>Online Dating Tips for 2012

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Brace yourself. You are now being bombarded with ads to sign up for dating sites. As a public service, I’d like to share some advice from my sadly extensive time on said sites.

• Dates don’t actually occur online. The websites are just a way to find people and figure out if they are interesting/sane enough to meet in person.
• Don’t sign up for a site just to be frustrated after a couple of weeks. Yes, some people find a date within a week, but we hate those people. Most of us take a good month or two to find someone to meet for drinks in midtown Sacramento. Just be realistic about the process. You will get frustrated. You might even get a little bored.
• Update your profile regularly. I don’t mean to say this as writing critique. If you perform even a minor tweak, and you have a profile on Match.com, your profile will show up at the top of the search results.
• Don’t pay for the add ons. I added the profile highlight and First Impressions features, just to see if they would make a difference. It’s been two weeks and no, they don’t. You’ll get more hits when you add an extra period to a sentence on your profile.
• Only sign up if you have the time to date. Sure, you might be lonely, but do you really have the space in your schedule to meet in person let alone send out enough messages to gauge a person’s level of sanity?
• Don’t use cliches. If you do, you are boring. Maybe you want boring, but just stay away from phrases like “I’m funny. I hate writing about myself. I’m laid back. I’m sarcastic. I’m goal oriented. I don’t like drama. I’m a good guy.” Because you will automatically be the opposite and they say nothing about the wonderfully unique person that we all know you to be.
• Post a photo. Seriously, no one goes out with lines of text. And use a current one. Don’t scan in your high school photo. So what if you are 20 pounds over weight, balding, and/or have wrinkles around your eyes. No one is perfect and you are probably more attractive than you realize. Also, stay out of the bathroom when you take your photo. Either find a friend or turn the damn thing around and have the lens point at you. Look at the screen in the mirror to see what it’s going to look like. It kind of annoys me that I have to tell you this…again.

Mostly, I’m posting these tips to help myself out. I’m sick and tired of getting messages like:

From guys with this headline:

Gross, dude.