Internet Hook-Ups

Five years ago I worked with guy named John. He had done some time for a sexual related crime up in Vermont and was homeless after he got out. Somehow he made his way to North Carolina and began working with me at a golf course. This dude was a motherfucking pervert. He used to be a raging alcoholic/paint sniffer but he diverted that addiction to sex. He started putting personal ads in a local free paper then graduated to phone chat lines. That shit worked wonders for him. He got mad ass through that and I met some of his "conquests".

Here's the funny: John is a 40 year old, 5'4", 120 lbs, ugly ass white guy who loves fat black women. Not only that, he loves eating pussy. He would rather eat pussy than fuck or get head. He's into ass eating too.

Now John is on Adult Friend Finder and has weird, nasty, fat sex a couple of times a week. He's not the only person I know who has had many a hookup on the Internet, but he's by far the creepiest and most successful at it.

 

Shockingly, I have never done it. I always viewed it as a way of ending up in an open sewer drain with a piece of re-bar through your throat and a wire drainsnake up your ass. You can't really trust anybody on the internet, so why take that risk?

 

I am trying to find a downside, seems like a mild friday night.

I did have a friend do online dating on a few sites after college. I asked her if she was ever worried about ending up with Jack the Ripper. She said it was just normal people, and the same people you could meet in any bar. So I guess take your 29.99 to the bar for shots.

 

I finally signed up for POF a year ago, after pretty much all of my single friends bugged me to join and then got bored of it themselves. Most girls I meet on there either don't hold my interest, or I lose theirs, before it ever comes to a face-to-face meeting, so it usually ends online. I hardly send initial messages anymore, and apparently I attract fatties, but it's mostly for entertainment purposes, like Facebook, only with a more explicit point. No real crazy stories. I dated the hottest girl I've been with for a couple months, became friends with one girl, and have a semi-ongoing fuck-buddy relationship with another. All in all, I give it a thumbs up.

I never totally got the stigma that comes with it though. I mean, isn't it just an online version of a singles night? Except with this you get a description of personality. Most profiles are shit, but those who put in the effort, I think, can really give an accurate depiction of who they are, which is more than you can expect meeting someone randomly in public (though there are advantages to that too, obviously).

 

There's a alleged cougar type chick who lives within a 30 minute drive of me that comments on a blog that I frequent that has expressed interest in the idea of getting together.

I'm tempted, but you know people have an online persona that can be wildly different from who they actual are.

 

I love me some internets.

One of the best things I ever did (long ago) was take a douchey photo of me with my shirt off and make a smarmy profile on friendster and match.com with it and let the offers roll in. It was amazing. Every day at work I'd skim through the emails from a variety of women of varying degrees of hotness and craziness.

There were some monsters to be sure but plenty of diamonds in the rough. I ended up meeting up with 20 or so women and even had a couple of six month relationships with a few of them.

 

I've found that boys on POF fall into two categories: nice boys who I have no chemistry with or boys who I have nothing in common with besides chemistry. While neither is absolutely horrible, it doesn't really lend itself to a relationship. There was one guy who I ended up seeing for a bit, but it was nothing serious.

I've had a couple of 'dates' that were painfully awkward to sit through. There was the guy who mumbled the entire time and then proceeded to repeatedly message me "WHAT WENT WRONG!?" until I finally just blocked him. And then there was the winner who talked about his ex-girlfriend and her hot cousin the entire time. With the exception of those two, everyone has been normal and could carry on a pleasant conversation.

 

Same boat. I tried it out for a little while, just to see what it was all about and it was pretty lame. The few women that I messaged were usually so dull that I got bored reading what they wrote about two messages in. Doesn't help that a vast majority of them are practically illiterate and snd thr msgz lyk dis n a frm that dznt mk snz*. Turns out that I'm much better with women in real life than on teh internets.

Focus: In regards to POF, I met one chick who worked at a bar; she got me ridiculously drunk then just disappeared. She was working at the time and some of her friends were in the bar as well, so, I just sat down with them and hung out till she was off shift - she then mysteriously disappeared. A little later I get a text from her that went along the lines of "Where the fuck did you go? I can't find you anywhere", when I hadn't moved from that spot other than to talk to her behind the bar or go to the washroom.

I replied to her text, got no reply and haven't seen her since.

*Send their messages like this, in a form that doesn't make sense.

 

I have two stories that I think are relevant to this point.

The first was a girl I met online and talked to for a length of time before meeting in person. It was initially awkward as the process of reconciling the online version of someone with the real version of someone took place, but as time passed I was able to see more and more the person I "knew" coming through.

The second was a friend of my roommate's I met when she came to visit for a weekend. I hung out with her a little bit, enough that we kept in touch via facebook/AIM for the next several months until she came back for my roommate's graduation. There was zero adjustment period with her, and even though most of our relationship had been built online, we got along like we hung out all the time.

I think ultimately what this illustrates is that online is a fundamentally limited medium, and in the absence of further information we make assumptions about people's speech and behavioral patterns based on pretty much nothing. So if and when a face to face meeting occurs, it can seem jarring that our totally baseless, but nonetheless established, assumptions are wrong, and it seems like they have a "completely different personality," even though time will show they're essentially the same person. This didn't happen in the second story I mentioned because I had already met her in person and thus my head was superimposing a personal style that was accurate, rather than one made of whole cloth.

I know there were several people on the old board who assumed I was in my mid to late thirties and had kids. I can't imagine what they would have thought about my online persona vs real persona had they met me in person, even though I comport myself very much the same in both.

 

In the past I have hooked up with and dated girls based on an email relationship. But I always met and got to know those girls in person first. Then circumstance took us apart and we'd flirt over email until the day we either lived or vacationed in the same place.

But for online dating sites, I wonder if OK Cupid is just a local phenomenon because I haven't seen anyone else mention it. It's huge here in the SF Bay Area. It's completely free and there are high percentage of great looking women on there. The one downside, well, from TiB's perspective, is that it's popular amongst hipsters. But hipster girls are hot, so...

I joined OK Cupid last year, flirted with several women and eventually agreed to meet one. 6 months later, she's the only internet date I've had and we're still together. Also, she was much better looking than her pictures. Her pics were okay, but in person she is undeniably beautiful. I was a bit bowled over when we first met.

So, where I was once against and skeptical of internet hook-ups, I'm definitely for it now.

 

I've met a handful of girls off Craigslist and one or two off POF over the years. Most have been crazies that never ended in an actual meeting, of the 10 or so I ended up meeting in real life most ended up in sex and 2 or 3 resulted in ongoing FWB arrangements. One girl I met I would've ended up dating if I hadn't met her a few weeks before I moved do a different city.

Also met and briefly (3-4 weeks) dated a girl I met off the old board. She was normal enough, at least more normal than I would've expected.

 

I met my boyfriend of nearly three years via the old board. Do I win this thread?

 

It just floors me that 2 years and 11-11 1/4 months later Deltabelle still thinks shes going steady with Mantis Toboggan (Although the M.D. probably makes him a keeper in someones book).

 

I'm thirty four and have never used myspace, e-harmony, or whatever. However while browsing REDTUBE I have been very interested in "The facebook of Sex" it seems very odd that everyone of those amazingly hot young girls live in the suburbs of Philly, roughly five miles from me!

If I was single I would be all over that shit. My-space gives you the chance to bang all the girls you felt you should have banged in high school and college! Every time I saw a missed opportunity I would on-line flirt with her, who cares if you get shot down?

I only know one couple that actually became an item via the internet and that is my weird neighbor. He was from Arizona and he met a girl from Maine, they both had relocated to Philly. I think those sites are fantastic for older people who want to start again. If you are forty and divorced or a widower I would imagine they would be the best thing for you, you can't really meet people at bars.

As for the young folk, do it the old fashioned way. I always thought the best strategy was to have a female friend hook you up, they always pan out. If i was single and not really looking for a relationship I would be on everyone of those sites romping away.

 

Once in grade 9 or 10, I was told that it was fun to search through match.com and so forth to see who you know in your area. I did, and found my elementary school french teacher, evidently divorced. I saw him at a wedding a year later. I suppose that's interesting.

I did, once, arrange to meet a girl from the internet when I was 18, on the premise of her taking my virginity. It was very awkward and no clothes were removed (she was on her period and probably got cold feet about the whole thing). On the plus side, everyone on my dorm floor thought I was getting laid, at least. And perspective is everything. Also, she was kind of fat and not particularly attractive.

 

In this vein, this thread inspired me to take a look at one of the sites, and completely by accident stumbled onto the profile of a girl I know. Attractive, single, looking for dating but nothing serious. Now I just have to figure a way around the awkwardness of "I know we already know each other, but I found your profile on a dating website."

 

The boy and I kind of sort of met through here. Someone sent him a link to my escorting Q&A, he emailed me, and I fell for him before I had any idea what he looks like. I lucked out and got one that's not deformed (at least physically). He didn't luck out and got a nutjob ginger.

I'd rather use the internet to make friends than romance, though. Like someone said earlier, it can be difficult to reconcile the idealized image you've assigned to someone's online persona [whether it's their true personality or not] with who they are face-to-face. I think I cope with the union better knowing that we're only planning to be friends; if I fall in love with someone's personality and end up being repulsed by (or simply unattracted to) them physically, it would break my heart but I wouldn't be able to continue the romantic relationship. Why, yes, I am quite shallow.

 

"Hey Lewkinferluv4552, I hear you're looking to get laid?"