OMG Lists.com

Top 5 Internet Dating Red Flags Of Doom

Nov. 14 9:23 PM by Kate McNally

I'm an online dater. I'm not ashamed to admit it--in fact I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert. In my time spent perusing the virtual meat-market I've figured out that this particular populace can be divided into two camps: People who are too busy to meet others in their limited spare time ("The Losties" or "Main Cast") and those who can't meet other people due to extreme social awkwardness and a tendency to live in mother's basement ("The Tailies").

After spending many an evening sipping bad martinis and suffering through conversations about the perfect golf swing, "Magic: The Gathering" and the latest in ball gag technology (all separate occasions, of course), I decided it was time to take my hard-earned internet dating capital and get listy. If one of the following winks, pokes, woos or shows up in your inbox, run in the opposite direction, or you may just get eaten by a polar bear.

5-People With No Pictures

Sure it's all well and good to say that looks shouldn't matter. But who really wants to strip someone's personality naked and play "Hide the Honey" with their brain? The only people who don't put their pics up on a dating page do so for a reason--care to guess why? These days it's practically impossible NOT to have digital pictures of oneself, so if they're not posting, they're hiding something and you'd better believe it's not going to be pretty. No one leaves off a pic because they're too HOT! Trust when Ok!Cupid says "No picture found. Be suspicious."

(Also beware of people with only blurry or outdated pics, like from Christmas 1982.Or pics of just their pets. Very. Bad. Sign.)

4-Users With Bad Handles

It's said that you only get one first impression. A person's username is what makes the initial impact. Be it clever or maudlin, charismatic or benign, a handle acts as a singular electronic pickup line. what kind of message is a person trying to send by using names like "PimpBaller69" or "DaddiesLilGrrl"? Any occurrence of similar names should be deleted immediately, and, on occasion, sent to Dateline's "To Catch a Predator"

3-Art School Students

How many fashion design students does it take to make an art school blow goats? Forget it, I totally don't give a fuck. Dates with this meta-cult often seem to involve leg-warmers, badly dyed a-symmetrical haircuts and copious amounts of black eye-liner. Generally the night will end after taking in an emo concert, choking down a soy-based beverage and wanting to drown yourself in a bucket of body glitter; consider yourself warned though, an enterprising young student may just put you in a window display and call it art. Not to worry, accounts belonging to art students are easily spotted by the black and white photograph of one of their eyes as the main pic. Those wannabe avant-garde profile shots are enough to make me vomitron Pollock-style all over the curb! Quick, someone get me a canvas!

2-Vague or Misleading Phrases

Here are some commonly used terms and/or phrases and their interpretations:

"I'm just a nice guy..." = I'm boring and will never satisfy you in bed.

"I'm a girl who knows how to have fun" = The folks at the free clinic know me by name!

"I enjoy going out for drinks with friends" = KEG STAND!!!

"More to love" or "Voluptuous" = More bacon, please!

"Exploring my career options" = Will html for food.

1-Stalkers

How you deal with emails from people you're not interested in is up to you. You can avoid them, politely decline or run in a mix of fear and disgust because the person is older than your parents. Usually ignoring them or saying "no thanks" does the trick, but every now and then someone just won't take the hint and go away--sorta like the Hilton sisters. It starts with "Hey, I think you're really hot, we should hook up," and ends with receiving sexually disturbing poetry titled "Rotting Corpses" and marriage proposals. It should go without saying, but this isn't exactly the epitome of romance. File away these unwanted missives in the "Pending Restraining Orders" file and pass along copies to the site's host so they can remove the freak nasty pervert. Hey, I didn't say all the number ones would be funny!

• << prev
• next >>