Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Online Dating

First of all, this is a ridiculous debate, and I present it here primarily for your amusement. Secondly, It's something I'm actually considering primarily due to it's ridiculousness, and would be open to any serious thoughts on it. Thirdly, it's a pretty hilarious medium for hooliganry, and I'd also be open to any suggestions on how to play with it.

The background: I've been back in Michigan three weeks, and have had a concert circled on my calendar for the whole time. This concert is on thursday, it's Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, who I love. It has only sit-down seats, and I was hoping I'd meet a girl and take her to the show. I didn't even try to meet a girl, partly because I don't think I want to be in a relationship or have random one-night stands, which basically means I don't want to meet girls. But I do want a date for this show...

So this morning I had the idea of putting an ad on craigslist to go to this concert with me. Seemed like an interesting thing to do. My ad:
There's a concert of a band that I love on thursday, and I'm thinking that would be a good time to get to know someone new.
The concert: Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Amazing lady-funk. Tickets are on me.
Me: Grad student at Michigan. Deep, funny, interesting, attractive.
You: Sweet, adventurous, attractive. And you must be a fan of the funk of course.

Now I have lots of replies (7) from girls that seem nice and like the funk and I have no idea what to do. I'm actually leaning towards going out with one, because I still believe that anything I've never done is worth doing and online dating is something I've never done. On the other hand, really? Online dating? Jesus.

It's right on the edge of ridiculousness. If it was more ridiculous, I'd do it just because it was ridiculous. But it kinda makes sense too; i want to go to this show with someone and i probably have a better chance of meeting somebody compatable through emails than drunken bar shenanigans. But it's still got that stigma in my mind that makes it not really a legitamate option in my mind. Plus, what type of girls are these that are that on top of craigslist singles postings that they're responding to this so quickly? Plus, if it did work out, it's such a pathetic "how'd you guys meet?" Plus, really? online dating? Jesus.

So questions for the cousins?
-Is this ridiculous enough to make it a good idea?
-Is this sane enough to make it a good idea?

Ah yes, part three. Medium for hooliganry. There's a lot of hilarious things I could do here.
1) Invite them all out to dinner on wednesday, and the winner of this date-off advances to the concert. Too mean and awkward to actually do though.
2) Go to dinner and concert with one. Drop lots of hints that I'm a craiglist pervert with a violence fetish.
3) Obviously a lot of people read these want-ads. I (or we) can do an experiment to see which work best, or how weird of an ad I can write that people would respond to.

Question for the cousins three:
-Any ideas for hooliganry? keep in mind that I live life for amusing memories and stories and will actually do these.

6 comments:

The Cheese said...

I like the idea, mostly because I'm married and you're the guinea pig and I get to live vicariously through your exploits. So do it.

You could invite all 7 and the first one to arrive at your place gets to go.

Put out a new add that says this:

There's a band that I love playing on thursday, and I'm thinking that would be a good time to get to know someone new.
The concert: Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Amazing lady-funk. Tickets are on me.
Me: Grad student at Michigan. Curious, confused, diabolical, _____ looking.
You: poor, mirthful, defunkitated. And you must be a fan of the funk of course.

Please submit a 200 word essay describing your thoughts on immigration. Must be exactly 200 words. Also include exact time spent on essay.

DEE said...

This is too good, you have to do this.

Is there one who stands out?

Maybe you could ask one to go, and then do a reply all saying "I did first come, first serve, but I think you're all just super for responding to my ad, so meet us at __ for a beer afterwards."

This way you meet whoever shows up just for the hell of it, and you avoid going home too soon with the one girl if you do hit it off with her.

Plus, if you don't hit it off with the one girl, you could get another girl really drunk and use driving her home as a way to escape.

K-Snake said...

Step 1: separately invite all seven girls to meet you at a bar.
Step 2: Post seven separate new listings stating the same thing, only using each of the girl's names instead of yours as the poster (may require starting new email addresses). Arrange with all new responses, probably men, to meet at the same bar, same time.
Step 3: go to the bar and enjoy watching the confusing mess of meet-and-greet.

K-Snake said...

Addendum:
Step 4: pray that the new responders are all nice guys rather than e-predators.

Whipit, Jay Jay Face said...

I know a couple people who got married to someone they met through e-harmony. Because of this, I never had anything against online dating, as long as your not just looking for sex. A good medium would be to have a way to mess with the girl if she turns out too weird. That way, if shes cool, you could just go to the concert. you could start off with a questionaire, say 20 questions, and see how she does. That way you could start the messing-with early. if she fails, you could park like 5 miles away, and tell her "one more block" the whole way.

sample questions include...

what hobbies do you have?
where are you from?
favorite sexual position?
favorite type of monkey?
favorite music?
define soul.
who do you admire and why?
why would tim arnold make a good president of guam?

True false section

you find me attractive.
you like the mountains.
you've never smoked pot.
you've never given a footjob to a black guy(or midget or clown...)
we will have sex tonight.

This section would be good for being real obvious about wrong answers while writing a big x


if she does well, and sees the humor and has good answers for the other ones, then take her on a date. If she fails you could have a night of experiment or something like that. test the stuff your studyiing, like get her to want something real weird by the end of the night. try some subliminal shit.


tons of potential. tons.

you could bring her to some dark ally and say you have no meet someone real quick, maybe have some girl show up looking like a ho to give you some money, or you could pretend to sell some crack.

tons.

Bubb Rubb said...

Thanks for the support and offers of hooliganry. I regret to report that my excursion into online dating was lame and uneventful, with a little self-loathing thrown in for good measure.

By the time I got back to it, I had about 30 responses, and quickly realized that about 25 of these were fake. The two methods they employed were: 1)tell you they were worried about security, and needed you to verify your self by giving your credit card to some random site, and 2) telling to to message them on yahoo or AIM and then these pretty clever programs make you think you might be talking to a real person and then telling you to go to a webcam site. It was surprising how this mastery of computer programming and auotomatic fraud correlate so poorly with spelling and grammar.

I closely read all the hooliganry ideas, and they all just seemed to mean and awkward and time-consuming. In retrospect, I definitely should have gone with one of those. All were awesome. I especially liked Kyle's, because it helps people meet each other, which is far too difficult in today's society. Maybe I still will...

So I weeded all the crap out, and got second responses from 3 people: a grad student who seemed nice, but not attractive and extremely fluent with online dating, 1 goth girl who was pretty interesting, and one very attractive middle-eastern undergrad.

Here's the email from the undergrad:
"I am a 2nd year student at the university of michigan. I was planning on majoring in pre-med, but not I'm not sure. I am arabic and can speak it. I love watching movies and spsorts. I am very social and openminded about things. I have a baby turtle at home ha. I kinda wana kick it wit dudes and find out what's the best way a girl can get an orgasm. ha yeaa" (plus 2 very cute pics of a middle-eastern looking girl with a nose-ring.

So I'm instantly leaning towards the undergrad, and feeling guilty about it. The other two seemed much cooler, and that email above, despite the sexuality, was pretty juvenile. So the undesirable self-perception of online dating gets coupled with the fact that i'm doing it in a superficial way, and i just want the whole thing to be over. But I push on, and email the undergrad back, saying that I'm game for the concert if she is. By this time, the grad student has sent me 3 emails asking what the deal is, and i finally tell her i chose someone else. the undergrad never writes back, and i end up going to a bbq instead of the concert, putting an end to the whole chapter. yep.