In a sea of generic "I live every week like it's Shark Week" or "I work hard and play hard" online dating profiles, the witty, offbeat, unique ones are generally what grab our attention. But you might be putting yourself at a disadvantage.
Guys with boring online dating profiles are the most underrated, untapped resource that those sites have to offer. They're regularly overlooked on dating sites for their straightforwardness, lack of snark or pretentious quotes — but in person, these guys can be funny, attractive, sharp, and simply better than some guy whose profile sparkled with quips and had an appealing, unique edge. Often, the people who are best at grabby profiles are horribly awkward and neurotic in person. I should know. I'm one of them.
By this logic, just because the Boring Online Dating Profile Guy isn't as adept at expressing himself in writing doesn't mean he's boring in real life. Plus, he might have a great job, many clean and nicely ironed dress shirts, smell like Dove, and exercise regularly. In movies, this archetype is consistently used as the pathetic foil of the turbulent, devil-may-care on-and-off boyfriend — the true love of the heroine's life. The good-on-paper guy is meant to represent the wrong choice, the easy path, and a lifetime of blandness, and the poor guy gets left at the altar by Katherine Heigl as soon as Gerard Butler crashes through the church wall on his Harley, or whatever.
Let's not confuse this with Nice Guy Syndrome, that obnoxious thing where men complain that women overlook them in favor of assholes because they're just "too nice." (Actually, it's because they keep insisting on pointing this out. It's like holding the door for an old lady or rescuing a kitten from a tree and then screaming about it at the top of your lungs. Who wants to date that?) Those aren't the kind of guys I'm talking about. The ones I'm referring to are nice in a quiet way, not flashy or douchey or constantly "on" the way a lot of creative people are. A grown man who does his dishes, pays his own rent, calls his mom, doesn't have a carefully cultivated joke Twitter account and isn't in a noise band called Fingerbang is immensely attractive to me.
After choosing the on-and-off turbulence for years ("He smells like exciting!" your dumb brain says), you eventually come around to the idea that stability and maturity don't denote "boring," because "interesting" doesn't really exist as one isolated category. Say you pick guys based only on how witty their profiles are. You might end up with a dude who says shit like "Dead flowers inspire me as an artist" or "Your melancholia is beautiful" and doesn't take off his porkpie hat during dinner. That is truly boring. On the other hand, someone with a straightforward profile — no bons mots or hilarious anecdotes, just a mention that his favorite movie is Casablanca like the rest of the universe — can be witty, charming, and refreshingly un-self absorbed. It aligns with mygood texters : bad boyfriends :: bad texters : good boyfriends theory.
Zero in-person chemistry is an immediate dealbreaker for any sane person, but basically, the fatal flaw of dating sites is that they don't account for the major in-person factors that make or break attraction: mannerisms, voice, smell, the sexy way he pushes his hair back, all the other things you can't wedge into "favorite bands" or "the six things you can't live without." I'm the last person to suggest that women be with someone they're not in love with or could never see themselves falling in love with, but I am suggesting that going with the witty profile every time might be limiting your options. You shouldn't make assumptions about people just because they'll potentially hang out with you during the day and have a good work ethic and cook with well-cleaned kitchen tools from Williams-Sonoma. Also, Casablanca is a really great movie.
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