You might be wondering what the image has do to with online dating – it’s a picture of dates – the fruit – in case you’re reading this without the image, is that even possible anymore? When I was searching for a stock photo to use  in my Adventures in Online Dating & Ghosting, all the ones about dating showed happy, loving couples fawning over one another. Clearly the people taking these photos are all happily coupled up. For some reason, the site I use for stock photos returned a bunch of photos of dates (maybe because that was the search term – duh), anyway, they look like the fat ticks that used to fall off my dog Snoopy when I was growing up, and if that doesn’t sum up online dating and ghosting I don’t know what does. 

Ugh, I don’t even know why I keep doing the online dating thing. Probably because there is no other way to meet men without actually going out. 

I’m not good at dating, and I’m even worse at online dating. It might be due to the format, it’s kinda like buying shoes online. I select the features I am looking for and hit the search button. This gives me a great selection of people that are really good at lying about who they are. 

Recently I started communicating with a pilot. That in and of itself seemed a bit odd. You don’t see a whole lot of doctors, lawyers or astronauts on online dating sites – not legitimate ones anyway. Also, I kinda always thought pilots didn’t have any trouble finding dates all over the country or wherever they happen to fly. I didn’t spend too much time trying to figure out if this guy was for real or not, I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere after the third email.

He’d sent the first email and I responded a few hours later. The same for the second email. These were short, generic sort of emails – nothing too deep and certainly nothing funny (which is why I knew this was going nowhere). The third email wasn’t much different – “What do you like to do for fun?”

The difference this time was that it was sent on a Friday morning and I didn’t even see it until Saturday morning. I got busy and didn’t bother responding right away, figuring I’d get back to it later in the evening when I wasn’t busy.

Except I forgot about it and went about my life forgetting to respond to this horrible dull email asking me what I like to do for fun. 

On Monday I got another email from the pilot scolding me for ghosting him. 

Now I’ve been ghosted and this was not ghosting. I’m pretty sure you have to actually meet someone to be ghosted. In fact I think ghosting really only applies to those you’ve dated for a while. Not three emails through the online dating site’s messaging service. 

I replied to his email and apologized for not responding sooner. I also told him I was no longer interested and wished him well. I was polite.

He continued to email me asking me why I didn’t respond. Since I have never met this person and had no relationship with him, short of a few emails, I didn’t feel the least bit obligated to explain myself to him. I wished him luck in his search.

He emailed me again and asked me why I wasn’t interested anymore and then he asked me out. Then he went on to talk about himself.

Is this a guy thing? Was I just mansplained about what I am and am not interested in? 

I wasn’t going to respond anymore, but I did. I was polite. I told him that because he assumed I had ghosted him, we weren’t going to be compatible. He is far too insecure for me. And I know insecure because that’s my thing. We both can’t be insecure, it will never work.

I went on to explain that if he is already thinking the worst of me – because I think ghosting someone is a pretty shitty thing to do to anyone – there wouldn’t be anyplace to go when we got comfortable with each other. This is a guy who was going to hate everything about me. He’d already stated he wasn’t interested in dating anyone who supported republicans. His intolerance might have also had something to do with me not being interested.

I state in my profile that I lean right, it’s not surprise, though I make it clear it’s in a libertarian sort of way. Honestly, I’m not even sure what that means, but it sounded good when trying to put together a clever and witty profile. 

Dating has become political. I have seen a surprising amount of profiles that say “Don’t connect with me if you voted for Trump or are a republican”, I have yet to see one that says “Don’t connect with me if you’re a liberal or voted for Bernie Sanders”, I don’t care who you voted for, if you’re that intolerant I’m not for you. 

The pilot has sent me two more emails, each one seemingly oblivious to the fact that I am not interested, and each one going on and on about his wonderful traits. Maybe he really is a pilot?

Here’s the thing guys – you need to step up your online dating game. Your profiles are boring, and you can’t carry a conversation. The reason I usually stop responding to your email is because your last email to me was a statement and I don’t know where to go with the conversation. Sometimes this means they don’t want to continue communicating with me, and that’s fair enough. But most of the time it’s because these guys don’t have a clue about conversing with another human.

If you want me to respond, then ask me a question. If you can’t think of a question then be funny.

Most of the guys who do online dating are not funny. Some think they are, but they aren’t. 

The guy who ghosted me.. he wasn’t much to look at, he was awkward, he wasn’t someone I would have ever gone out with except for the fact that he was hilarious. It was almost worth being ghosted because I laughed my ass off for several months before.

I don’t know if you can learn to be funny, it might be something that can only develop because you suffered a traumatic childhood or something, but if you can learn to be funny, you guys should give it a shot. If you can’t be funny on your own, at least learn to recognize what is funny and then send me funny memes because that works too.

You have to have more than a shirtless photo of you holding a fish in your online dating profile if you really want to meet someone. And for crying out loud cut out the damn bathroom selfie!!