I refuse to date boring people!

January 2, 2012 7:29 PM

JDate question: Are my expectations for quality of messages and content of profile too high after being on OKCupid? What is your experience with this?

I promised to my mom that if I was still single in December, then I would join JDate. So, she made me follow through on the promise last week.

Now this question might sound cocky and too picky, but for the sake of the question, believe me, I am not. I just prefer not to waste my time online with someone who has no personality.

I've been on OKcupid for a while, and I only respond to messages that say something interesting, something more than "you're pretty" or "hi, how are you" or "your profile sounds interesting, we should chat." Also, I only write to, or reply to guys whose profiles are somewhat interesting - either something they write makes me smile or laugh, or they have a hobby I'd be interested, or they have a fun picture, or something. On JDate, NO ONE'S PROFILE is interesting (I've looked through hundreds!!). Everyone writes "Hi I'm ____, I work in finance/law/doctor and I am looking for that special girl." Their personality doesn't show through at all (or is that really all they got?). The only messages I get are the 3-5 word messages that I would normally not respond to on OKCupid, because obviously the guy didn't even bother to read my profile, or hasn't actually found anything about it interesting. If they did, I am sure they'd ask about one of the dozens of things that I am interested in.

I know I've been on the site for only a week and of course I will give it more time, but my question is: is JDate just crappy like this and full of boring people? Should I start taking what I can get and just writing back to the boring messages? (Obviously I know I don't have to if I don't want to, etc, but since I am paying for this, I feel like I should at least meet a few guys and give them a chance, it can't hurt, right?) Or am I just having bad luck, and there are people on there who do take the time to write you a message, and people who write more than 2 sentences about their job in their profile?

Tell me your experience with the people on JDate, especially compared with OKCupid. If it's relevant, I am female, 27, in NJ, but even the people from the city and from Brooklyn aren't interesting!

Also, I know that online dating is a numbers game, so guys don't want to spend a long time composing a message to a girl who might not even write back, but the thing is, guys *do* put in the time on OKCupid, and I have pretty much the same pictures and profile content on both sites, so that is a constant, which leads me to question whether my observation with JDate is true.

posted by never.was.and.never.will.be. to Human Relations (23 answers total)

Here's the thing that I found about online dating: I found after sifting through 100's of "wuts up u r sexxi" messages to reply to the few that were interesting, I still wound up on dates with people I never would have gone out with in real life. I also found that I met guys in real life who I knew for a fact that I would NEVER have replied to if they had contacted me through online dating. So my advice is this: if the guy doesn't display any deal breakers, just meet him, that'll tell you so much more about whether or not he is actually interesting IRL than emailing back and forth forever.
posted by cairdeas at 7:38 PM on January 2, 2012 [9 favorites]

The worst, most boring profiles ate the ones where people answer the questions literally, and sadly, people do this a lot on JDate. Also, something about their UI made the site very cold and sterile. It wasn't always that way, but the changed it a few years back. Anyway, I had shitty luck on there. OKC does a lot to make people interact with each other, and JDate does a terrible job with this. Also, paid dating is a ripoff because you spend half your time messaging people who can't message back. So yeah, thumbs down on JDate.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:39 PM on January 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

(ate = are)

damn phone.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:40 PM on January 2, 2012

I haven't been on jdate in several years, but I only met one woman I connected with on there, and we've remained friends, but we never really dated. The rest of the women I met on there were...blah. But I know a number of married couples who met on JDate. So, it works for some, doesn't work for others, etc.
posted by dfriedman at 7:41 PM on January 2, 2012

Best answer: Well, I can at least assure you that Jdate was as fruitless and dull in LA and the SF Bay as it sounds like it is in NYC. Maybe it is the personality of the site, who knows.
posted by namesarehard at 7:52 PM on January 2, 2012

Excuse me, Jersey, before I get beat up.
posted by namesarehard at 7:52 PM on January 2, 2012

I have been on both sites. When I was active and trying, I could get 4+ dates a week and went out with my share of them. Eventually did meet my current partner on OKC, for what that's worth, and he is Jewish to boot :)

My problem with Jdate was that I tended to attract a certain type there. I don't know what it was about my profile that attracted this type, but every reply I got was from some variation of the same guy (Russian, lives at home, works in IT) and it just didn't work for me. OKC seemed better at directing me toward more varied types.

As for the current guy, who may just be the one for me at last, his initial message to me was about a specific television show I mentioned. I checked out his profile, liked what I saw and things progressed from there.
posted by JoannaC at 7:53 PM on January 2, 2012

A boring profile is not the same thing as a boring person. An interesting profile is not the same thing as an interesting person.

Everyone on these sites is writing a sales pitch. Some of them just aren't very good at it. You can judge a lot about someone by how they approach you, but "interestingness" is probably not one of them.

Don't lower your standards, but do spend some time thinking about whether or not you're judging people by reliable indicators.

Let me put it this way: Would you want to date someone who was very interesting in person but was bad at writing ad copy?

If the answer to that question is "Yes", then you're ruling out potentially great partners by being too picky about their dating profiles.
posted by toomuchpete at 7:59 PM on January 2, 2012 [20 favorites]

Another Mefite contacted me recently for feedback about their experiences on Jdate. You are not alone in your experience. FWIW.
posted by jbenben at 8:01 PM on January 2, 2012

The interesting people I met on JDate were all also on OKCupid. I am in Seattle, so obviously the jewish dating pool is smaller than in NJ and YMMV, but I think I would have been better-served spending the time/money I spent on JDate joining a club or something and trying to meet people in person. (In addition to putting "I am only interested in dating jews!" in my OKC profile and doing searches there for religion=jewish, which is how I met the woman I am dating now.)
posted by inkyz at 8:26 PM on January 2, 2012

Data point: I never, ever had the tiniest bit of luck on Jdate. Even the live chats were full of whiny guys.
posted by Melismata at 9:35 PM on January 2, 2012

Of course JDate is for boring people! It basically says on the package "for people who are too boring to even consider the possibility of dating someone outside their culture".

There are plenty of Jews on OKCupid, and I imagine a lot of them tried JDate and migrated over when they found it to be full of boring people. There are probably other Jews on OKCupid who never joined JDate because they get weirded out by the implication that "racial purity" is important in a match, but who would nevertheless be happy to date other Jews.
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:58 PM on January 2, 2012 [9 favorites]

Well, I'm pretty sure my mom met her current husband on JDate like, more than 10 years ago, and he's not too boring (a math professor Asperger's type... but not boring as such, though I can't imagine his profile was anything but, and I don't think he's the verbal type). That said, she was 45 and he was over 50, so I think this contributed-- to a certain semi-conservative and/or utilitarian mentality. Anyplace you have to pay to do internet community stuff (I think of) as stupidly conservative in all the wrong ways, but then I'm not a middle-aged person with 'values' and 'time-constraints' or whatever. Further, I personally think that the kind of person who'd go and (entirely of their own free will) pay money to date only Jewish people is going to be conservative/uptight/likely boring/old-fashioned/etcetc.


I know where you're coming from-- I also realize it's a bit unfair to people to judge them on how they write/communicate in writing, but... basically, I personally am very verbal and it's like, possible you'd get along great with me without being highly verbal, but you'd get along a lot better if you're a good writer. So I feel semi-justified judging people on how they write about themselves and/or their interests. However, if you don't self-identify as a writing geek as much as I do, consider that people may be not-so-good at writing (esp. about themselves, but also just writing), and be very cool. Apparently (so they tell me), writing is hard (or some such weird thing). So they tell me. Who knew??! Anyway. So it's very easy to seem 'boring' in writing when really you're just bad at writing. However, I also think JDate has more uptight/traditional people who'll censor themselves and not say weird stuff so as to not scare off their fellow conservative/religious/traditionally-minded brethren and/or potential matches. On OKC, people are more into letting it all hang out and playing the numbers game-- they can afford to, since to them time isn't money as such.

Also, most people are boring and/or interesting, depending on who they're with, what medium they're using, the subject-matter, your pov, etc. Possibly not lawyers, however. (Well, I couldn't help myself there.)
posted by reenka at 9:59 PM on January 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

There are probably other Jews on OKCupid who never joined JDate because they get weirded out by the implication that "racial purity" is important in a match, but who would nevertheless be happy to date other Jews.

I think you're the only one introducing a creepy "racial purity" thing here, but actually, another minor irritation I had with JDate was probably 5% of the people on there aren't jewish. This probably varies by location, and I imagine they can't legally screen out people based on religion, but it does seem like it reduces the value of the site if people there aren't even reliably jewish.
posted by inkyz at 10:16 PM on January 2, 2012

I have always heard that JDate was the "hook up" dating service and okcupid was the dating dating service. People always tell me, you should try JDate, they put out on the first date, etc. I'm in NYC so maybe that's just what JDate is like in New York, but I've heard this from several completely unrelated people. Perhaps this perception and use of JDate as a one-night-stand facilitator, as the people who mention it to me describe it, effects the thoughtfulness of profiles.
posted by fuq at 4:14 AM on January 3, 2012

Best answer: Oh, lord, you're not alone in this... I've been on Jdate for a number of years and it's always been the same story: endless pages of people writing the same boring shit in their profiles. The ones that really piss me off? "I'm a beautiful Jewish princess looking for her prince" or "I only deserve the best." (Actual quotes.)

But, that said, there are still some folks on there who have a brain, and every so often, I'll even come across someone who looks delightfully quirky. But they're pretty few and far between. And like other commenters have said, most of the cool ones are on OKCupid too.

Good luck with your search!
posted by greatgefilte at 7:09 AM on January 3, 2012

If you are not connecting with certain people, then don't communicate or write back. This would apply to any online dating site. If prioritizing communication by the quality of profile is your thing, then OKCupid would probably provide a better match over JDate due to the culture of the site.

There's no silver bullet when it comes to online dating sites. It's just another tool in your toolkit (OKCupid, JDate, friends, family, meetups) that can be used to meet people. If you find one site to be a waste of time (wading through poor profiles) or resources (money needed to pay for access), then ditch that tool and get a better one.
posted by seppyk at 7:22 AM on January 3, 2012

(And if you ever want to see my secret stash of god-awful profiles that I've saved for posterity, let me know. ;) )
posted by greatgefilte at 9:14 AM on January 3, 2012

toomuchpete:

Let me put it this way: Would you want to date someone who was very interesting in person but was bad at writing ad copy?

If the answer to that question is "Yes", then you're ruling out potentially great partners by being too picky about their dating profiles.

What if the answer is "no"? I can only speak for myself, but having been on many Jdate-generated first meetings, the ones that have gone well have inevitably been with those people who had enough creativity to express their personality in the cramped, constrained space of a dating profile, rather than trying to sell themselves descriptively. I don't think the OP is wrong to skip over the chaff.
posted by greatgefilte at 9:33 AM on January 3, 2012

JDate is a site for the 2.1% of the population who want to limit themselves to partners that share their cultural/religious background. Is anyone surprised that there aren't a lot of kooky out-of-the-box thinkers on there?
posted by pjaust at 10:24 AM on January 3, 2012

Sure . . . if "must write stellar ad copy" is your thing, I'm not here to judge you. But the fact remains that being able to write a good online dating ad does not make you interesting. The reality is that you're not going to date or marry a profile, you're going to date or marry a person.

I think profiles on most of the sites (yes, even the vaunted OkCupid) are, on average, more boring than the people they represent because of a tendency for people to want to seem accessible to a large number of potential dates and not to scare anyone off. They tend toward a homogeneous expansion on "I like everything! Except for really terrible stuff, I hate all of that!"

But yes: there are plenty of interesting people hiding behind really, really boring profiles. This question is going to get a lot of "Yeah, ignore boring profiles" answers due to selection bias: the fewer boringly-profiled people you entertain dates with, the lower your likelihood is of running across one of the interesting folks, but I still think that's generally bad advice.

And maybe boring profiles are a red herring and it really is just JDate that happens to be full of boring people -- I have no idea.

Skip the boring profiles if you want. Judge their verbal skills on how clever you thought their profile was. Whatever helps you manage the numbers, but I'd recommend at least considering the possibility that the person on the other side of that profile is more interesting than the text lets on.
posted by toomuchpete at 10:50 AM on January 3, 2012

I last used JDate before they adopted their current design, but I found one of the major issues with the site to be that their question prompts tend to lead to very boring responses -- resulting in very terse or overly boring profiles. Most of the interests were mashed together into a list that was very difficult to read.
posted by andrewraff at 11:08 AM on January 3, 2012

Your time and attention are precious. You don't owe them to anyone for any reason other than natural desire. Absolutely not cocky or picky to know that!

So, to the original issue: You're on this religion-specific site because your mom wants you to be. What about telling her you'll see a larger, more interesting pool of people (and therefore be more likely to actually have a relationship with one of them) if you just make that religion a must in your OKC match options?
posted by kalapierson at 5:40 AM on January 4, 2012