Project Happily Ever After

To my virtual male admirers:

I am writing you this open letter because I am sincerely interested in helping you achieve your goal of chasing down a virtual soul mate. I do commiserate with your situation and with the loneliness you must feel. I understand that you mean well, and that your advances toward me come from the most admirable part of your being.

If this is your avatar, I'm putting you on a virtual watch list.

I also realize how frustrated you must feel when women like me ignore your advances. I’m sure it takes a lot of courage to approach a woman online. You probably think I’m a stuck up poor excuse for an unavailable married woman. In reality, however, it’s nothing like that. I haven’t responded to your advances for one reason and one reason only: you give me the creeps.

There. I said it. It’s the honest truth.

I’m sure you did not intend to creep me out, which is why I thought I would offer following advice about how not to pick up women online:

* Do not fail to include a photo in your profile. When I see a blank space for a photo, I think, “This guy must be one of Picasso’s main models and have his nose up where one of his eyeballs should be.”

* Do not use an avatar that makes you look like a serial killer. See picture above for an example.

* Do not make comments about my appearance. Such comments lead me to believe you are into only superficial things like arm trophies and BMWs. I’m not into superficial men—unless, of course, they are Billionaires.

* Don’t put things like “XXX” or “69″ in your profile name. I’m not against either, but putting such things in your profile makes me believe you have the mental maturity of a 13 year old.

* Do not forget to check out the information in a woman’s profile before you contact her. You can find out a lot about a women from her profile, including the Internet sites she frequents, the books she reads, the movies she likes and so on. Writing, “Tell me more about yourself,” makes me think, “You are the laziest man who ever came out of a woman’s womb.” In fact, I can only assume that you are the type of man who can’t be bothered with putting down the toilet seat or with making sure his soiled underpants make their way to the hamper.

* Do not flirt with a woman during your very first communication. If you write, “You are a beautiful woman. Tell me more about yourself,” I’m going to think about alerting my local police about your whereabouts. On the other hand, if you write, “I see you just stumbled an article about SEO. Here’s another good one. What do you think?” I might actually respond with a, “Gee thanks.”

* Don’t friend a woman on Facebook because you think she’s pretty, and then write on her wall that you think she’s pretty. That will just get all of her real life friends to email her directly, asking who the creep is who just wrote on her wall.

* Don’t ask a woman where she lives unless you know for a fact that she wants to meet you in real life. Again, the digits 911 come to mind.

* If you bookmark porn sites, don’t try to pick up women on StumbleUpon or Digg, unless you are trying to pick up porn actresses. Don’t think you are safe because your profile is “protected.” We women know that “protected” means you look at porn 24-7. You can’t fool us.

* Don’t flirt with married women, including those of us who blog about our blockhead husbands. We’re not available. You’re wasting your time.

* Don’t use Twitter as a dating service. Women are smarter than you think. We’ll check your profile, see that you only follow pretty women, and will not in a million years ever agree to follow you back.

* If you think a woman might be too young for you, she’ll definitely think you are too old for her. May December relationships only work when May is after December’s money.

Do you have advice for men who wish to approach women online? Leave a comment.

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