Living in Vancouver, Canada i can tell you this province is particularly savvy in computer tech. Nonetheless because of this, online culture is vast and rampant and the dating world is quickly going online. Vancouver is the province of Bachelors, for many reasons or another people have become very picky in selecting who they want to date, it has become the Los Angelas of Canada.
First off when you sign, onto this site, if you want to take it seriously and not be a spam man or play find the crazies lol, then you need at least 2 pictures. Spammers can have usually only one pic, hacked by someones account, stolen on the web, or friends playing pranks on their friends, plenty of fish seems to be a good prank site for the hopelessly romantic.
While filling out your profile, do not try to bull shit your qualities to much, because it is real people you are dealing with, and one way or another your profile tells them who you are, and they will use what they read about you in a conversation, so if they find out the many lies you put down, that may be a deal breaker, as trust is important in any relationship. This is relatively simple to understand but people still do it, to appease their pretentious minds.
It is a numbers game, and psychologically you will have to deal with rejection. So you have to pump out those messages like your doing Articling (or whatever they call it in Law School). I know guys are not good at this, since women i have spoken to personally who use the site frequently, even those on the site itself state on their PROFILE how men should stop writing back angry messages for reasons being why they are not being responded to, so pay attention to whats written on the profile. You can only imagine now how they deal with rejection in the real world, could possibly not even ask women out if they know they will feel this way. So in other words be prepared to face rejection A LOT of rejection. Because this medium is online, LOOKS and aesthetic BEAUTY, and whatever pictures any people can see and relate to give that instant attraction, it is profoundly one of the most important qualities unfortunately to have on the site for the unfortunate. Being beautiful has its great advantages if your woman and a man, you just put your profile there with mundane sentences and the people will come in droves with messages. However we are humans, and as such attraction we see attraction in many forms, not just appearance but in what we pride ourselves in best our brains, the mind itself.
So you dont look like tyrese or brad pitt, not even close to looking like ryan gosling if you take pictures from an angle either, or get that perfect pose like Kim Kardashian and other starlets. However if you can write like Ernest Hemingway, or Charles Bukowski you can potentially become the next Hank Moody. Even if you cannot write good, eventually if you put in enough effort and write creative elements about yourself to the person you are writing to, they will appreciate it and write you back and a conversation will ensue. The goal here is to keep it around a few messages before asking someone out, to build enough rapport and trust to meet in person. This can be tricky for men, if they rush things, the woman will feel pressured, and if you take to long, she assumes your not very romantic and can possibly be boring, thus starts losing interest. If you can find some method of writing that gets attention, stick to that and revise, refine it according to the women you meet, do not try to copy word for word either because they will know, women complain a lot about copy and paste messages from guys. Creativity is key.
For guys in particular put effort into your profile as if it was your provincial finals for English exams. Or your Essays at the university level if you have the ability to do so. Do not pay to much attention to the women that have an ever ending list of what a man needs, don't feel compelled to call her out either it is a waste of energy, let people figure out the troubles for themselves they dont need strangers pointing it out for them. If you feel the list is ridiculous for the requirements they want in a man, just simply move on, as you get used to this it will make it easier to move on when dating in the real world. Sometimes you will meet users with unrealistic qualifications or expectations to meet someone, often times the vices they say they hate, is the vices they themselves portray when you actually get to know them, so study the profile carefully before you attempt on the quest dating them. If you follow with your penis, and you end up meeting the girl and find out she is a crazy, well you did not read the profile well enough. As for ladies, its relatively easy to spot a douche, if you pay attention to the pictures and interests (eg style of clothing, ed hardy, other kinds of colorful clothing etc). Also his writing style, and what he is looking for, often hang outs you can find a great number of douches lurking in this category. The fortunate thing with women is mens profile are direct in and of itself so you get what you read...Almost.
"Looking for" this is very important thing to look for in the profiles as well, when you see users while searching you can often see what category they are looking for, and people that want to get laid are usually in the 'hang out" category. "Other relationships" and "intimate encounter", or also categories for the hedonistic man, the only edge you can have in these categories is if you are very attractive or good at writing dirty talk, the average joe usually stick to "hangouts" where you have a higher chance of meeting someone not as picky, and expectations are not so high since the bulk of users put themselves in this category anyway. "Activity Partner" is for those wanting to meet acquaintances or potential friends to do extra curricular activity with outdoor activities perhaps, this category also houses the implied horny crowd to if you look hard enough, if that's what your into. For the most part though, if you want to attempt to gather friends to go hiking then you venture into the "activity partner". "Friendship" is just how it is stated friendship. This category just like "Long term", means that users here are genuinely looking to invest in someone potentially being a commitment, you will not find the majority of people in this category as the majority of plenty of fish users are in it to predominantly get laid, sometimes the "Long Term" can even be deceptive for those just wanting to get laid, the trick is in reading the PROFILES. The tricksters in this site are the ones looking for a bang bang thank you mam sort of crowd.
When you look at the ladies picture profiles, be sure to see ques if she is overweight. If she is taking bathroom pics from a distance chances are she may be a butter face where she looks good from far, bad up close, or a banging body and not so good face. If they take pictures from above, this also means they might be packing, since the angle of the shot hides their stomach, but the breasts are visible. Basically if they pose in ways it hides the midsection you have been warned.
For women the site is relatively easy to use, so the article is more based on the men, also i can only speak of this site for the demographic and experience whom i have talked to in the place i reside which is Canada. If this is absurd to you in new york, it may also be because it is New York and people go about things differently, then here. I am open to suggestions on how online dating should be interpreted, remember these are my observations and tips on what you can do to improve your odds of dating on this site.
Sen
