Being Dumb over Icebreakers

[Deleted Member]

I think people tend to forget an opening message is just an ice breaker. Unless you find an immediate hooking point in someone's profile to build rapport and compatibility on, the conversation is not going to start particularly interesting. I mean think on a day to day basis when you see a neighbour or a co-worker how often you immediately jump into a conversation about star gazing, science or philosophy. That's just not the case most of the time right? The subjects you'd typically open are about the weather or how their day went. Or perhaps on a "deeper" level you might discuss current events like news or politics. Sports, perhaps.

But when it comes to online dating many people get weird about this for some reason and in a way they would not for day to day interactions. I'm not saying men don't do this as well (except perhaps as some kind of attempt at a gender role balancing act) but it will be mainly women's profiles I explore and it's not uncommon to see something like "don't say hi, how are you". But apart from "I read and connected with your profile" or "I found something interesting that you and I share" there isn't anything much more substantial to put. Now I understand, "blah, blah, blah - well of course, they don't know anything else about the guy, he could be a serial killer or creepy stalker for all they know - a neighbour or a colleague they might well have built up an existing connection with already".

But here's the advantage people have when it comes to online dating that they don't have meeting somebody in the flesh for the first time ever: there is an entire written profile to explore about another person assuming they have gone to the effort. That means not every "hey, how's it going" message is identical. You are literally a mouse click away from discovering more about that person, if they're the kind of person that loves what you love, has a way with words or just has something that can spark a connection. Sure if you're popular and get a lot of messages you won't be able to filter through all of them. Sure you won't feel like investigating all of them. But there's no excuse for saying it's impossible to filter your messages beyond the opening lines - it's just an ice breaker.

And the only ice breakers that are remotely interesting are either (a) when someone's found an instant connection point, something that they can actually immediately work with or (b) a cheesy pick-up line. So ask yourself how much importance you subscribe to one hollow "words at face value only" message as opposed to the chance to investigate somebody and find out more for yourself.

[Deleted Member]

Very true. Opening messages are judged way too harshly.

[Deleted Member]

They are judged harshly, but come on. Just a 'hey, how are you?' Shows no effort what so ever (especially since they know it will be judged) and from experience the rest of the conversation is nearly always just as bland.  Sure, I agree with the sentiment that they arnt all the same, and I will often check a profile out and find my own interesting message to reply with if their profile catches my eye.

But when i message first, I always make a point of being different, whether it be a random fact, something silly, it doesnt matter. 

I do agree that in online dating people are judged too harshly on their opening words, but a little effort goes a long way.

[Deleted Member]

I find this a bit hard to follow but I think you’ve just said that if women ignore messages because they’re too basic, they’re being dumb? Do I have that right? You are interested in Dommes and I am not a Domme, but it’s certainly an interesting post title if you want to meet Dommes.
It’s not that I have don’t have some sympathy as whenever I match on a dating site I struggle to start the conversation. But, I do.

[Deleted Member]

48 minutes ago, ChiefNexus said:

Very true. Opening messages are judged way too harshly.

In what way? How do you mean?

[Deleted Member]

I agree especially if they have a empty profile or lack of information so commonly saying hi how are you is only the real none creeper way to break the ice

But then there the other side where we try to connect or break the ice with someone with information on there profile for us to get no thank you or blocked so it annoying on both sides to be honest

[Deleted Member]

  

2 hours ago, BooBookitty said:

They are judged harshly, but come on. Just a 'hey, how are you?' Shows no effort what so ever (especially since they know it will be judged) and from experience the rest of the conversation is nearly always just as bland.  

Sometimes you come across a load of blank profiles successively and there literally is nothing else to say.

 

2 hours ago, BooBookitty said:

But when i message first, I always make a point of being different, whether it be a random fact, something silly, it doesnt matter. 

I used to do that, in my experience the women rarely understood where I was coming from or occasionally even sought to find offence at what was a harmless light-hearted joke or silly observation. Now I just remark on something I connect to on the profile or express interest in a different way. The response rate is actually not that different from a simple "hey how are you", so for all their complaints people hardly react differently.

 

2 hours ago, Curvykate said:

I find this a bit hard to follow but I think you’ve just said that if women ignore messages because they’re too basic, they’re being dumb?

More like if they filter on that criteria alone or say something like how pathetic a simple greeting is on their profile, I have to question their intelligence when they could simply navigate to the guy's profile on occasion, yeah.

 

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Do I have that right? You are interested in Dommes and I am not a Domme, but it’s certainly an interesting post title if you want to meet Dommes.

What difference does it make if I am interested in subs or dommes? We are supposed to message each other and relate to each other as people first and foremost.

 

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It’s not that I have don’t have some sympathy as whenever I match on a dating site I struggle to start the conversation.

The other thing is that statistically women are more likely to get an initial response so less likely to understand the response. If true, that could explain the feedback to the post thus far - mostly likes from men and critical response from women. Fairly sure a few feminist males will chip in to critique though.

Edited July 28, 2020 by Deleted Member

[ey****]

It's true that no matter how basic the message that you are just a click away from the recipient viewing your profile.   But that's still "I put the minimum effort into my message, you owe me to check out my profile"

and maybe they did look at your profile and weren't interested.

If someone has a blank profile it's true there's not much to really go on - but then the question is "why are you contacting them?" - because there must be a reason.

So, I dunno, someone has a blank or basic profile you have very little idea about but they're local and you like their picture, something like "Hello, I'm from city too - have you been to any of the munches/events? I go to blah but haven't seen you yet." is a basic building block when there's nothing to go from.

-

On another set, a lady did a couple of experiments and one she had a sock puppet account posing as a man.  She filled out a profile and added some generic photos (and some cartoon pictures) she contacted women as this man where she could see there was mutual interests and something to talk about.    She talked about this in the messages.

She got responses to 80% of the messages.

How this would have continued is guess, because anyone who replied to she then replied back to explain the experiment.

-

Meanwhile

Another person put herself through the *** of replying to every message she got over a 2 year period (she didn't have to continue the conversation indefinitely - but set herself at least replying to the first messages)

In this case she was a Pro-Domme and of the basic messages only 9% ended in a booking and it took an average off 22 messages to either reach the booking or end the conversation

Whereas those who contacted properly it was the other way round where only 9% didn't end in a booking.  And each of those ran an average of 5 messages.

It's different to otherwise measure but - most women kinda know from their experience that the more basic the message they get the more exhausting keeping a conversation going is.  Obviously, as we see above - even with "Hey, how you doing?" 9% eventually ended up being worthwhile responding to - but, only with a lot of otherwise labour first.

[ey****]

28 minutes ago, BlushingFlush said:

The other thing is that statistically women are more likely to get an initial response so less likely to understand the response

That says more about the men that reply than the women who send  

[Deleted Member]

31 minutes ago, BlushingFlush said:

  

The other thing is that statistically women are more likely to get an initial response so less likely to understand the response. If true, that could explain the feedback to the post thus far - mostly likes from men and critical response from women. Fairly sure a few feminist males will chip in to critique though.

Oh. You just called women dumb again if I’m not mistaken. Hmm.

[Jinxy]

Overall, I agree with the idea that there doesn’t necessarily have to be a clever hook or one-liner. Sadly, nowadays just having the message “Hi! How are you?” spelled out instead of text abbreviations is a challenge so that’s really where I’ve set my bar. However, I would make the caveat that if you are just going to lead with that opening, have your profile filled out with at least some type of informational message (not just your listed kinks). The number of men who actually make the effort to do that is incredibly low. And if someone is going to lead with something that ten other guys also sent on the same day, I’m going to pass by all the ones that have nothing in their profile and take the chance on the one who did. 

[Deleted Member]

Curvykate I mean, I try to be personal and stand out only to be turned away or blocked for no reason. Us good guys don't get a second look.

[ma****]

Honestly my experience has been that women more so than men struggle to strike up any interesting conversations assuming I get a response from them. Many a times I’ll spot interests in common and ask about them, following the first response I ask if they could tell me something about them. On a few occasions the questions would be ignored or missed or I get one line responses. Granted this is just bad luck of the draw with the people I message. Personally I think us men do okay with communication on a whole and in fact I’ve seen some studies done which suggest men are more sociable and easier to get on with than women. Sorry this block of text is so long by the way its just a very intriguing topic for me. All the science and variables at play is fascinating 😁

[Deleted Member]

7 hours ago, ChiefNexus said:

Curvykate I mean, I try to be personal and stand out only to be turned away or blocked for no reason. Us good guys don't get a second look.

Chief, you’re not single for a start. I think that would be a factor for many. And the missing profile photo - many don’t even accept messages from people who haven’t added one (I don’t) There is nothing personal in your profile. Just that you want a sub. Nothing about what kind of Dom you are, other interests, why you’re seeking someone when you’re not single. If people are rude or block in return, that is unnecessary if you’ve been polite in your approach. But if you’re not getting responses - there are reasons.

[Deleted Member]

8 hours ago, eyemblacksheep said:

It's true that no matter how basic the message that you are just a click away from the recipient viewing your profile.   But that's still "I put the minimum effort into my message, you owe me to check out my profile"

Allow me to clarify. If I send a message to someone I'm not "owed" a response regardless how detailed the message or my own personal profile is or whatever. What I'm saying is if somebody only filters based on the intrigue gathered in the first message, I find it an odd thing about that person (and maybe kinda lazy to never look at someone's profile occasionally - e.g. when you've got 10 or 15 "hey" messages, that could be a good time).

 

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On another set, a lady did a couple of experiments and one she had a sock puppet account posing as a man.  She filled out a profile and added some generic photos (and some cartoon pictures) she contacted women as this man where she could see there was mutual interests and something to talk about.    She talked about this in the messages.

I'm not saying it's impossible to be smart and use a strategy to get people responding through first messages. I'm just pointing out the first message strategy doesn't really tell you about someone, I mean like you said yourself this person had a generic sock puppet account but managed to get all those responses. Also if you were looking to get a match this way would it be possible? I mean there's got to be an advantage to an 80% response rate somewhere I'm not denying that however, it seemed like this woman's approach was purely social, not necessarily interested in any of the women she was contacting, just a pure experiment.

 

8 hours ago, Curvykate said:

Oh. You just called women dumb again if I’m not mistaken. Hmm.

Women dumb? No, the approach is. For example if the script was flipped and men were suddenly bombarded with messages, they'd have a lot more opportunity to apply whatever arbitrary filters they'd want and probably would. So it's more about human nature than gender, really. Also I'm not saying a person's dumb if they do this, I'm saying the action/habit is. I did this for a short time too as I was annoyed about being on the team that can't really do it much. I'm not seriously calling myself dumb though.

 

8 hours ago, Jinxy said:

Sadly, nowadays just having the message “Hi! How are you?” spelled out instead of text abbreviations is a challenge so that’s really where I’ve set my bar.

H/ow r u? 

 

4 hours ago, matt-o-chist said:

Honestly my experience has been that women more so than men struggle to strike up any interesting conversations assuming I get a response from them.

Yeah, that's another thing: people don't really like just talking about their favourite band or ice cream flavour that's about as much as you can dig up from a cursory glance of their profile (and on a fetish website you don't even really glean that sort of info). That's because those are mostly generic subjects unless you can get really "stuck in" somehow. They want to feel butterflies and joke/banter and have fun, light-hearted flirty communication. But that's mostly non-verbal as you can't communicate tone as effectively through a computer anyway - so then you have to find a different way. But all of that through the first message and find a hook point? There's not really much chance unless you're totally ace at this, which most people aren't.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Deleted Member

[Mr****]

9 hours ago, Jinxy said:

Overall, I agree with the idea that there doesn’t necessarily have to be a clever hook or one-liner. Sadly, nowadays just having the message “Hi! How are you?” spelled out instead of text abbreviations is a challenge so that’s really where I’ve set my bar. However, I would make the caveat that if you are just going to lead with that opening, have your profile filled out with at least some type of informational message (not just your listed kinks). The number of men who actually make the effort to do that is incredibly low. And if someone is going to lead with something that ten other guys also sent on the same day, I’m going to pass by all the ones that have nothing in their profile and take the chance on the one who did. 

I second this opinion whole heartedly. (for reference I'm male) I have very similar feelings,

I'm also messaged far more frequently by males than by females (must be my feminine charm)

in my experience a male who's opened with only "hi" has much higher likely hood of being a creep
Moreover this lil effort from either sexes generally leads to a dull conversation that goes nowhere...

A massive pet ***ve of mine is when someone has clearly not looked at my profile. Specifically it has always been males (subs and doms) who have over stepped boundaries or tried to *** a dynamic, typo ally with ***.

I switched my profile from curious to straight to mitigate a frustration that nearly had me delete the app

[ey****]

1 hour ago, BlushingFlush said:

(and maybe kinda lazy to never look at someone's profile occasionally - e.g. when you've got 10 or 15 "hey" messages, that could be a good time).

But you also don't know they didn't view any profiles.

It's also pretty lazy to just send "Hey" or basic messages all the time - but there we go.

1 hour ago, BlushingFlush said:

. Also if you were looking to get a match this way would it be possible? I mean there's got to be an advantage to an 80% response rate somewhere I'm not denying that however, it seemed like this woman's approach was purely social, not necessarily interested in any of the women she was contacting, just a pure experiment.

This is something that others pointed out and that she acknowledged - it's impossible of course to gauge how many would have ended in a meet without catfishing which would have been bad in itself.

But - I think - never underestimate social.   

But also, the point was these got replies, etc. which goes in that you're more likely to at least get a response if you go above the minimum effort 

[Jinxy]

6 hours ago, matt-o-chist said:

Personally I think us men do okay with communication on a whole and in fact I’ve seen some studies done which suggest men are more sociable and easier to get on with than women.

And I’ve seen even more studies that say they aren’t. I have been in countless chats and chatrooms and there’s an incredibly interesting phenomenon that happens. Any chat room that doesn’t have active female chatters is dead in the water. People barely say “hi” to each other. All the guys in a chat room will lurk until a woman comes in. It’s incredibly strange. So more social and easier to get on with? I wouldn’t be claiming that. Not saying men are awful either as I’ve had some great chats with men. Just simply neither is better than the other and it really depends on context and an individual. 
 

1 hour ago, BlushingFlush said:

it seemed like this woman's approach was purely social, not necessarily interested in any of the women she was contacting

That in a nutshell is exactly the difference in success. Instead of approaching it in a get-to-know-you manner, many people treat it as a at checklist and goal accomplishing mission. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been ditched because I didn’t meet some tiny criteria. Many times the “checklist” people have is idealized instead of realistic. I think people would meet with greater success if they were open to more possibilities instead of the fantasy they are picturing their future partner as. 

[Deleted Member]

8 minutes ago, eyemblacksheep said:

But you also don't know they didn't view any profiles.

That's why "if" is the keyword that needs to be inserted here.

 

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It's also pretty lazy to just send "Hey" or basic messages all the time - but there we go.

I mean, there isn't always much else to say.

 

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But - I think - never underestimate social.   

I don't - like I said with an 80% response rate, there's got to be some opportunities there somewhere. I just think those could be the opportunities you could have honed in on as opposed to, e.g. eliciting message responses from a tonne of people you were never interested in. Seems a lot of extra energy.

 

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But also, the point was these got replies, etc. which goes in that you're more likely to at least get a response if you go above the minimum effort 

Yes. To clarify, I think you should be looking for things to say besides "hey" I just don't think often there is much else that comes across authentic rather than canned. And you can't really complain about canned if you're asking more than "hey" - because of course that's what guys are going to resort to. 

[Deleted Member]

I don’t think women will complain about it, they just won’t bother replying. For the record, I have had lots of authentic intro messages to which I do respond. I am betting that other women on this thread have also. And some men are even cannier and contribut  to the forum and chat in a positive way which means I am more likely to reply to a message. Or even message them. It really isn’t that hard.

[ey****]

48 minutes ago, BlushingFlush said:

I mean, there isn't always much else to say.

so why say anything?

if there's a profile you have nothing better you can say to than "hey" then why contact them?  They're clearly not interesting. 

[Deleted Member]

16 minutes ago, eyemblacksheep said:

so why say anything?

if there's a profile you have nothing better you can say to than "hey" then why contact them?  They're clearly not interesting. 

Like I said in OP there may be a time you encountered lots of empty profiles. Or you might enjoy reading a profile but there isn't that hook point in the profile to immediately start a conversation. It might be that all you have to say initially is, "I enjoyed reading your profile because x y z, we should talk". That's only a little bit different from "hey how are you?".

 

32 minutes ago, Curvykate said:

For the record, I have had lots of authentic intro messages to which I do respond. I am betting that other women on this thread have also. And some men are even cannier and con to the forum and chat in a positive way which means I am more likely to reply to a message. And some men are even cannier and con to the forum and chat in a positive way which means I am more likely to reply to a message.

Some people put a lot of effort into being adept at the first message part I guess. Others are just very popular, receive a lot of messages and don't need to adapt in that kind of way. Some people may or may not like forum posting.

 

1 hour ago, Jinxy said:

That in a nutshell is exactly the difference in success. Instead of approaching it in a get-to-know-you manner, many people treat it as a at checklist and goal accomplishing mission. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been ditched because I didn’t meet some tiny criteria. Many times the “checklist” people have is idealized instead of realistic. I think people would meet with greater success if they were open to more possibilities instead of the fantasy they are picturing their future partner as. 

Like I said to eyem, it's good for socialising and with an 80% response rate, there's bound to be opportunities there. I'm just saying, without trying to sound to cynical that people you have more compatibilities with, some might prefer to just focus on them rather than pretending to be interested in loads of others they're not. Could be kinda disingenuous, in fact.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Deleted Member

[ey****]

Personally speaking.  I'd never contact an empty profile.

Because, well, there really isn't anything to go on.  But, if you've enjoyed reading someone's profile there's always a hook - what did you enjoy?  

[Wo****]

It's not that people start with things that are mundane, that's not the point. It's when they expect you to be collared, submitting to them within three sentences... and if we don't leap at the chance we're the bad guys.

 

In the last couple of weeks 75 pc of my messages have been along the lines of "hey slut, u r hot. U r mine now"

Or "let's meet"

 

One person out of those had actually looked at my profile.

 

A lot (Not all) of men seem to think sending someone a private message saying hi is their first step towards hooking up with someone within hours for sex.

 

 

[Si****]

13 hours ago, ChiefNexus said:

Curvykate I mean, I try to be personal and stand out only to be turned away or blocked for no reason. Us good guys don't get a second look.

The lack of a picture could be a reason.