The "Angie POF Gal" part 2: So are men really that bad?

I created this blog as a rant against the things women do on the POF site that annoy me. In the interest of fairness, I took the advice of a reader and, for a week, I took on the persona of the "Angie POF Gal." So, after walking a mile in virtual high heels, the time has come to settle the age old question-- just how different are men and women on the online dating sites.

Allow me to take a moment and get the stuffy methodology out of the way. As I explained in Part 1, I created a profile that was simple and non-threatening, even a bit suggestive. I used the picture of a woman I once dated who lives three states away so no one would suspect anything. I did nothing to bring attention to "Angie." Angie read no profiles or sent any messages. Angie simply logged in and waited.

Angie didn't have to wait long to get responses. In the first three hours (on a lazy Sunday morning), Angie got 25 messages. By Monday, Angie had gotten close to 70. I had real life work to do, so during the week I had not spent much time logging Angie in. But by the end of the week, Angie had received 125 messages and 147 people wanted to "meet" Angie.

I was hoping for some o those legendary nasty opening messages that women claim to get regularly. I have to say I found NO evidence of that occurring. Sadly, messages to Angie were mundane. Nearly all were of the following theme -- "Hi, how are you, you're beautiful, I'm [insert name], do you want to meet/ chat?" At least half were little more than one or two words, "hi/ hey beautiful." Angie got one cheesy "did it fall when you fell from heaven?" I almost broke kayfabe when I read it. I wanted to reply, "No, I landed on two naked people in the Garden of Eden and I was so grateful I made them an apple pie."

Of course, I did see a few losers -- a couple of guys with names like "$hort dog" (dollar-hort dog? Is it kosher?), Bigstud (big as in fat, and more dud than stud), and "inches deep" (two inches maybe?). I did see a few shirtless pics of moobs (I guess shirtless pics are the equivalent of the from-the-top cleavage shot the ladies love to do), bathroom selfies (geez, the ladies look silly doing it, men look that much worse) and one person used LIFESTYLE CONDOMS as his profile pics, and another had a penis as his pic.

But all in all, I saw nothing that shows than men act crazier than the women on this site. Whether it was like this BEFORE POF changed their dating policies to weed out the assholes sooner, I cannot tell. POF has changed a bit lately. In fact, a couple of the 100+ people contacting Angie had a deleted profile. Who knows why?

Before I move on, I have to rant for a second. I saw a fair amount of behavior on both men's AND women's profiles. Yes, we're all looking for love (or sex), but I was amazed at how many men piss and moan about their online dating woes or how much POF sucks and how many people are fake/ game players, etc. I could almost cut and paste many of my rants about women, change the words to men, and repost, and it would save me a LOT of typing.

So, can we finally put the stereotype of black men preferring "thick women" and white men preferring skinny blondes to rest? We should. As I mentioned in Part 1, Cincy is pretty close to even when it comes to racial demographics (53% white/43% black). But what I found interesting is the demographic of Angie's potential suitors.

Of the 125 people who messaged Angie, 37 were black, 76 were white, 7 were Other Races, 5 were unknown (they were deleted or had no pic). Of the 149 who wanted to "meet" Angie, 28 were black, 115 were white, 4 were other races, and 4 were unknown (no pic). If you believe the stereotype, given the demographics, you should expect the numbers of whites and blacks courting Angie to be even or even favoring blacks. Well, the numbers say otherwise. The discrepancies between the "meet" group and the message group is smaller among black men than with white men.

I can reasonable conclude that the myth about the preferences of white men and black men are dispelled. Also, it is obvious that the black men are more apt to at least say hi rather than just play with the "meet me" feature than the white men. And no, dick pic or Lifestyles man did not message Angie (and if you care to know, they were both white).

Only 4 sent more than one message, but no one resorted to angry messages.

After playing Angie POF Gal for a week, I have come to this conclusion-- the only thing separating the men from the women on this site is the attention factor. Women don't have to work for attention. "Angie" was, after all, a gal I dated who was 5'2, brunette, and "thick" (170 but shapely). She wasn't a supermodel but pretty. I suppose I could try with other shapes and sizes someday. But regardless, "Angie" had a problem I could only dream about with my real profile-- the amount of interested people. I could tally in every message I ever received with my real profile in three years and multiply it by 10 and not got what "Angie" got in a day. men are more forthcoming. It is no secret.

Men can act like jerks, and men can piss and moan about rejection (and Lord knows I'm a master of it at times) but I think women tend to be a bit more sensitive to the negativity of the site.

Ladies-- Please, stop bitching about the quality of the men. You have set ridiculously high standards and have your pick of hundreds of suitors. If you don't like the ones messaging you, read a few profiles and strike up a virtual conversation. It isn't that hard!

Guys-- Stop bitching about women who don't message you back. They get hundreds of messages PER DAY! And for the few of you who do this, please, no shirtless pics, sick dick pics, degrading headlines, and the like (if you refer to a woman as a "bitch" the only bitch you'll ever get is the four legged kind).

I guess I'll keep Angie around a little bit, so I may rant more in the future.

The "Angie POF Gal" part 1

A couple of months ago, I decided to write this blog to gripe about my struggles with online dating, particularly on Plenty Of Fish, because it is free for the most part. Well, one of my readers suggested I make a female online dating profile and gauge responses.

I have to admit, I was reluctant to do it. After all, I am a man, and exclusively heterosexual, so reading messages from men potentially telling me they want to "tap 'dat az" is not my idea of a lazy Sunday afternoon. But, after reading my share of ALL CAPS rants from female profiles tired of getting "nasty messages" from men, I decided to take the plunge.

So, for a day, The "Angry POF Guy" underwent a virtual sex change operation and became the "Angie POF Gal." No joke, I literally called my female profile "Angie POF Gal."

I know. Very clever, huh?

Seeing as how I was playing a silly game for the sake of writing an article for this humble blog, I have self-imposed a few guidelines.

First, I tried my best to make a mundane yet somewhat unique profile-- something that is inviting but not blatantly "my legs are spread eagle." Nothing bitchy, condescending, or negative. Something that implies you can get away with sounding a bit like a jerk to get Angie's attention (since I chose Cincinnati as my target, I made a local reference just for authenticity purposes)

A real masterpiece. I expect a Pulitzer Prize for this award-winning profile!

Second, I have made it a point NOT to read profiles before they contact Angie. Back when I was serious about finding dates, I perused lots of profiles, so I wanted to see if it was truly easier for women.

Third, I intentionally picked Sunday Morning as my day to introduce "Angie" to the world. Why Sunday? It seems to be the day of the least activity. Most activity takes place towards Friday and Saturday on the site. As you can see, I am trying to balance my little experiment.

Before I move on to the results, there was one unresolved question-- what picture should I use? I thought about using a porn star pic, but a "Tin Eye" search could easily blow my cover (FYI, TinEye is a service that allows you to search pictures on the internet to see if they are found on other websites). Luckily for me, I was once engaged to a gal who had a real aversion to the internet, and thankfully, she lives in another state. She was about 5'2 and 170 pounds, but she worked out a lot so she was what some people would call "thick." I had a picture of her wearing the stereotypical red party dress-- not too revealing but with enough cleavage to get attention. Perfect.

So at about 11am or so, Angie POF Gal went online. As usual, I get that introductory email from "Markus" welcoming Angie to POF. I had not even finished deleting that canned message when Angie received her first message. I went to fix a sandwich.in the time it took me to slap some cold cuts between two slices of bread with some mustard, three more messages came.

By 2pm, when I started working on this article, Angie has received 25 messages, and 20 guys want to "meet" Angie. It certainly exceeded expectations, considering the time frame and my lack of interaction with everyone.

As a result of all the negative profiles I have read from women, my first expectation is a lot of jerks making comments about Angie's ample bosom or her pretty jet black hair. Well, of the first 21 messages, none were anything more than mundane "hi,' "how are you," a couple of "hey sexy/ beautiful," and similar comments. Nothing groundbreaking. No nasty comments, no sexual references (unless you could getting a simple "hey sexy" from a man using a screen name with "well hung" as part of his screen name).

Cincinnati's demographics are 53% white and 43% black, so it is fairly close to even-- at least far higher than the national average-- 73% white, 13% black). The stereotype, of course, is that white guys prefer a skinny blonde and black guys like a "thick" gal. Well, of the 23 guys who messaged in the first three hours, 16 were white, 7 were black, one was Arab, and one had no pic (and remember I'm not reading profiles yet). Of those who said they want to meet Angie, 15 were white, 4 were black, and one was "other" (I think Hispanic going by the pic). So far, it isn't looking good for the black guys want thick girls myth.

Of the 87 men who actually viewed Angie, 25 sent messages, so roughly a third were impressed. Compare that to my real profile, where well over a hundred women viewed my profile yet I received less than 10 responses. It goes without saying men are more willing to make the first move, but tend to write little more than the simple "hi, you are beautiful, wanna chat?" Where is all the "lets get naked and do it" comments?

So far, my first impression is this. Guys do make the first move, and maybe some guys have a one-track-mind, but I believe the ones who do aren't hiding it, and women just tend to get easily offended by the ones who do.

Now, by the time I published this, my experiment was over. I decided later on to wait till Saturday to delete the profile. Don't worry, I will share my final results soon.