Today’s guest blogger is from my good friend, Jools. We connected through Twitter and our mutual love for Hawaii Five-0, and I guess two sassy, smart, gym loving, single gals just naturally gravitate toward one another, right? Jools decided to try online dating because of my ahem–raving reviews about it and here are her thoughts.

For the last few months, I have been following the highs and lows of the internet dating world via Hanssie on this blog. It’s been hilarious and decided to go and see for myself what she was talking about. I hadn’t been on these sites for donkey years, wanted to know what the market was like these days.

I have been on 2 very different sites. One where they take a scientific approach to find you and your other half and the other one where just as you post your pic, the guys start pouncing on you.

Errr, don’t you know want to read my profile before hitting on me? Apparently not.

The approach was so direct that I freaked out and disabled my account until my head stopped spinning. Yes, I’m old school and I have super high standards. I like to meet my men the old fashioned way: either through a friend, in a bar or on the bus. I’m also a hopeful romantic.  Though I am no princes, Hanss and I have that in common, we are freaking Queens. We don’t need saving, we’ve got that shit handled. We just want a reliable man in our lives.

Paper bag in hand this time round – yes one never knows if she will need to use it, be it for the nonstop messaging or the odd chance there might be George Clooney on that site – I went back, ignored the messages that I had received and went on to fill out my profile. Well, half of it.

Then it was message time. Just based off my photo and for the 10 min I was on there the prior day, I got about 15 messages. Meat market, much? I sieved through them and after a pep talk from my girl Hanss, went on to ignore all messages with bad profiles pictures (When I say bad, I’m not talking about the guy being meh. I’m talking torso, half asleep, asleep, in costume, hidden faces, no faces, bathroom mirror, cropped pic clearly showing there was a woman attached to the guy, pic with the best mate, the kids, the pets, the drinks and their feet). 4 guys were left. Then it was onto to the profiles. Can the guy spell, use grammar properly, write a full sentence, and not use ‘lol’ as punctuation? I was left with two. Back to the photos: Do I dig you? I was left with one.

His message, “Yes yes yes! I’d love to meet up with you – fancy chatting?” Message based solely on my pic. The chat with half my profile done, went like this:

“Me: Hi! Even with my summary not completed? 🙂

Him: Well ! Let’s give it a go. My mobile number is xxxxx. Text me! “

And there I was staring at his message thinking, Is this guy nuts or what? Who hands out their mobile number after 2 lines?

I went back to his profile. The guy is allergic to cats and wants someone local. Fail on both counts. But hey, there was something about him, so I replied. Apart for the fact that I am not where he is at the moment and that he prefers to meet up to get a feel (hopefully not of my arse on the first meet), he doesn’t really communicate. He barely asks questions and that bugs the hell out of me. I know chats are not the best, but one has to start somewhere. I also have been super honest with him. I don’t like to be toyed with. I don’t know how to play games in the love department or any department for that matter. Like I said I am old school, I like to be wooed and if a guy makes the first move, he should at least fake interest. After a few days of messaging, it’s starting to be quite clear that the feel will be of my arse and not of my personality. What to do, what to do?

In the meantime, my inbox is exploding. Some guys are really sweet and one can see that they took their time to read my profile and be witty about it in their messages, but I know that it will go nowhere, so I gently drop them.

Other guys, I summon my inner Samantha and ruthlessly drop the ones that are rude, fetishists, cross dressers or use their penises as their profile photo. Honestly if you are going to do that, at least wet my appetite and don’t post something that needs a magnifying glass. Yes, it was that bad. (I, Hanssie, will vouch for that, since I saw the photo of which she speaks…)

After nearly one week of being on these sites, I honestly realize that they are definitely not for moi but that they do provide endless hours of giggles to be shared with my girlfriends. So I’m sticking to them. Who knows, maybe I will find my Prince Charming, errr King, on there because at the end of the day ‘I am someone who is looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, cant-live-without-each-other love’.

Wish me luck.

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When not planning someone’s life or creating an event, Jools can be found playing with manta rays, enjoying the finest things in life, discovering new countries or soothing her shoe addiction. She took her pastime of sitting at a cafe eye humping hot men walking by, to the web recently and was she in for a surprise.