Author Richard Cahill's Website--Living By Our Motto:"There Are No Stupid Questions, Just Stupid People Asking Questions Everybody else already knows the answer to."

This is not the picture I used when I transgendered online. That would have been real trouble.



Both my readers have pointed out that I write from a guy's point of view in The Complete Guide to Computer Dating. One insists that I just write like a guy, period. Like all guys, I respond very sensitively to criticism, so I decided to experience computer dating from a woman's point of view.

I should make it clear (and I usually do, to my dates) that I feel sorry for hetero women for having to date men. We're short-sighted, bad-tempered, self-indulgent, self-important braggarts driven entirely by our sex urges. Those of us who are mature, that is. Men between twenty-five and forty are mere raging cages of poorly controlled hormonal impulses.

Males between puberty and twenty-five are just support systems for an erection.

This was just my personal opinion before I proved it beyond any reasonable doubt by becoming a woman. No surgery or psychotherapy was involved; I simply borrowed a fifteen-year old picture of a woman I once knew, cut and pasted a few of the most boring female dating  profiles I have ever read together, put together a short but vapid list of interests, made my girl thirty-two (for nostalgia's sake) and posted the fake profile on one of the free sites, which shall remain nameless because I'm pretty sure it was a violation of their Terms of Service.

My girl specified that she was looking for a long-term monogamous relationship, as she  wished to discourage merely getting hit on. Might as well have wished for a year's worth of winning lottery numbers. I meant to leave her profile up a whole day, but I had to take it down after twenty-two hours, as I didn't have the time to sort through the responses.

During that time period she received twenty-eight emails plus sixteen other notices that people wanted to meet her or had added her as a favorite. When I would go online, just to read her  messages, the guys who had already emailed her  would IM her, sometimes plaintively, asking why my girl hadn't got back to their message of fifteen minutes previous yet.

Some of the things I discovered about my fellow men:

1.      We can't spell.

2.      We can't use spell check, either.

3.      We aren't in touch with our shortcomings. A thirty-year old correspondent admitted he "doesn't understand women." On his "Interests" section, he lists "whiskey." I see cause and effect here. Another 27-year old applicant for my girl's attentions listed one of his interests as "drinking."

4.      We don't really observe the limits people set for us. My girl was looking for men between the ages of thirty and forty; the vast majority of her messages were from guys under twenty-five.

5.      Guys under twenty-five think the highest complement they can give a woman is to tell her she "seems pretty chill."

Some emails stood out from the others, and so did some of the profiles. One twenty-one year old offered to take my girl out to "a bad-ass dinner." I supposed he could have meant a bad-ass diner, considering the way the rest of his email was spelled, but the offer is still incomprehensible.

Some older guys applied for my girl's affections. One 57-year old politician (his username was northcountymayor) wanted me to be "honest about my feelings and thoughts." Okay, I think you're an idiot for trying to date a 32-year old. Another gentleman in his early sixties wanted my girl to visit him on his "berry farm in Canada" this summer. Come and watch my berries grow What woman's heart wouldn't beat faster?

Other charmers included a guy who claimed to possess a graduate degree but worked as a "bodyguard—truck driver" (who knows—maybe he went to school on a Mexican drug cartel scholarship) and another claimed "I've got so much love to give--want in on any of it?"

Even a woman with the deepest possible longings for male companionship might consider these offers resistible. My favorite was a twenty-one year old who promised on his profile "ill be your best friend but i will b ur worst enemy if u decide to use me," apparently thinking that most women are eager to fly into the arms of their future stalkers.

Any woman that posts an attractive picture on a dating site is going to get slammed with offers like those above. My girl received less outrageous emails, but none of them stood out as particularly irresistible. A middle-aged woman that I know  likes the variety of online dating. "It's like a supermarket," is what she says, but she is seeking only non-committed relationships.

No, you can't have her email, guys.

She's not unique on the girls' side, but she's definitely in the minority. This is the bad news, fellow dudes. You way outnumber the girls that are looking for short-term sex. Your supermarket is more like a grocery store in Cuba, where you take a number and wait in a long line to get your hands on a couple of turnips.

Another attractive woman I know had the opposite reaction. She hated being online so much she canceled her account after only a few days. She couldn't stand the bombardment of emails, to which she felt compelled to respond. She was certain all the men who contacted her only wanted sex. This impression was reinforced by a guy who not only contacted her but also two of her friends who were also online and offered all three a lifetime of monogamous love. All in identically worded emails. It's not often that the girls get together to compare notes in virtual reality, but when they do it's just as bad as when it happens in real reality.  They all live in a small community, so this guy might as well have tattooed "Do Not Sleep with Me" on his forehead. Word is he's thinking about moving to El Centro.

Cleopatra, early victim of bullshitting
            

The death knell is sounding for this, the most venerable of human epochs. No one can say when the era began. Many scientists think that bullshitting was invented by the ancient Sumerians, which makes sense, because most scientists think the ancient Sumerians invented beer, too. As a scholar of the art, the author disagrees. He feels the Sumerians invented beer just because they were tired of all the bullshit. Bullshitting is even more hallowed by time than beer. Certainly it was invented before written language. It was well established by the time cave painters began decorating the granite of the walls at Aurignac. Just put yourself at the primitive scene:

CAVEMAN: Nice of you to be keeping things pretty in here, Bog, but how about you help me and the boys catch a few of those mammoths instead of just painting pictures on the walls?

CAVE PAINTER: (Solemnly) By painting the mammoths on the wall, I am capturing their spirits. Thus, when you hunters meet the mammoths in the field, they will have no souls, and easily succumb to your spears.

CAVEMAN: Really? Wow. I mean, thanks. No souls, you say? This is gonna be a piece of cake. Gotta go. (CAVEMAN exits. From the exterior, we hear him screaming as he is stampeded to death by a herd of mammoths)

 CAVE PAINTER: (Chuckling) What a loser!

            Other ages came and went—of  Stone, Bronze, Iron, Classical, Exploration, New, Aquarius—but the art and practice of bullshitting thrived. From deeply personal bogus advice ("If thou standest up right away after we swive, thou wilst not become with child") to the construction of vast monuments built by slaves, perfumed by incenses and inhabited by anointed priests in its name, bullshit ruled. Moses bullshitted the Pharoah, Anthony bullshitted Cleopatra. Columbus blew smoke up Isabella's royal buttocks. Gigantic exaggerations were responsible for war, treachery and slavery. Men worshipped other gods and followed other kings, but the real power behind the throne was always magnificent Bullshit, the mastery of which gave the ambitious individual the keys to any kingdom.

            How is the modern age any different, you may ask? Vast organs of the state and the media, Congress and Fox News, for example, are devoted to spewing forth bullshit ever more pungent than any before. Many of you believe that Rush Limbaugh is entirely composed of bullshit, covered only by a thin layer of human skin, kind of like a  Terminator made of pasture pudding. The Chinese nation, ruled by a philosophy long ago exposed as bullshit, get its people to make cheap bullshit to sell to us, which we borrow money from them to buy, giving them bullshit securities in return. Then we buy the cheap stuff, and when it fails to work properly, we scream "Bullshit!"

            The answer to that is that the flame always burns brightest before it dies, and that the façade always seems the most impenetrable before it crumbles. The Internet will kill bullshitting. Only the Net can destroy an ancient tradition overnight. Think of the classified ads.

            The author first realized this while working his last real job, back in 2007. One of his co-workers, a known practitioner of the art of lobbing meadow muffins, was entertaining us in lieu of working with the supposition that Mr. Rogers, the deceased children's' TV star, was a former Navy Seal with over a hundred confirmed Viet Cong kills.

            A quiet, usually well-mannered member of the team simply hit a few buttons on his keyboard and, glancing up from his Google screen, said "Bullshit."

            The silence in that room was eerie. The icon Bullshit is like the evil wizard Voldemort. It must not be named. Once identified, it loses all efficacy. It thrives in uncertainty. Evidence and skepticism are its enemies. It is the ghost story told around the campfire, the witch-tales muttered on a windy moor. The author was at such a campfire when, as a tenderfoot Boy Scout, he was sent to fetch a left-handed smoke shifter from the next Boy Scout camp. If smart phones with full Internet access had existed back then, he would not have gone. He would have typed the term under "Search" first, said "Bullshit," smiled, sat back on his log, and waited for someone less savvy to hunt for it.

            It says here that the E-trade baby is never going to grow up to look for a left-handed smoke shifter, or go on a snipe hunt. To this, you may say "Bullshit! There's more crap on the Internet than anyone would have though possible when Al Gore invented it, and more gets uploaded every second!" That's true. There are acres of cattle croutons on the net. Enzyte is there. Scientology has a site. Many sites are devoted to what the author regards as the most cynical and evil of conspiracy theories (and that's quite an award) the one that regards the terrorist attack on 9-11 as an inside job by the US Government. Regardless of how many arguments about the melting point of steel or the direction the of  the towers collapse may be made, the main problem with the theory is that it assumes that hundreds, if not thousands, of members of the Air Force, the air-traffic control system, the Executive Branch of the federal government and the Pentagon (who cannily decided to bomb themselves to cover-up), when presented with the opportunity to kill thousands of their innocent fellow Americans, and never mention of word of it to anyone forever, said, as if with one voice, "Sure! Great idea! Why didn't anyone ever think of this before?"

            The Internet will continue to provide a platform for cow chipping, but it will also continue to supply the flames to burn those chips. Fact finding will always pursue fact-fudging. You can choose not to believe this. You may, in fact, think it is bullshit. It says here, though, that the best (or worst) part of the Age of Bullshit is behind us. If you doubt that, ask Bashar al-Assad.

A flagged photo on OkCupid


Disclaimer: My reader noted I'd quit posting the disclaimer. Just got tired of pasting it here. If you need a disclaimer, read below.


Miraculously, about a month ago, the free dating site OKCupid asked me to be a "moderator" for them. Let me emphasize that I did not ask for this position. It just came to me on the wings of serendipity right after I decided to write the Complete Guide to Computer Dating.

I favor computer dating, as I have made plain. It is not however, for the thin-skinned or easily disturbed.  The free sites have a significant number of users who are not taking the opportunity to find love here entirely seriously. If you cannot abide by the assortment of trolls, exhibitionists, spammers, cam girls. flim-flam artists and plain bonk-ass loonies who may contact you on the Cupe or POF, go to one of the pay sites, where they are less common. Being a moderator on the Cupe means you get to examine questionable profiles, pictures or messages and then, along with your fellow moderators, or "mods" as we refer to ourselves rakishly, vote to delete the questionable item or decide that it doesn't offend sufficiently to merit deletion.

In order to come to our attention, an item on the site has to be "flagged." The people who do this are known as "flaggers." There is a  button next to every picture, profile and message on the site that says "Report This." There is a little icon of a red flag next to it. If a user hits that button, I get to see the item.

Remember, any user can block any other user in the computer dating world, if they are being unpleasant, and never have to deal with them again. Flagging is for offenses that the flagger regards as so egregious, the offender should be removed from the site. Except for some flaggers, who seem to think by clicking the flag button, they are sending a message to the flaggee. We get messages like "You're hot" or "Nice butt" all the time. This is true of me, of course, but obviously not meant for me.

Individuals who make this mistake are referred to by the moderator community as "flagtards."

OKCupid has guidelines for we mods. Some of them are precise. "Full nudity" is prohibited in pictures, for example. I follow this rule, even though the Internet abounds with full nudity and outright porn. It is a little known fact that Al Gore, after inventing the Internet, waited only fifteen minutes to post a nude picture of himself on it. For further documentation of the Net's sex drive, you may review this video from the musical "Avenue Q."

The definition of "full nudity" seems simple to me, but it is not to the flaggers, or even some of the other mods. See the flagged pic here. The flagger says of it that "It belongs on a lesbian site."

Well, so do I, but I'm not qualified. Regardless of her orientation, the lady in the photo is not fully nude. There are far more revealing pictures on the Sports Illustrated web site. Am I the only one looking at them who is not a lesbian?  People also flag pics of women in g-string underwear or see-through bras. You may not like g-string underwear or see-through bras, but if you find yourself wearing one or both anyway, you are not fully nude. Amazingly, some of my fellow mods will vote to delete them nonetheless. Repressing sexuality is still a spectator sport here in the US.

There are people who do put nude pictures of themselves on the site. Most of these include an erection. I vote to delete them. Some of them are just an erection. I delete those as well, even though a picture of just your schlong may not be "full" nudity. Very occasionally women will post nude pictures of themselves. I'll delete them, too. I don't let my appreciation for naked women interfere with my personal integrity. At least, not any more. At the very least, not that often.

The Cupe has a rule that pictures must be of the user. Users put pictures of their cats, dogs and kids up and they are against the rules of the Cupe. I always vote to leave them alone, as long as the user has actual pictures of themselves as well. I'm not big on following inane rules, but many of my fellow mods are, and they don't mind making up their own, either. They vote to delete anything anyone complains about. Denied the opportunity to become true oppressors like concentration camp guards or vile small-town cops by history or circumstance, they seize the tidbit of authority that moderating at the Cupe gives them and wield it like the hammer of Thor, crushing the bits of free expression the lovelorn post like milkweed in sidewalk cracks.

Others are cool like me. We call the right wingers "modtards."

At left, a BBW

Answering the Questions

All dating sites want you to answer standard questions about yourself. Height, body type, hair and eye color, astrological sign, ethnicity age, location and religious preference are the basics. It's pointless to lie about most of these, but some of them begged to be fudged. On the POF drop down menu, you can be slim, athletic, average, a few extra pounds, Big and Tall (BBW) or you can prefer not to say.

I picked "athletic" although I would go with "muscular" if it was available. Actually, I would go with "irresistibly sexy" if I could. If you have to select "average" or "a few extra pounds" go ahead, but these categories can mean anything.  In Southern California, where I live, a few extra pounds means your anorexia has become less obvious. In Louisiana, it means you can sit on the sofa without a leg busting off of it.

The Big and Tall (BBW) category is for the unashamedly fluffy, but it contains its hidden traps nonetheless. There is no opportunity to be Big and Short, for example. A BBW is a Big Beautiful Woman. You can't just be a BW, even though we know they're out there. Likewise, you can't be a Big Beautiful Man. You're just a fat guy.

POF also wants to know your vices. You can drink or do drugs not at all, socially, or frequently. If you do indulge, check "socially," even if you have not spent a day completely sober since Jimmy Carter was President or you can roll a joint while driving a stick shift and talking on your cell phone. Seriously. If you weren't so stoned I wouldn't even have to tell you this.

People want to know if you like dogs or cats, or have same. Religion is also important. I am not religious, except for occasional attendance at the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and a sometime flirtation with Dudeism, and it is bad for me to be involved with people who are, because whenever they express a religious belief to me, I treat it as a lazy slow curve that needs to be knocked out of the park. People don't like having their cherished beliefs treated this way, so if they say on their profile that one of the most important things in their life is their relationship with Jesus, you'd better have a relationship with Him, too, otherwise it's not going to work out. Plus it means you're both willing to wait forever to have sex, which I am not. I was once emailed by a woman whose religious beliefs meant that not only did she expect to have but one husband in this world, but when they were reunited in the next they would continue to be married FOR ALL ETERNITY.

I was married for two years. It seemed like an eternity. I did not answer that email.

"Nobody wants to ride on the back of your Kawasaki, so don't mention it."

Disclaimer: This blog may often not contain any information about computer dating. When it does, perfectly good advice is often mixed in with sarcasm and humor. If you cannot tell the difference between good advice and blistering sarcasm, consult a humor professional before using any of this advice. Also, in spite of the name, it is not complete.


Completing Your Profile, Part 1—The Picture

Your picture is the most important part of your profile on whatever site you select. Most of the relationships we eventually forge are based on the shallows of physical attraction; the decision to click a mouse is exclusively driven by the picture the cursor is hovering over.

You can use as old a picture as you like, if you never plan to actually meet anyone. Other than that, stick within the last few years. You look almost as good as you did two years ago. You don't look as good as you did ten years ago.

You can go blurry—many people do. Again, unless your first date will be the two of you talking through the porthole on a diving bell, blurry can backfire.

Posting a picture with more than one person in it. This happens, too. Most of the time people will be able to figure out which one is you, but it's distracting, especially if the other person in the picture, by dint of good genes or just lack of aging, looks far better than you do. Never post a picture of yourself in an embrace with an attractive person of the sex you are trying to attract. If it's a great picture of you, crop them out. Many of the profile pictures you'll see are being held by disembodied arms or rest their heads on parts of shoulders. If you feel guilty about cropping them out of your life forever, you probably shouldn't have broken up with them.

If you’re the viewer, don't complain about the disembodied arm, or ask whom it belongs to. This just exposes your jealous, insecure nature.

All the sites allow you to post other pictures besides your main one. This is where people post pics of their children, pets, cars, boats, Harleys, skydiving instructors etc. If you have other flattering pictures of yourself, post them here. Nobody cares about any of those other things, except maybe the Harley. There is an entire subcategory of women that "want to ride on the back of your Harley." Nobody wants to ride on the back of your Kawasaki, so don't bother mentioning it.