The 5 Most Annoying Things Guys Do While Online Dating (From A Girl’s Perspective)

Once you get into your twenties, your life becomes consumed by this thing called WORK, and social opportunities seem to be restricted to friends you’ve known for 5+ years, who, by the time you hit 25 all seem to be married, engaged, or at least cohabitating.

Enter online dating, or even more conveniently, the dating app. Now you have all the singles in your area at your fingertips, and you can filter by age, interests, and whatever other criteria you have to seek out The One. What’s not to love?

I know people who have met the loves of their lives online, however, as with shopping in a charity shop, you have to sift through a lot of junk to find a gem. And as with anything virtual, people seem to be a lot… let’s say… braver behind a screen, which gives rise to a lot of rude or downright odd behaviour.

Here are the 5 more annoying things guys do online.

1. Blatantly Misrepresenting Who They Are

The whole point of online dating, is to talk to people you can then go on a date with in real life. So you’d think that you’d want to be as honest as possible in your profile, so you can attract people who will actually be attracted to you when you meet in person. This logic appears to be lost on guys.

OK, I’ll admit, it’s not just the men at fault here. Women do it too, and from what I’ve heard it’s usually about their weight or their age. However, it seems to be the trend that every guy is adding at least 3 inches onto their height. As a tall girl, this is a right pain, as it means a lot of wasted dating time. If you are 5’2” and “don’t date men under 6’0”!”, you are part of the problem. Stop it now, and leave the tall guys for me!

2. Strange Messages

We all get the odd bit of writer’s block sometimes. It’s hard to know what to say in your opening message to someone online, but “Hey how’s it going”, followed by asking them something about something they mentioned on their profile usually does the job. But some guy’s openers are just… weird.

One I see all the time is where a guy will start telling me about himself, or even just say hi, then be like “let me know if you want to chat!” Why would you say that? If I want to chat, I’ll reply! And you hear all kinds of other crazy stuff. The strange compliments, the hook-up requests, one guy even tried to write me an erotic story. Come on, if that’s what I’m after I’ll read Fifty Shades of Grey!

3. Dick Pics

I received my first “dick pic” on Bumble last week (somehow I’d luckily managed to avoid them until that point). It was from a guy that I’d been talking to 5 months ago, and been in the process of arranging a date with but he’d disappeared. But, lucky me, he’d decided to pop back up now and send me a picture… of his penis. My first thought was just…. Why? No woman alive is going to look at that and be like “Oh wow thanks so much for sending me that, now I TOTALLY want to go on a date with you!” I can only guess that these guys are either incredibly stupid, or attention seeking but can’t distinguish between positive and negative attention, so the best thing to do is just report and block.

4. Endless Chat

I’m a busy woman with limited hours in the day. So if we’ve matched, and both have an interest in meeting, I’d like to do just that. Meet up. You know much more about someone from just having a quick chat in person than over messages via a screen. But some people love to talk. And talk. And talk. And the thing is, if it’s someone you’ve never met, you don’t really have much to say to each other. There are some guys who’d just message every day asking how my day was etc. and we’d end up in these long, boring, conversations, but I had no idea if they even had any intention of meeting. Cut it out guys.

5. Disappearing

The problem with technology, is it dehumanises the dating experience. People are reduced to just profiles on a screen that you can discard with the swipe of a finger, which gives rise to a drop in manners. “Ghosting” is more common now than ever, as most millennials are too socially inept to deal with the awkwardness of even a “thanks but no thanks” text. And it’s happened to me before where I’ve had a date lined up with a guy, texted on the day to confirm, then heard nothing back. Flaking isn’t cool, but come on, if you’re not going to come anymore at least say.