An Open Letter To The Gay Men Of Online Dating

I could have gone my entire life without being propositioned to defecate on someone’s face, but such is the game in internet gay land. Online dating is weird.

Dating nowadays is hard, much harder than it used to be when you could go to a bar and just pick someone up and everyone seemed to have the confidence level of a honey badger. Now we hide behind the shield of the internet and dating has taken a strange turn, sometimes down a dark alley behind a dumpster into the arms of a tree snake. Here are a few of my thoughts to the electronic mating men out there.

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To the men who have no pictures on their profile…

It’s the 21^st century. My Pop Tarts this morning were fitted with cameras, so there’s really no excuse anymore. To all the men who use a picture of their dick instead of their face (well, at least on Gaydar, anyway): good luck to you; I hope you get all you want from life. To the men who start a conversation with no picture: don’t ignore or complain when politely asked for one; you wouldn’t talk to a box with a question mark on it at a bar.

To the boys at the budding age of 18 who say they have ‘daddy issues’ and want $upport…

You should at least attempt life before you give it away to paid sex and heroin.

To the men who seem to forget that each and every profile is an actual human being and ignore or don’t respond…

I say fuck you. If you send someone an email, you expect a response — it’s common decency. There is even an option to use the website’s stock reply: “Sorry not interested, good luck out there”, or something along those lines. You don’t need to be creative; a rejection email is much preferable to an empty nothing, which leaves one’s already vulnerable thoughts dangling around them in an anxious haze. Be a decent human. Respond.

To the men who think it’s okay to give up on basic conversational skills…

Please revise your typing abilities and get back to me. “Hey how r u wat u in2?” is not a sentence; it is a text message from a 12-year-old. “good. u? into?” is not a response. Work harder. You are a grown man. I am more likely to fuck a pomegranate than I am a deliberate illiterate. To the acronym users: when will you realise words are sexy? Using ‘VGL’ in fact makes you less good-looking, and ‘DTE’ actually means that you are so far from the surface of the earth that you are space junk, floating around aimlessly, ignored by all of mankind.

To the straight men who are taking time out of their busy heterosexual relationships to seek out the pleasure of a man…

Tell me again how straight you are with my tongue down your throat. Don’t hide behind a veil of what you assume people think is cool or hot. No one cares anymore.

To the racists in the room…

You are not hiding your racism by explaining it further. “Sorry not into Asians or blacks; I’m not racist, just not into that kind of thing…”. Hmm…

To the old men who think it’s okay to prey on younger guys who aren’t asking for it…

Please don’t. You guys already have a bad rap; don’t solidify this by playing up to stereotypes. Adhere to the age preference, thanks.

To the men with the bizarre egos…

Please get a reality check. Every time you mention how good-looking you are, or how in shape you are, or how good a lover you are, or how hung you are, you are only reinforcing the fact that you are probably none of those things. There is a difference between confidence and assholery. To the body-obsessed men with nothing else to offer: this is sad and indicative of a boring persona. Your abs may be rock hard and your gym regime extensive, but the conversation you bring to the table will be tedious and the sex will probably be vain and dull. Also, I can’t clutch marble; give me some butter mounds.

To the men who are into weird shit and advertise so, I admire the honesty (it’s a rare trait out here)…

But really, unless the other guys state that they’re into that sort of thing, please refrain from sending explicit requests or pictures to them. It weirds them out and makes you look like a creep. Also, don’t come out of nowhere and whip out your sex dungeon and fetish hole; be upfront about what you’re after, no one wants to be Fritzled.

To the men with the all-in usernames…

Be bold in your choices. If your profile name is pigoutonmyasshole and your subject line in your email is “Woof.”, this paints a definitive picture of who you are and what you want, which is fine. But say I get an email with the subject line “Ahoy there!” and I am then asked normal questions such as “How are you, how was your day?”, I will find it harder to talk about how my brunch went if your username is stretchmyredhole or muscleboywholuvscum. If you’re going to play all your cards like that, play them! Don’t pussy out and withhold halfway through.

To the men who say stuff like this: “UB 45-25yo GL hlthy HT 2 WT rto”…

I can’t help you. Good luck. Whatever.

And finally, to the men waving their dicks around…

Please don’t. I can’t reiterate this enough. I’ve probably already assumed that you have one, and if I wanted to see dicks, I would watch porn where the dicks would be better-looking anyway, so do yourself a favour and sheath. Unless it’s really gross or weird-looking, in which case brb, Reddit beckons.

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