Reasons Porn is Better Than Sex: Dating Sites Suck (Part 2)

When I say that porn is better than sex, I’m being somewhat tongue in cheek. (If you’d like to put your tongue in my cheek please leave a comment. Also, please be female. And hot.) Obviously I prefer fucking over watching people fuck, although I have to admit that watching people fuck is a helluva lot more convenient.

I’ve written before about the problem of ratio in dating sites: There are tons of dudes, not so many females, and it changes the nature of the game. When girls are getting a billion messages every day they start to get snowed under and have trouble paying proper attention to each one. At the same time all the attention makes them feel very wanted, so they can become choosy, looking for the “perfect man.” One can’t blame them.

On the dudes’ side, it becomes a numbers game: you have to cast a very wide net, from which you’ll get only a few nibbles, and only at that point can you start filtering down to the good ones. And yes, despite what we think of men – much of which is true – we do need to filter, because the fact is that not all women are created alike.

Let’s compare and contrast two particular examples, to highlight the point.

After a long absence I decided to log back into one of the dating sites I sometimes use. I saw some interesting profiles, sent a few messages, nothing too special. Then I saw a very simple profile: Just a girl taking a selfie, wearing a little black dress (with a cleavage window), with an angle that highlighted a very nice pair of legs. We’ll call her Legs, because I’m reductionist like that. Unfortunately, that’s all the profile had: just the picture. No “likes” or “dislikes” or “turn ons” or “turn offs” or “what I’m looking for in a man” or much of anything. You can see why I’m calling her Legs, because I don’t know anything else about her.

“What the hell,” thought I, “I haven’t been here in awhile, I might as well send her a message.” So I did. As I always do, I spent some time on it, I was as clever and witty as I’m able to be with no context – really just limited to saying, hey, nice legs – and I fired off the message, expecting little in return.

Message sent, I went back to scrolling through profiles and a few minutes later found an amazing woman. This was a woman who’d put thought into her profile. Her picture was beautiful, posed in an interesting way, not trying to be sexy but all the more sexy because of it. This particular site has “taglines,” and hers was witty; it made me smile. For the profile itself she included poetry, she alluded to the nature of the site using metaphor, she showed how clever she is. Folks, I wanted this woman. We’ll call her Sepia, which doesn’t do justice to her profile but has some symmetry with Legs.

Of course I had to send Sepia a message too, but her profile made it easy. The words fell out of me, and I was able to come up with something better than my email to Legs but without as much thought required. What a great start to the relationship! (I get optimistic when I write these emails.)

Now while I was writing Sepia, Legs responded to my earlier message. So I went back to read her message… only to find that it wasn’t a “message,” really, she’d just granted me access to her private pictures. And there was only one picture there, which was almost identical to her public picture: she was in the same pose, taking a selfie, but now the little black dress was gone and she was in a bra and panties. Which is, of course, a nice improvement, but… what am I supposed to do with that? The sum total of our conversation had been:

Her: Look at my dress! And legs!

Me: An email with words and sentences and grammar and shit

Her: Look at my bra! And legs!!!

But the night wasn’t over yet. Oh no, the adventure was just beginning, because while I was looking at Legs’ legs, Sepia wrote back! And she mentioned that she liked my message! This is progress! This is gr-  Wait, I should finish reading.

Oh. She says I remind her of her husband. That’s… kind of a deal breaker, for someone who’s looking to commit adultery.

Well shit. I’ve got a woman who can’t communicate (apparently) but has nice legs – I’m not going to take that away from her – and one who is amazing but it’s a non-starter.

Now if this were a porn video, I’d already have Legs’ legs wrapped around my head, and Sepia would be straddling my midsection. If they’re into it they might even be kissing each other, but I’m not going to push that too hard; one can’t have everything.

Oh, right, I was saying “if this were a porn video.” Yeah, they’d be kissing.