Master Dilettante

This year, I approach a significant life milestone – I’m not saying precisely which birthday – still a bachelor. As I’ve waited patiently at home for Mrs. Right to come knocking at my door, several “friends” have been badgering me (for years now it seems) to try the online dating thing. Alas, I’ve been utterly incapable of overcoming the two biggest hurdles for me: (1) writing a profile and (2) selecting suitable photographs.

In an act of inspired brilliance, a good friend suggested that I enlist help. In an act of utter foolishness, I agreed and jumped at this opportunity to take the easy way out. I promptly created a Match.com account and made a temporary user name and password available to a dozen friends, with the request that they craft a profile for me, wiki-style.

My expectation was that my “friends” together would write a humorous, wry profile that captured the essence of my personality, which, clearly, would be enough to attract interest. Well, the profile was certainly humorous and wry – but perhaps a bit too wry. I haven’t added photographs yet (more on that later), but I’m fairly certain that any eligible woman reading the existing profile will run not walk away from the surely psychotic person it depicts.

For example, I’m not so sure the prefatory tagline, “I’m 39 and need someone other than my poker buddies to plan my 40^th bday party,” is likely to attract women. Even if an unsuspecting lady were to find that tagline funny and continue reading, I’m not sure the current introductory “About me and who I’m looking for” summary puts my best foot forward:

I have been beaten down to a shadow of my former self. In the last 39 years, it has become apparent to me that I need a strong woman to guide me in my latter years. Despite being successful professionally and having a wide set of friends (though questionable in their quality), I have yet to find my soul mate.

My perfect match is a lady who will order me around, tolerate my fussiness and grudgingly accept my excessive and too-soon gifts from Tiffany’s, Louis Vuitton and Gucci. No gift is too expensive or too over the top for me. My AMEX lives for your needs.

Okay, not the best start. Grudgingly, I had to admit this was quite funny, however. But would any reader agree – and agree enough to respond?

The Match profile page also includes additional, shorter, “In my own words” sections on “for fun,” “my job,” “my ethnicity,” “my education,” “favorite hot spots,” “favorite things” and “last read.”

These started off somewhat amusing. For example:

my job: I move up the corporate ladder three rungs at a time, occasionally slipping back four or five rungs. My friends say that I got to where I am by brown-nosing; I would argue, but they’re really smart, and are usually correct in their assessments.

my ethnicity: I am Korean but not really. E.g., if you are looking for the stereotypical Korean man, you can stop here. You’re the boss in the relationship, not me.

However, with the best of intentions, my brother, finding all of this horribly mean-spirited, whipped out his lawyer’s pen and began revising.

Before (my friends’ version):

for fun: I enjoy inviting myself to my “girlfriends’” parties. Note, these are not “girlfriends” but “friends” that are girls with whom I tag along. I’m considered the know-it-all who has to provide an unwanted opinion on how to cook and clean.

my education: I have been educated in my life and despite having a JD and an MBA, I never scored at school. Hence I am on Match looking for my soulmate [sic]. Luckily, this is cheaper than the $200K I spent in the ivy [sic] leagues.

favorite hot spots: I go to lots of cool foreign places and put pictures of these places on my office cubicle wall. My objective is to convince unsuspecting passersby that I am more interesting than I really am.

favorite things: My two cats (one is dead and in a box in my living room), my overpriced jeans and my high maintenance travel headset. I also like reading business books that I can quote to my boss.

After (my brother’s version):

for fun: Hanging out with my friends, cooking up a great meal, and drinking good wine. I love games of all sorts — poker, monopoly, Pictionary, you name it. And watching movies on opening night — why wait for a better seat and miss the excitement?

my education: I have a JD and an MBA.

favorite hot spots: I’ve traveled to a lot of places — Thailand, England, Nepal, India, Australia, Korea — and I still haven’t gotten rid of the travel bug.

favorite things: My niece Alexandra! She just turned 3 months old.

You be the judge. Both versions are essentially accurate. However, where the collective profile at first was abhorrently interesting, now it is an odd assortment of bland and weird.

My brother makes the excellent point that the brash, odd profile previously written might, if at all, attract an audience not actually suitable for me, but the current pastiche profile is now internally dissonant. In theory, the combination of humor and sincerity should work, but the execution is imperfect at this point. I’m back to the drawing board and might actually have to do some of my own dirty work here.

(My brother has also proposed that he and my friends write competing profiles and we A/B test them. We’ll see.)

Oh, one additional note. Match allows you to attach searchable “MatchWords” to your profile. One of my poker buddies kindly added “introverted,” “lonely,” “sad,” and desperate.” Now, if anyone searches for these terms, they will find me. Winner! Compelling, don’t you think, ladies?

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

As for photographs, SmugMug hosts over 2,000 of my photographs. Of course, only a fraction of these are of me. I culled through my albums and identified 30 photographs with which I had some relative comfort and asked friends to select the ones they liked. Now, what would you think when two friends effectively responded with, “Uh, yeah, I think you need to take some more photos. I’ll help, really.” The photos are relatively accurate images of me, so I was a bit concerned with what they must think of my appearance. Back-peddling, both friends independently explained that the sample of pictures did not accurately represent my personality, and my ego forces me to accept this explanation.

I’ve published the profile on Match, so what are the results so far? My portrait has been viewed 86 times as of this writing, but I haven’t been contacted by anyone yet. To be fair, all female friends I know on Match uniformly say that they screen based on photographs first and spend perhaps 2 seconds doing so. I’m unlikely, then, to attract any responses until I add photos. Yeah, that’s it, that’s the ticket.

I plan to solicit and make further edits to the profile, add some photographs and see what happens. Stay tuned.