I get some messages on OKCupid that are real doozies, but this latest one really took the cake:
Guys are that observant. We just know your fair looks nice. We not concearned with how women get the way they look. We are just happy they look nice.
It s funny someone noticed a Victoria secret catalog in a photo I sent of cookies I made.
But very nice profile I hope your search goes well
What the...what? I have NO idea what this man was trying to say. There isn't anything in my profile that talks about men being concerned about looks. Victoria's Secret catalog...cookies...what? Not to mention the spelling mistakes. I assume he meant "hair" and not "fair." The message sounds like Cookie Monster wrote it. One initial thought was that English wasn't his second language. Anyways, it was so bizarre and non-sensical I simply had to respond:
Excuse me--is this an actual response to my profile? This message makes zero sense and is full of spelling and grammatical errors. NEXT.
He responded with this:
It was intended ado kind note. Sorry about that. My sense of humor does not translate well sometimes. My apologies.
I was typing on my phone
Yep, I could have guessed as much. The friggin' smartphone. Texting mistakes. More importantly, the inability to see how much of a doofus you come across as when you send someone on an online dating site a sloppy message that you texted up that's filled with spelling and grammar errors but oddly enough, no relevancy to anything whatsoever. (Sense of humor? His message was supposed to be funny?) By the way, I looked at this guy's profile after the fact and was baffled to see that he apparently was born in the U.S. and that he actually wrote a normal sounding profile.
Not long ago I took a virtual dating trip around the world and viewed the profiles of guys in other countries. Amazingly, their profiles were written in far more impeccable English than a lot of American men's profiles. They seem to care more about first impressions and a few stated that they hoped their English was good enough to read. (They also dress and present themselves better than a lot of American guys online, but that's another post for another time.)
So what the hell has happened to communication skills? I guess technology has killed them--but that's still no excuse to me.
I'm seeing moronic messages from strangers more and more and I don't like it one bit. I got a message a few weeks ago from a girl who wanted to sell Mary Kay to my social group members. Her message was exhausting to read as it was essentially one long run-on sentence with no punctuation or capitalization.
I really want to ask these people that if they applied for a job this way, do they think they would get an interview? If you take a test on your way to becoming a doctor or lawyer by writing like you're in the 4th grade, do you think you would pass the exam? Why would you think anyone should take you seriously when you communicate like a caveman? If the texting keypad on your phone causes you to make several mistakes, then why not type a proper email using a friggin' computer?
And I'm afraid it's only going to get worse. This report that American students lack writing skills was no surprise to me. Maybe school administrators need to wrench their phones and tablets from their hands while they're in the classroom.
Maybe I'm being harsh, but first impressions are everything and from now on, if one can't bother to spell or write a coherent sentence, they're not worth my time. The sad part is a lack of basic writing skills has now become expected; accepted, even, because of texting. Well, I simply cannot accept it. I didn't graduate from high school, go through college, hold jobs and start a blog with shitty language skills.
Call it having standards.
