by schiaparelli » Tue Nov 19, 2013 9:01 pm
i know that feel about being in college and with an online dating profile, like "what's up aren't there enough college kids for you to hit on?"
because dwindles suggested it, i am now going to tell the story of how i met my current boyf on okc:
at the beginning of fall semester i hung out with two dude friends of mine and we all went "agh we're lonely" and then made okc profiles together. i don't know how it happened but we spent the evening editing each other's profiles and it was pretty funny because my two dude friends had both had okcs before and one of them would go, "don't message that guy, i met him at starbucks and it was super awkward"
and then i muddled around for a few weeks and fielded mostly messages from older dudes. what dwindles said about okc having mostly older people is true. the college demographic is slightly represented but not very (i mean, every once in a while i run into people from my university in undergrad that i know and it's terrifying). a lot of the guys i ended up talking to were like 21-25ish, and i'd occasionally message/be messaged by some girls 18-23. (for reference i'm 19)
and then one glorious beautiful day that was like 2 months into the okc thing i got a message from a guy who said something about typefaces and my favorite novelist in his message and we started exchanging absurdly long, 500-to-1000-word-length messages about urban design and books and asian food and typography and medicine. and after a week-ish of that i said "hey. so as i was writing this i was thinking i'd like to ask you out, but if you want we could take it slow/ambiguously and just go have bubble tea?"
and he said "sure", and we met, and had bubble tea, and walked around talking for six hours and also got pho and dessert waffles along the way, and he gave me a ride back to my place, and said, "see you around sometime" (confusing as there's no way we would run into each other regularly). i remember i felt super awk because i came back to my room and realized my fly was unzipped (AGH THE WORST). and i was thinking "agh i don't want to get up my hopes"
he asked me on a second date and we hung around for 12 hours in a museum full of weird installation art, and it was easily the most fun i've had browsing art with other people, and there's one floor that's completely dark in the hallways and the pieces are in separate rooms with gentle weirdly neon light, and he grabbed my hand when i kept on muddling around in a confused way so we wouldn't lose each other, and then we got sushi, and then we walked around for ages, and got froyo, and went to his place to stare at the city skyline, and then he kissed me out of nowhere and said "hey, i like you". i think at some point he also complimented me on how i dressed which was nice because he's been suspiciously well-dressed this entire time.
i just realized this was a totally useless story from the perspective of gauging online dating benefits/detriments so i guess the tl;dr is we had four more dates and now we're a thing
anyways, unwashed, i'm going to guess that it's because okc has questions that you answer, and you can view other people's responses and okc uses that to assign match percentages (% match, friend, enemy) and recommend people. it seems to be a reasonably good indicator of how matched-up you are with someone w/r/t overall life outlook and preferences.
hunnish and ben, super hope you find some cool people. or at least one. you just need one achingly awesome person to hit on who also is hitting on you, and then life is great!