When you’re out in public, or at work, or any place with actual humans physically around you, it’s not so difficult to pick up signals of communication. When you talk to someone, it’s not only their words that convey meaning, but also gestures, inflection, looks, body language; it’s all integral to figuring just what exactly someone is trying to get across to you.
The same goes for flirting; by the time we reach adulthood, we have almost automatic interpretations of certain looks and smiles that indicate to us that someone is trying to initiate the first moments of courtship. And what's more, there are at least a few things about someone, even someone we don't know at all, that we can deduce about them immediately: what they look like, how they carry themselves, perhaps where they shop or work or what neighborhood they live in.
Yes, that instant infusion of starter information about a potential romantic interest is one of the great things about real life encounters.
Internet dating, on the other hand, has a great many benefits that the off-line world can't offer: shuffling through many possible matches at rapid speed, learning information about someone before even having to decide whether or not to engage them in conversation, and the convenience to dive into dating whenever you have a moment.
The downside is that all of those subtle inter-personal nuances that help you figure someone out in person simply don’t exist in the cyber world. When someone isn’t physically there in front of you, the rules for communication are inherently different. What’s more, as time has gone forward and internet dating gets older and more established, there has been born a whole new range of ways to interact, along with slang, unique subtleties and curious etiquette.
To help you navigate the tricky waters of online dating interactions, here are a few scenarios and how to handle them:
Scenario A: In which, you receive a message from a fellow Datepadder. The message is terse, something like, “Hey, I saw your profile and thought you looked nice! Thought I would say hello! Hope to talk to you soon!”
Interpretation: This person is likely sending you what I call the “template message”. The lack of you-specific information and vague interest means this person is probably sending these out like crazy. If their profile strikes you as especially interesting, maybe write back. But don’t feel bad if you immediately write them off for being lazy and/or not realizing what a marvelous gem of a person you are.
Scenario B: Someone “nudges” you.
Interpretation: The “nudge” on Datepad has an equivalent on lots of other dating and social networking websites. It’s a quick and easy form of communication that simply shows interest. Not what kind of interest or why, just a little “hey there, I noticed you and I’m putting you on notice that I noticed you.”
Someone might employ this because they’re shy (although come on, we’re online…how much safer do you need to feel to come out of your shell?) or simply because they were running out the door and wanted to initiate the easiest of interactions, with the intention of following up with something more substantial later.
Send back a witty quip about nudging to let them know you’re there and if they’re worth their weight in webspace, they’ll respond with something more personalized to really get the ball rolling.
Scenario C: You’ve been emailing back and forth with someone online and so far, everything about them is promising. You share similar interests and so far, no signs of drug addictions or psycho exes still hanging around.
But something about the way they say things in their messages is confusing; are they joking when they give you a hard time about your 5 cats or do they really hate animals? You could come right out and ask for clarification on these discrepancies because if they’re serious, you want to know but if they are kidding, you don’t want to seem like the person who doesn’t have enough of a sense of humor to get sarcasm.
Interpretation: This is when I think it’s time to move from online dating to actual dating. When the foundation seems solid enough to merit taking time out of your life to experience this person first hand, that’s when you stop getting hung-up on the little breakdowns in impersonal communication. Emotional tones like sarcasm are hard to convey and even harder to pick up on online. So move it to 3-D and see if the back-and-forth clicks more easily.
