1) How many women have on their profile they're looking for original messages? How do you get a woman's attention if she's going to judge you by your first message? Would a one liner be better? I think that only works if you have the initial looks to fall back on for your lack of thoughtfulness or curiosity.

1a) I agree, and I agree there's no point in getting involved with someone just for the sake of being with someone. If you're not into the person, that's fine, save both of you the time and energy if you know it's going to go nowhere but

2) Not responding at all is rude, period. Why don't women NOT UNDERSTAND this? Are they so used to men just trying to get into their pants that they are so defensive against anyone who isn't their type? I seriously have no idea why it's a big deal to write someone back you're not interested. It's called being POLITE.

3) And I'll give you points if you can convince me how not responding to someone who wrote you something polite themselves is a positive. It's just a snooty way of going through life, IMO.

It's like, say you're out at a bar with your friends, ladies. Do you ignore and pretend the guys who try and chat you up don't exist, or do you make up an excuse or let them down gently and move on with your night? That's a big point I want to make; just because it's the internet, I find women have some pre-conceptions that it's not real life and making someone feel low is no biggie.

I just don't understand why men would purposely WANT to be rejected when no response is so much better. I know when I e-mail a guy, I don't want a response unless it's worth reading. I'd prefer not hearing anything if he's not interested - I get the hint pretty easily.

As it's been explained in about a gazillion threads here, no one owes anyone a response here - do you respond to all your junk mail, or call back all who telemarket you by phone? Same deal. Also, women get fired back at by men when they do say no thanks with some rude, nasty insulting e-mails, or their no thanks ends up being mistaken for a negotiation. Most women who don't respond now did once but it wasn't worth the backlash so they stopped.

No - again you misunderstand my post. My point is in order to get any good results you will have to spend some time making an effort. Oh wait, I already said exactly that. Turns out there's no clearer way to explain that. Trying to save time in any sort of dating scenario will skew your results. Why? Women deal with a lot of guys - so standing out has to be part of your approach.

Women choose the men.

The men on this planet are decided, in the most part by woman.

Guys gauge up-front chemistry based on physical attraction, 9 times out of 10. We have all different wish lists, but some kind of looks-based "type" is high on it, you can bet. So looks are something that are easily checked out in 2D on a site like this, and it makes perfect sense to rule out someone he doesn't find physically attractive (just as women routinely read-delete emails based on their own criteria.)

That's because you are not invested in your emails. If you don't care whether or not that person replies to you than you didn't really care about meeting this person in the first place. And no, the hint isn't always that straightforward and can easily be interpreted in different ways by different people, at least with a reply you get closure

Bravo, comparing online dating to junk mail and telemarketers. Thanks for proving my point.

Obviously we have different opinions on this, and I'm not a hot woman who gets flooded with messages, but I just think that it's polite and safer to actually respond than not respond. Off topic but if a guy is a club and trying to talk to you and you talk him down easily he'll hopefully go away. Ignore him and you have a bigger chance of him stalking you or getting aggressive.

That's because you are not invested in your emails. If you don't care whether or not that person replies to you than you didn't really care about meeting this person in the first place. And no, the hint isn't always that straightforward and can easily be interpreted in different ways by different people, at least with a reply you get closure.

I am pretty sure that the people who send nasty emails in backlash are in the minority and that those people would express their anger whether you reply or not. If anything, I would think that not replying would get you multiple attempts from the same person.

This site is not really comparable to telemarketers or junk mail: you are on this website by your own choice, you are putting yourself out there for people to email you. These emails are from actual people, not a machine programmed to mail/email thousands of messages a day.

Don't you think it would be fair for women to also put in the same amount of effort? Women may get a lot of mail but men also have to read through a whole lot more profiles and write a lot more messages too. (Going on the assumption that women who deal with a lot of guys mostly just look at the profiles of those that email them first and don't actually take the initiative to look through profiles and making first contact themselves, which seems to be the norm from what I can tell)

Wow.
I've sat back and read a lot of the posts after mine and I must say womaninprogress, you have a horrible attitude about all this.

In fact, it's women like you with that state of mind that makes dating suck so much for guys. Not responding to WELL WRITTEN messages is rude, POINT BLANK.

Another thing is, you keep mentioning 5-10 mins is too much to spend on a note. I dont understand your logic with that one. Because i spent 5-10 mins on a note doesnt mean i was writing a novel, it just means I carefully thought out what I wanted to say based on reading your profile.

I really feel you need to change your attitude on somethings because you are wrong!!!

I guess you will never know because you never felt that type of rejection. I bet you hide behind being a woman so you never make the first move and even if you did, us guys aren't like that because we know how it feels.

Woman-In-Progress,
Is this one of those subjects which men and women view so differently that they cant understand the other's viewpoint?

You cant understand why a man would want to get rejection messages, well consider this: a guy posts a profile, he gets no first contact messages from women, his first contact messages (however well written and polite)go unanswered, yet he reads postings in the fora from women who say they receive tooo many messages to respond to.

Is it surprising that such a guy would like some response as reassurance that threre really is someone out there in cyber space?

I dont think women who claim to get so many messages that they cant respond to all can have any Idea how demoralizing it is to be completely ignored.

That's not to say that it is somehow their fault, but it's probably something they'll not be able to relate to.

How do you get a woman's attention

And the chemistry thing, how can we tell in this two dimensional environment? Why not meet and see if we hear the "audible click?"

Woman-In -Progress,

1. I'm not assuming that women who get a lot of messages dont understand rejection. My point is that someone who is getting a lot of messages probably doesn't understand why getting a "rejection message" might be more preferable to some than getting no messages at all.

YOU keep questioning other's stated preferences to get those "rejection messages". No one is obligated to send them, but why flame someone for preferring them?

After having watched these fora for a year or so, it still amazes me that guys get flamed for asking the rather obvious questions(What exactly is going on on this site? How does this POF thing really work?What does a guy have to do?), stating their preference for "rejection messages", and of course, for exercising their G*d-given right to moan, complain and gripe.

2. There is, IMHO, a "truth-in-advertising" component to this. When a guy joins POF(or any similar site, for that matter), he is lead to believe that there are "thousands" of women "waiting to meet you!",and a certain expectation is encouraged on the part of men by site operators, that women are on these sites to meet men, that women are going to meet men "halfway",(wherever that is) and that meeting women on the net is going to be somehow easier than in real life. After guys have been on here a while and find out that it's not what they were lead to believe, they do what any red blooded man would do: they go to the fora and gripe about it, for which many are flamed.

Your response boils down to "That's life. Deal with it. Nothing personal". The fact that it's "not personal" doesn't make it any less frustrating, but some of the women who post in these fora seem to feel that men somehow have no "right" to feel frustrated, which leads me to believe that men and women are talking to themselves rather than to each other. Or maybe we are all talking past each other. Men would have no complaints here, IMO, if they knew up front that men outnumber women on this site, that they'll be lucky to get a 10% response rate, and that some will go for months without getting any messages. Men aren't complaining about being rejected so much as they are complaining about having been tricked. Being told "It's nothing personal" is cold comfort when you think you've been had.