The first step when it comes to any endeavor is to ask, “What is my goal here?” It’s important in all areas of your life and just as important when creating an online dating profile. Most people blunder and fumble around emotionally, vaguely reminded that they are trying to attract a partner. But almost immediately, they lose sight of the goal and begin treating it like all kinds of other things – a place to vent their frustrations about past relationships, a place to virtue signal about their politics or social justice proclivities, or a place to aggressively berate the other people on the platform (or the platform itself).

Aside from avoiding those kinds of pitfalls, there’s the flip side of that coin – what if you’re not doing nearly enough to achieve your goal? As I mentioned in my intro blog post, I’m going to assume that the average person is trying to attract their ideal life partner, i.e. someone to marry and have children with. We will get to the former disasters later but to get us started, I’ll focus on the latter issue of not doing enough.

The above picture shows a woman who is quite pretty in the face (which, no doubt, she is banking on to do most of the work for her), but bland to the point of nearly-invisible in the text. Let’s go through it point by point:

 

World traveler – This explains nothing. Where in the world? Why those places? What do you get out of traveling? Is this your reality or an aspiration you’d like to achieve with a partner?

 

Lover of life – Commendable but vague. Which aspects of life? Why is your life lovable?

 

Lover of wine – Loving a particular kind of alcohol is not a personality trait. Unless you own a brewery or vineyard, you can take it as a given that everyone enjoys drinking on occasion. And if you are extremely into wine, talk more about it. This is akin to saying, “Lover of food”. Yeah, we all love food. We also love oxygen.

 

Lover of laughing – People laugh as a natural reflex from the moment they are born. It releases endorphins that make us feel good. The only way you aren’t a “lover of laughing” is if you are severely mentally ill.

 

Lover of dogs – I guess that’s slightly better because “dog lovers” are a more specific subset of people. Still pretty vague, however. Do you own a dog? Are you hoping a guy comes along with his own dog?

 

Lover of working out – Probably the best thing she “loves”, because at least it describes a lifestyle. You’ll notice that no where in here does she describe what she’s looking for, however. So while she may love working out, would she strongly desire a man to work out with her? Does she even care if the man is fit? We can assume probably, but we have no concrete way of knowing.

 

In DC for the week…let’s go out and have fun! – What does “fun” mean?! Does she want to hook up? Does she want to drink a ton of wine? Does she want to walk through a dog park? We have no way of knowing. There is no denying she is quite pretty (take my word for it), but if I had to guess, she’s been relying on her looks in place of a personality for most of her life. When she has the chance to describe herself and what she’s looking for, the words and sentences she uses may as well not exist. They are useless to the point of annoyance. She may as well have just said “I’m hot, you don’t really care what I talk about because look at me.” And that will absolutely work for her for a little while longer, especially if all she’s interested in is “fun”. But this is far from a profile that’s going to attract to the attention of a worthwhile man.