Do men and women check out their competition in OLD?

[Destined2B]

I have a feeling women do it a lot more, hence more original openers. On the other hand you got "love. live. laugh", so I don't know....

[sillyanswer]

I have a feeling women do it a lot more, hence more original openers. On the other hand you got "love. live. laugh", so I don't know....

 

I always assumed that "I love staying in... and going out" and other clichés were proof that those people don't check out the competition.

 

I don't.

Edited September 24, 2014 by sillyanswer

[PegNosePete]

Absolutely, you can learn a lot from looking at other guys profiles. Get ideas for your own (although don't copy!), see what works, see what sounds good, find fun new ways of phrasing things, and most importantly learn what cliches 99% of guys use and how to stand out from the crowd.

 

IMO you would be crazy *not* to check out the competition.

[WesternWizard]

More to the point, I check out my competition at meetups. Those guys are not as intimidating-looking as I am, and many have subsistence-level jobs.

[sdrawkcaB ssA]

I don't know... I never look out for competition as I am not competitive in any way.

 

As for women I care not to ask. Though I think many who do OLD are self contentious and want to know how they stack. Unfortunately it is not what they show on OLD that gets my attention. So, all they are doing is creating their envy.

[carhill]

There's always someone else with a bigger dick, a fatter wallet or a better-looking face. Learned that back in the days of newspaper single ads. Never looked back from those years of brutal competition. What other men do is what they do. Once I figured out the style of the successful ones by observing in real life, I went off on my own. In my 20 years or so interacting with OLD, I never looked at the profile of another man and did fine in the medium. My approach to date ratio was astonishingly successful, especially compared to real life. The main reason? The OLD women were actually single. Huge difference. The successful guys in real life were better at catching women at a bad point in their relationship or marriage and using the BBD skills to pry them away. I was lousy at that.

 

So, no, I've never checked out the competition in OLD.

[central]

I would occasionally check out the "competition." Sometimes I'd get profile ideas I'd use to try to attract more suitable women. However, unless there are a LOT of other men comparable to me, there will be plenty of compatible women available for all of us.

[Michelle ma Belle]

Meh. In the beginning I would occasionally if only to assess things and get a feel for what I should write in my profile.

 

After doing the OLD for a while I stopped caring so much about everyone else. It just didn't seem worth it to spend so much time and energy on such things.

 

Either you liked what you saw and read or you didn't. And I was fine with either

[OwMyEyeball]

I remember once taking a peak at the competition on POF and was floored by the high proportion of good looking, healthy, toned guys with generally decent profiles. I felt my chances take a huge punch to the gut. Then I noticed that overall there were fewer male than female profiles, which seemed odd.

 

I got more confused when one of the profiles stated that "I'm not looking for a father figure" and that's when it hit me ... I hadn't set my search parameters correctly and had been browsing Men seeking Men.

 

So I reset the search and there they were, two times as many guys. I felt relieved

[Destined2B]

I did a quick check on POF in my area (Vancouver) and most guys clearly don't check. I can see why some women are concerned with the selection of men on POF: same openers, like "were you looking for me?!" , or "insert random opener here". Similar descriptions (I like outdoors), or lack of. And most use selfies as their profile pics. C'mon guys, prof even has a video guide on how to set up a nice profile. Guess they get exactly what they put in.

[pteromom]

I never did. Because I never looked at other women as competition. I wasn't looking for just any guy. I was looking for the guy who connected with ME. If he didn't read my profile and connect with what I had to say, I wasn't interested in him anyway.

[Keenly]

I've never looked at profiles specifically, but I did meet up with an old friend from high school recently.

 

As we ate I asked if I could read her PoF incoming messages to get a good laugh.

 

 

She's decently attractive. I looked through the messages an Jesus Christ, its D-bag city. Shirtless Pics, bathroom selfies of flexed arms, pics while doing curls. The messages themselves were everything women always complain about. Most can't spell, let alone form proper sentences.

 

 

After looking through it just confused the hell out of me even more than I already was, regarding my own lack of success. It seems they are far down one end of the scale, and I must be too far down on the other.

[Tayken]

I have a feeling women do it a lot more, hence more original openers. On the other hand you got "love. live. laugh", so I don't know....

 

 

I personally do not, but I do tell women what their competition is up to vice versa. I get a lot of compliment on my profile, and apparently it's refreshing to read mine because it's detailed, doesn't have pics on a truck/hunting/drinking session/selfie

 

Most are usually intrigued my the extent of my travel (over 100 countries), my education, paragraph intro posts as opposed to "hey", "wassup", and if they can hear my accent

[Phoe]

Never looked. Never even thought of the concept of competition. Never occurred to me. Since I was only interested in men, I wasn't gonna waste my time looking at womens.

[Phoe]

She's decently attractive. I looked through the messages an Jesus Christ, its D-bag city. Shirtless Pics, bathroom selfies of flexed arms, pics while doing curls. The messages themselves were everything women always complain about.

 

And what still boggles me is that I didn't get any of that crazy crap. Almost all of my messages were polite and thoughtful. There were only 2 that weren't. One guy who sent an opening message saying an average girl like me must be really happy to be getting a message from a guy like him (ignored), and a guy who simply said "sexy ass lips girl" which was also ignored.

 

The rest of the messages I got were awesome.

[Mirages]

Haa, I am analytical, so yes, I have checked out guys at my "level" and above my education/$$ level.

 

Did I learn anything? Well many men are a bit more established in their careers, have a decent face, but really out of shape. A number of them have too much thug in them, I can see they'd be trouble. Lastly, no matter how bright they are, the photos are consistently poor. A few seem like me, but without the minor issues I have. Does that help me? We should know where we fit in the spectrum of normal, not to emulate, but just to know.

[MissBee]

I have a feeling women do it a lot more, hence more original openers. On the other hand you got "love. live. laugh", so I don't know....

 

I've never done it.

 

Funnily, I've asked guy friends what it's like on their end but I suppose I could check out for myself what women online are like but I just never think to do it.

 

I also don't view it as a competition. I am who I am, I think I'm pretty decent, and I don't find majority of men on these sites suitable anyway, so I just go in with the mentality that a man likes what he reads and sees and will follow up and we'll go from there and if after we go out and it's meant to be, we'll click and pursue something. If he isn't enamored or I'm not, we move it along.

 

This is not The Bachelorette where you're all together competing for the attention of one man...

[hellon]

I have a feeling women do it a lot more, hence more original openers. On the other hand you got "love. live. laugh", so I don't know....

 

I've done it to get a sense of what other people are writing (and to make sure I don't sound like everyone else without sounding too out there), and have probably inadvertently copied some lines in the process. It's hard to be original.

[Kid_Charlemange]

I've done it. At first I was intimidated by some of them: Really good-looking guys, clearly with money (lots of expensive cars, boats, and, even a few with private planes). Then I noticed that few of them could string together a complete sentence; most didn't know the difference between "you're" and "your," and about 2/3 felt like they were from a boilerplate -- if there was any description at all.

 

That's when I realized why I was having some success, even without the looks. Intelligence matters! (to some women)

[Tayken]

I am getting a feeling of lack of confidence here from people checking out the competition....are you the same people that walk down the street pretending to walk your dog, whilst looking into the neighbours house?

 

I can't stand such people by the way

[Disillusioned]

Everyone in the dating market is, in effect, promoting themselves as a brand.

 

The more similar your brand is to the brands others are promoting, the more you'll have to compete. The more unique your brand is, the less you'll have to compete. This is one reason why OLD sucks for most men, because horny barbarian types come a dime a dozen.

 

The exception is if your brand is perceived by others as especially undesirable, in which case it's up to you to take the hint and break the curse yourself.

[OwMyEyeball]

I am getting a feeling of lack of confidence here from people checking out the competition....are you the same people that walk down the street pretending to walk your dog, whilst looking into the neighbours house?

 

I can't stand such people by the way

Where would you rate them alongside people who, say, waltz into a discussion, contribute nothing towards it, throw baseless judgement at the participants, throw disdain towards them, then waltz right out?

[Destined2B]

I'm surprised most people (particularly women in this thread) don't see OLD as competition. Maybe this is because there are more men online and women get to choose anyway.

[Cristo]

Personally, I don't use OLD. I've tried it multiple times in the past and have just had no success with it.

 

Then when I learned more about myself and what I truly want from a woman, I simply had no interest in using OLD. If you look at the profiles, the VAST majority of women are not ideal for a long-term relationship (which is what I want). If I was just looking for a hookup, sure, but definitely not long-term.

 

Of course there are exceptions, but I didn't see many of them.

 

Even with living in the middle of nowhere, I meet higher quality women throughout my day than I see online.