In order to be a successful online dater, you’ve got to craft a compelling, well-written profile highlighting all your life accomplishments, your charm, your wit, your verve, your dreams, hopes, and desires all in 2000 words or less.  In short, you’ve got to sell it, baby!  And that, my friends, is no easy task.  Plenty of people panic and talk about how they don’t know what to write and how difficult this is and blah, blah, blah and come across sounding like complete morons.  Big mistake.  Huge.  Nobody wants to read about your struggle to describe yourself.  If you can’t come up with any good reasons why someone should want to spend time with you, I’m certainly not going to dream them up for you!
For the past ten years, my profile has remained mostly unchanged.  I’ll mix up the title now and again or I might throw something extra in if I’ve been blown off by a Match date and I hope he might revisit my profile in the future but, for the most part, it’s been pretty consistent.  And this is what it says:

My Headline
“Two Things are Infinite: The universe and human stupidity;

and I’m not sure about the former.” – Einstein

(catchy, don’tcha think? Humor from a smart guy!)

My Profile
Some random facts about me… “I generally cry at least once a day, not because I am sad but because the world is so beautiful and life is so short.” – Brian Andreas – he’s one of my favorite quirky artists! I have an inexplicable fondness for earthworms. And most large mammals rock my world. Rednecks scare me. There, I said it. It’s true. But I still like country music. I will forever have a deep and abiding love for John Denver.

My brother thinks I’m a dork. My friends love the fact that I laugh at all their jokes but I think that’s just because I have a goofy sounding laugh – but in a good way. I generally laugh at myself at least once a day and will giggle madly at any passing weenie dog.

I had a list of past-times up here before but found that you boys like to turn it into a competition. It’s just life – I like to live it. I’ve had more adventures than many – only a few compared to some.

I’m a work in progress but enjoy the process. I will be the most fascinating woman you’ve ever met and then bore you senseless the next moment. I am warm, sunny, loving, faithful and generous by nature but will become sullen, petulant, condescending and patronizing if I feel I’ve been wronged. And I’ll likely let you hear about it. I’m enormously magnanimous though and don’t stay upset for long. I can be a veritable dream come true and your absolute worst nightmare. I am a woman. It goes with the territory…

I’m dressed up more often than down ’cause I’m a girly-girl and I like to feel pretty. But I break a sweat on a daily basis and will try to beat you at racquetball and leave you in the dust on my bike in an attempt to prove I’m your equal. I like to pretend I’m a tough chick but I’m really just a big softie so be nice. You boys make me cry sometimes.

I’ve got this list of qualities and physical aspects that I could toss out there and describe the “man of my dreams” but the fact is that there is no real rhyme or reason to the type of men I’m attracted to. Physically, I’m attracted to the usual “tall, dark and handsome” type – who isn’t?  But, in reality, I’ve fallen in love with short, bald and gap-toothed (not necessarily all in one package.)

I do tend to gravitate to tall men – I have a crazy fixation with men’s voices – and I can tell whether or not I want to see you sans clothing just by looking at your forearm. Nutty – I know.

I am drawn to confident, healthy people – mentally, physically and spiritually but, admittedly, I‘ve been duped before… If you smoke or do drugs or have so much baggage that you need 2 sherpas and a pack mule to haul it all around, you’re just not my guy. If you can tell a good story and make me laugh so hard my sides hurt, you’re on the right path.

I travel frequently and can be hopeless at a timely response but I do appreciate all emails and will respond eventually, one way or the other.

(And during my Tennessee years, I added some disclaimers)
That being said, in an effort to keep me from clicking the “No Thanks” button repeatedly, let me throw out some things that I consider to be “dealbreakers” –

Mullets

Pictures of You Without Your Shirt

Acid Wash Jeans

Wife-Beater Tanks

Living at home with Mom

Dishonesty

Missing Teeth

Poor Grammar and/or inability/refusal to use spellcheck

Twangy Hick Accent (not to be confused with Charming, Southern Drawl)

Bodypainting yourself for a sport

A felony conviction

Having more than 1 child without ever having been married

Liking Nascar

There…. that should save us both some time and weed out most of Middle Tennessee.  😉

And this has been my online selling tool to the dating world.  Most men like it.  Smart men love it.  Some men are threatened by it.  And occasionally some jackass feels the need to give me his opinion about what a bitch I am.  Fortunately, I can fire back with a scathing reply and then “block” him from future contacts.  It’s fantastic!

Now, I confess that having strong writing skills is a plus when it comes to crafting an interesting-sounding profile but it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker if you’re not the next Hemingway.  But it’s SOOOO important to say something that makes you stand out from the crowd.  Because EVERYONE talks about how they want someone “easy-going and laid-back, no drama, loves life and is friendly.”  Yawn.  Even bigger yawn if this is how you describe yourself.  Talk about your quirks, what makes you unique and unusual – that’s what going to stand out to someone.  And, frankly, don’t make it as lengthy as mine!  Mine is long intentionally – I’m trying to weed out the intellectually challenged – but I confess that it’s been called “daunting” by more than one man.  Nevertheless, I leave it unchanged.  But the key is you want to separate yourself from the pack – stand out from the crowd – show yourself as being different from all the other pretty faces out there.  Rather than describe yourself as “easy-going and laid-back” talk about your ability to stand in a room full of crying toddlers for more than an hour without batting an eye, or that you can go shopping at Wal-Mart on Black Friday and still love your fellow man – that sort of thing.  Instead of talking about how you “live life to the fullest”, talk about what lights you up from within, what you’re passionate about and why!  So many people just rattle off a laundry list of likes but it’s much more compelling if you talk about WHY you love something.  Your WHY allows someone to feel like they’ve connected with you on a deeper level and also gives them something to talk about when they send you a message.  And that’s basically the point of all this, right?  To strike up a conversation with your potential future partner.  So put a little effort into is is all I’m saying. 🙂