Writing An Encouraging Profile

Profiles sometimes catch your attention and make you think although they fail to stir you to action and reply. today I had some thoughts about how a profile could be improved. And I'm using this as a memorable example.

Accentuate The Positive

Today I noticed a profile from a man who was a middle-aged virgin and said he was 'desperate'.

The word desperate was already off-putting. Any negative word is off-putting. Look for a positive word. A better word would have been keen.

Desperate evokes a series of images, which might be wrong, and irrelevant. 

It means different things to different people. To me it suggested that contacting him was taking a risk because things could go from bad to worse:

1 A loser. A failure. Has never attracted a woman. A loner. No friends. Unattractive.

2 Deeply unhappy. Possibly a depressive. Could even be suicidal.

3 A man willing to pay for sex. His ad might attract call girls.

4 Somebody with no alternative - might become a stalker. 

5 Too clinging. A million problems. Why has he never attracted anybody? Plain? Stupid? Poor health? Criminal record? Been in prison? Always lived at home? Mama's boy? Homeless? Would he want not just sex but money and a home?

6 Total submissive? No confidence? No ideas? No initiative? Can't study, hold down a job, organize a date at a romantic restaurant. Can't buy a bunch of flowers. No persistence?

7 No social graces. Low IQ. Possible mental problems.

All these ideas floated through my head - caused by just one word!

I was not interested in meeting him but was sufficiently curious to read down his list of attributes. 

Under children I expected him to say none. I would have thought - obviously, no sex means no children.

But he had ticked on or clicked on no answer which comes up as 'prefer not to say'. 

Why?

Too lazy to fill in the form?

Too evasive to answer the simplest question.

Hiding something - actually has adopted children - here my imagination runs riot. With no clues from him I run a checklist of every possibility to see what is possible or likely. He has had a sexless marriage and adopted children. Or married an older woman who already had children but didn't want sex. 

He has been a priest. Or teacher. At a boarding school. A special needs school.

I have given you a lot of negatives. Now let me brighten up this blog. I would also like to reassure anybody who has included any of these three ideas (virgin, desperate, prefer not to say whether I have children) that they can re-write to create a more positive impression.

Desperate

As I said earlier, look for positive words. And positive thoughts.

For positive words, use a thesaurus.

Play happy music. 

Imagine you are a GP (to any American readers - a British General Practitioners is a family doctor). Adopt a jolly bedside manner or the cheeriness of the doctor. 

So let's change the word desperate. The doctor or adviser or counsellor says, 'So Mr Desperate, you have now decided to take action to solve your problem. Excellent. You are keen to meet a nice lady. What are you looking for? Who would you get on with? What can you offer her?'

I now see why some dating sites have done the work for you. They ask you to describe yourself, and they put hints in brackets.

They even ask why somebody would want to meet you.

Why would anybody want to meet a desperate man?

Why would anybody want to meet a virgin?

And how can he counteract the impressions I suggested earlier.

Here are a few suggestions:

I think you will see from this how a profile can be improved. Amazingly, after one nods one's head in agreement, thinking, well, this is common sense, this is obvious, often you go back to your own writing and find you have hastily written off the thought of the moment. Your first thought was not checked at the time. Nor later. There in your own writing, are all the errors which, when made by other people, were so obvious that you tutted and shook your head and wondered why they could not see.

Excuse me - I must go off and check what else I wrote today, giving the impression that I'm some negative, awkward person. When, of course, I am all sweetness and light. I ooze kindness. I am positive thinking, and the most intelligent, insightful and charming person you could hope to meet or read!  Anybody would love to meet me.

Attention-getting humour - how much is too much?

I have read several profiles of men which are negative, occasionally humorous, but you are left wondering whether they are ranting or humorous or just plain weird. 

They start:

'I am not a millionaire who ... I have three yachts and two heads.

or

'I am a millionaire who - only joking. Actually I am unemployed.'

or 

'I do not play with dolphins and ride into sunsets.'

or  

'Two elephants met on a dating site and ...' 

or 

'I like sunsets with yellow dots. My hand wanders over the mouse and ...' 

One ended with, 'I hope you appreciate my humour'. 

I didn't. I wondered what he was high on. Or would he sit grumbling about the world? Or would he start verbally attacking his date for her conventional or outlandish clothes and expectations? 

A man who calls himself your dinner date or your ideal man may be boasting. But that is what a woman is looking for. 

If he calls himself Mr Wild, Mr Nasty or Mr Fed Up, or says the site is a waste of time he sounds like a loser. At best he may be somebody who has no enthusiasm and joy in inviting the female reader out to dinner.

By all means include the odd - yes, even odd, remark. Maybe you think that you cannot mix humour and serious sentences without making the serious ones sounds insincere and the humorous ones too unexpected. Then put the serious stuff in another paragraph. But make sure at least half your profile or email is sensible. Finish on an invitation to action. 

At least say something like, 'If you find my humour amusing, write back and we could have an evening of banter together.' 

But if you just end with only one sentence, the reader is left wondering if it will be an entire evening of monologue humour. Will she meet somebody incapable of coping with life? What sort of job can they hold down if they cannot give a straight answer to a question? 

Here are my thoughts on one profile and email:

This does not sound like an invitation to a dinner date or a relationship. It is not an invitation to conversation, more a monologue. A profile and email consisting entirely of offbeat jokes is unnerving first thing in the morning when one is at work and hoping for a sensible letter like a CV telling you the other person's good qualities and what you can easily do to satisfy their criteria. Nothing but humour sounds as if the other person is high and in a world of their own, rather than interested in the reader and matching the reader.

As a stage performer myself, I read a 'funny' monologue and feel that perhaps we could do a comedy stage act together. But could the writer be relied on to have a sensible conversation about arrangements to turn up on time? 

If your title does not promote yourself, it is not good PR.

Sounds like you are making fun of the site and the reader.

Think what you are offering the reader and what action you wish them to take. 

I was scared of getting involved with a nutter. I decided to write a general blog here instead. 

I would reply to the man who was both cheerful and sensible, in control, happy with himself and the site and life. The one who said he was hopeful, or had met some great people but still looking for more friends and somebody special. I bet a lot of readers would agree with me. 

What do you think? Have you written an offbeat profile? Have you tried two of different tones, to see which got better responses? Have you met somebody who wrote one? Were they better than expected or worse?