Already Gotten Weird

My POF profile has a hidden nugget in there that says something along the lines of “Your message should engage me if you want a response.”    And quite honestly, I haven’t been on that site in months.  (You ALL know how I feel about POF.)   But, my phone alerted me yesterday, while I was out shopping, that I had a message on there.

“Hi. How are you? What’s up? =oP

So, I’m confused by your comment about art. Are you saying you’re an artist, but not the brooding, anti social stereotype peope tend to think of?”

(I also mention being an artist, but not a “dark” one..  More cheery..)  Now, being that I hadn’t been on POF in forever, and was out – I responded a quick “Yes.”  to this guy.   I then went to his profile and saw that he is definitely out of my age range currently.  (12 years older..)  and he probably wouldn’t have been someone I would have messaged back had I read his profile first..  but-  it was done.

“So, you make comments about engaging in conversation, but send a one word reply? Gawd.”

Haha – he did call me out there.

“Lol… Engaging questions require more than a yes or no answer.  I am also out and on my phone and would forget to reply otherwise.. and like you said.. pof is a joke.”

(I referenced his profile in POF being a joke – that is something we have in common.)

“Even a yes or no question can be elaborated on. You could have said something like “Yep. That’s what I mean. What about you? What kind of art do you do? I like to paint” and so on. You can’t expect someone to be able to carry a conversation with you when you only say one thing and wait for someone to prod you for a reply. I’d rather prod you in other ways.”

Once again – I want to point out that I wasn’t on my A game, because I was not at home, and busy doing other things.

“Well I tend to think when it comes to online its not my job to start the conversation or elaborate. And, once again, not being home and using my phone instead makes it a challenge.”

Now – if you’ve read me for awhile, you know what I meant by the above response.   If I seek the person out – I should be the one building the conversation, I should not expect the guy to do the work.   In this instance,  he found me and sent me a message with a “yes or no” question – and expected me to have a huge response.    He has the right idea down, because he told me what I should have said back..  but he should have been the one to ask those particular questions.

“What kind of thinking is that? Well, good luck. This has gotten weird already.”

I didn’t respond because I can’t get myself to care.   Maybe he’ll see the blog.  And he also said he wanted to “prod me in other ways” which… ugh.

So once again, the lesson here is – don’t make the person you are messaging do the work for you..  Had he have sent to me what he told me I should have sent back – this conversation would have been way different.