Because it's easy to lie to someone while they're still just on the internet. I've got to disagree with the give it time advice. You're never going to find out who they really are online and at best you might catch them out in an obvious lie.

Example: Her profile says that she's been single for three years and she also tells me that in an email when I ask her about it. We chat online for maybe a couple of months and I start to get sucked in and emotionally involved with her. Then we eventually meet but she's not really thirty seven. She's forty two. Also, she's been in an on and off relationship with some guy for the last five years and she still hangs about with him all the time, even when their sex life is on hold and she goes on the internet looking for it from somebody else.

But I already like her and even though I'm not too happy with this deal with her hanging about with her ex I go along with it because she says that they are just friends. Also, I accept the fact that she lied about her age. Shrug my shoulders and say that all women do that, even though if I had known that she had lied about one thing and then maybe something else and then yet another thing I would be starting to think that I've got a compulsive liar here, instead of finding that all out later, as I would with someone that lured me in with a false appearance on the internet and then maybe got me to fall for her by sleeping with me when we met, so that I ended up in a relationship with someone that I would probably have run a mile from if I had just met her without listening to her lying to me on the internet for a couple of months.

I've got bad eyesight and can't tell much from the pictures anyway. Some people tell me that I'm good looking and I suppose that women looking at my pictures are going to ask themselves if they're in my league. I think that puts off the ugly ones. I'm telling myself that anyway.

The problem that I've got with it if the date really is "blind" and I've not got much idea what she's going to look like is that it will throw me a bit if they're not my usual type. What if she's not got boobs? I really like boobs but I'm not so shallow that I insist upon them. She might have a nice arse. I think that I would like to be prepared beforehand to meet a woman if I'm likely to be a bit disappointed by what she looks like. I could be sitting there debating with myself during the date whether it really matters if she hasn't got nice boobs or legs or whatever when she could just have told me that she hasn't got big boobs before we met, so I wouldn't be expecting them and would have already accepted the fact.

Hmm... I'm comparing it to what I might do if it was a face to face meeting. If it was someone that I met when I was out and about we would maybe engage in a bit of polite conversation but if that was all that I was getting from them I would start to get bored and maybe think that they were a nice person but not much fun and not really my type.

On the other hand, you can warm to someone straight away if they say or do something funny. I'm rubbish at using rehearsed cheesy lines and wouldn't want to but I'm maybe not too bad at putting women at their ease by maybe making some humorous self deprecating remark to show them that I don't take myself too seriously and am not full of myself. It could be something about my midlife crisis. Women looking at me are probably going to think that I'm having one, so why deny it?

It's like everything that works for me in the real world tends to fail online. I don't think that it's just a matter of my lacking social skills. Why am I blaming myself because some woman on the internet is paranoid about sociopaths? If I met someone in a pub would I worry about that and if she was acting like that would I really want to talk to her anyway? Is someone like that likely to ever make a date with me, or is it best to just filter out the paranoid time wasters by making a cheeky remark and not worrying about it if they hang up on me?

Yes but the point is that I wouldn't care. Why would I care what a snob thinks?

Well, that would still tell me something about them I think.

I was in a relationship with someone that used to try to wind me up all the time. She might do something to make fun of me and if I didn't find it funny she would tell me that she was just having a laugh and she didn't think that I would take it that seriously. "Winding people up" is a very common form of humour in the UK and it can be considered to count as wit here to do it.

My humour isn't forced (even if it may be somewhat exagerated on the internet) and if I do this filtering thing it's a habit that I've developed. At some point during a date I'm almost inevitably going to say something that I think is funny or witty, even if it's just a piece of sarcasm.

I don't know any guy that doesn't go out on a date hoping that she will be what they call "a good laugh". "Must have good sense of humour" is a non negotiable for millions of women. I can't really speak for anybody else but if my date just sits there like a humourless misery guts they aren't getting a second one. They might not consider themselves to be humourless. They may well enjoy a little light humour but are the sort of person that can't take a joke. It's bloody awful spending time with people that want to enforce their standards of social conduct on others, such as snobs and the politically correct. We aren't going to get on and I'm liable to just say something to offend their sensibilities to tell them in no uncertain terms that they can piss off.

From my point of view a lot of the women out there are damaged goods and maybe incapable of loving anybody. At the same time though they expect love and romance from you and not to just be treated as a sex object, when that's basically how they're treating you.

It's not gender bias. It's a topic about talking to women. The same rules don't apply if it's a guy. Not so much anyway. I don't notice many guys posting threads about how they only get mail from weirdos and most guys on here would probably just be thankful that a woman was talking to them.

I don't like to take crap from people or to be slighted. Maybe it's a scorpio thing but I'll pay back an insult. If it's someone that's close to me I can maybe take a bit of criticism or sarcasm from them but two can play at that game. The way that I see it, friends maybe have a right to get a bit personal with me but I don't see why I should take that from anyone else.

Saying that, I've trained myself to pretty much not care when it's people on the internet and sometimes I find it amusing when they try to flame me. It's amazing how many assumptions and generalisations people can make about you if you just give them a little bit of personal information. I had a guy once taking a dislike to me just because somebody mentioned that I was British and an Englishman had once insulted him.

Oh, you can know a person for years and they'll still never apreciate your sense of humour. Some women are just full of crap when they say that they like a certain type of humour. Sure, if it's a professional comedian it's a funny joke and if your brother says it he's offensively unpolitically correct.

I'm not so sure that it's so much that it's hard to communicate just with text. I look at someone's Facebook page and it's a Scottish working class guy and he's been engaging in a bit of banter with his friends on there. Yeah, they possibly know what he's like from the real world but I've never met them and I get their humour.

I suppose that it's just looking for women that I've got stuff in common with. I can meet an Edinburgh girl and assuming that she's not snooty we get on straight away and it can be like we've known each other for years. I do quite like exotic foreign women as well but with them I suppose it works a bit differently. I wouldn't expect them to get me straight away but they might be a bit intrigued by my sense of humour. That doesn't work so well on the internet though.

Yeah. I have actually been thinking about this one for the last twenty years.

So far I haven't got much further than, "Go over there and say hello to those girls." I'm not really one for cheesey lines but I would maybe tell myself to ask if they were glamour models because they did look like they might have been.

For me there has to be a limit I suppose. A woman can be carrying a few extra pounds and still look pretty but if she really is morbidly obese it's not so good.

Could be a first meeting. Could be a situation where you're trying to atract the people that you want to atract and filter out the ones that you don't. It could be someone posting something on the internet and some people getting it and others not doing so.

I'm thinking of it in terms of what you project of yourself and how people respond to it. It could be the way that you dress. It could be spouting some opinion or proclaiming that you have morals. It could be my saying that I like big boobs to see if someone's a goer or a prude. It could be a woman saying that A guy from a dating site sent her a picture of his member and what do you think about that? Why do you think that a woman would tell me a story like that? To see if I'm a perv as well maybe?

@ Sassy: I was responding to the other poster.

Thanks for your reply anyway, however evasive I might think that it is.

The question was about what you do before you got to doing background checks though. You don't tell a guy in a pub that you'll maybe talk to him after you've done a background check on him. It's a question to think about because if you don't think that you're doing it then it's just because you're unconciously doing it, or simply passively sitting there making judgements.

You've really never done something or acted in such a way that you were testing somebody? Say, to see if he was a gentleman?

Right. So, that's pretty much any joke then that would offend you and you would never say anything that you thought was funny that might hurt someone's feelings? You wouldn't make sarcastic remarks about men that you thought were sexist so that you and your female cronies could point and laugh at him?

You can call them big and beautiful and maybe they are but they're usually not proud of being overweight. They tend to suffer from low self esteem and are somewhat succeptible to flattery.

Last time that I told a fit girl that she was gorgeous she just accepted the compliment and said yes. She knew that she was and didn't really need me to tell her that.

Why would a twenty five year old be interested in me, rather than in a twenty five year old? Don't know. I could ask her I suppose. Could be that she thinks that I'm better looking than he is maybe. She'll probably say that she likes a guy with experience. Could be that that's it. I've got more experience with chatting up women. I'm better at it now than I was when I was twenty five.

See? No need to overanalyse or overjustify yourself.

I get you but that can be like a giving someone enough rope to hang themselves strategy. I think that I prefer it to making snap judgments about people and just dismissing them because they're different than you are.

It's a problem that a lot of people have been aware of since the early days of the internet. If you take anything on it seriously then you are a retard. Thus it became necessary to punctuate every utterance with a lol and those lame smileys were invented.

I was just reading over one of my threads and the different reactions that I was getting from the women posters. I don't like dull and humourless people, so I tend to use a lot of humour as a way to find out who they are.

What strategies or unconcious habits do you use to filter out undesirables?