Maybe you use too many shorthands or really bad grammar.

Here's the thing: You check out a profile (and I am actually someone that reads them rather than just looking at the pictures), you write a message saying hi, commenting on how you think that you have similar interests and talk to them as if they are an individual unique human being instead of just spamming them with a hi there, wanna chat message. What happens? Well, if they reply okay but if you don't it's a slap in the face and makes you feel a bit annoyed or stupid maybe.

Don't know really; I don't like snooty women anyway and if they looked at my profile after I contacted them and there was something about it that put them off then goodbye and good luck to them.

I've talked to many men like you. I understand how you feel.

But here is the thing you have to realize. The great majority of women on dating sites are covered up with men trying to get with them. Yes, Some of them get ignored just like men do. Just not as bad as men do. So, You have to realize that with so many men "knocking on there door", A lot lot of them are lured into a faults sense of there desirability. Alot lot of them don't think about the "quality" of men knocking on there door. They get an ego boost about the "quantity" of men knocking on there door. For a lot of them that's all they think about.

Some openly think that with so many men writing them they can pick and choose whatever they want. You may think this sounds goofy. But I have found it to be the truth. You have to come up with a way to make yourself stand out from the rest.

My way of making myself stand out from the rest, I do not care one way or the other. They can answer, or not answer. I don't care. You can't let it show that it bothers you.

If you do it's dating death for you. You have to let it show that you are independent and even though you would like to find someone to spend your life with, It's not going to bother you either way. Your life will go on. You will keep on living. You do not have to have a woman in your life to make yourself feel whole.

For most of this, It's all in how you write your profile. This is your way of getting it across. You have to be subtle about it. You don't want to come off as a cocky jackass. You want to come off in your profile as independent and not desperate. You need to let it show that you are happy either way. With or without. Also, never,ever lash out because some woman didn't answer your message. That happens a lot more than it should. No way would I ever give some stranger on the internet the satisfaction of knowing she got to me that way. (O hell no)

You can't,Not in the least, show any kind of desperation. Desperation stinks. It will run women off in a heart beat. When I decide to write a woman,And me, I don't write many, I'm kinda picky, I look for certain things in a profile. If they are not there I don't write. But anyway, When I write I don't write in great detail of why I think we would make a good couple.

I pick out one thing in the persons profile. When I write, I mention that one thing. I don't go into a bunch of detail about it. It's just a way of letting her know I did read the profile. And that's it. Two to maybe four lines. That's enough. I send it, Then I delete the sent copy. Alot lot of times I forget even sending this person a message. I move right on to the next. If I don't hear from the person most likely I have already forgotten them anyway. If I do it's a pleasant surprise.

As far as the "slap in the face" thing goes, Sorry, That makes no sense. Why would anyone want to take a non-answer as a slap in the face? Unless they have a "ego" problem themselves?
To me, Such as this falls under desperation. No one should ever be that desperate.

I don't even try to get dates here. This site has no one close enough for me. The other site I use, For the most part, I have no problem getting dates. You just have to put yourself in the right frame of mind. Once you do that, It gets easier. You will find that a lot of them will come to you. One last thing. You have to always remember that a lot of women want what they can't have. Or, What's not easy to obtain. They always seem to want what they can't quite get their hands on. Make yourself "not easy to put a hand on" and watch what happens.

Yeah, tried all that with the commenting on something on their profile and I've tried doing different things with my own profile. Sure, I'm not going to die without a woman but I came on these dating sites to get one because I want to be happy and apart from other problems I have to cope with in my life I have not been happy these last few years since my last relationship ended.

None of this means that I don't know that coming across as cocky or desperate is a turnoff and I do not send women abusive messages merely for not replying to me. Is it my having an ego that makes me feel bad about rejection? Perhaps and maybe it's my ego when I'm feeling that life is good when I meet someone that wants to be with me.

I am on here for dating and I would not be wasting my time on a dating site where there were no datable women. No offence. I wasn't particularly picky when I went about contacting the women in my area on here and I don't actually believe that the profiles say all that much about what someone is really like and how we would get on. I didn't come on here looking for a specific type, although as I said, I do not care much for snooty women that are full of themselves. I have actually talked to quite a few women on dating sites and a lot of the time I did it just to have a chat and see how it went without having any great expectations about it. Sometimes I commented on their profiles and sometimes I just said hi and asked them if they would like to chat. As someone pointed out above, quite often there is very little to comment on when you read their profiles. I haven't found the women on this particular site in my local area to be that friendly and I honestly doubt that I would have had more responses with a different aproach when I sent those first messages to them. I don't even believe that half of them are real people anyway because Edinburgh is in Scotland and a load of them seem to think that it's in England when they made their profiles...

Don't get me wrong; I am not trying to chat up loads of women or date multiple people. I put a lot of time and effort into the emailing, as you can probably gather from the length of this post I'm typing here. I am still on this site because I have been talking to a lady here for about two months now and I have met her. I don't think I said much more than hi and asked her if she felt like a chat in the first message and she was cautious and it took a while to develop the friendship and persuade her to meet me. She does not go on these forums and I don't post here thinking that anything I say here could lead anywhere in the real world because as I have said in other posts, I am not looking for a long distance relationship or to travel to meet somebody. I just looked for someone friendly and found somebody that I got on with and that was all there was to it.

I can't speak for other women, but I certainly have enough in my profile that someone contacting me should be able to start a conversation.

And yes, some men need better writing skills. It's tough to read a solid paragraph with no punctuation. It's also tough to read a whole paragraph full of text speak.

Also, perhaps he didn't give them anything to respond to.

OK, I understand even better now. The way your post sounded, it made me think that you were feeling bitter about how a lot of the women are on dating sites. I was just trying to make you feel better and understand not to be that way. Not to let it bother you. I think I understand you better now though.

Yeah, some people on the internet aren't great writers. There's a lot of snobbery about that. I go on this gaming site where they actually make you pass a patronising literacy test before they let you into chat and it's full of grammar nazi trolls and some quite pretentious people.

Really don't want to get personal here because I know this isn't a flame forum but it really does just depend on what sort of person you want to meet. You do have a lot on your profile and perhaps you are content to sit on a dating site for ages waiting for someone that's going to read all the way through that and think that you sound right up their street. Your response to text speak is negative (if you will excuse me for saying so knowing how you feel about negativity) and someone else's response to your profile could be TL;DR.

I'm not a great fan of text speak myself but I try not to let my personal peeves about how people communicate on the internet put me off because I've known women that do that sort of thing that are nice people and fun to be with when you meet them in real life or talk to them on the phone.

Also, although it's true that sending a one word message to somebody is really lazy, saying, "Hi, I liked your profile and think you sound nice. Would you like to chat?" is enough to respond to. All you have to say is yay or nay. I think a good way to keep a dialogue going with someone on a dating site is to try to put a question that they can respond to in most of your messages to them. Hopefully they also ask you questions back and then you have what's known as a conversation.

As you said, I can only speak for myself and a few of my single friends. As you can prob' tell by my long posts, I'm a talker. If someone gives me enough info about themselves I can usually make conversation with them. I have to admit, My profile on this site is pretty short. But, I'm not looking for anything here. I mostly come here for the forums.

On the other site I use my profile is pretty long with lots of different info about me. No TXT speak. Also, I run my profile through a spelling and grammar checker just in case I missed something. A hard to read profile is a big turn off to me. So, With that in mind I don't want mine to be a turn off to someone else. When they come to my profile they find it easy to read with lots of different things to talk about.

I've actually done this, I've copied & pasted a profile or a message from someone who wrote me into a spelling & grammar checker. That way I could fix it well enough to read it, so I could understand it.

I don't expect perfect spelling or grammar. I know mine isn't. But some are just terrible. And believe it or not, Some of the worst I have ever seen were,or say they are,collage educated.

I freely admit that on the dating sites I've been on I've spammed just about every woman in my area and age range trying to find somebody that I'm going to click with. This seems to be something the women have a problem with but why is it so bad really when I know that they are getting lots of men talking to them?

In a discussion about this on another site one of them said to me that men who do that must be looking for quantity rather than quality but I told her that it's just that you have to kiss a lot of frogs...

There's another reason why some people don't put a lot of personal info on their profiles that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet: Stalkers. We've all heard the complaints about the creepy men that these sites are supposedly full of and I don't blame women for being wary and not giving too much away about themselves when they do this. Sometimes it can be like trying to pull teeth getting them to chat and tell you about themselves and I actually think the "personalised" message could scare some of them off. There's a fine line between showing an interest in someone and being too nosey.

Also, I know some people aren't going to like me saying this but when I read one of those well crafted profiles that are supposed to be so attractive what that says to me is that this person has probably been on dating sites for a very long time and is probably either really picky or has been dating lots of people. Why have they been on dating sites for so long I ask myself if they are so great and why hasn't some guy snapped them up already?

I don't think that preferring someone write well enough to understand is being snobby. We're using a site where first impressions are made via writing. If someone is not writing well enough to be understood, it's definitely going to affect communication.

Not sure where I've ever said I sit around waiting for someone to read through my profile. This is just one way to meet people. I would not recommend anyone just sitting around waiting for people to contact them. I certainly contact other people. I also get out and enjoy life and meet people in person.

Sorry to hear you feel my preference on text speak is negative. Again communicating on this site is done via writing. If someone is not writing well enough for me to understand them, I'm not going to continue having a conversation with them.

And if you feel my profile is too long, that's fine. No one is forced to read it. However, many people do ask the same questions that are answered right in my profile. All basic stuff. Either way, they're going to have to read to find out the answers, whether it's by me telling them or by reading my profile. It gets tiring answering the same questions over and over, though.

If someone emails me and asks to chat, I give them a chance to chat. If they're able to start an interesting conversation, great!

This is really very simple. For the same reason no one has snatched YOU up yet. It's not easy. You should know that yourself. I'll tell you the straight truth. I'm not ashamed of it at all. I've been doing the online dating thing for seven years. Me personally, I figured that by now I would be already married again. But here I am. And yes, I am somewhat picky. Simply put, If you have been where I have been you would be picky,at least some,to.

I believe it's the same with most of these women. They come from relationships that were broken for one reason or the other. So, With that said, It stands to reason that most of them are going to be very careful who they hitch there wagon to in the future. I also know how a lot of men are. A lot of men make the same mistake over and over again. They get divorced, Maybe for good reason, Then start running from one relationship to the other. They can't for whatever reason stand to be alone.

So, The next thing you know, You've had 20 different relationships and none of them work out. That's just crazy to me.
Me personally, I would rather know that the woman I'm interested in has been around a dating site a long time,taking it as it comes waiting for the right guy to come along. Then to be jumping from one relationship to another. If you jump one to the other all the time it shows me you have no staying power. Maybe your "picker" is broken.

But, If you take it as it comes. You are careful about who you let yourself get involved with. I see no problem. Because picking the right one ain't easy.

Hmm, I get what you guys are saying and maybe it's just that I haven't done internet dating for as long as you have. Most of the women that I've chatted with haven't been dating site veterans either. At least, when I ask them how long they've been on the site or sites like it they tend to say not very long. I go on a site, check out who there is in my local area, contact the ones that look interesting or at least maybe worth messaging and when I've gone through them and if I'm still on the site I wait for newbies. Could be that women that are trying it for the first time are more likely to respond to, "Hi, liked your profile. Fancy a chat?" Of course, then there's the fact that a lot of them are just on the site to chat anyway, or are very cautious about actually meeting someone from the internet.

Yeah, I'm a guy in his forties. I expect the women that I'm going to contact to have had previous relationships that haven't worked out for one reason or another. I tried this a few years ago and chatted with or tried to chat with a lot of women but didn't actually meet anyone. I got fed up with it and now after a few years I decided to give it another go because it's not happening for me in the real world and I've got nothing to lose apart from time when I could have been doing something else. This time I decided that it was pointless for me to contact anyone that doesn't live within about thirty miles and that I was on here for dating and not endless aimless emails or just people to talk to on the internet and I tried to cut to the chase fairly quickly with the ones that did want to chat and I asked them if they would be prepared to meet me.

Don't really know about my "picker" but the two women that I've met didn't have all that much on their profiles and I only got to know them and their personal histories when it got to the phone calls and actual dates.

Its my experience too. i have to say that they are shy,not having courage or just want to make fun from innocent.
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This all seems awfully deep for a dating site :-( I just wanted to have fun! Im a big girl now..past the confusing stage of twenty and in the comfort zone of forty. This should be more fun!

What was it that you were saying before about being negative?

I think some people just write much better than others and are able to talk about themselves and what they want in a well written manner. If that suggests to you that something is wrong with them, that's up to you, but it's awfully judgmental right from the beginning. Though, if you're ok with limiting yourself that way, go for it.

And you're questioning why they haven't been snapped up? I would guess they could ask you the same.

Some great writers on datesites make poor lovers and are not good relationship material. In person interaction and talking face-face is the real way to know someone.

In order to get to that in person interaction, people on dating sites need to be able to communicate well enough to see if they'd like to meet. Some may skip that all together and call each other or meet immediately, but others, like myself, would like to chat a bit and see if we'd like to meet.

I like to communicate a while myself online. I was just making a comment how a Man types is not always the best way to detect what he is really like. Most men I meet dont like to type or cannt type that well. They are also educated men with good jobs, who do their best communicating by Phone. But then I meet Older guys. Maybe Younger dont have that problem.

I have to admit, I'm the same way. I like to talk for a while. Message back and forth for a while. It helps me get a "feel" for the person. A lot of women can be just as wild as a lot of men. If I take some time talking to them over the net, A lot of times, I can tell if they are someone I want to meet or not. I'm a pretty good people reader. I have to admit, I'm about 98% right when reading someone in person. I would guess about 90% over the net.

Right now as I type this it's going through a spell and grammar checker. If you are the type who has gotten old enough to have forgotten what you learned in school, OR, You just wasn't paying attention, It's a must have. Me, It's not so much that I have forgotten my schooling, I prefer writing. At least for a while. I also like playing around on different forums.