Guy sets up female dating profile, learns some harsh truths
LONDON -- If ever you needed proof of just how many awful chat-up lines, inappropriate propositions and random blasts of abuse women have to put up with on online dating sites, just watch the video above.
After having limited success in the world of Internet dating, UK comedian Sy Thomas decided to see what life would be like as a woman.
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So he set up a new account.
"I am a single man growing increasingly frustrated with online dating," Thomas says in the video. "It got me thinking, what if I was a woman?
"Maybe I'd learn techniques from the men who were trying to woo me?"
Three days later, Thomas' new profile has received over 400 messages. The "techniques" used by the men contacting him left quite a bit to be desired, though.
Here are some of the responses Thomas received.
Oh dear. Admittedly not all of openers were like that -- there were some nice ones in there too -- but the majority were pretty grim.
So what conclusions did Thomas draw from his brief trip into the world of online dating as a woman?
"Receiving so many messages was certainly an initial ego boost," Thomas told Mashable. "There were some genuinely lovely and funny messages out there, but also -- and this is not something I've ever seen in my own experience -- quite a few overtly sexual and offensive messages.
"That initial ego boost turned to shock and disgust when these messages started coming through."
Thomas said he couldn't understand what men were hoping to achieve by sending messages like this.
"I'd heard from a lot of female friends about 'dick pics' and creepy messages, but as it was something that I'd never experienced in my own online dating experience it was a real eye-opener," he said. "I just can't understand how men can think it's a good idea, or what they expect to achieve by it."
Ultimately, though, the experiment is slightly flawed. The video avoids discussion of transgender dating and skirts around issues of gender complexity, instead taking a fairly black-and-white view of the Internet dating scene.
While it may only be scratching the surface, though, the experiment does still go some way to showing the gulf between how different people are treated online.
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