What women seem to think men want

I've exposed myself to Internet dating on and off for around... I don't know... 6 years maybe... and there are a few things that really does not make me want to contact a woman. And by a few I mean a lot. So I thought that instead of whining about it in my dating profile(I have done so in the past a few times with something around zero women throwing themselves at me as a direct result) I thought I would not do that and instead whine about it here. Because here nobody actually reads it and thus does not get offended. Yada yada, Puck something something mended.

A quick tip to the men: pointing out any of the things I mention here to a woman on a dating site will probably not be the start of a wonderful, long lasting, exciting and fulfilling relationship. None of them are great conversation starters. I tried. I'm kind of a trial and error moron that way.

But if you're a woman and want to increase your chances of bagging me (it seems not everyone does for some strange reason) you may at least increase the chances I will contact you by taking note now. Perhaps that special guy you have been waiting for suddenly drops you a line.

Poems

Fuck poems. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong with poems. Like songs there are good and bad ones. And like songs there are ones directed at thirteen year old girls with severe damage to the frontal lobe. These are generally the poems women put on their dating profiles. The kind that the devil puts as texts about roses and violets stupid color in GIF images depicting sad teddy-bears and googly eyed kittens holding hearts. Sorry for the profound language, but they started it. And speaking of teddy-bears...

Teddy-bears

I am a man. I am looking for a woman. I am not looking for a playmate. Wait a minute... or rather... never mind. No matter what you think of when I mention the word "playmate": That is not what I'm looking for. Teddy-bears are for children. And maybe collectors. I'm not feeling at home in any of those categories.

Cats and dogs

I'm a cat person, and I can stand dogs and even become quite fond of them if they have the right personality. But pictures of your... cuuuuuteeeee doggywoggyyyy! Yeeesss hesss a goood doggywoggyyyy! Yes he isssss! ...on you'r profile? Sure: a picture of you playing with your dog, that can send a positive signal. You have a dog and you like it, fine. But five pictures of your dog? Wearing clothes? Sitting in cute places? Seriously?
On the other hand, if you are that serious about your pet: Maybe I should just be thankful for the warning...

"I love to work out"

There is nothing wrong with keeping fit. Quite the opposite. But when that is the only information about a persons interests, that is probably not someone I will have deep conversations with. Yeah but great sex you say? Sure. One time perhaps, but then what? If you are looking for someone to spend a huge amount of time with, perhaps the larger part of your life... I'd like something more.

No description, lots of pictures

This is so sad. Women I've talked to about the messages the get all say the same thing: They get tonnes of mindless messages from men with the imagination of dried bones and the vocabulary of retarded chimpanzees. The women with only pictures must be the saviors of the regular female Internet daters as they draw the attention of the most shallow of the mail bombers. Then again, these male daters probably copy-paste their cheerful greetings, giving them ample time to pester the rest of humanity as well.
It would be nice of dating sites to offer the filter "Only show results with a description" along with the more standardized "Only show results with pictures".
This angers some(in quite the same way as it did me, resulting in this current rant) to the point where they start...

Whining

This one is priceless when combined with the above. But even for women with otherwise good descriptions this is common. Hell, I've done it myself more than once.

I can't really complain about this one because I've heard stories about the staggering portion of mind-boggling stupidities that men in general seem to revel in sending to women. Really guys... shape the hell up. I'ts a scary concept that if you walk down a regular street in a regular city... a overwhelming amount of the seemingly normal guys you meet will become total ass-wipes when they talk to women behind an alias.

Trolling an Internet forum I can understand to some extent but on a dating site... aren't these women actually people you are entertaining the possibility of meeting in real life? Or are there really a bunch of people trolling dating sites just to be assholes?

Duck-face

At first I thought it was some Internet meme. But I've seen them... Don't they have friends that tell them when they do moronic things like that? Or do industrial strength morons naturally flock together, bereaving them of any chance of constructive feedback on their erronious behaviors?

Platitudes

In Sweden there are two words/expressions: "Busig" (Something like "mischievous" but more cute and feminine) and "Skinn på näsan" (Meaning "Mind of her own". Directly translated it becomes "Skin on the nose"). These are so common and has lost their meaning so utterly that I think a good dating site should allow women to tick a box to automatically display a text like "I'm a mischievous girl with a mind of my own" at the start of the presentation.
That way they could also offer men the search filter "Don't show women with platitudes".

"I don't know what to write about myself"

Describing oneself is something people are not generally used to. It can take a while to create a description that fairly accurately describes something that is even close to the wonderfully complex collection of thoughts, dreams, history and environment that is you. But talking at length about how hard it is only describes one or both of two things: your self-knowledge is pretty low and/or you are bad at putting thoughts into writing. None of which are obvious selling points.

Trying to look like you have a kind and caring heart(and failing miserably)

A few years back, an organisation (I think it was the Swedish branch of Ecpat) had a drive where they used TV-ads, billboards and he Internet to raise awareness of child pornography. Among these were a link that was spread with a message like "Help stop child pornography, go here for information" and the URL under it.
This message and link was posted on a lot of presentations during that time.
The sad thing was that after the drive ended: the link was taken down. But quite a few women still had the link on their presentations. And I'm not talking about weeks or months here. I think the last one I found referred to a page that had been removed 4 years ago.
That, to me, does not signal a deep commitment to a cause that is close to your heart.
And besides: If it was ever important to you, I think bringing up the issue with the operator of the dating site and or reporting any illegal activity you witness is a tad more effective. Also: liking pictures on Facebook may not actually core cancer/stop hunger/stop wars. If you truly care that is.

I'll stop whining now

Thank you. I feel better already.

There are a lot of reasons that do make me interested naturally, but the examples above hurts my eyes and make me loose faith in womankind. And that is something I would like to avoid if possible.

iOS or Android?

My 2 home screens

I’ve always used Android devices since the smart phone craze set in. If you call iPhone users Apple-heads, I would best be described as a Samsung-head.

The initial reason for this choice was rooted in the open source mindset and to some extent the dismissal of Apple users as shallow and conformist. I know. A childish reason.

But even if I’ve tried out different Apple products, I’ve never used them continually and so I have never been able to make any real comparison between them, other than on the basis of specifications and often biased reviews.

But now I’ve used the Apple iPhone 4S with iOS 5.1.1 for two weeks and I feel that I’m now actually able to compare it to the Samsung Galaxy Note with Android 4.0.3.

I’ll try to keep the hardware differences out of it where possible.

First let me kill the suspense by saying that there is no showstopper in any of the systems. I could use any of them, the question is more what parts would annoy me.


Battery life
The iPhone beats the Galaxy Note in battery longevity. It has about twice the up-time of the Note and that is really important if the difference is if the alarm wakes you up in the morning even if you forgot to charge it before you went to bed.
It is hard to say what parts of this is in the OS but at least one reason for this is that Apples use of semi-multitasking gives it better control of battery time.


Keyboard
I’m sure that you will get used to the iOS keyboard if it is the only virtual keyboard that you have used. I must say that it is really bad and ineffective to use compared to many of the different keyboards I’ve used on Android. My current favourite is “Scandinavian Keyboard”.


Hot spot
When it works it works fine for both systems, but I’ve found that even if the feature is active: in iOS I need to unlock the phone for it to work. This may be by design, maybe some security reason, but I just find it is just irritating.


Personalizing
iOS just does not have it(besides changing background and ring tones). Same as with the keyboard I think that I would not be as frustrated if there was no other options. But having used Android I know that I can change the appearance and functionality of my phone to something that really suits my needs. Heck, I can even modify it to look and feel like an iPhone if I want to.
This is probably a very conscious decision by Apple that makes people in general more comfortable with their product, but it does not suit me.


One-glance overview
Something I was not aware of when i used Android was how often I used the home screen as a way to get a quick overview. Stuff like time, date, calendar appointments, TODO lists, time reporting and general phone state(like if Skype or any other program was active).
This is probably the thing I miss the most in iOS and I was not even aware of it until now.
In the iOS home screen I can see time and battery status, anything else I have to start a specific program.


Developer OS access
Another thing that I noticed is that a program like “Vem Ringde?” (Who Called) is severely handicapped on iOS, probably due to the tougher restrictions on developers access to the OS. On Android it queries the interwebs for information on any current incoming call that is not in your phone book, but on iOS it attempts to mimic this by adding the 400 worst spam-callers to my phone book. It kind of solves the spam issue but it gives me no help distinguishing an unknown spammer from a friend that just got a new number.
I’m guessing here, but I suspect that this is because iOS does not allow either plugging into the call process or does not allow programs to run as background services.


The single button paradigm
I miss the back button. I miss the menu button. But mostly the back button. The in-program navigation with the arrow buttons at the top annoys me for several reasons:

• They change meaning based on context and have text that has to be read. This makes navigation a process that needs more thinking an analysing than strictly necessary.
• They are generally at the top of the screen, forcing me to have my fingers up there as opposed to the button that is at the absolute bottom. I think this on-screen button paradigm would work a lot smoother if all the navigation was made in a single area. Preferably at the bottom of the screen.
• They are not always there.
• If I click a URL in the mail client and it opens up the browser, I would like to be able to go back to the mail program again. To do this in iOS you double click the super-button to get the running programs, find the mail program and click it. I miss the back button.

The app store
Entering the app store password every time when downloading app, even a free app. Also: you must enter it yet again to update a program... Sure, when I’m paying for a program I can see the point of this, but for free programs and updates? That is just annoying.

Conclusion

If you read the above I guess you already know that I’m not very impressed. The strange thing is that I really thought it would be a pretty awesome OS, just different from Android.
I was expecting it to “Just work” and be very intuitive and smooth and glossy. Sure, smooth and glossy it is, but that can only hide the user-un-friendliness for so long.
It is quite possible that you don’t have the same requirements on a phone OS as I have. Perhaps you are just using as a... phone? But if you are selling me a “Smart-phone”, then I expect it to be something closer to a computer OS than what the iOS is.
I see iOS as a telephone with support for apps.
I see Android as a computer that supports phone calls.