Thinking about it now, it seems like the numbers game recruiters play. Send out a lot of semi-decent introductions and hope for a response or two. Your best bet is getting out there and "networking", but in lieu of that, sending out a deluge of messages is the next best, albeit shitty, thing.

I'd be interested in hearing how women deal with the deluge of introductions and what makes them decide to respond to someone. Is it the intro? The profile picture? Do they read the person's bio or use that compatibility meter?

I've done this, and the profile picture is what matters. Text matters a bit--empty hurt, but the half-assed one, if anything, outperformed the one with effort, though they were basically the same.

As computer types, we like to focus on the text, because the text is all and controllable. Good pictures are more difficult, because they take soft skills. Note that, contrary to expectations, it's probably easier to get great pictures of an average looking person than a great profile from an average writer: just using a well-constructed photograph taken with a decent camera as your main photo puts you ahead of most people, even those significantly more attractive than you.

If it does to other people, then I should put more effort into my photographs...

It turns out photo quality, and even which camera you used, matters a lot.

1. Generic one-liners get rejected out of hand. Especially generic one-liners with no icon.

2. Message + picture. Did the message amuse me? What's the massively parallel snarkbeast in the back of my brain tell me about you based on your picture? Or preferably, what's she tell me about you based on the multiple pictures you've uploaded? If you only have one you're probably winnowed out here unless it is one hell of a good picture.

3. Skim profile, consider OKC's match estimate, then I start reading the questions you've answered. Some answer conflicts are instant dealbreakers, some are not - someone who's aggressively monogamous has no chance with my poly self, for instance.

4. Consider my current workload: does this candidate feel worth a couple hours at a coffee shop, or more, to experiment with? This is the hardest filter to pass: are you more interesting than "working on my comic" or "getting other art out of the way so I can work on my comic".

Note that a reply is no guarantee of me actually having a desire to do anything; when I checked OKC after this essay reminded me I have an account there, I found a message from a 60% match who turned out to give me a much more conservative vibe than I like, so I did a probe for my own amusement: he said I seemed adventurous and like someone who has 'a whole lot of soul', so I replied with 'Actually I don't have a soul; one dark night in Los Angeles I went to a certain crossroads and traded it to the Devil for serious drawing skills.'. Which is at once a joke, an ironic metaphor about what it was like to work in the animation industry, and a test to see if the conservative vibe I got was correct.

I know that my method for sifting through the hundreds of profiles given by the matching algorithm is to first discriminate based on the profile pic. From there, I'll go on to read the profile text to see if she's someone I'd want to be around. After that, it's the compatibility list which can show any major areas where we would have a difference of opinion (stuff like kids vs no kids, for example).

If those three hurdles are cleared, I'll write a message. I wouldn't be surprised if she's using a similar mechanism to decide whether to respond or not (thus, the low response rate).

If you ever figure this out go ahead and write a book. It will be the most successful, widely read book in human history.

I've always gone with 'minor perturbations in the local electromagnetic field'. I've found this hypothesis about as successful at predictions of how women choose mates as anything else I have ever read or heard or thought of, ever.

This is why kstenerud's approach is the correct one.

Anyway it takes a few minutes per user to check them out and write them a quick message.

Read the profile, find something they mention you don't know about, ask about it, make a joke.

You can even use the same shitty joke over and over--all told, shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

It's like starting up a conversation at a bar or wherever with a stranger: listen for a second, ask nicely about whatever they're talking about or bring up a random thing, and go from there. Practice on people in elevators if you need to overcome your anxiety. :)

cooldood_69 "hey! you like icecream?"-- --"yeah!"

The key word is "think", but I guess most people don't use "think" to actually mean "think".