Whenever I log in to JDate, I immediately go to see what girls in my area are online at the same time.  At first, seeing six girls online at a time makes me excited.  “I can just choose whomever I want to talk to and I don’t have to get off of this awesome couch!”  This is likely something I would say out loud to either my roommate or my roommate’s cat.  “That’s great!/Meow!” she would respond, respective of species.

In the early days (last week), I would just blitz the site and message every girl that was online.  About one third of my messages were rejected.  I know, for a fact, that they were rejected, and not ignored, because the IM box would say, “The current user has declined your instant message request.”  That hurts.  That hurts a lot.  There are so many interesting things that I was going to tell you!  We could have established a wonderful rapport!   Another third of the girls I messaged simply didn’t respond.  This is either because they didn’t want to chat but were too polite to click “Reject IM”, or because they just weren’t there.  The last third of the girls responded.  This is why, if there are less than three people online at any given time, it is not worth it to send out an instant message.  This is a basic statistical tactic.

Of the girls that do respond to my IM, I end up having more than one conversation with about half of them.  Of that half, I end up meeting about one third of them.  Therefore, according to basic mathematics, I go on dates with one out of every eighteen girls I initiate conversations with.  Hey, it beats zero.