Pay off lines for humans
Oi, Oi, or as the French say, Oui, Oui. Howzit? Hope you had a nice column, here’s your weekend. No wait, that wasn’t what I wanted to say at all. Hope you had a nice weekend, here’s your column:
A MILLION MILES FROM NORMAL – By Paige Nick
SMART AS A HORSE AND HUNG LIKE EINSTEIN
So there’s a local dating website that I’ve been known to visit every now and then. I go there for a number of reasons. First of all it’s a good place to find funny stuff to write about, being that it’s full to the brim of freaks and lunatics. But also, as a single person, I think it’s important to keep working out those dating muscles. No, not those muscles you pervert, I mean that it’s important to stay in the game, keep your brain fresh, your dating skills sharp. Like a dating ninja.
The first thing you do when you sign up on a site like this is choose a name for yourself. These generally fall into four or five basic categories. The sickening, like ‘Pookie-Pants’ or ‘Cuddle Bunny’, the trying hard to be clever, like ‘Mr Right’, the overly obvious, like ‘George’, the just plain honest, like ‘Divorced Dad’ or the over-promising, like ‘Handsome Dave’.
Once you’ve settled on your name, you then have to write a short line about yourself to go along with your profile. I suppose it’s all about advertising and this is where you need to do a bit of self-promotion. So it’s a bit like giving yourself a pay off line. You know, your own personal ‘Just Do It’, ‘Yebo Gogo’, or your own ‘Saving you time, saving you money, putting you first’.
Now this I can buy into, after all, advertising is what I do for a living, so I totally get how important it is for a product to put its best foot forward, and give people an idea of what it does and how it does it, in just a few short words.
So I decided to surf through a couple of the daters’ ‘pay off lines’ and see how good we are at selling ourselves out there on the meat market. And I wasn’t disappointed. There was the full range, from the inspired, to the bizarre and even the just plain crazy.
My absolute favourite came from a chap whose pay off line is ‘Smart as a horse and hung like Einstein.’ Pretty funny I thought, if he’s joking that is. Not so funny if he’s describing himself honestly.
I hoped like hell that the guy who wrote; ‘Animal Lover’ was joking too. I’m not so sure this is that kind of website.
Another interesting one I came across was; ‘Opsoek na Christelike waardes!’ I’m guessing there would be no tequila and wild monkey sex on the first date with him then? Another one read; ‘Just when you thought it was safe to go out again.’ Anyone else out there also wondering if this guy is a serial killer?
But they aren’t all freaks, this one caught my eye: ‘Let’s not discount the possibility of me being the one.’ Cue the Barry White soundtrack, roaring fireplace and scented candles, what a charmer.
Then I decided I’d better size up the competition, so I went to check out what kinds of pay off lines the ladies
on the dating website are writing. But if the twenty or thirty girl’s profiles I scrolled through are anything to go by, I think the guys must be better at this pay off line business than we are. Maybe all those years of crafting their pick up lines has given them the edge.
on the dating website are writing. But if the twenty or thirty girl’s profiles I scrolled through are anything to go by, I think the guys must be better at this pay off line business than we are. Maybe all those years of crafting their pick up lines has given them the edge.
Miss ‘Fourth time lucky?’ had me worried. But not nearly as worried as ‘Classy, spunky lady’. You have to question whether one can be classy and spunky at the same time? And ‘Wie’s jou tannie???’ With three question marks. Clearly this lady really doesn’t know who her tannie is at all. Perhaps she should be on a find your tannie website instead of a find your boyfriend website. And I wasn’t crazy about Miss ‘Ignite me and make me your chariot of fire’ either. You know what they say about boys who play with matches.
But it’s easy to be critical, which I discovered quickly enough when I got to work coming up with my own pay off line. Coming up with three or four words that encapsulate your entire personality is way trickier than you think. I even looked at some classic advertising pay off lines to see how the pros do it, thinking that I might be able to nick one. But in the context of a dating website ‘They taste so good ‘cos they eat so good’ would probably make me sound a little weird, ‘It’s not inside it’s onnn top!’ feels a little cryptic, and ‘Sheer Driving Pleasure’ might paint me in a bad light. Maybe I’ll just stick with ‘Dating ninja’.
As long as you’re not one of those dudes that post a blurry photo of them in sunglasses and short-shorts. Those types are creepy and remind me of a serial killer waiting to pounce.
Gimme the shivers…
oh yes, the very blurry webcam shot… i’ve seen a bunch of those. creepy.
speaking of creepy, i’m not sure why my type is so small. sorry all.
there think i fixed it.
Yeah, text is as big as the wife’s bum now 😀
Love your “dating ninja” concept, that be your lovely self? With head to toe covering? Or in disguise?
:p
too big? forgot me specks today.
Confessions of an obsessive dater (www.plentyoffish.com) …
1) OBSESSIVE, COMPULSIVE, NEUROTIC, ANTI-SOCIAL, MANIC and PARANOID, but BASICALLY NORMAL
2) Bitter alcoholic seeks hard-core drug addict.
I had more responses from that headline, I think, then any other headline. And no, none of the women who responded were hard-core drug addicts. At least I don’t think so.
3) Willing to lie about how we met!
4) Kissing-Prince-Alberts need not apply.
Single white female – 31SNL
Worked for me.