Nerd Movie Reviews

Nerd Dating: Online Dating pt 13: interpreting photos

They say a picture is worth 1000 words, but if you are clever, it can actually be worth 1001-1010 as you glean little insights into the personality, sense of humor, fitness, motivations, and general suitableness of your prospective procreation partner.

Picture with a cat (or cats). If this is a guy, either he thinks this is really clever and funny or is something that rhymes with “Tin the Bloset”.  If the first he could be a great guy to date, but you will never ever know for sure which of the two he really is.  If this is a girl first of all go back and reread my “More than two cats” rule for dating women.  If she is shown with only one or two cats then you can explore further, but know that she has probably made her cats her substitute children in a way that will absolutely drive you nuts at some point.

Picture from high school. Unless this person is actually 18 years old, steer clear.  Either they have hit the wall so hard that they have broken through (with their face) into new, unexplored territories of ugliness and this is the last time they took a good photo, or they were one of those super popular kids in high school who now feels a desperate desire to go back in time to when they were cool again.  If they only included the high school pic in addition to some more recent ones then it is probably is the latter case, but even then you will soon become thoroughly sick of stories that all start with “This one time in high school…”  Take it from me (the bitter troll that I am), if you took the total sum of all your accomplishments, parties, and popularity you had in high school it has the value of a wad of used chewing gum at the bottom of an empty grande latte cup from Starbucks the day after you graduate.  Move on.

Girl in group shot with other girls cheek to cheek. This inevitably means sorority girl (or the junior college or GED equivalent).  It also generally means she likes to party and wont have a real problem sleeping with you.  If she does love to party go back and look at the guideline I did for “Love to Party.”  Otherwise, as long as you aren’t a hard core GDI you should be able to date her and have fun, although I would not be surprised if she turned out to be a little shallow.

Guy in group shot doing the “hang loose” symbol with one hand, beer in the other, and his tongue out trying to touch his chin. Frat boy.  I don’t know why it is, but every frat boy I have even known has a biological imperative to turn profile, do the hang loose (thumb and pinky extended to the max), and stick out his tongue whenever they are in a group and someone points a camera at them.  They all have hundreds of these photos and love to post them on profiles in an attempt to show you what kind of a fun party guy they are.  If fun for you is watching him get hammered every night at the sports bar down the street with his Greek friends, than by all means go for it.  Also, most of these guys have a hat on backwards.  Not sure I understand the motivation there.

Girl in group shot where she is the hottest one. This girl is kind of a user and also has some self esteem issues.  She will most likely only be friends with women she thinks are less attractive.  All things are relative, but usually they are pretty hot and extremely well groomed.  They also tend to be pretty shallow and a little overbearing.  Odds are she is looking for a guy to hold her purse while she shops, so if you feel like you have an overabundance of machismo go for it.

Girl in group shot where she is obviously NOT the hottest one. This can be two different kinds of women.  Either she is a fairly cool girl who is OK with her appearance or she is a walking, talking doormat.  The first one can be very cool to date as they are interesting and opinionated.  However, they also tend to do stuff like get sick of washing their hair and cut it all off with clippers.  The second girl as been thrown on so many grenades by her girlfriends that she will probably be remarkably easy to date.  However, you will constantly be attracted to her friends and there is a reasonably good chance one of them might fool around with you just to reassert who the Alpha female is in her circle of friends is, so dating her can lead to some serious drama in spite of the fact that she herself is low drama.  Both of these girls are pretty low maintenance, in my experience.

Guy in a football uniform. This is always a high school shot (guys who played football in college generally don’t have to go online to date) so all the things I said above about high school photos apply.  However, this is a special case.  This guy desperately wants the world to remember that at one point he was an athlete.  However, they inevitably have gained about 50 pounds since then and the closest they have come to participating in sports in trying to sink wadded up paper in a trash bin.  If he were still in shape he would have a current shot of himself playing volleyball or something.

Girl in a cheerleader uniform. This is the female version of the guy in a football uniform, with the added need to show you that at one point in her life she was hot enough to be a cheerleader.  The one difference is once in a while you can get a woman that shows herself as a college cheerleader too.  Everything I said about the football guy applies here, plus she is probably much higher maintenance to date than most women.

That’s it for today.  More on this tomorrow.  Yesterday’s question, second fiddle Riker verses the extremely lovable Chief Engineer Montgomary Scott, has caused me a lot of angst.  I really, really want to say Scotty would kick Rikers ass, being a real man and all, but I can’t help but think that Riker is taller with greater reach and seems better trained.  However, Scotty worked in an environment where violence was more common (he did throw the first punch in the Trouble with Tribbles) and probably has a lot more actual fighting experience, so I am going to make myself happy and go with him.  The problem is I don’t believe it enough to put money on it.  It would be a close one.  (Riker image courtesy of the Star Trek t shirts category).

For today I present something that seems really obvious until you think about the kinds of fights he has overcome with his brain: who would win, Batman versus Darth Vader?  Think about it for a while before answering.

By the way, if you like my writing and are looking for someone to write blog articles or other online content I am willing to do some contract work.  Check out some of my product descriptions on the commercial site.  Email me at [email protected].

Tags: online dating advice, star trek t shirts