What a difference a year makes, and why the internet is not full of perverts.

Let me start off today by telling you that I'm very sorry I haven't updated for a while. Whilst I've been living in my new house, which is all lovely and shiny, I haven't quite gotten around to actually having the internet yet. This creates lots of problems, like not being able to blog, but the biggest problem by far is that I'm not able to look at rabbit videos on Youtube whenever I want. Sad face.

So as I sit at my desk in work - I'm absolutely snowed under, honestly - I had a think, and realised that my life has changed entirely within the last year. So for some reason, I've decided to blog about it, because you all deserve to know the ins and outs of my life for being such loyal readers; we're now at over 2000 hits. Pretty good for a blog I only set up to showcase my articles and complain about stuff that I felt deserved more than a Facebook status.

So lets take a trip back down memory lane...

This time last year, I was in a long term relationship. A very long term relationship. There were plans of trips to Paris where I would eat as much baguette as I could get into my face and be vaguely romantic on the Eiffel Tower. We discussed marriage and babies, and came up with rough timescales for each - I was going to be one of those lucky cows who had their life mapped out early. I was ready to be a grown up; or at least, I thought as much.

It turns out that sometimes, not everything works out as you thought it would. After a few months, we were over, the plans were scrapped, and I cried continuously for three days and all but stopped eating, existing purely on a diet of tea and whatever junk my wonderful housemates brought back in some kind of sacrifice to the 'Oh Just Please Stop Crying' God. It worked, because after a week or two, I stopped sniffling, and stopped getting angry at every happy couple I saw in the street. After another couple of months, I realised that I was ready to go about trying to find someone else who might be good at bringing me biscuits, finding me new baby rabbit videos on Youtube and generally being the nice boy that my mother so desperately wants me to find. However, there’s a small issue with this.

I’m crap with small talk.

I am not one of these people that flourish in a new social situation. I tend to stick with the people that I know, afraid of looking like an idiot. This presents the problem of not being able to just go up to people that look interesting, as I tend to forget how to use my mouth and just run away. Obviously, this means that I am never going to be one of those people who can spend a night in a bar chatting to someone and go home with them, I’m just incapable of doing so. The fact that all of my friends are all wonderfully social butterflies just makes it worse.

I’d like to establish that it’s not that I can’t talk to people at all. I’ve been told enough times I’m pretty confident, it’s just that I have to have some kind of established platform to start off on, which I just don’t have with strangers.

So, in order to make the transition from Bridget Jones-esque spinster, I decided I would do something radical. So I joined a dating website.
This wasn’t necessarily something new for me. I had met said long term ex-boyfriend on one, and it had gone swimmingly, even if he did go between the mental ages of 5 and 75 with no warning.

Now, I know that these websites get a lot of bad stick. They’re portrayed as some kind of portal of perverts; the kind of place that your mother wants to try and block on the home computer but doesn’t know how to. However, these websites aren’t all doom and gloom. For one, I’m on there, so it can’t be all bad. Secondly, not everyone you speak to on the internet is a paedophile or a cannibal. Trust me.

As soon as I signed up, there was a barrage of messages from illiterate men. I soon made the promise that unless it was a frighteningly good message, all grammar and spelling mistakes would mean that I wouldn’t reply. There were also messages from those who assumed ‘hey hunny, u ok?’ would count as a good first message. It does not, and no, I did not reply.

Essentially, the website that I use is what my good friend terms, a ‘sausagefest’. This refers to the fact that there are far more men than women on there. Think of it as a post-apocalyptic world, where men are scrambling for those last women with whom to repopulate the world. Not a chance, mate. Even in that situation, I’ve got standards.

What I think this post is trying to get across is that not everyone on a dating website is there because they’re secret perverts, watching you in the shower. Some of us are just crap at talking to attractive strangers. I’ve met some perfectly decent people – and one or two knobs – and the fact that I’ve been able to talk to them before meeting them makes it so much easier. I’ve got a plethora of information on them that I can discuss in more depth. It’s like having an info card for people you meet in the street. It’s useful.

So please don’t hate on those who have met each other on the internet. Yes, it might be a little unorthodox, but the internet is a wonderful place – where else are you able to buy shoes and meet men from the comfort of your own chair?