Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Yenta.com = identity crisis

It never would have occurred to me that the hardest part of setting myself up on the new matchmaking site, now being called yenta.com, would be picking a user name. That process took me a good 15 minutes!

You have all, I'm sure, run into this same scenario. It says "sign up, it's free/easy/non-fattening/etc.!" so you think why not? Take a couple of minutes, they're only asking for a few pieces of information to get started, and I have a little time... And then everything that you want to use as your user name is already used! (winner of "using the word use, or a variation of same, most times in a sentence!" use, use, use...) Of course the helpful robots on the other side of the process always have the same stupid helpful suggestion:

"Hey, we're real sorry and all that someone else already had that witty, clever idea, so why don't you do that, but add the numbers 659 to the end?" Where do they get the numbers that they suggest? When other people have usernames with numbers are they just using the helpful robot suggestion? It's the main reason that I can't use an identity with numbers -- I will fixate about what the hell the numbers mean! Is JessicaRabbit467 someone who has seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit 467 times? Was HeavyHitter22 really the 22nd person who wanted to use that name? And Bettyboo69? Do I have to ask the question? People?

And that's not the only "deep and meaningful" problems I had with the selection of username. Because let's face it, the thing you use as a title on some websites really don't matter. Who cares if you go by the name of your favorite muppet or your uncle's nickname or your embarrassing college nickname, so dubbed after the night where you threw up in the bed of your roomate's girlfriend and then let her pass out in it. (you use it because you're taking it back, trying to free it and yourself of the embarrassing stigma. Which, by the way, will never happen. Because Pukenap will always be embarrassing. Always. Move on. Moving on!)

But one has to keep reminding oneself that this username is going to reflect on those who may come by to peek at your profile. (oh yeah, I should tell you guys that this time through we're doing one of those date-centric sites, where you wander through aisle after aisle of boxed dude and pick the ones you want to sample. Blame The Queen -- it was her idea.) What I'm saying is that while Sweetums is a perfectly fine username for some places, it says something really specific on a dating site! As does Femtastic, as does DownandDirty. Many perfectly good usernames never got past the vetting process.

Here are some other surprising discoveries from my registration process:
  • Way more people are fans of The Jungle Book then I would have expected.
  • Or the Muppet Movie
  • Or Bugsy Malone
  • The Sting
  • Mercer Mayer books
  • Esoteric comic book characters
  • and spam.
  • People who were born before 1920 don't deserve to fall in love. (probably concerned that they'd break a hip and sue.)
  • I'd like to leave my body type empty, except that I know from my own initial browsing that such a blank answer screams "massive! I'm massive! When you come to pick me up for our first date please BYOC - Bring Your Own Crane!"
  • Apparently I can start introducing myself with the phrase "hi, I'm femtastic and I have a strategically place tattoo!" Makes me seem edgy, no?
  • You could hack up your whole family and store them in your chest freezer, taking out a hunk here or there to slow cook for dinner and I'd be willing to hear your story, but if you so much as light up one cigarette while you're telling your sob story and I'll boot your ass elsewhere.
  • Apparently no dating sites will list "painfully, nerdishly white" as an ethnicity. I thought maybe it was just a wove.com thing.
I only went through to add the basics, as The Queen is going to help me fill out the deep, meaningful questions. This is either a brilliant way for me to make sure my profile this time around is well-rounded and truly reflects both who I am to myself as well as how others see me OR I'm going to end up dating Queenie's dream dude. Here's what I know so far: she likes 'em pseudo-troll-short!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, I like them short, that's why my husband is like 6'3!

You couldn't tell how tall that guy was in the pic, and I'm sorry but he was cute!

Be nice or I'll make sure you sound like a total freak in your profile!

Love ya!