PUAs told me how to game online dating. They were wrong.

I was so ashamed the first time I made an OkCupid page that I deleted it after a couple of hours. I let the society we live in convince me only losers used OKCupid and I didn’t need to resort to geeky online dating . A few years later, online dating became ubiquitous enough to no longer carry a stigma. Besides, bars and clubs weren’t my scene; there was no other way for me to meet women other than OKCupid.

I’m the kind of person who gets nervous ordering takeout, so messaging strangers of the opposite sex I thought were cool elicited promising job interview-level nerves. To say it in meaner terms: I sucked at OKCupid. Few women responded to my messages, and even fewer actually sent me messages first. The only girl who went on a date with me did so because she thought I worked for BuzzFeed (which I only contributed to as an unpaid “community member” at the time).

After over a month of poor luck, I saw a Daily Dot article about a woman soliciting OkCupid profile rewrites for only $25. I contacted her. Read more