When I graduated college, I was exasperated that 4,700 nights of greying out at the Palace hadn’t netted me a kind, handsome, brilliant husband with 2 corgis, a house in the Hamptons, and extensive knowledge of the alphabet trick. (3 years later, I am still not sure quite why this didn’t work? But I digress.) Out of this resentment, my OkCupid profile was born, and it has lived mostly-off-but-occasionally-on since.

Somehow, in the sea of “hi”, “i luv redheads ;)”, and “i fuk u plz?”, I met my truly wonderful boyfriend last November (awww). I learned from Cosmo that men only want what other men want, and to keep a man, he needs to know how lucky he is that you chose him over the literal thousands of other suitors at your online doorstep.

So for the first few months that we were dating, I left my profile up and showed him my favorite incoming missives. I think it was eye opening, as a man, to see what a woman’s online dating inbox really looks like. He was, to put it gently, taken aback. We’ve all seen sites like TinderNightmares, but at this point, it’s evident that most of those messages are carefully planned to get a reaction, reused so many times that they’ve lost all meaning, or just incredibly fucking fake:

Therefore, I reactivated my profile last week to get some strange… I mean… screencaps! To get some screencaps!… to use in this post. All of the following are taken directly from my inbox- 100% real, manipulated only to cross out the identities of the accused (most of whom don’t deserve it).

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