After screening hundreds of messages that started with "Hello Beautiful" or "Space Science? Marry me?", I narrowed my online suitor pool to a few exceptional individuals. I must confess, my lack of interest in 99% of men on OK Cupid put some heavy reluctance in meeting any of these men. The thinking is something like "Ugh, he's probably going to ask me to talk about my job again... and I just want to sleep" (I know, it's that kind of attitude that leads to happy relationships!)

The Doldrums of OKC

And, well, that was pretty true for most of the dates. I went on 4 dates with 3 guys in a 2.5 week period and then basically said "Eff this shit".

Alaskan Boyfriend #2 - He managed to obscure his face in all pictures

While in Juneau, I put my OKC on 'local' as a joke with Jamee. However, it ended up working out nicely. When in Fairbanks I started talking with an engineering graduate student who was keen to hike. We met for coffee, I assessed that he wasn't a serial killer, and we planned to go hiking in Denali (OKC as hiking tinder for the win!). I must say, this is a really efficient to couple low cost travel, dating, and hiking all in one.

Alaskan Boyfriend #2 (hey! No comments!) picked me up at 6 AM from my hotel and we drove 2.5 hours to hike Mount Healy. He only made like 4 jokes about murdering me and leaving my body on the side of the road ("They'll never find it - it's Alaska!) We had a delightful time, and he kept pace pretty well. After a romantic snowy picnic on the top of the mountain (He only joked about pushing me off the ledge twice!), we headed back to civilization (sigh of relief, yeah?). We did another hike in an Aspen grove closer to Fairbanks before he dropped me off at the airport at 8 PM (That's 14 hours with a total stranger. A+ to us for keeping conversation going).

This was actually a totally OKC win, except that there was really no spark between us. Even the beginnings of friendship were tested when he started praising the logical soundness of Donald Trump's everything (we're all entitled to our opinions...) Overall, this first OKC date made me really hopeful for future dates...

But then I came back to Ann Arbor and things deteriorated. Date #2 wasn't really a date either - I found someone I had 'met' in person before at Tango lessons once and even though I told him there was no chance I would date him, we decided we'd go to drinks as friends. Once again, I'm not going to just diss the guys, but there was no spark here, and I found myself stressing about research throughout my second glass of wine.

#soulmates

Date #3 I had really high hopes for - he was an Australian who worked at an animal conservatory, and, I mean, his starter pick was Charmander (#soulmates). We had been talking for weeks and it had been fun, but within 5 minutes of meeting him, I knew he wasn't for me. Cue horribly awkward scenario - you're trapped! We were getting coffee, and I am too pathetic to just tell him "Nope, sorry" and walk away. So for the next hour, we made the smatterings of conversation while I was trying to picture the type of girl he would end up with (it's actually a pretty happy way to pass the time). He asked for a follow-up date, but there was no spark on my end (foiled! again! By these sparks!!).

At this point, I realized I just didn't have the patience for this. I would rather be single than waste my time on dates that aren't going anywhere because... I suck at (online and arguably all forms of) dating. Legitimately - I was unwilling to meet guys half way on these dates, and instead, I found the appeal of sites like kittytwin.me to find a companion. So I stopped making an attempt at online dating in Ann Arbor and instead to decided to devote my energy into my data science internship and backpacking (maybe OKC for hiking tinder!) this summer.

He really wanted to be in the blog...

One more creepy WTF message from OKC...

There are TWO other interesting side notes that emerged from Experiment #5.1. The first one (get excited, you know who) is a guy from OKC who found me on Facebook and then followed Facebook to this blog. When I posted Exp 5.1, he waited till 9 AM to then text me quotes from the article.  I actually found this hilarious instead of creepy (the line blurs with online dating). It definitely was a (refreshing) change of pace to be getting trolled instead of doing all the trolling, haha!

The second interesting event to emerge from this line of experiments was that one of my Facebook friends, also a graduate student at UofM, saw my blog post and went "Oh, hey, Lo's single? I should ask her out" and proceeded to do so. So who would have ever thought that you could get dates with really great guys by posting about your terrible online dating experiences as part of your blog? Really opens the mind to new possibilities ;)

I think this post ends Self-Experiment #5 - conclusions:

(1) Don't do online dating unless you have lots of time and patience

(2) Describe to the world via blog how insane you are and bad at dating in order to attract reasonable men. Seems to work.

(3) If I could skip the dating phase and go straight to "should we cook the zucchini tonight or the asparagus?" that would be awesome. Since it doesn't seem to work that way, cats are likely a great alternative.