The World According to... Boring John

Rules of Internet Dating

These are rules to be taken seriously (or otherwise) that will help your chances of success in the ultimate adult sweety shop.

The rules below are based on extensive, some might say painstaking, research done over the last few years. Of course science is also involved and prejudice and maybe even a small sense of humour got involved too (very small, obviously). But if you know better then please do contribute - all good contributions will be added, anonymously or otherwise.

Here are four rules (or questions to answer) to start the ball rolling.

1) How many emails before you go on a date, or at least speak to each other?

I suggest 3, and always recommend that you talk to the person on the phone before you meet up with them in the flesh. Voices matter, people, as a squeaky voice when you were expecting sexy can offend almost as much as bald instead of hirsute (or vice versa! :-O )

2) How many dates will you go on before you should have kissed, fumbled or held hands?

I suggest 3 as first date fumbles never usually become anything more and if you aint snogged after five dates do you think it's ever really gonna happen. Well, punk, do ya?

3) Do you date/snog or fumble with more than one person at once?

There are some internet daters who think you should not email or date more than one person at a time. Whilst there are others that think, unless you're going out exclusively with one person (don't you just love American expressions like that?) that anything goes with more than one person.

I suggest dating and snogging more than one person at a time is okay, but nothing more. Soon as you've done the ol' 'in out, in out' then you need to commit baby, or get rid! But you can't dibble dabble like that with more than one. Tis bad karma for one thing, and all your mates will be very jealous for another!

4) Are you looking to make friends?

Some people only want to date and do not want more friends in their life. (They're so popular see, already.) Other people only seem to want to make friends. (They like grazing, or maybe they don't have enough friends.)

Know what you want, and stick to it.

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General rules:

A) Men, I politely suggest that you do not post photos of your better-looking friend or that photo of you that makes you look ten times fitter than you really are or the photo of you with hair now you are a bald eagle! Women kinda get a bit pissed by this, and your date will not last long.

B) Women I think professionally taken photos of you looking like a B-movie starlet or photos of you reclining on a bed with your bra showing or even photos of you hugging some hunk might, just might, give out the wrong signals.

C) Stick to a set period that you'll do internet dating then pack it in afterwards. 3 months is good. 5 years is very pessimistic indeed and 3 days is bloomin' hopeful indeed!

D) Similarly, I recommend that you only go online dating for about one hour a day. If you don't set a limit like this then you might find that several hours have just passed by. Online dating is worse that channel-flicking on the TV in my humble opinion.