So there you are, armed with a brand new username on the dating site that’s going to end your bad luck with romantic prospects once and for all. You’re ready to dive in! You’ve picked your most attractive but still accurate profile picture! You know what you’re looking for! And you’re staring at the blank “About Me,” head in hands, wondering how you’re ever going to get past this required section. Should you try to sound smart? Funny? Silly? How can you convey the very special snowflake that is you in just 200 words?
The fear of descriptive paragraphs was one of the first things to go when Online Dating Version 1 (think OkCupid, Match, JDate) transitioned into Online Dating Version 2 (think Down,Glimpse,Cheek’d). The creators of these new apps realized that people really hate writing descriptions of themselves.
However, V2 is mainly about hookups and those V1 sites are still going strong for people who are looking for something to last longer than a night or two, which means that the "About Me" paragraph is still haunting thousands of lovelorn people worldwide. For those folks, I’d like to introduce the Online Dating Ipsum by Lauren Hallden.
Anyone who works in print, typesetting, or online is familiar with Lorem Ipsum. For those of you who don't know it, Lorem Ipsum is filler text placed in design layouts so that the person proofing the page won’t be distracted by the text. It’s usually a bunch of random words in Latin, but Online Dating Ipsum takes that same concept and pokes fun at the tropes we all inevitably fall into when we’re banging out those self-conscious profiles. To use it, select the number of paragraphs you "can stand," and if you're looking for "typical inane jabber" or "with a side of crazy sauce."
The first sentence of my crazy sauce Online Dating Ipsum paragraph was: “Ages 18-22 Ayn Rand extreme I tend to be attracted to,” which first made me laugh out loud. And while I doubt that anyone would truly use an Online Dating Ipsum paragraph in their own profile, who knows? Maybe it can help you get past that romantic writer’s block.