Taurus555: You still don’t get it

One of my earlier blog posts was this monster.  Did you know that at least one girl out there is sexually turned on by my hate speech?  I bet there are others.

I’ve been casually watching Taurus555’s profile over the years to see if he finally gets it.  Two years later, the answer is no: he still doesn’t get it.

It’s time for round 2.  Please keep your hands and feet inside the coaster at all times.

So, Taurus, you’re energetic, random, and happy, huh?  If you’re so happy, why do you need a woman?  If you’re so energetic, why are you so fat?  We can do without random since it doesn’t mean anything.  It’s a shame OKC won’t let you insert a google ad there, but at least he could have written “this space for rent.”  At least that would have been actually random and mildly amusing.

“I am single, 26, with my own house, car, and a respectable job in the IT industry.”

While this is a marked improvement over his previous opener, it still fails to impress.  In other words: I define myself as a herb beta-male provider.  Even if he does manage to snag a woman with a line like that, what kind of woman will he snag?  A woman who is chiefly interested in those three things, all of which are simply material goods that virtually everyone his age should have, except maybe the house.  But I bet it’s a town house.

The first line of an online profile is like the opener in a real life situation.  Can you picture yourself approaching a girl in a park, or a library, or a bar, and saying, “Hi, I’m 26, single, I have a house, a car, and a job”?  No, of course you can’t.  If you wouldn’t say it in real life, you shouldn’t say it in an online profile.  Not in the very first line.

A much better approach to getting these facts about you across is to weave them into your profile with vague allusions.  This will put the idea that you might be 26, you might have a car, you might have a house and you might have a job.  What does this do?  It provides the opportunity for the girl to ask you questions.  Intrigue is the kindling for a romance.  You can’t start a fire with a match and a log.

“When I go home after work, even though I’ve been staring at computer screens all day, I still like to come home and bust some zombie heads, or rock out in rock band, or race the world in Burnout.”

Aside from the obvious lack of attention to detail here (capitalizing one game name but not the other), the problem with this is that Taurus is still trying to promote himself by talking about video games.  This didn’t pass at age 24 and it doesn’t pass at age 26.  In fact, he’s stepped it up a notch and made his profile even more video-game centric, which indicates to me that at this point in his life – a very early point, I might add – he has settled into a world revolving around video games and is now only interested in a woman who fits into that world – opposed, of course, to indicating a willingness for himself to fit himself into a new world that she and he share based on common ground.

He goes on.  “I want someone who will offer at least half-way decent competition at what I play, I won’t get mad if I lose, I will show you how to play if you want to learn, and I won’t let you win once you show that you know what you’re doing (or upon request ).”

You’ve got to be kidding me.  Seriously?  Who would write that?

Oh, I know.  A 26 year-old virgin.

In the preceding paragraph he describes his tastes as eclectic.  Bad word choice.  For someone who goes on to tout his expansive vocabularly, eclectic means “wildly varied.”  It implies multiplicity.  A man who describes his tastes as “eclectic” would probably do so as a keyword for “likes to sleep around.”

What he meant to say is eccentric, unique, esoteric, unusual, arcane, or even just “specific.”

I guess beggars can be choosers.

But seriously, this spiel about video games is one of the most effective pussy deflectors I’ve seen in a long time.  It trumps even his creepy mug-shot style front-and-side shots taken 4 days after a shave and his 5′7″/220 breakdown (which he admits online).

He wants.  What he plays.  He won’t get mad.  He’ll teach you.  He’ll let you win.  At your request.

These phrases are like giant signal flares that this guy’s trouble.  I could come up with a few ways to improve this paragraph (less “I”, more “we”), but he’d be better off just deleting it entirely.

GIRLS DON’T WANT TO PLAY VIDEOGAMES WITH YOU.  The only girls who want to play video games with boys are south asians who already have tall, atheltic white boyfriends.  Almost every man in your age range plays video games and therefore girls who also play them are a hot commodity.

The condescension in this paragraph is also staggering.  Apparently, Taurus knows best.  He wants to be in a position where he is the one with the skills and the knowledge  that he will lovingly impart upon a doting female companion eager to bask in his genius.  This is another glaring sign that this man is a beta male.  Alpha males do not seek admiration from women, because it is assumed to be automatic and therefore worth nothing.  Alpha males seek to dominate other men.  Taurus has never been a leader of a male peer group, nor could he ever be, because he’s a beta.

“I’m funny enough to be told to do stand-up, but smart enough to recognize my brand of humor doesn’t work on stage.”

In other words, the person who told him to do stand up is not as smart as he is.  The person who told him this is a female, and probably a relative.  $10 says it was his mother.

“My interpersonal humor is like a gobstopper.  I’m sweet at first, but when you get to know me, I get sour with sarcasm.”

Translation: when I’m courting you, I will act like a total pushover, never daring to neg you in any way.  Once I am settled into the relationship, I will mock you ruthlessly and “sarcastically” neg you constantly because I’m a really funny guy.  I use this method because I am too afraid to be my true self “at first” because I am smart enough to realize “sour sarcasm” is a put off at every stage in a relationship.  I also lack confidence, fearing that dare I judge a women “at first”, she will judge me back.  Only after I receive tacit validation from 2nd base will my true, dark colors bleed through.

“My music tastes.. blah blah … I can get really into the stuff that I like including singing along and thrashing (I won’t call it dancing lol).  Some women find this to be disturbing, but really, it’s just me enjoying myself.”

He’s 26, presumably courting women around his age, and he is talking about music outside of a canned question-and-answer section (such as “my favorite books, movies, music, and food” only a page and half down)?  Strike one.  He won’t call it dancing because he can’t dance, and even if he could, his ogrish form flailing about a confined space would suck the oxygen out of any room.   Strike two.  Some women find his capacity to make a total fool out of himself in response to stimuli as basic as hearing a song he likes disturbing (i.e., embarassing), but he ignores their feelings so that he can enjoy himself.  Presumably, the same rule would apply when his future date is disturbed by Taurus shitting on her chest, but really, that’s just him enjoying himself.  Strike three.  He’s out.

“I also enjoy writing.”

He’s still at it.  Does he not realize that his profile is littered with grammatical mistakes and misspellings?

It gets worse:

“My expansive vocabularly frequently flustered my former beau, so if you can keep on the level with me verbally, that would be fantastic.”

What a jackass.  Here he is again condescending his ex (with whom he later mentions he is still friends).  The first rule of an online profile is to not talk about ex-anythings.

But look at that sentence.  He didn’t even manage to use “beau” correctly, because “beau” always refers to a man, in every context.

beau (boh) – noun

1. a frequent and attentive male companion
2. a male escort for a girl or woman
3. a dandy; fop.

It’s one thing to tout your “expansive” vocabulary, which is bad enough.  It’s quite another to prove that you don’t understand the meaning of the words in said vocabulary in the very same sentence.  Later on, he uses the word “ordinance” in such a way that it is obvious that he shift-F7′d that shit and looked it up in a thesauraus, but it doesn’t even make sense.  “… if you opt not to employ your own arsenal of multisyllabic ordinance“?  WTF does that mean?  Some synonyms of “ordinance” are decree, authorization, command, mandate, and order.  He should have said, “if you opt to withhold your own multisyllabic arsenal.”  Much cleaner sentence.  Maybe, as with “beau”, he just doesn’t know what the word means.

By the way, Taurus, your alliteration is not impressing anyone.

 ”I’m waiting for inspiration to come by and help me finish [my novella].  Will you bring such inspiration with you?”

Translation: will you please validate my crappy writing?  If you say it’s good, I will have the confidence to “pursue publishing [vainly, as in with lulu.com]“.  Otherwise, I’ll leave it under my bed and never think about it.

“Physically, I’m 5′7″, 220lbs.  I’m a chunky monkey, but I’d say I carry it pretty well.  I’ve often been told I’m ‘cute’ but aesthetics are always subjective.”

Was I right about his mom telling him he’s cute or what?  Taurus, you don’t carry it well.  Nobody carries 220 pounts on a 5′7″ frame well.

“Photos are misleading.”

Wait, you’re uglier in person?  I didn’t think it was possible.

Taurus, seriously bro, if you ever want a chance with women, you need to lose weight.  Unlike me, you are not blessed with striking, masculine features such as an imposing brow ridge and square, chiseled jawline.  Add about 75 pounds of extra fat into the mix and your face is about as round as a basketball.  You do not look manly at all.  Girls have round faces.  You have a round face.  The fact that you don’t shave does not change this.  The only way to change this is to lose about 75 pounds.  It’s not hard.

Who the hell uses the expression “chunky munkey”?  Is that a flavor of Ben and Jerry’s?

In all, Taurus’s “My self-summary” not only leads much to be desired, it actively damages his cause.  My recommendation: nuke from orbit and start again.

But there’s more.  Come, intrepid readers; let’s brave on.

What is Taurus555 doing with his life?  Apparently he works in a call center.  The phrase I used in 2007 when he touted himself as a DBA was “least common denominator” but I’m afraid I was wrong.  No, friends, the least common denominator of the IT world is what he is currently doing, which is fixing printers and pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE when the boss’s secretary’s copy of Outlook freezes up for no apparent reason.  And he finds this rewarding and fun?  You’ve got to be kidding me.

There are two categories of jobs that are worth talking about on an online profile: status jobs and exotic jobs.  A status job is something like medicine or law.  An exotic job is something like secret agent or dolphin trainer.  Status jobs are rewarding.  Exotic jobs are fun.  Reinstalling Windows XP fifteen times a day is neither, and everybody - even girls who know nothing about IT – knows it.

Calling a shitty job like that “rewarding and fun” is a code for declaring that you’ve settled into a low-paying, dead-end job.  You’ve convinced yourself that you like it even though you hate it so that you won’t be motivated to go make more out of yourself.  Good work.

As if the position wasn’t bad enough, he works for the State Department.  That means he’s a civil servant.  If he isn’t lazy and unmotivated today, after a few years of no-consequences budget-driven (as opposed to results-driven) employment, he will be.

“Keeping up my house, learning new things, and getting a real passion for music.”

Boring.  Boring.  Boring.

Is that really all you’re doing with your life?  Dang.  Sometimes I wish I were a girl so I could get a ticket to that boat ride.

What’s Taurus555 really good at?  I bet “writing online profiles” isn’t on that list.  Let’s see what is:

“Video games.”

Again.  Good lord man.  This arrested development is staggering.

“Nothing to brag about, but I will anyway.”

Good.  You recognize how completely immature and trite it is to brag about being good at video games, but that won’t stop you because it’s the only thing you’ve got going.  This would work for a prebuscent 11 year old boy, not a 26 year old boy.

“The exception here is sports games.”

Right.  Sports games would at least suggest some kind of stereotypical masculinity.  You know, right down the middle of that bell curve.  Most girls know that most guys like sports.  When a guy says he doesn’t like sports, a girl must ask why not.  Or not bother asking, because she knows that if he doesn’t like sports, she wonders what other typically masculine traits he lacks and decides it’s not worth finding out.

“Writing – it’s been a while since I’ve been creative, but when I am, I’m unstoppable!”

He used the same language, roughly, in 2007.  Since it’s 2009, “a while” must mean at least 2 years.  But who cares?  His very profile already proves that he isn’t good at writing and the fact that his two and only hobbies are apparently video games and music, neither of which smack of creativity.

What exactly does it mean to be creatively “unstoppable”?

As if any of this weren’t already condemning, he drops the atomic bomb (again).

“Magic Fingers – per my ex, with whom I’m still friends . Evidently they’re quite magical.”

Creeeeeeepy.  Nobody – especially girls you want to date – want to hear about how you got to 3rd base with your ex-girlfriend and her enormous impossible-to-miss manclit.

Aside from being perverted and gross, don’t you realize that at age 26 girls are not interested in getting fingered?  Are you still in 8th grade?  If you’re going to go this route, at least talk about your magic cock.  Oh, that’s right.  You’re a virgin.  Thankfully, you’ve publicly announced this a few pages down in case there was any doubt by this point in the profile.

“Cooking”.  Iron Chef Taurus555’s signature dishes include cheese steaks and spaghetti.  Are you serious?  My wife wouldn’t list cooking and she knows how to make flan.

The first thing people notice about Taurus555 is his crazy (maniacal, serial-killer-esque) laugh.  The second thing people notice is that he’s a fat ass.  Sorry, bud, but making a stupid, non-funny joke about how you enjoy your own cooking and that’s why you’re fat doesn’t change the message.  So the two things people notice about you is that you laugh like a freak and you’re fat.  No wonder the girls are lining up.  Who wouldn’t want to be seen in public with a lummox whose two most noticeable qualities are obesity and awkwardness?

Nobody really cares about his favorites.  If anyone is still actually reading this profile by this point, nothing in this list is surprising.

Two gems stand out in his “six things I could never do without” section -

“My family are the backbone of my life, the center upon whom I rely.”

You don’t rely on a center, Taurus.  Again with the bad writing.  Hint: you’re not good at writing.  Please remove any reference to being a good writer from your profile.

“Video games – as if that wasn’t painfully obvious by now.”

It is obvious. Painfully obvious.  And since you know it, why are you repeating it?

Taurus spends a lot of time thinking about what happens when an unstoppable force encounters an immovable object.  Oh how clever.  If this were original, that would be one thing.  But it isn’t.  This is a reference to World of Warcraft.  There’s a two handed mace called “The Unstoppable Force” and a shield called “The Immovable Object”, both acquired from the same source.  I can’t say for sure that World of Warcraft didn’t steal this pair of ideas from somewhere else (they themselves might be a reference), but given his pentient for video games, where do you think he got it?

Taurus555 works his shitty job 5 days a week and on Saturday too.  Great.  Ladies love unavailable men.  Actually, in Taurus’s case, the less of him she sees is the better.  Presuming that she exists, the debate on which should be academic by now.

Even though since 2007, Taurus has rewritten the majority of his profile, he still managed to leave the most egregious lines in it, for example:

“I’ve never had sex.  Nope, not once.  And if masturbation counted, we’d all be filthy sluts.”

GROSS.  You’re a 26 year-old virgin and you fap a lot.  Is this really how you think you will appeal to women?  Do you really think this sounds like something a girl would find attractive?  This is why you’re a virgin, Taurus.  This is why.

“Oddly enough, people don’t believe me on this.  I can’t imagine why I’d put something like that here if it WASN’T true…”

It’s not that “people” don’t believe that you’re a virgin – all they’d need to do is look at your picture and they’d know the odds – they don’t believe you’d state it on an online profile.  They can’t believe you’d admit to being a 26 year old virgin on the internet.

Beggers being choosers, also known as “you should message me if…”

Based on everything else I’ve seen of this disaster, if I were him, I’d write, “if you have a pulse and a vagina” or, “you’re as desperate as I am.”  I bet he’d get messages.  From war pigs, but he’d get messages.

But instead, Taurus wants a 21 to 31 year old woman (or older, anything wil do) and proportional. 

Wait, what?

You’re almost 100 pounds overweight, but you want a woman who’s proportional?  What a hypocritical douchebag.  Good luck with that one, pall.  You’re size 18 material, minimum.

No, I spoke too soon – Taurus recovers with, “you don’t have to be fit or thin – curves in the right places preferred”.  Okay dude, “proportional” means fit and thin.  Make up your mind!

“Race mostly doesn’t matter, but I’m not romantically interested in black women.”

Wow.  Just plain wow.  Look, Taurus, let me explain something to you.  Even if you’re a racist – and you’re looking for a racist woman – you can’t say something like that on the internet.  Our culture has decided that it is inappropriate to be discriminatory, even when it comes to personal romance.  Whether or not you agree with that cultural policy, or whether or not you have nothing against black women (except sleeping with them) is not the point.  The point is that you shouldn’t say something like that in a public place because it shows that you don’t understand this fact.  You don’t understand how to fit in with the crowd and tow the line even though you personally disagree with it.

You don’t want to date black women?  Fine!  Don’t respond to their messages!

Every woman, regardless of whether she feels the same way about black men or is herself a racist also, reads this line and sees it as a giant red flag.  If you’re willing to say that on the internet, it means you’re likely to also say other inappropriate, offensive, awkward things in mixed company.  It means you don’t understand proper decorum and the appropriate times to say what’s on your mind and to keep it to yourself.

Interesting enough, this disaster uses similar language to, like this profile, vainly attempt to hook women.  Let’s see.  Taurus555 and Chrischan …. they’re both the same age, they’re both fat, they’re both ugly, they’re both single, they’re both virgins, they both have a passion for video games, they both have a passion for music, they both fap a lot, they both claim to be “creative”… I wonder if they’re both also mildly retarded?  Is Taurus555 a high functioning autistic?  Or a closet gay?  I gotta say, the similiarities are as striking as the equal likelihood that neither one of them will find true love in 2009.  Or 2010.  Or 2011.  Or ever.

Taurus555, if you should ever stumble upon this post, I apologize in advance if your self esteem may have been lowered by my hateful vitriol.  In remediation, I am more than willing to help you write a new profile that is far less damning than the ones you’ve been putting on the public internet.  I can help you.  You may not believe me, but believe this: I am getting married on September 13th, 2009.  I am marrying the first and only girl I ever messaged on OK Cupid.