When I started blogging everyone I know had one tip, watch what you say. Like most bloggers I didn’t want to watch what I said and I wrote some pretty dumb stuff and a few times it did come and bite me in my ass, it was all well worth it though. Taught me a few lessons and gave me some great stories.
Most bloggers are anonymous, they choose to be anonymous so they can tell all the loshon harah they want or expose some awful thing going on in their community or lots of other good stuff that they wouldn’t do as their real selves. Unfortunately or not I chose to be non-anonymous to the point where if someone reading my blog wanted to they could easily find out who I am. First of all the hardcore Jewish outdoors crowd aint that big and I live in a small community anyways.
Bring in the modern day shidduch research. Every single girl I go out with gets googled, then she gets searched through on myspace and facebook. Then I judge her based on amount of friends, type of friends and lack of clothing or other features you can tell from facebook and myspace profiles. Then if you really want to be a bastard you can judge them on how cheesy their comments on only simchas are. “OMG I am sooooooooooooo happy for you this is sooooooooooo kkkkewlllllll” This of course garners my judgement as do other things like “ B’H may you build a bayios neeman b’yisroel together” and so on. I assume rightly so that most of them do the same, and due to that pesky NJ Jewish news article I am very googleable. It used to be my name was under the Volvo high mileage club but now in plain sight lies my profession, name, age and location. They can find me on facebook as well and if they look hard enough there are some biking videos lying around here and there.
Assuming that folks will google me, I debate constantly whether to tell my potential dates about my blog. I am sure many folks hide their blogs from their partners and I wonder if I should do the same. Will they judge me based on my blog, they definitely are right in doing so- granted they should read both my blogs to get a real picture- being that one is ideas I expound on in a comic way and one is devoted to me real life in and my adventures. So I debate and usually I forego telling them and just try and see if they actually know what a blog is, because up until last year I would have had no idea. I find that the girls who are in white collar positions like accountants, lawyers and marketers are much more likely to read blogs then teachers and the nice frummy girl jobs like speech pathology, OT, PT, social workers and so on. So I tread carefully and try and figure out their blogging habits. Then of course I can see if they appreciate my humor, that will tell all when it comes to them either laughing or steaming red when they do discover that the guy they are dating is a serial blogger.
My first blogging dating collision came a few months ago when I went out on a very fun date with an awesome girl from Monsey. I unfortunately blurted out that I had a blog and wrote some incendiary things about her that she ultimately read and sent in an email to the shadchun. I wrote basically that her mom was hot and she was, and that the girl wasn’t. It wasn’t so incendiary sounding to me, I intended the post to be telling of how I would still be willing unlike most guys to gladly try a second date despite my complete unattraction due to the fact she was a very cool girl. This point was missed by the shadchun and the girl and understandably the girl was offended. We also went Dutch and apparently that is a no-no in the dating world, chivalry is still in vogue. I am sure many of the guys can relate to the situation mentioned above, you have no idea what the girl looks like- you see her mom- hope skyrockets- only to come crashing down into the “give me a shot before we go out type horror.”
So that of course exposed my weakness in the shidduch world but it also kind of gave me an edge. Instead of having to go out to girls, maybe they would come to me and the blog could be sued to my advantage. I always though blogging would be the best way to meet girls. I happened to have dated a wonderful girl 4 times, actually one of my only dating partners to garner a second date willingly. Hopefully the prospects will come pouring in sooner or later. I even went as far as to put a link to frumster profile and use the traffic to my advantage. I think the blogging world and the shidduch world have yet to collide and break down the status quo but hopefully that will change.
Recently I had the whole ordeal of actually liking someone and that person liking me only to be horribly dumped on the night before our date. I then proceeded to do something drastic and erase a bunch of pathetic posts about sexual topics that spanned a week of bad writing and write the famous apology post that garnered over 70 comments mostly bashing me for becoming whipped and selling out. Its funny because I am troubled as to whether I agree somewhat.
Selling out is a harsh term to use, but maybe went against my morals would be better. After all I am a guy and guys do think about sex pretty frequently. But then again I am not anonymous so maybe I should keep up the image of a frum blog? But then again what the hell does frum mean anymore anyways? Shouldn’t a potential marriage partner like all aspects of me- what many people said? Well then again first impressions do count and most girls first impressions do not want to be of a guy writing about how masturbation is mechalal shabbos (that post will be put back up one of these days- because it was good).
Then of course if you really want to lure a women in you can tailor the posts around your going out time to her interests and try and suck them in knowing that only a handful of people actually go past the first page of any blog unless someone sends them a link. This could be compared to opening a bunch of seforim just to show others how smart and knowledgeable you are even though you cant even read rashi lettering.
This was all in my head during last week’s dates. I went out on two of them. Both good looking, both good on paper and both the first date in a few months. So naturally I didn’t want to mess up my chances with blog related rejections. The girl who didn’t even have the net didn’t want a second date and the second one rarely reads blogs. I told one of the girls about the blog and who knows if she read it, her voice on my answering machine did not sound like she read it. But then again she is way chilled and probably wouldn’t care. I also can judge based on peoples first date language and attitudes. The girl without the net forced me to dress up, my first time on a date by the way. I wish dates were shorts and t-shirts, I hate dressing up- precisely the reason I try and do biking or hiking dates.