A Dating Site Darkly

This is ridiculous.

I have a profile or three on Plenty of Fish at the moment, where I have been struggling to contact a member, whose name includes a reference to Miro, and whose profile makes mention of Philip K. Dick. I write this in hopes she is reading it.

There are three obstacles that I have thus far had to negotiate in my attempts to reach her: censors, filters, and glitches.

1. Censors. This is the least malign. Plenty of Fish has bovine censorbots in place that make it impossible to say certain things. Profiles and messages cannot contain sexual language (unless you spell things creatively - "suck my c0ck, lick your pvssy, do you want to fvck," etc - such words are rendered with four stars - "hey baby I want to **** you"). Such language is not part of the problem, in this case, since these words were not part of my attempt to hail Ms. Miro... tho' I did mention my amusement that Philip K. Dick's name is censored, rendered as Philip K. ****. (It is actually intact in her interests section, but the censors have different standards in different areas. For example, "suck my cock, lick your pussy" etc are all allowable in an IM section, but THERE, words like "transfer" "bank" and "account" are censored, regardless of context; you can ask someone to account for themselves and it comes out as "**** for yourself"). Amusing, but not part of the problem: part of what I intended to send to her in my first message, as a matter of fact - a cute note about the censorship of Phil's name.

2. Filters. PoF has a variety of optional filter levels in place that make it impossible for people to send messages to others, if they are deemed incompatible. If I do not want to meet someone who smokes, for instance, I can set my profile to bar all smokers from being able to say hi - even if they merely say "Prefer not to say" in the "smoking" section of their profile; they have to specify that they do not smoke in order to get through. Personally I find this an odd thing - what if some smoker merely wants to chat with me about some interesting detail in my profile? Why should they be barred from even sending me a message? Routinely, of course, women use these filters to try to prevent The Dreaded Internet Pervert from reaching them - the masturbating man, who, in the heat of his tumescence, will email you photos of his erection and messages both desperate and vulgar, insofar as he can get around the censors ("suck my c0ck, eat your pvssy"). As it happens, this is not my problem either, because - at least from my serious profile, because I have a frivolous, horny one that I sometimes troll the site with - I do PASS her filters. She has many in place - "must not be looking for Intimate Encounter." "Must not smoke." Yadda yadda. I'd presumably have to have a chat with her about the "Must not do drugs" filter, but otherwise, I'm in the clear.

3. But once one gets around the censors and the filters, one encounters That Which Cannot Be Circumvented: THE GLITCH. Sometimes you send a message to someone, and PoF SAYS they have received it, but it is not copied to your "sent messages" folder, and they have not, in fact, heard from you. Try as you might, your profile and theirs simply are starcrossed; you cannot say hi. You THINK you have (unless you check your "sent messages" folder) - but they have no idea you exist. The message has been sent to some Internet Limbo, presumably never to return.
And so this morning, I attempted to say hello to Ms. Miro and jabber about PK Dick (and ask her if she wanted to suck my Theodore Sturgeon, and tell her I wanted to lick her Ursula LeGuin... no, I jest, really). But The Glitch came between my serious profile and hers. Then we come to my frivolous profile: I attempted to hail her from that, directing her to my serious profile with what I hoped was an amusing explanation of my complicated attempts to say hi to her and an apology for the profile I was actually contacting her from... though I had to revise the profile a tad to get around her filters. Once again, I got through the censors and around the filters, to bang my head firmly into The Glitch. She could be reached from neither of my two existing profiles. I created a THIRD PROFILE, just for her eyes - and had to re-send my message about five times, pausing to make sure that all the "prefer not to says" that I'd left blank for the purposes of writing a quick profile were correctly filled in, because the site's filters kept blocking me. Finally, I have a third profile that passes muster with which I can say hello! Double check message, click "send;" get "message sent!" message; check "sent messages folder" - and there's nothing there to her.

Sigh. The Glitch, again, presumably. Doors and windows barred; you can't get there from here, or anywhere else.

I have thus re-written that third profile, directed solely at her, with the directions that she visit my blog, should she see it. I really don't know if we're at all compatible - she's slim, and I'm not, and she's a tad older than the person I ideally seek - but after so complex a process, I cannot give up now.

Good day, Ms. Miro. Are you reading this? There's something wrong with your profile, I think - at least SOME people who are interested in saying hello to you cannot do so. Have you read I AM ALIVE AND YOU ARE DEAD, the PK **** bio? It's quite interesting. I have only read a few of ****'s novels, but I admire him greatly... worse, sometimes he reminds me of myself.

I think **** would be amused by all this, don't you?