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rocketshipready
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"Hi, I'm rocketshipready. I saw your post on craigslist when I was looking for people into biking, so I figured I'd drop you a line. Anyway, I'm x years old, just moved here, I love biking and bike camping, blah blah blah description. Anyway, you seemed cool from your post, and it'd be good to have someone to chat with about bike stuff.
PS: Here's a pic of me on my last camping trip to Mount Wannahockaloogie."
Basically let her know your age, a brief description of yourself (brief! not your life story, but who you are/what you do/basic personality), and a good, clear picture of yourself hopefully doing something fun.
Thread's done.
Online dating/friend making is hardly the stigma it used to be, I know plenty of success stories now, especially from people moving to new places. I mean don't get me wrong, sometimes people mis-represent themselves etc, but you just move on when this happens.
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Good luck! I met my current girlfriend on the internet (not craigslist... a site called plentyoffish.com which incidentally is not a bad site... it's completely free, but there are a lot of crazies you have to weed through) and we've been together for over 9 months now. Sometimes it can work out.
Trowizilla's got it. It's simple: 1) don't be creepy. 2) Enclose a good picture of yourself wearing clothes, including a shirt, and not with other chicks. 3) Tell a little bit about yourself so you don't sound impersonal and spammy. 4) Don't ask for a picture of her, sending yours is an implicit request for hers. 5) Do NOT reveal a bunch of baggage in your email, e.g., "I'm looking for a woman that will be faithful and honest." 6) Stay open-minded.
One thing to note about Craigslist is that in the last year or so a huge amount of the postings on there have become spam. Depending on the locale it may be more than 50%. If you post an ad on there, you're likely to get minimum 5 emails "responding" to your ad that are fully bogus. Even ads that LOOK legitimate may be bogus: you'll email and they'll use it as a vehicle to spam you. Get a Hotmail address and don't give personally identifying details until you're sure the other person is legit. First name OK, last name not so much at first. "I go to school X and major in Y" OK, "I work 5-9 as a cashier at the Best Buy in Podunk," not so much.
Good luck and have fun!
What about other sites like Match, or say OkCupid or PlentyofFish? I'm thinking I should just start message every girl that looks even remotely interesting in hopes of some kind of a reply. Since I would already have a profile and picture up, how would the etiquette for messaging work? I'm complete social retard, so I really need advice on this should really work. Otherwise, I'll probably be doing all this for naught (it's all been for naught up to this point, and I'm hoping to change that).
I met my wife on Match.com, so I'm as close to an online dating expert as you're going to find. Whatever you do, don't be the guy who sends a generic message to every cute girl on the site--they can see you coming a mile away. You're the digital version of that guy in the bar pointing at every girl and saying, "Heeeeeeey!" Read the profiles, send an actual email (not a wink or whatever) and mention some specifics (e.g. "You like the Red Sox? Me too!" or, "Wow, we both have an inappropriate love for the works of Jeremy Irons!"). Don't try to be funny unless you're actually a funny guy. Basically, be yourself. Remember that your goal is to find the right person, not successfully go on first dates with 50 women.
This is also very important. After you get past the first few get to know you emails that establish you aren't a creepy guy or a psycho, meet in person as soon as possible. All those getting to know you conversations are a lot better in person, and if you prolong the email relationship you'll eventually run into the problem of being disappointed when you finally meet because your mind has played a little trick where it substitutes all your ideals for missing information about her.
Secondly, whether it's email or not, remember, you're still attempting to iniate conversation. This person doesn't know you, you don't know them. The nice thing is you've already got something in common. Be confident.
There are a million places on the net to find info on this but here's about how I see it.
The most important thing, I think, would be to lose any guilt, feelings of stupidness, lameness, or anything like it. If you're messaging someone on a dating site, remember, they signed up too. Plus, as mentioned above, the online dating scene doesn't really have the stigma it once did.
Same type of thing as above, only you've got an advantage. Their profile tells you alot about them, often more than they would tell someone they met on the street right away. So you don't have to poke and prod for conversation pieces. I think you'll find that as long as you're polite, and have a genuine interest, people are responsive, just like when you meet people in person.
You already have angles to ask questions from their profile. So say hi, introduce yourself. Let them know a bit about yourself. Share a couple of your interests, even if it's on your profile. Find some common ground, tell them what you liked about their profile, i.e. why it was interesting. Ask a few questions. Mind you, nothing too personal. How many people they've met on match is NOT good starter conversation.
After that, just sign it with however you choose, but I wouldn't use cliche'd lines like "hope to hear from you soon." Simple, is better.
Remember this message is the start. You shouldn't go telling random strangers your address, phone number, or even the personal email you use day to day.
Good luck
Lt;dr: Use the same format as Trow, but use what you know to get the conversation rolling.
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. "
-Aldous Huxley
Applies right-the-hell-on in any dating situation, but particularly so online. If a girl sounds ehhhh but you're tempted to message her anyway because she's cute...well, if you want to try, go for it. But you don't have to.
Actually, I'd lime most of the thread if I could.
Please don't be that guy. Trust me, people can tell when you're just shotgunning you're replies.
"Hey, [Profile Name Goes Here],
How are you? My name is MichaelLC, and I just wanted to say I saw [Favorite Movie Name Here] too! I think it'll be a huge sucess."
Well, I'm not really shotgunning. I was planning to point something out/ask a question about something in their profile so they know I actually read it. Trust me, I've seen some that, while they are cute in their picture, what they wrote in the profile made me cringe a little and decided to not message them. So I am reading profiles and only messaging the ones that seem interesting or we have something in common. And I'm going to give sort of a coded email address, like saying dalboz at paforums (one that doesn't reveal my name, although I sign my messages with my first name) since I know the Match service will switch any email addresses to their own to "protect privacy."
I don't want be over-critical, but I don't know that this sort of thing is necessary. (Read: helpful.) That is, unless your sole goal is to advertise for PAforums. Just be you, they have a means to communicate with you, the message system you're contacting them at initially. For a first message, my honest opinion is, I'd be much less likely to respond to someone asking to communicate somehow outside of said system.
Take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt, I've never done match.com or any of that, but it seems like maybe you're over complicating this. There's no need to approach this with some sort of trickery to beat the "system."
You know, thinking about all this, maybe it really is as easy as it sounds. Maybe I'll go sign up...o_O
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. "
-Aldous Huxley
Oh, no. I was just giving an example with the "dalboz at paforums" thing. I'm not actually using that. I'm using a username at gmail. The reason I want to do that is because places like Match require you to have a paid subscription to not only send messages, but to reply to them as well (last I saw of J-Date, the require a paid subscription to get into your inbox). This way, they can reply if they don't have a paid subsciption. Free ones like OkCupid or PlentyofFish I probably wouldn't bother with doing that.