About half of women’s profiles complain about generic, overly simple, and outright copy/pasted openers. “Put in some effort,” they ask. “Be unique, read my profile, start a real conversation.”

And what do they do when presented with several paragraphs’ worth of talk about goals, aspirations, prior adventures and upcoming plans?

Here’s a few days worth of received openers. This “Hey there :)” crap consistently makes up about 90% of first messages. Great conversation starters.

This is normal, and to make matters worse, these are real people, not bots – I’ve talked to a few for the sake of checking. Why is the capitalization, smiley face, and (lack of) grammar identical? Beats me. Maybe POF offers some pre-written messages for women to choose from, lest the precious darlings tire of coming up with one of their own? Wouldn’t surprise me at this point.

Best of all, these will keep coming even if your profile explicitly says to not send a “Hey there :)” message, because for all the complaining women do about guys “not reading” their (wonderfully identical) profiles, the vast majority of them only care about your looks.