"Losing All Hope Was Freedom"

I'm not a huge romantic, still I feel like Tyler Durden isn't the ideal philosophical voice to follow when you're looking for love, just leaving a mess of contradictions between me, girls, and the tenuous CupidMail connecting us. I'm currently zero for seven, disheartened and a priori pessimistic, and embracing Fight Club's absurd reductivist nihilism under the illusion that it's not just comforting but even empowering. Roger Ebert simply calls bullshit on Tyler's myopic, emasculated world-view — and I do see the false premise — but short of suffocating myself in Axe™ Deodorant Body Spray, it sure seems like it doesn't matter what the hell I write to simplysara@okcupid.com or art_fiend84@okcupid.com because they won't respond anyway. So, "Hey, cool profile. [Generic question referencing a detail in said profile.] Hope to hear from you soon!" Close my eyes and click send, and at least it's not like I'll be disappointed or anything.

You can see the problem here. I can't tell if I'm suffering from a self-fulfilling prophecy because I do, at least consciously, make my best, honest effort to be appealing and attractive, engaging and interested — and to be sure, that's certainly not my greatest strength — but at the same time, I don't imagine people who are really successful at dating treating it like the love lottery.

Then again, my computer generally behaves the way I want it to, and you'll hardly catch me complaining about how modern technology is inscrutable.

I predicted it would take ten to fifteen CupidMails before I'd figure out the right thing to say, so in that vein, I'm almost fifty to seventy percent of the way there. But it would be nice to know what other guys are Cyrano-ing, maybe cutting out a bunch of the false starts and (utterly adorable) self-doubts plaguing me. Some people might be missing out in the meantime.