Come on, what do you really think?

So here's how to NOT win friends and influence people. . .

This guy in my program messaged me on OKCupid, this personality test/dating site thing that purports to cater to sort of hip nerds, but really only to 23 year olds trying to make it and to balding men over thirty who are in neuroscience or program video games.

His first message was just kind of like, "haha! I see you!" Fine, whatever. I wrote some kind of acknowledgement back. But THEN, he writes this back to me:

"so - did you intentionally put less than perfect pictures of yourself up on this profile?

you are way hotter in person, and i doubt it's a non-photogenic thing. trying to screen out the guys who are interested in looks only? :P"

What kind of not-overly-backhanded compli-sult is THAT? You have bad pictures, in fact, they're so bad that anyone who cares about looks is not going to message you.

Are you kidding me? How could you expect to win favor with someone by starting off by telling them that their pictures suck? Maybe the idea is that I would suffer such a severe drop in momentary self-esteem that by the time the compliment appears, sandwiched between insults, I feel so desperate as to decide that actually, yes, what I'm missing in my life is someone just like him. And second, it's not like we're even friends -- tough love is not sanctioned for acquaintances. Social skills, however, are always in order.