"Thou Art More Lovely": Dating with Shakespeare

One of the funniest things about online dating is that you will invariably get professions of love thrown your way.  Sometimes they're annoying but most of the time they're just entertaining.  These emails can even make you feel good...if you're the kind of person who lies to yourself and believes that these are genuine emails and not a copy and paste from some bad modernized Shakespeare inspired sonnet that might have been better received if written in iambic pentameter.

Here are two emails from a user whose name suggests he might be the kind of man who has a dog and covers parts of his body in peanut butter late at night.

Lonely in Queens: It would be an honor and a privilege to get to know you better, and perhaps even take you out...your beauty knows no bounds and is beyond compare...please contact me ASAP. I will be waiting anxiously by my computer for your first sweet message, and I will forever cherish the moment at which I receive it and the day I receive you in my arms.
Me: Thanks for your message but I don't think we'd be a good match. Best of luck.


I figured he would move along...but he sent another email a week later.


Lonely in Queens: A lovely lady of your exceptional calibre surely receives countless messages everyday. They are probably so numerous that you likely don't have enough time to open them all, let alone respond to the ones you actually enjoyed reading. Despite this, and the strong likelihood that you will never respond to this, I felt compelled to write to you anyway. I simply had to. Your profile, what you had to say along with your gorgeous pictures really caught my eye. I believe that if we were to meet, sparks would fly and the earth would shake. Planets would become realigned and flowers would bloom. There is something indescribable, something intangible about you that has attracted me very strongly. Hopefully you will be able to wade through the morass of mediocrity in your inbox from insincere players and find this letter, and then like me enough to respond. With any luck we can meet soon and I can romance you all over our great city. If this were to happen I would be the luckiest man on earth. At the very least I hope you enjoyed reading this.


Putting aside the cheesiness, it is a very nice email, but still a no go.  Considering that my profile is 2 sentences about how I value honesty and a zest of life, the fact that he thinks we'd be a good match based on what I wrote is highly unlikely.  Just tell me you think I'm pretty, also value honesty and would like to meet for a drink, dude.  Also, the fact that I don't live in "our great city" (NYC) shows that while he might do a good job wooing, his reading comprehension is lacking.


I did enjoy reading this, Mr. Lonely.  I think my readers have too!