A Real Earful

that’s umm…not really weird or bad

I must disagree, zomboid. Asking about child abuse on the first date? Awkward and strange. The email is erratically written albeit entertaining.

ok so the date sounds less than fantastic (child abuse should probaby be on the no-go list for first date discussion topics…) but I’m actually pretty charmed by the followup email. Yeah it’s quirky but it’s clever, awkward and kind of cute! I would actually give someone a second chance after getting an email like that.

I actually like this chick, she’s got a great sense of humor.

I agree with Em. Not that terrible and certainly more interesting than the kind of conversation you’re stuck with on most online dates. I would’ve given her a second chance if she were cute enough.

True, the date doesn’t sound terrible— but the email’s horrific!

The email isn’t awful because she happens to discuss severed appendages, it’s awful because it’s such a disjointed, pretentious attempt to seem like a wacky, free-spirited bohemian.

———————
She “rocked” the Car Free Portland event (hipster cred point #1).

Identification with a misunderstood artistic genius (hipster cred #2).

Professed desire to do something outrageous & devil-may-care, like cutting off her ear (hipster cred #3). (Sure, honey, we can ALL “totally see the appeal of cutting off our ear”– why waste time toiling a lifetime to attain artistic immortality, when you can leapfrog all that hard work by copping a famous, incidental gesture? Voila! I’m an artistic genius too!)

Tiresome reference to piercings (hipster cred #4).

Gratuitous mention of the welded-leg decorating her apartment (hipster cred #5)

Why does somebody have to be “tactful” to ask someone if they want to go out again (oh, excuse me– hipsters don’t “go” out, they “hang” out)? (hipster cred #6, for referring to a date as “hanging out”)

The self-congratulatory reference to her earlier reference to severed appendages. (hipster cred #7)
——————–

Her stream-of-consciousness ravings make her sound like an insufferable teenager, circa 1995. Blech! Does this girl attend art school, by any chance?

If I didn’t have a girlfriend, I’d get her e-mail from you and follow up. She sounds fun. What the heck kind of e-mail do you expect? She has a sense of humor that I can appreciate.

May I have her email? This chick sounds rad!

PS..I’m using that email. It’s ready to go in my draft folder!

Oh Jesus! Run! She is the type that would cut your dick off.

She sounds awesome, actually. If she was a guy I’d go out with her.

Now I can’t see myself asking about child abuse on a first date, but I can see myself writing an email like that if I liked someone and the first date didn’t go so well. Geez, this was your worst first date ever? You sound boring.

I’m with Lisa on this one. Nothing about the date is horrible, but it sounds like this girl was trying way too hard to seem quirky and interesting. I hope she’s just really young; I could forgive this from someone under 25, I think. Or maybe she’s actually socially awkward, I don’t know. At any rate, meh. There are ten thousand girls in Portland just like that, so if the OP changes his mind, he’s got options.

From my perspective, her erratic writing readily suggests akin erratic personality.You ran away from her and rightfully so. This kind of “trying-too-hard” artsy, type chic should stick with their male equivalent in the cesspool.I fathom you’re a Bio major?..stick with science gal’s, they can be nerdy for the most, but definetely smart,interesting and won’t waste your time writing sophistry. Just my take lol

girl has something to prove. personally, I think that is one of the least attractive qualities a person could be stuck with.

What’s so strange with joking about cutting her ear off? She had an ear infection after all, and it was probably painful or at least irritating.

LOL@Nine. gg.

And I am 100% with Lisa on this one. Even though I am one of those eccentric artsy types, I see through that email as an attention whore attempt at being told “oooh, you’re unique.” She reminds me of this evil girl I know who talks like she knows everything when she knows only a little (gotta love people who read wikipedia and then are suddenly knowledgeable in everything you and everyone else does).

People who have something to prove are highly unattractive. Nothing is more annoying than someone trying to prove they are someone they aren’t.

@ Lisa – that was epic.

Sounds like an MPD- Manic Pixie Dreamgirl: see Natalie Portman’s character in “Garden State” (waaaay overrated). Her music will like change your life and her forced weird cute ways are supposed to charm and suprise you…they don’t.
Lisa. I would cut off my ear for you!

Oops.

In retrospect, maybe she WAS just trying to make a joke out of her ear infection– I kinda whizzed past the specific reason she was taking Sudafed (the business about feeling “eternally bonded to Van Gogh” suddenly seems a little LESS out-of-left-field, I guess).

Annoying hipster chick, or misunderstood comic genius?

This girl is awsome. You are just boring and need to find another boring person to mate with so you can have a boring uncreative life with.
Maybe she thought you had been abused as a child because you were so withdrawn and boring.
Seriously like pearls before swine. I bet you freaked out and ignored her completely afterwards. Loser.
I’d love to meet this girl, she sounds fun. Like the kind of girl you could have crazy convos with at 1am.

I think the email is awesome!

Asking about child abuse is over the line unless she was obviously joking. Since you dind’t find her email funny, that is probably the case.

Once I went on a date while I was on vicoden and I realized the next day that for half the night I sat silent and the other half I talked nonstop about crazy things that didn’t make any sense.

I think she sounds pretty cool and that she a great sense of humor as well and is just testing you so to speak and you failed.

I’m with Lisa and the hipster cred list. That email, combined with her hour-long monologue about herself – lots of me-me-me going on there.

The poster of this story definitely fails at dating.

This confirms that people think I’m faking it when I realize they think I’m weird. Strange is the new chick, but I have always been strange. And people have always accused me of “putting on an act”. I’m 27 and only just figured this out. This girl seems ok. I think we would get along and I think she really is kinda weird. Go strange girl!

No, there’s nothing wrong with the email except that the girl probably belongs to http://www.latfh.com

Email is too quirky and cute and weird to be genuinely charming.

Ugh, I dated a dude who was like this. He was too insecure to ask for a date in a normal way, so he sent me inane e-mails very much like the one posted here.

Instead of beginning with the usual “Hi, how are you,” he would launch right into how he wanted to build a house out of cardboard boxes and eat cereal every day, because the status quo is overrated, and he was really into freedom, you know, like riding a bicycle in the clear air instead of being a slave to a car made by an evil corporation and bla bla bla…

He would then make a self-conscious comment about how this was probably the weirdest e-mail I had ever gotten, and he would invariably close with, “Hit me up, yo. Peace.”

Vomit.

Lisa is bang on the money. She probably has hippie parents who told her incessantly how cute and funny she is. Spending any time with her would be exhausting! Maybe she’d be fun in really small doses, but I bet in person she’s not as amusing, clever or interesting as she thinks she is.

garter snake and the other ppl that agreed with lisas first comment, u sound like bitches. sometimes wierd, artsy, crazy ppl arent ‘trying too hard’, they just ARE that way. just because someone seems abnormal doesnt mean its an act. i admit im not crazy about hipsters – mostly because they deride everything but stand for nothing – but y’all have exceeded their average bitchiness with this one…

Asking personal questions on a date!

Running to catch a bus!

Making jokes in a followup email!

I’d think the OP was a little odd and dull himself (not that there’s anything wrong with that) except that so many have shown up in this thread to tar and feather his date for her presumption. So he may be dull, but apparently he is only too ordinary.

No need to get in touch, she’s already been touched in the head.

me: It’s just that all of the genuinely artistic people I know, the ones who are talented and serious about making art or writing or making music or whatever it is, act like pretty normal people. They don’t go around trying to convince everyone else how unique and artistic they are, because their work does that for them. So yeah, it’s irritating when hipsters–and if the chick in this story wasn’t a hipster, I’ll eat a trucker hat–are automatically considered “artistic” just because they try to be different.

It’s also annoying when people who consider themselves eccentric–and by the way, everyone is eccentric; everybody’s weird, okay?–use that as license to make others uncomfortable. You don’t bring up abuse on a first date. I don’t care if you’re an uninhibited, artistic person who just finished reading On the Road. You still need a filter when you’re interacting with people, especially people you don’t know. What if the OP had been abused?

smelltheglove : Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State is exactly who I was thinking of when I read this, but I couldn’t remember the name of the movie. I guess I’d blocked it from my memory.

We should note that this story was submitted by a female.

Garter Snake…We’ve said weird…quirky…hipster…but where did you get artistic? Yes I also hate people who try to pretend they’re artistic when they just want to appear alternative, but I don’t see how this has anything to do with this girl.

Some of us aren’t pretending that art has anything to do with it…we’re just different. I suck at art…that doesn’t make me not odd.

I agree with you MMMichelleMarch….when you’re a strange person that people don’t know how to relate to or someone who rubs people the wrong way, they want to think that you would just change that part about yourself. They don’t know why you would be like that by nature, so they assume that you’re faking it for attention.

Sorry normal people, I don’t step on toes and alienate co-workers by choice, I’m just different. And by the way, I would change if I could, believe me, I’ve tried.

The person I was responding to, “me,” said “artsy.” I find that word incredibly annoying, so I subbed “artistic.”

You and MMMichelle have both said something akin to, “I really AM different.” Don’t you think everyone on earth feels that way? Do you think there are people who go, “Oh, yeah, I have to live by the rules, because I’m just an average person. But that girl over there is different; I can’t hold her to the same standard of politeness I expect from normal people.” Pretty much every person in the world thinks he or she is unique, different from everyone else. It’s important to find ways to interact with others without being offensive or stepping on toes. (The people whose toes you’re stepping on think they’re pretty darn different and special, too.) My closest friends know how strange I am, and I know what a pack of weirdos they are. That doesn’t mean that we all go around being rude, alienating people, asking near-strangers personal questions; we’re adults now, and we’ve learned how to operate within a society. “I’m just different” never excuses a lack of tact.

MysteryGuest:

Asking invasive personal questions that might bring up a rush of traumatic memories on a first date!

Running to catch a bus without even saying goodbye!

Sending a lame follow-up email full of look-at-how-interesting-I-am, unfunny hipster-cred “jokes!”

If this stuff is appealing to you, good luck.

Idiosyncrasies are something we all possess, and are a mixed bag– you determine which of yours are useful or counterproductive, then cultivate the good, eliminate the bad. The useful are what’re known as ‘virtues’, the counterproductive as ‘vices’.

To those of you who profess to be “weird” or “different”— are you confident that your idiosyncrasies are worthwhile? How are you weird, exactly? (Yes, it’s an impertinent question, but you were the ones who made the claim.)

It’s become so fashionable to affect the pose of misunderstood, eccentric, beautiful-loser that these qualities are now practically a prerequisite to success in artistic fields. People now boast of being “weird” as though it were a badge of honor.

Freethought tempered by intelligence & courage is a good kind of weird; self-indulgent navel-gazing is the stupid, annoying kind. Choose your weird with care.

I don’t really think that it matters, that OP was also a girl. Thanks for the info anyway, admin.

The masses: “OP sounds like a boring guy for not giving the hipster a chance”
Admins: “OP is a girl”
The masses: “You mean she’s bisexual?”

Well said, Lisa.

*sigh* Repeat after me:

You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

If I wasn’t a chick… I’d be soooo into Lisa <3

I'm not an eccentric, free-spirited bisexual either, so I guess this love will never be

I have got to learn to stop reading comments on sites like these. I can’t believe how judgmental so many people here are being. The girl had an ear infection and was taking medication, so maybe that’s why she spoke carelessly during the date. The email likewise sounds a little disjointed as if written while on meds.

And so what if she makes sure to mention biking and the welded leg on her wall? Maybe you’ve forgotten what it’s like to date, but that’s how people try to figure out if they should see each other: they reveal their interests and quirks to each other to see if their personalities fit.

Anyone who finds the email obnoxious, just accept that hey, this wouldn’t be the kind of person you’d get along with. That doesn’t make her an obnoxious hipster or a fake or a flake. It just makes her the kind of person who’s not right for you, but would be right for the commenters who found the email fun and cute.

The girls sounds ok and normal… she realised she was talking about herself and tried to make up for that on the date by asking the OP some questions, why didn’t he volunteer information about himself rather than wait to be asked?

Cute e-mail, nothing wrong with that. I’ve just rated my first 1 star to the OP for thinking there was anything wrong with his date!

Well, I’m completely random myself, and I liked it. A girl who digs beneath the surface, appreciates the weird, and has enough confidence to be cutely sexy. I don’t see any red flags, just a girl who is unafraid to be open and personal, instead of conventionally dull.

Your loss, I suspect, but not hers. Someone will ‘get’ her, and they’ll have a funky, abstract life. You will have beige walls.