Journalists have been placing themselves in the throes of danger for centuries. Battlefields, politically unstable nations, places of dubious security, tenuous loyalties and little outside aid — all have been the territory of the most courageous reporters for decades, as they risk everything for the sake of an informed public. We at Buzzbin recognize the power of this brand of intrepid, sometimes perilous investigative reporting. That’s why this writer, in our Valentine’s Day issue, took on an assignment that involved menace, corruption and interactions with a series of alarming strangers — an assignment that led to some of the most depraved places in contemporary society. That’s right. I tried Internet dating. The objective was this: Sign up for a few online matchmaking sites using a real photo and a snarky profile that gave away nothing but my general location, and see what the dating waters were like here in Northeast Ohio. I wanted to see what kind of men used these dating sites, which sites were worth my (or someone’s, at least) time, how an online courtship progressed and what elements of my profile, however stupid, might elicit some interest. Of course, like most of the journalistic experiments we might execute here, it wasn’t quite a full-on fair trial: Glaring Hole #1: I wasn’t actually going to, you know, meet any of these guys in person. Even war correspondents have that moment where they back away from the potentially still active grenade. This was mine. I’m a big fat wimp who listened to too much morning talk radio in high school about the dangers of Myspace predators. And I wasn’t going to text, IM or call them, either. The goal here was to see how far one could get via the sites only, which meant that exchanges were somewhat limited. (And as it turns out, extremely limited for what most people were there for. More on that later.) Glaring Hole #2: We didn’t want to pay for memberships, which meant that the big, legit sites like Match.com and eHarmony were out. This limitation did actually go beyond our general being-a-cheapass syndrome, although not much more: We were looking for a younger demographic in my age range of 18 to 35, a demographic which, historically, is broke. Represent. Glaring Hole #3: We had no gender counterpart. No Buzzbin staffer dude signed up to try these sites out from his perspective. No excuse for this one, unless you count the fact that several sites are free for women to join but charge a fee for men. (If you’re going to call discrimination on this one, we’re behind you — but recommend that you start with ladies’ nights at the bars. Same idea, same concept: if the cleavage is there, the dudes will be.) That just means that these findings are pretty much useless for guys, unless you’re interested in tips on not sounding like a douche on the Internet. (Tip one: please do not get into arguments on forums for webcomics. That applies regardless of online dating.) Still, with my plan riddled with journalistic holes, I forged on and chose two free sites to sign up for: Plenty of Fish (plentyoffish.com) and OkCupid (okcupid.com). With OkCupid, whose site was sleeker and better designed than I would have given it credit for, I wrote a profile that was playful, raunchy and a little weird. I gave myself a new pet (an African land snail), listed toast and Andrew WK as two things I couldn’t live without, and, in a move calculated to test the site’s creep factor, confessed that the one thing I was really good at was blowjobs. Poorly animated cartoons, Doritos, Monty Python, line dancing, Discovery Health and fantasies about Sarah Silverman all made my list — and good quality American red-blooded interests they were. The photo was trickier. I wanted a real picture, but not one that could be instantly identified, and I wasn’t about to go for the standing-in-your-mom’s-bathroom-with-a-cell-phone pose. I went with a middle-ground shot that I counted as indistinct enough. Unfortunately, the only photo that had the right distance and the right imprecision was one that featured me standing in the woods holding a plastic grocery bag. Evidently the Internet was going to have to live with an impression of me as either a piss-poor camper or a convicted violent felon who happened to document the moment she buried the evidence. Uploaded. Done. I moved on to Plenty of Fish, or PoF, whose website design was evidently modeled after Craigslist circa 2004. Its sketchy design and sketchy, to me, profile questions (“Do you have a car?”) made me a little more hesitant, so I skipped the innuendo and just went for bizarre. My PoF alter ego enjoyed frying bacon, William Gibson, my three hamsters, anime, the Japanese cookie pocky and “Real Housewives”, and had a pathological hatred of Lucky Charms. Same photo. The next morning, I checked the two sites. OkCupid elicited five polite new messages — most of them (endearingly) more intrigued by the prospect of a chick who was into cheap cartoons that one who was great in bed. Then I went to PoF. Seventeen new messages. Most of them obscene, one including a request for a threesome. I’d found my story. When perusing the selection of an online dating site, first impressions are important—and the first message sent to a potential romantic interest is crucial. I was disappointed that the vast majority of the men who contacted me opted instead for monosyllabic missives, often misspelled: “hey hwo r u”. Nothing makes an editor less likely to respond to you if it’s clear that most of your communication skills are dependent on predictive texting. But some really got creative. I had to hand it to these guys—at least they tried. (No spelling or grammatical errors have been changed, because it preserves the journalistic integrity and also because we here at Buzzbin were in a hurry to get to the bar.) There were the guys seemed to have the idea that a strong advertising campaign was the way to go: • i stand 6’3’ 165 of lean black angus beef, holding 9 3/4” of pure chocolate known to cause damage with it does it sound good to you • If you’re looking for a stud, that would be me. • We’re having a party…..bring this guy! Others preferred the provocative, alarming, irrelevant or straight-up weird question: • do you like walking around nude at home? • Are you real • u ready to do the 69 with me? • u into black guys? • up 4 a 3some? The honest approach was the choice of a few: • damn lets just fuck…then you can fry me some bacon • im open to try things that are hot. Others decided that they’d go ahead and suggest a date night. One guy, from Flint, Mich., wanted to meet up to “get it in” but couldn’t afford the gas. So he offered to let me drive there: • Lets do it boo!, ready for that road trip, I figured it out, we can chill eat drink, smoke, and laugh, come to Flint, MI for your road trip, on a day off, an lets get it in Another guy forewent verbs in his hurry to get his perfect date plans across: • dbz? and a slam session (For everyone who, like me, thought that a slam session meant spoken coffeehouse poetry and “dBZ” was some kind of measurement on the Weather Channel, that means sex and Dragon Ball Z. Thank you for forgiving my confusion.) One guy even offered to compensate me for my trouble, even though he conveyed the request in what sounded like the voice of an angry Korean grocer and even though to cash he offered couldn’t have paid to replace the spark plugs in my car. I’m thinking the subsequent offer of Applebee’s meant that he wasn’t an undercover cop: • Him: you make me horney, me pay you $150 now, you sucky sucky long time, ok lol Me: $150? Really? Him: 150 yes i would but im like a 2.5 hr drive from you, lol you have to stay the night, do ya like apple bezz What was consistent, from the bashful one-liners to the most insistent budding erotica authors, were requests to move our conversation off the dating site. If you’re on a site, here’s why: The sites monitor the content of all exchanges that take place via their email and instant-message programs, both text and words. When I wrote someone a message that included a joke about our ex-vice president, for instance, it sent reading “*****Cheney”. Which means that everyone responds by trying to get you off the site and onto anything that’s less regulated — many of them sites I was unaware still existed, like AOL instant messenger. I got Yahoo! chat requests, Hotmail chat requests, Skype and text requests. At the final count, no less than 47 guys had sent me a phone number. And this was with a two-inch, pixilated, fully clothed, unattractive photo and the disclosure that one of my most central interests was hamsters. Some of them were more insistent than others. I had this exchange at the end of December: • Him: hey hot stuff Me: Damn, now I’ve got that Donna Summer song in my head! Him: whT donna summers song lol Me: “Hot Stuff”… Him: ur silly lol but ru on here for an entimint inconter? Me: If by “entimint” you mean “intimate” and “inconter” you mean “encounter”. Him: haha ya so u got a pic phone? Him: do u got a pic phone?? Him: hey just txt me *** *** **** [As ruthless as this article might be, we stop at revealing names and numbers.] Me: Damn, so eager to get me off of this site! Him: haha no i just wanna snd nudes maybe mt up Him: so was u going to txt me or message me back or do u not wanna tlk to me?? Me: Sorry. I live in the real world and had been having Christmas with the family. Because it’s Christmas. Are you Jewish? Him: no im not jewish but that dnt meen we cant fuck u kno?? After a while, this insistence started to get fun. For the record, when women complain that men are only interested in physical appearances, they’ve never met this guy: •  Him: nice body. I would love to see you naked. Me: As soon as the stitches come out! Him: um ok? it’s all good. you can always send me a tit shot. I can send you some too. you can send me some of your tits. But would love to see that sexy body anyway. And this dude never responded after I shared my favorite website with him. (To be fair, Google Chrome does say I visit it the most often): • Him: sup sexy what u up to Me: Not a thing. You? Him: chillin about to look up porn lol Me: Don’t you believe in bookmarks? Him: yea but the same site gets old after awhile i want something new lol i always go to youporn.com Him: what sites u like Me: Weather.com. Sometimes the weirdness was funny —  like the He-Man wannabe who signed off every missive with “By the power of Grayskull”. Other times it was downright creepy: One idiot told me about his white pride tattoo (“everyone thinks im a clansmen btu im white and proud” he misspelled) before anything else. An older guy told me he was looking sex and an heir to his beach house, then asked if I was interested in buying a car off of him. (I directed him to eBay.) Another guy told me he was a vegan polyamorist who had a girlfriend but was looking to add another. (I told him I was open to polyamory, but not to veganism.) And then there were inexplicable exchanges like this one: * Him: hey how r ya Me: Bloated. Him: NICE!!! But here’s the surprise: The Internet is honestly full of nice guys, even on Plenty of Fish. The creepsters are there, but there were dozens of dudes who were honest, funny, respectful and self-effacing. As hilarious as this foray was, we can’t knock online dating completely. After all, there are guys like this one: * Him: what are you up to Me: Watching MST3K. Him: marry me Photo credit Lucky Tom (This picture was used for illistration purposes only.  This is not Molly Lehman or ‘neohottie69″)