Now, a lot of you out there don’t care whether I would finish reading your profile after I was exposed to it. For lots of you, you’re trying to dismay or disgust a whole different demographic. Other than an empty profile, there’s no sure way to turn off everyone at once. Someone out there just loves your typo-ridden screed, written in all caps, about how you’re just HERE TO HAV FUN AN MAKE FREINDS LOL, and if they’re the person you’re trying to attract, then you’re golden.

If, however, you are interested in turning away my demographic specifically, there are some key things you can do to get me clicking the back button as fast as my little mouse can click.

”I give great massages.”
Unless you are a massage therapist, and you’re talking about work, this makes you come off like Creepy Back-rub Guy. Bonus points if you said that you were “good with your hands.”

”I’m a Burner”
Especially in the first sentence of your profile. I don’t care if you go to Burning Man, many fine and wonderful people that I love go to Burning Man, but if you, when tasked with describing yourself, choose to self-identify primarily as a person who likes to get high in the desert, I am going to think you are a flake. You probably are.

”I have really eclectic tastes: [Insert giant list of things that are the same]”
Hey, it’s cool if you found what you like and are sticking to it, please don’t say you’re eclectic when you’re not, it just looks like you’re trying too hard.

”Ayn Rand”
No.

”I have a great sense of humor”
In my experience, no one I have known who had a great sense of humor, needed to tell me so, and no one who told me so was telling the truth.

”Living It”
Oh yeah, right there in the “What I’m Doing With My Life” section. This is almost always paired with the great sense of humor.

”Sex”
Hahahaha, awesome, they asked what you spent your time thinking about, and you said: Sex. Because it’s a dating website. And you’re here to get sex. Dude, I totally get it.

Excessive discussion of: tantra, holistic medicine, reflexology, accupressure, meditation, your organic anything
A little crunchy? Awesome, I’ll be honest I’m a little crunchy too, but if it comes up more than once in your profile, I’m inclined to think that you’re Inappropriate Yoga Guy.

”Polymath”
I’m pretentious and self-educating and even I find this term pretentious. Plus, experience has shown me that most people who identify with this term know just enough to have heard the word “polymath” before and not a lot more.

Jokes about being owned by your cat
Dude, I have a cat, she’s a great cat, I love her to bits, I don’t make this joke because a) I buy the cat food and am bigger than her, so I’m pretty confident in who owns who and b) I am not one of those weird cat people who ascribes detailed motivation to a creature that mostly wants to be fed and petted.

Bonus poly people edition:

”Intentional Community”
Great in theory, in practice everyone who I’ve ever heard talking about this has been so profoundly annoying they’ve chased away all their unintentional community.

”Join our family”
Nothing says, “put on this shapeless dress and come drink this strangely bitter kool-aid” more than this phrase. Alternately it can also mean, “looking for threesomes, no fat chicks.”

Anything about the restrictiveness/close-mindedness of monogamy
Relationships have rules because the people in them want to treat each other decently, some relationships include rules about not having relationships with other people, some don’t. The presence or absence of this one particular rule doesn’t make a relationship restrictive or close-minded, but thinking it does suggests you’re one of those “evolved” poly people who make my eyeballs hurt. Kindly restrain your ego.

Chances are, people will disagree with some of my statements here. The awesome thing is that I am not picking their dates, I am picking mine. The other awesome thing is that my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek here, and I suspect that most of my readers can recognize exaggeration for comic effect.