For those of you who don’t know, I am very active on Twitter (follow me!) I tweet all day long…
*Tweet* I have muthertrucking cramps!
*Tweet* STOP! Brownie time.
*Tweet* Why the freak hasn’t Jorge texted back?
You get the picture. I can even tweet from my phone, so why not tweet during a date to tell everyone how it’s going? I’ll tell you why not.
***
It was a Monday evening and I was completely exhausted. I really didn’t feel like going on this date, but the rest of my week was booked and I would’ve felt rude cancelling last minute. The bar we were meeting at was close by, so I sucked it up and went.
I knew immediately that it wasn’t a good match. He wasn’t hideous, just not my type. I’d known he was a computer nerd, but geek can go one of two ways: chic or eek. This was more eek.
He wore a blue chambray button down tucked into his jeans and sported a gold stud in his left ear – complete with matching chain necklace. Nothing wrong with that, just… not my type.
I wished I could turn around, drive home and get into my pajamas. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I sat down and ordered a pilsner. I knew that although there was no point, I’d have to sit there and make small talk with this man for at least an hour.
I should’ve gone home.
The Inquisition
He seemed a little nervous and was much more hyper than I could handle that night. He fired question after question at me so fast I could barely take a breath – much less chug the beer that would’ve helped make the interrogation more bearable. I like when a man tries to get to know me, but this guy was like a question bot.
You went to Japan?What was your favorite part?Did you ride the bullet train?What was that like?Was it really fast?What else did you do?What cities did you go to?
I was so not in the mood for this. If we lived on Planet Honest, I could’ve just said, “You know what, I’m beyond tired and really not feeling this so why don’t we call it a night?” But we live on Earth and I didn’t want to be impolite.
I should’ve been honest.
Tweet Gone Wrong
I excused myself and went to the bathroom. While there, I pulled out my phone and typed a tweet to my Twitter followers:
“Sneaking a tweet, the guy is a geek. With a gold earring and a necklace. Need to escape!”
I tapped “send,” but since AT&T blows, the words “Message send failed” appeared. I tried to troubleshoot for a minute but finally gave up and went back to my eek.
Back at the table, he asked to see my iPhone (he was considering buying one). I handed it over without thinking and he started playing around while I stared out the window, envious of the people driving by in their cars, heading home. Then he held the phone to my face.
And there was the tweet.
It didn’t register at first, because the “message fail” text lay on top of the text I’d tweeted. I just took the phone and said “Oh, figures, AT&T.” But then I realized what had happened and my stomach started to feel googly.
Ohhhhh, shit! Did he see it? Maybe he just saw the fail message. But what if he didn’t? What if he saw the horrid, petty words I tweeted about him? Omigod, omigod. I am such a rotten bitch!
At first he didn’t seem affected, but shortly after, his demeanor changed. He was quieter and stared at his drink like he’d find the meaning of life there. I wondered how well I was concealing the turmoil I felt inside. After about 10 more minutes of blah-blah I suggested that we go.
He walked me to my car, shook my hand and said it was nice meeting me. Oh, I’m sure. About as nice as a deep tissue massage from Freddy Krueger.
Later that night I checked my chemistry.com account and saw that he’d already moved me from “active” to “archived” matches. I can’t say I blame him.
It was one of those times when you just feel like a truly horrible person – like Kanye West, or one of those mean girls from Mean Girls.
I don’t have many regrets in life, but the moments I do regret are the times when I’ve unnecessarily hurt other people.
So please, take this as a lesson and heed this important public service announcement:
Do not, under any circumstances, date and tweet.
Categories: True Story
Single Girl Blogging 
I don’t date and tweet but I definitely shove ye ole foot in the mouth mostly unintentionally. I hope most of these guys forget it within the hour, but I remember my gaffes much longer!
We so often project our own thoughts on to others. I wonder if he in fact didn’t even see the failed Tweet, but instead picked up on your awkwardness, in turn making him awkward. And since you feared he saw what you had hoped he didn’t see, you started ‘looking for’ all the signs to prove yourself right. Sounds complicated but we do it more often than we think.
Either way, you can feel a bit better knowing he was the one who archived you. I see it as a blessing, no?
Onto the next!
And sadly, if he saw your twitter I.D. then he could be following you and have tracked back to this very blog post. Crikey.
I say date & tweet, but don’t get caught 😉 lol. But yes living on planet honest instead of earth would be soooo much easier insteAd we have to sit through horrible dates or figure out an excuse to get out of them. Why can’t we just say thanks but no thanks or something along tbose lines. Yet we can diss & dismiss club guys left & right at least I do. Happy dating!
Plus, his interest in Japan could be a prelude to going to Japan where American men do extremely well with women. I didn’t see anything in the post that said he did not have a very high IQ, decent height, good breath and decent pecs – I just saw a criticism of something he could correct in 10 seconds.
Then he can blog about how much better social life in Japan is, blog about how he had grilled some “unattractive American woman” about Japan and how she had the nerve to think he was interested in her and not her knowledge of Japan and then the guy you might actually want would read this and read more about Japan and be in Tokyo on the day you otherwise would have met. 😉
The Internet is filled with incredulous guys saying “how did this woman believe I could actually be interested in her for more than one night”. It really does put men into shock when they see women think they are rejecting him for more than what the men wanted that night. It is often projection on the woman’s part, although in this case I will assume that the man would have been glad to get into a long term relationship (LTR) with SingleGirl if she had been willing.
Also, in the above case, he was clearly still a geek in need of learning to be a man.
To the contrary: You did this guy a great favor. You had just laid it on the table that you were not attracted and sat there facing him ready to answer questions…enabling him to find out why and improve himself.
You even gave a huge specific piece of advice to him: Lose the women’s jewelry if he wanted to date your demographic.
Most women would not have been so nice, would not have told him the necklace was a No-Go, and would not have provided the opportunity for him to ask how he could otherwise improve himself (which is what 75% of so-called stalkers are really doing when they call women – often men who keep calling are not any longer interested in the woman so much as trying to learn the exact reason for the lack of interest so they could correct the problem or know that a particular sub-community is screwed up and in need of avoiding).
Unfortunately, he became even more of a geek and failed to take the golden opportunity. That would be like when I was 16 and a group of 17 year old girls started singing “Jimmy, Faggot, Jimmy, Faggot” – and I just sat in the front seat of my mother’s car and did nothing.
They would all be way over the hill now while I date in the 18-25 range now. If I would bother to go to a high-school reunion, I would have the last laugh.
He will probably think about that Tweet a lot and learn from it big time. Especially if he is reading this blog post now.
He could have taken the gold chain and earring off quietly in front of you and then calmly said “What do you think about the phrase Men Age Like Wine, Women Age Like Milk?” If you started to talk about Demi Moore, he could laugh and say “that attitude explains why you feel you can date a guy your own age like me long term…listen, I may be young and still somewhat of a geek, but 20 years from now I will be looking just fine and dating women younger than you. Where will you be at?”
Your response would no longer be condescending and filled with pity. You’d be pissed (or happy that he was finally sticking up for himself). You may have become angry enough to let him have it, full bore, why you were not interested in him.
And he would learn from your response.
And then go out, minus the gold jewelry, and get someone 5 years younger.
Do you have stories of guys you rejected who actually had the guts to ask why?
I’ve also wondered a lot: do American guys generally take rejection badly or turn the pity table around and ask for non-condescending advice like I described, or do they mostly go out meek and mild like this guy?
Can you point me to any posts you made where a guy turned the pity table around like above? Obviously you would think such guys are jerks, but I can guarantee that, if you posted about an experience you had where a guy said what I just said, you would be getting a lot of traffic to the comments section from all over the net.
Finally, what, honestly, could he have said after quietly removing the jewelry that would have sparked your interest in at least being real friends? (No, leaving the jewelry on would not have been a good idea for him)
Honestly, there’s nothing he could have said. Jewelry or not, I just wasn’t attracted to him. The jewelry just didn’t help.
Oh lord, if I had a smartphone, I’m sure that this kind of stuff would happen to me all the time. Thankfully, my phone dates back to the Stone Age, and I have found many other ways to embarrass myself and otherwise shoot myself in the foot.
But if I ever acquire such a modern device, I will heed your advice and refrain from dating and tweeting. Dating and blogging get me into enough trouble as it is!
Yeah, I manage to make an ass of myself with or without the phone. I suppose the tweet was just one more way to do just that. Yippee!
Oh that’s so funny, it’s something I would do also. Thanks for the laugh. But think of it this way. Maybe he’ll lose the earring and necklace now and be on the road to a successful date. I’m still trying to think of a nice way to tell my husband’s friend that a pot plant gold pinky ring is not the way to go. lol
Well, I suppose there are some girls who might be into that. I’m just not one of them. Well, not on him anyway. Jewelry is cool on some edgy musician types. But not gold, and not on nerds. IMHO.
Ouch! Yet totally something I would do!
Not anymore, I hope! Learn from my stupidity.
I had a similar thing happen, but much more in their face. My iPhone was setup so that if I got a text message while the phone was locked it would display the message on the screen. Sure enough, had a date in the car with the phone in a position that she could see the screen. I receive an elicit incoming message from a former FWB, the phone beeps, she glances down and sees the text, and now I’m explaining who the sender of message is and why she is hot and hoping I’m free tonight.
My phone no longer displays a preview of the message…and I keep it on silent and in my pocket.
Ooh, well that sounds like a real pickle. Hope she understood. That would bug me out though, too!
Noted. I’m happy to have learned from your experience:)
If someone benefits from my idiocy, my work here is done. Well, not even close.
ah, that sucks, yo. a tough line to tread – and a lesson we all totally need.
Thanks, hun. Yup, don’t do it.
Ha, ha! I shall learn from your mistake!
Good, good. Glad to share my wisdom.
Well, on the upside he may have quietly decided to ditch the jewellery and go get himself a make over and so, as painful as that probably was, you brought him one step closer to getting laid.
Being a lover of geeks (bearded ones, particularly…), I understand them to be pretty self deprecating and innate problem solvers. He would want to fix this and after a lot of soul searching and (hopefully) a few more dates. over the years (kidding!), he’d be just fine. Who knows, your story may even be the butt of a Twitter gag on a niche coding forum, somewhere. OK, last bit is unlikely, but hey, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you were the one who suffered the most from this war wound.
Hey, great way to put a positive spin on it! Maybe he’s a real stallion now and has me to thank. Yeah… I’m sure that’s what happened! 🙂
Oh Snookumz, we’ve ALL done it in one way or another. I remember I was on a date, headed back to his place (for the first time) and as we were driving down a side street I spotted a house with Christmas lights on. It was the summer. I opened my big yap trap and said “OMG! I can’t believe some people still have their lights up…and ON! How tacky!” then he pulled into the driveway that belonged to the house with the Christmas lights and declared “We’re here!”
I felt like the biggest turd. He laughed it off as I tried to apologize…but I still felt stupid.
Well, uh, Christmas lights in summer? And they were ON? He kinda needed to hear that.
Holy Hot Kats!! You are wicked and I love it. I’ve totally done that…well, the tweeted from a bad date, but not the getting caught part! Oh well, lesson learned right? Never hand a guy your phone after a ‘message fail’ while tweeting…that was it, right?
Just be very, very careful!
OUCH – that sucks – the fact that you went anyway, and it wasn’t a match AND he saw the tweet accidentally. Big bummer/yikes. My random, unrelated question – you can SEE when people archive you on chemistry.com? How?? I haven’t figured that out yet.
Yeah, I had a bad attitude from the start, so it was doomed. Re: chemistry, you can look at your own archives, and if the guy is there and you didn’t put him there, it means he archived you. I think…
Haha I love this post. Had me laughing but oh so true. But you know how that is, you’re in a bad date and you can’t help but want to vent your disapointment.
Well, I guess it’s one of those instances that is so not funny when it’s happening, but then funny when you think about it later, right?
It’s called life experience for you and him. You learn something and hopefully he did too; you can’t feel back about that. Besides he archived you, there are worst things that could have happened.
HAHAHA that is incredible. And let that be a lesson to guys, esp on first – don’t be the overeager tool asking all the questions. I love the part where he stares into his beer, with the carbonation bubbles representing his tears of rejection. PS. I was half expecting a rhyme with your secret tweet!
Aww. He really wasn’t a tool, just nervous I think. I’ve had the opposite experience when guys don’t ask me a single question – and that’s really lame, too. Conversation should be a two-way street.
So I’m a reputed rhymer now? 😉
I wouldn’t worry about it. Social networks cause these things by nature. Imagine if he thought the date’d gone well, went home, and then checked his Twitter if he was one of your followers, seeing that. That’d be 100 times worse. He should’ve just dealt w/it and tried to relax so the two of you could have some platonic, no pressure fun.
I do the same thing ALL the time w/women. 90% of the time, though, it’s either me putting my foot in my mouth in a “God, I’m an idiot” John Mayer-like moment or simply forgetting the importance of breathing room early on. You’re not alone so don’t sweat it.
Oh, I don’t tell any of my dates about my social media accounts. Bad move!
I know, this stuff happens. I just feel bad. I’m still hoping maybe he didn’t actually see the tweet and just thought it was a bad date.
ooooh, I have been there and done that–not dated & tweeted (and got caught) but hurt someone’s feelings when they just weren’t my type. It does leave a lasting impression–but c’est la vie. I’ve been hurt on dates too–like when the guy I was SO INTO turns to me during lunch (after our 6th date) and says, “I hope you’re seeing other people, cause you know I’m still looking for “the one”. I ordered a steak and said I forget my wallet.
Ouch. At least he was up front with his douchiness so you could make the very wise decision to order the expensive dish! 😉
This could have been any number of situations. You could have been on the phone with a friend by the bathroom and gotten caught. You could have left early and tweeted from home and he could have found your twitter account and the tweet. Don’t knock yourself over the head over this.
The one thing I have learned is never say anything about anyone behind their back that I wouldn’t be willing to say in their face.
That is a very good policy, Salsero.