the borogoves principle

over the last week or so, i've formulated a theory about online dating. when i first posted an ad in the online personals, several weeks ago, i got *lots* and *lots* of responses, most of which were *crap*. in the last week or so, the response rate has *really* died down, and the signal-to-noise ratio is climbing. (so much so that i'm currently trying to keep 6 or 7 (i've lost track) guys straight in my head. i know i KNOW, that sounds terribly conceited, but it just happened like that, i swear!)

my guess about why this is happening (it's good! though i sorta miss the *completely* wacky responses) is this: you can search/browse the ads by date posted (most recent first). some men routinely browse, sorted, through the ads, and respond to basically all of the new ones. so, when my ad was new, i was getting a lot of those kind of responses. now that i don't show up on the first page of ads anymore, i only get responses from men who typed in search criteria that bring up *my* ad specifically. it's lovely, really.