Pretty Woman With 'Worst Online Dating Profile Ever' Still Got Dates
Jan. 7, 2014— -- How awful does a lady have to be in order to halt a man's advances online? That's what one woman wanted to find out when she created what she dubbed "the worst online dating profile ever."
Alli Reed, a Los Angeles-based comedy writer for outlets including Man Cave Daily and Maxim magazine, created an OkCupid profile for a contemptible alter ego with the sole purpose of seeing men reject her existence.
"Honestly, I’ve never had that bad of an experience on OkCupid, I've gone on a lot of great first dates," said Reed, who also met her current boyfriend using the dating website. "But the thing that got to me after being on it for so long is that you get so many messages from men who clearly haven’t really read your profile that carefully, and they just message you anyway with these... requests."
Daunted by a deluge of spam-like indecent proposals, Reed wondered what kind of a person would deter such messages. Likely a terrible one, she assumed, and so she set out to create "the worst online dating profile ever" for just such a person.
"In making this profile, I made sure my creation touched on every major facet of being truly horrible: mean, spoiled, lazy, racist, manipulative, and willfully ignorant, and I threw in a little gold digging just for funzies," wrote Reed in an essay on Cracked.com, describing her experiment.
She called her character "aaroncarterfan," and filled out her profile with other information that she hoped would repel men, such as under the category "I'm really good at..." when she responded "convincing people I'm pregnant lol." In response to the prompt "On a typical night I am..." she wrote "knockin the cups out of homeless ppls hands, its sooooo funny to watch them pick it all up lollllll."
"This is not a person you'd want to get to know," Reed, 26, told ABC News.
And yet, men still messaged her. She received 150 messages in just 24 hours, she said.
It appeared that many men were willing to overlook aaroncarterfan's horrible personality due to her attractive selfies. In place of her own photo, Reed said she used images belonging to her friend Rae Johnston, an Australian model.
Stunned by the response, Reed then made it her mission to make aaroncaterfan's interactions with potential suitors so toxic that they would stop messaging her.
But despite e-mail conversations in which she claimed to participate in cyber-bullying, avoiding community service sentences, and faking pregnancies, she said guys still asked for her number.
"I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from critics saying 'well, of course because she was pretty,'" said Reed, and “'are you really that surprised?' How little faith would I have to have in men to not be surprised? I am surprised because I don’t think humans are that bad."
But despite the unexpected result, Reed still considers the experiment a comedic success.
"I’m not a journalist. I did not conduct a legitimate social experiment," Reed told ABC News. "I'm a comedy writer and to me, this was funny."
OkCupid did not immediately respond to ABC News' requests for comment.
