I’ve mentioned up here a few times about how I’ve met all over this wonderful people post breakup (back in November). Sure, some of the people I met through other friends or through random circumstances, but I’ve met a great deal of them through Meetup.

Now, I’m not going to get up here and plug Meetup (because they are not paying me to do so), but it’s been a great tool to flesh out my social circle a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I love and adore all of my friends equally, but there are certain hobbies I like to do or places I want to go/things I want to experience that may not appeal to all of them and that’s fine. Plus, once you kind of get out of college, making NEW friends outside of your social circle and work environment can be a little more challenging.

Meetup is just like its name says…it’s a “meet up”. You use the site to join “meetups” (groups) and RSVP to “events” that group is putting on. All of the “meetups” have “hosts” (some have one host others have several) that organize and post the events to members. Some have “meetups” weekly and others more sporadically or in more of an ad-hoc sense. Pretty much every group’s purpose is to help its members to branch out and meet new like minded folks. It’s great for people who have recently moved to town or just for people who may be a little shy or even newly single (hey, that’s me). Shortly after the break up, I was feeling really down in the dumps and really lonely (I don’t want to link to this because the post was extra sad). I probably spent at least two weeks just going to work and sleeping. I also wasn’t eating and was just barely getting through work each day. I was on autopilot. It didn’t help that during this time, I was for whatever goofy reason still seeing my ex (for lunch, coffee, etc), which was a bad idea because he also looked like death warmed over. It just made everything hurt that much more because we were both sad and it enhanced my sadness to see him like that. Yeah, I did a lot of sleeping and can’t remember a good chunk of that time period. I was not in a good place emotionally. Anyway, after having a bit of an emotional spaz fest around Thanksgiving, I decided I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and get back to living my life, but that I needed to live my life a bit differently and maybe try and do things I hadn’t done before to keep my mind off of being sad. I figured, what better way to do that than to pick up a new hobby or two and the rest is history.

I now have an additional social circle of friends that I regularly spend time with even outside of our regular meetups. We usually do a few things outside of meetup weekly and lately over each other’s places. It’s been so much fun getting to know them. They really helped me get through a dark period a few months ago and even more of a bonus, many of them had also just gone through breakups, so we were all kind of healing and leaning on one another to get better. It’s been great.

Aside from all of the positives that have come from meetup, like meeting new people that have become great friends, brushing up on various hobbies of mine, venturing out to new places in the area that I’ve never been to and getting a different perspective on life in general, it has also come with some negative aspects. One of which being the amount of men two stepping into my message box (yes, there is a messaging feature in meetup. Think of it like email).

Typically, the message function is supposed to be used by organizers to communicate with group members about events, but sometimes can also be used to communicate with members in your group…but for whatever reason lately, I’ve been inundated with messages from guys hitting on me, asking for my number, flatout asking me out on dates— sir, WTF?!

First of all, yes meetup could be used as a tool to date and or meet your next S.O., especially if you join a meetup geared towards that (like speed dating, singles groups/outings, etc), but cold messaging somebody out the fucking blue that you don’t even know or have never even seen in person is a little bold for my taste. It’s also bold to assume that person is not already in a relationship or at the very least actively dating. I could be an asshole and print screen these messages up here, but I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s just annoying. I don’t even have a racy photo on meetup. I’m literally in a sweater and jeans and my hair is frizzy. I think I took the photo in my bathroom. I personally think I look like a bum.

I will summarize two message exchanges I’ve had up there within the past month:

1. One guy messaged me because we were in the same meetup group (not one I’m active in) and then further into the conversation asked if any of the groups I was a member of indicated if I was single. He then proceeded to ask me if I was “into older men”…Gross. No, dude.
2. Another guy (just earlier this week) sent me some long message asking if I had seen black panther (which I have). Then further along his lengthy message asked me out on a date to go see the movie and wanted to know if I wanted to do dinner after, “my choice”. NO. WTH.
3. Another guy after asking me about a meetup asked me to send him more photos of me and drop my digits. SO FULL OF NOPE.

Obviously, the meetups that I share with these guys (if any at all) are not ones I’m even active in or are meetups that are dormant and I’ve just been too lazy to remove them from my profile.

But jazzedout, you’ll date someone online, what makes this any different?

What makes this different is that I’m actively choosing to use online dating as one of MANY tools to date.  I am not actively choosing to be borderline harassed on a social website. Meetup is not specifically meant for online dating (exclusively anyway–it is not a dating website) nor is my entire reason for using it meant for dating. If you just so happen to date someone you meet through meetup, great, but cold messaging people is a bit creepy. Secondly, if I am online dating and I decide to meet that person IRL, we’ve usually spoken quite a bit and feel comfortable enough with one another before even moving to that stage. I’ve never been one to be like, “hey, this guy I know NOTHING about just asked me to see this movie tonight in his first message, off I go”.

No sir. You ever seen a lifetime movie or 1,000 ways to die? Won’t be me. Bet.

Anyway, aside from the creepy men dropping in my messages (I’m usually nice and respond by politely declining, but I think I’ll just start ignoring or blocking all together), it’s been a pretty cool tool to use in expanding my social circles. I definitely recommend it….just maybe shut your messaging feature off (I believe you also get communications from your organizers in your email too), so you probably don’t technically need that feature turned on.