Hmm... I'm comparing it to what I might do if it was a face to face meeting. If it was someone that I met when I was out and about we would maybe engage in a bit of polite conversation but if that was all that I was getting from them I would start to get bored and maybe think that they were a nice person but not much fun and not really my type.

On the other hand, you can warm to someone straight away if they say or do something funny. I'm rubbish at using rehearsed cheesy lines and wouldn't want to but I'm maybe not too bad at putting women at their ease by maybe making some humorous self deprecating remark to show them that I don't take myself too seriously and am not full of myself. It could be something about my midlife crisis. Women looking at me are probably going to think that I'm having one, so why deny it?

It's like everything that works for me in the real world tends to fail online. I don't think that it's just a matter of my lacking social skills. Why am I blaming myself because some woman on the internet is paranoid about sociopaths? If I met someone in a pub would I worry about that and if she was acting like that would I really want to talk to her anyway? Is someone like that likely to ever make a date with me, or is it best to just filter out the paranoid time wasters by making a cheeky remark and not worrying about it if they hang up on me?

^^^^ This. I think men that are most success with the ladies know timing. They know when to say it, what to say and how to say it.

Well, I don't know. It's a two way thing and after I get over the initial rush when a woman messages me I'm usually just not feeling it because her emails aren't very interesting and she doesn't seem that bothered about dating. They're just expecting me to chat them up or entertain them and it's one thing to do that when I'm sitting in the same room with them and quite another when it's an email correspondence. I usually have to put most of the effort in and it feels like wasted effort because it's like having hundreds of crap dates where you tell some boring person all about yourself and they're not even interested in seeing you again and the feeling is mutual.

It's a bit different when they're not local and the prospect of a meeting is highly unlikely anyway. That's a penpal and I've only done that a couple of times because when I take the time to sit down and write someone a proper letter I don't want to just get a couple of lines and a smiley face back.