The Small Print Beneath the Picture

I am curious. I always have been.

I like to test the waters first. People included. Feel the warmth, see the light, ask questions and get my answers.

So this became another one of my little experiments.

I met my husband online twenty-eight years ago. Years later, I met the love of my life the same way.

Back then, it wasn’t a requirement to post a photograph of yourself. You could post a sunset, a sunrise, waves crashing against rocks, a rainbow, or anything else that felt like you.

Then you wrote about yourself.

You invited conversation.

Sometimes there were topics and interests listed in your profile, and those became the bridge between two strangers. That’s how it started. Not by staring at a face, but by getting to know the person behind the image.

I found that far more interesting.

Today things are different.

You must upload a picture of yourself and wait for the website to approve it.

And unfortunately, there are apps and websites designed to lure you in, making money from loneliness. AI pretending to be real people. Messages that arrive instantly. Promises that the next click, the next subscription, the next payment might lead to connection.

One night I fell for it.

Not for long.

Less than thirty dollars later, I started noticing things.

The speed of the replies.

The time zones that made no sense.

The photographs that kept appearing over and over.

The conversations that felt just conversational enough.

And then I realized something else.

I hadn’t even finished my profile.

There was almost nothing there for anyone to respond to.

No stories.

No details.

No personality.

No thoughts.

Just a few photographs and a list of interests.

Yet somehow these people were already fascinated by me.

Imagine that.

That was the moment I knew something was wrong.

Whatever they were responding to, it certainly wasn’t me.

I am not stupid.

So I said goodbye, deleted my profile, and walked away.

The other sites were not much better.

With my photographs visible, I was receiving eighty to one hundred messages a day.

“Hey beautiful.”

“You look fine.”

“We should be friends.”

“Hey babe, wanna chat?”

Most of them had one thing in common: they knew absolutely nothing about me.

They didn’t know what I read.

They didn’t know where I wanted to travel.

They didn’t know I could spend hours looking at cottages by the sea.

They didn’t know I was learning Welsh phrases for fun.

They didn’t know anything at all.

They saw a face and a body.

And apparently that was enough.

Over the last two months, I met quite a cast of characters.

There was the man who accidentally copied and pasted a message meant for someone else. Nothing says “you are special” quite like receiving evidence that you are not.

There was the history enthusiast who somehow managed to remove all the joy from history. Every time I mentioned a place I wanted to visit, I was immediately informed of the war, tragedy, massacre, invasion, or catastrophe that had happened there. By the end of the conversation I felt as though I needed permission from the dead before booking a flight.

There was the man looking less for a partner and more for a replacement mother.

There was the one who seemed genuinely shocked that I was not sitting beside my phone waiting for his messages.

“No answer?”

“Are you there?”

As if I had been assigned a shift and forgotten to clock in.

There was the gentleman who proudly stopped listening to music sometime around 1970 and appeared determined to remain there indefinitely.

There was also the optimistic soul who confidently informed me that with his height and my eyes we could make perfect children.

I admired the optimism.

What I admired less was the fact that he had apparently skipped over every single thing I had written about myself.

Did he know my age?

Did he know I wasn’t looking to have children?

Did he know anything at all?

Or had he simply seen a photograph, noticed a pair of eyes he liked, and launched directly into a reproductive strategy?

I never found out.

And then there were the pickup lines.

So many pickup lines.

The same lines that probably worked twenty-five years ago. The same lines copied, pasted, recycled, and sent into the world with the confidence of a fisherman casting the same lure into every lake.

The technology had changed.

The apps had changed.

Artificial intelligence had arrived.

But somehow the conversations had not evolved at all.

Which made me wonder something.

What would happen if I removed the one thing everyone seemed to notice first?

So I removed my face from the profile.

In its place, I explained who I was and how I preferred to be approached if someone genuinely wanted to start a conversation.

Then I waited.

The results were immediate.

The one hundred messages a day became ten.
Some of them were women, which was unexpected considering I wasn’t trying to date them either.

And some people were deeply offended by my existence.

One gentleman dramatically informed me that I was as old as his grandmother and demanded to know what I was doing there.

At least he had read my profile, apparently.

I was tempted to answer:

“Reading, writing, traveling, learning Welsh, planning, buying hiking shoes, and apparently upsetting strangers.”

But I resisted.

Others simply said hello.

A few commented on my profile and the places I had visited.

Some mentioned things I had actually written.

Imagine that.

For the first time in two months, it felt as though people were responding to a person instead of a photograph.

And perhaps the most surprising discovery was this:

I didn’t miss the other ninety messages.

Not even a little.

The noise disappeared.

The endless compliments disappeared.

The pickup lines disappeared.

The men who had clearly never read a single sentence disappeared.

And with them went a surprising amount of exhaustion.

My peace was restored.

What I discovered wasn’t really about dating.

It was about attention.

Most people were not reading profiles.

They were scanning photographs.

The profile was merely the small print beneath the picture.

Once the picture disappeared, so did most of the audience.

And honestly?

I was perfectly fine with that.

And if some of you are wondering why I don’t simply meet someone in person, the answer is simple.

It worked for me twice.

For me, the art of writing is crucial.

It is important enough.

You feel moods in words.

You get to know someone without the distraction of a face, clothing, appearance, or scent.

You learn how they think.

You learn what they notice.

You learn what they value.

You discover their humor, their kindness, their curiosity, and their character.

Then, when you finally meet in person, chemistry becomes a bonus instead of a gamble.

It worked for me twice.

That’s why I still believe in it.