"I get knocked down, but I get up again..."

I've been doing this online dating thing for a couple weeks now and have been striking out worse than [insert name of shitty baseball player here].  That's right, despite my sheer and utter awesomeness, I am not having any luck with this dating thing.  My friends keep telling me to be patient, that this doesn't happen overnight, but I'm beginning to think my friends are all just lying - they don't have the heart to tell me that I am not, in fact, utterly awesome.

I have sent messages to 24 men, saying hello.  That's right, twenty-four.  As in, 24 hours in a day or Jack Bauer is going to kick your ass on 24 (past tense of course, the show got canceled).  Not 23...but 24.  You would think, hey, 24 guys, surely one of them replied?  Exactly three have replied.

1. I decided that I wasn't really interested in the first guy after all, so that should probably be considered a foul, not a strike.
2. The second guy to respond was the poor man's Johnny Depp who resides in Berkeley.  That was a positive response but he lives in Berkeley.  Not only do I spell it wrong sometimes (it's very fond of the letter E), but I live nowhere near Berkeley.
3. The third guy that responded basically said thanks, but no thanks.  And I'm not sure which method I prefer if a man is not interested - ignore my message or flat out tell me that he's not interested. (We'll come back to that later.)

I know I should be patient but seriously, it's like I'm fishing with no bait.  Wait, that's not exactly true, because I am catching something, it's just that when I draw up that line, I'm throwing back what I've caught.  (So far I've referenced baseball and fishing - that should earn me brownie points with all those outdoorsy, sports types.)

I have received a lot of messages, they're just not from anybody I've reached out to.  Which would be okay if the guys messaging me were guys I would actually consider going out with.  But they're not.  They either have horrible grammar (shut up, it matters to me!), I'm in no way attracted to them, or they say creepy things like, "Do you have sexy feet?"  No, no, and no thank you.  (P.S. I totally have cute feet but I'm not interested in dating someone with a foot fetish - unless he's offering to pay for my pedicures and cute shoes, in which case, I may have to reconsider that one.)

Now some people have told me that I need to sign up for a paid dating site; that people are probably more serious about dating on a paid site than they are on a free site.  Hopefully the incentive is that people aren't going to goof off or be as creepy when their credit card is getting charged for it.  I have signed up for Match.com but I haven't paid for the subscription yet, which I am seriously considering doing.

My hesitation?  Right now I can get rejected for free.  If I sign up for Match.com then I'll be paying for rejection.

***sigh*** I think I should just move to Berkeley so I can drink wine and speak French with my poor man's Johnny Depp.