Yes, those are real pictures...of me 15 years ago.

You know when there's a movie that you want to see, and then there's a ton of hype about it, so you get really excited, and then when you finally see the movie, it doesn't live up to the hype? And you're mad about the hype, because had you just seen it pre-hype, you would have really liked it?

Earlier this week I started emailing back and forth with a guy I'll call LL (Liberal Lawyer). From his match.com pictures, I could tell he was cute, and from his emails, I could tell he had a great sense of humor. Eventually, we were using our personal email accounts, and his happened to be his work email. So I did what any online dater would do and looked at his work's website, where there was a profile of him. And a picture. A picture which looked VERY different than the pictures on his match profile. Now, on match, he had one head shot and the rest were sort of far away shots where you couldn't see his face. The picture on the law firm website looked like a totally different person, a person who was at least 10 years older than the person in the match pictures. I asked him about it, and he admitted that the picture on his match profile was "a few" years old. Okay, fine. So we agreed to meet up for coffee.

You can say I was a little surprised when the guy walking up to me looked like an OLDER version of the already older version of his picture. As in this guy was bald (okay, maybe still in the balding stage, but he was well on his way). His profile said he was 6'0", but he was probably more like 5'10". And that cute, funny personality that he had over email? Apparently it doesn't show up in person.

Now, I'm well aware that people lie about themselves highlight their strong points in their profiles. I mean, the pictures I have of myself are good pictures and not what I look like every day. However, the point is that I can look like those pictures, any day, if I wanted to. LL, on the other hand, is not going to grow two inches and a head of hair by spending a few extra minutes getting ready. Had LL's pictures been more realistic I probably would have liked him more, because I wouldn't have had to get past the shock value of meeting up with someone who looks totally different from their pictures. And you know what? He looked fine the way he was in real life, but because he "hyped" himself up, I found myself very disappointed in the real thing.