Is this true? Aside from the fact that getting "your body language in order" is easier said than done, it would be pretty easy to do an experiment to test this hypothesis. You could approach one hundred women in this way and see how many responses you got of each of the following nature: active hostility, passive "please go away" politeness, friendliness, perceived actual sexual desire. You could even get, say, five different men from different quintiles of physical attractiveness to see how it varies.

• I'll volunteer to try this if anyone else want to set up an empirical test of this. Somebody else will have to evaluate attractiveness, though.

The one time I went on Omegle everyone kept next-ing me almost instantly, and maybe one out of five times they next-ed me as soon as I said "hello" or the equivalent. I can't think of any characteristic I have that would make me exceptionally next-able, so I concluded that Omegle was a really frustrating waste of time. I'm confused as to why other people concluded otherwise.

Anecdata: I've been dating someone I met on Omegle for 8 months. However, I'm not sure I would recommend it as a means of meeting interesting people. Finding good conversations on Omegle seems to depend mostly on luck, but also on what keywords you enter as "interests," and on what time of day you use the site.

I've not tried it myself(at least, not often enough to have useful data), but from all I've heard it can work. It's low probability - single-digit percentages for most guys, it seems - but the investment of time and effort in doing it is sufficiently low that it can still be a good strategy, as long as you have a high tolerance for rejection.

The one time I went on Omegle everyone kept next-ing me almost instantly, and maybe one out of five times they next-ed me as soon as I said "hello" or the equivalent. I can't think of any characteristic I have that would make me exceptionally next-able, so I concluded that Omegle was a really frustrating waste of time. I'm confused as to why other people concluded otherwise.

Some tips for using Omegle: Choose the text chat option. Put in at least 40 interests that might appeal to someone who thinks (ideally you'll have enough interests so that you're never getting random strangers). Open 2-3 browser tabs so you can fish for interesting people in parallel and use ctrl-tab and ctrl-shift-tab to cycle tabs (or don't do this, if you don't want to get sucked in). Press escape three times to get a new person. Generally do this if the person you're chatting with asks your gender within the first 5 messages they send.

I have had success with Omegle's video option, but I think you just have to accept the fact that a lot of people are going to next you just so that you won't next them first. Could be good for building a thicker skin.

The one time I went on Omegle everyone kept next-ing me almost instantly, and maybe one out of five times they next-ed me as soon as I said "hello" or the equivalent. I can't think of any characteristic I have that would make me exceptionally next-able, so I concluded that Omegle was a really frustrating waste of time. I'm confused as to why other people concluded otherwise.

My experience was similar. The main exceptions were guys who next'd when they found out I wasn't going to send them pictures of the "hot chick" they were hoping to meet, and one person advertising benaughty.com who I'm not convinced was not a bot.