I started making use of the suggestions to make things slightly silly on my profile and to message people about the stranger things that we had in common (especially odd movies and non-mainstream authors). I sent out around 20 messages on Monday and got back 5 responses. One of those is going to be a date next Tuesday.

For the time being, I primarily attribute this to slightly increased desperation around Valentine's Day and fixing flaws in my profile that were likely too bland before. However, it's a substantial improvement over how I was doing when I attempted actions on OKCupid several months back and had a less friendly profile and overly serious picture. My rate back then was about 1 in 10.