rules of engagement

I have a few rules of engagement which, if broken, will result in a non-response from me.

1. Do not offer me your yahoo! or MSN email address, especially without me asking. I most often associate these addresses with spammers.
2. Do not ask if I use yahoo! or MSN. I do not. I rarely start iChat or Skype.
3. Do not pay me a complement. while appreciated, it is, more often than not, not believed.
4. Do not say I am ‘sexy’. same as #2, except even less believed. [especially on non-dating sites, and Facebook is not a dating site.]
5. Do not say you want ‘to see more of my body’. a worse form of #3. this not only conflicts with my own body image, but also raises the ‘stalker’ red flag.
6. If you wish to engage my interest, you must  have a public profile picture with a face and body I can believe is yours.
7. Do ask me how I am doing. It is a wonderful ice breaker for someone who is, in general, shy about starting a conversation.
8. I fancy myself as poor at conversations. As such, I do not like to carry a conversation. Do not make me do so.
9. I do not like intruding on people or conversations.
10. You can invalidate rules 3, 4 and 5 if you follow 7 enough. Make sure I warm-up to you.
11. Make sure you know me. I am not that complex a person. I may be a target that can be missed, though.
12. Do not assume I am looking for someone to date.
13. Remember that textual conversation plays by different rules than face-to-face. Know your audience.
14. Know, also, that the other party, myself included, may offend unintentionally. Be politely forward about it.
15. Avoid being forward, aggressive, fawning or heavily emotional. I may run and hide.
16. Understand that I am dense much of the time. Subtlety sometimes is lost on me. Especially, when I am trying to pay attention.
17. Understand that I have trust issues. Not extreme. I was not abused, or majorly taken advantage of. I was let down often enough, by people I am supposed to be able to trust.
18. Understand I have a sorta regular life. I have a regular workday job. I go to the gym. I get to bed about 22h30 work nights. I need my sleep. My time zone is Allentown, PA time. If I cut you off ‘early’, I do apologize.
19. I get bored easily. Keeping me entertained or engaged is important. I will do my best to do the same.
20. I have no interest in TV, movies or popular music.
21. When I am online, I tend to be on multiple services all at once. If I do not get to you immediately, I do apologize.
22. We all have issues, whether we wish to believe them or not. Neither act as if you do, nor disrespect those whose issues are more obvious than yours. [At least, until we get to know each other. Then, we can dish all we wish.]

Rules are meant to be broken. Many of these rules have come from enough experience with social not-working, and are mostly actively used. Gotta love me.