"HI" ?!?!?!?!?

Hi.

Okay... Hi what?

Hi.

All right, we need to talk about the lack of vocabulary that the average 25-32 year old American man is capable of. I don’t mean it offensively, but as I enter my second day of online dating, and read through my second round of “introductory emails”, I am slightly appalled at the lack of verbage making the online waves.
To begin, I should say I’m quite impressed- seven new emails. Seven! Who would have thought there were seven guys in the entire city who might be remotely interested? But there they are- most are mildly interesting, one is a little more than slightly, and the rest are slightly uninteresting but I’m surprised how many are actually worth looking at. That is, until I open their emails.
I pause on the first one. Did I miss it? Did it even open? And then I realize- the subject line is the same as the message. “Hi,” it says in the subject line. “Hi” it says in the message. That was it. Nothing more. Just… Hi. All right, I get that we’re trying to start a dialogue here with the ultimate goal of perhaps meeting up and starting something real. So when you begin a conversation with “Hi”, you’re at least off to the correct start. But when you end the conversation with “Hi”?
What am I supposed to respond to that? “Oh, darling, thank you so much, how could I ever have lived my life without you?!?!?” Yea, I don’t think so. Let’s try, I don’t know, a name? Even, hi, my name is John. Sounds like we have a lot in common. Perhaps we could talk some more?” How hard is that?
Apparently quite hard because as I continue through the other 7 emails, 3 more are the subject/message email of “Hi”. I find myself glaring at the computer screen as if by some chance it has decided to hide the rest of the message and these relatively attractive guys, these guys who have paid just as much money as I have to get on this website and are, supposedly, looking for the same thing I am- so why aren’t they trying a little harder? I mean, how hard is it to come up with a starter question? Let’s try… “What’s your favorite movie? What’s your favorite time of day? If you had to go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” I mean, hello gentlemen, what am I supposed to do with “hi”?
I get that this is nerve racking. I get that this is hard, it’s complicated, it’s making me chew my nails down to the quick and I’m a writer; or at least, attempting to be a writer, so I’ve got a leg up on most of the people out there. But if you’re going to do this, this online dating, this throwing yourself out there with a handful of pictures and some rather odd questions, letting a computer match you with three points to hundreds of others supposedly “perfectly matched for you”, then you’re going to have to do a little better than “Hi”.