Why bother if you're not putting in any effort?

There are many things that either irritate me or baffle me about the men on the dating sites I use (which is one of the reasons I started this blog - to share the ridiculousness).  I'm sure there will be many entries to come along these lines.  But for tonight, here's what's driving me crazy . . .

If you are not putting in any effort, why are you bothering at all?

Some guys put absolutely NOTHING on their profiles.  The site tries to prevent this by forcing you to have a set number of characters written in order for your profile to go up.  People will get around this by just copying and pasting the site's tips for writing a good profile, or just writing ...................................................
............................................................................................................................................................ and other such things to get around this.  Those users I just ignore.

But the ones that really get to me are the ones who make/continue contact with you but do nothing to actually try to have a conversation.  I get that online dating is awkward and it's not like meeting someone in person.  But isn't that all the more reason why you should TRY to get some semblance of a conversation happening?  So that you can learn enough to get off the site and meet someone?

The number of times I get a message from guys that just say "Hi" or "How's it going?" or "Hey beautiful" . . . Okay, great, so you said something to me.  But what do you expect back?  "Hi" or "Good" or "Thanks".  Then what?

A few times for interest's sake, when a guy's photo has been great or there's something in their profile that intrigued me, I've tried to reply to the couple-word messages.  I've tried just responding with a short answer and of course the correspondence went nowhere.  (Really, who has the time or CARES to write back and forth emails that are just sentences at a time?)  And I've tried to move it into a conversation, but they have always seemed unable to write more than a sentence at a time.

When I first make contact, I make a point of always asking at least one question, referring to something they said in their profile, to attempt to actually start a conversation.  This last weekend, there was a man who's profile and photo I really liked.  I sent him the first message.

"Hi,  Your photo caught my eye and I like what you had to say in your profile.  What are you passionate about in your life?"

When I saw in my inbox there was a response I was a little hopeful.  I read:

"Hi that's a great question am passionate about life it self am not sure if that makes any sense"

So, good, he responded and thought it was a good question.  But then he left it completely up to me to continue the conversation.  Fine.  I gave it another try.

"That completely makes sense. I feel the same.  What kind of work are you in? What do you outside of work?"

But all I got back was:

"The car business depends on how i feel and who am with"

By this point I'm just too frustrated to write back.  If it's this much of a struggle to get a conversation going now, how will we ever converse in person?

Maybe I'm too harsh on people attempting to date (which is already awkward and challenging) through a method that is very awkward and very challenging.  But really, it shouldn't be too much to ask that someone puts in effort to find me.