I see "I don't date outside my race" a modest amount around here. I remember one profile that tried to make it better by saying, "I'm not racist. That's just how I was raised." :biggrin: Oddly enough, I also see black girls that say, "I don't date black guys."
Ugh, I know what you mean. I've tried a lot of different approach to profiles. I've tried using lists where you just list basic facts about yourself; serious and to the point; and also ones where humor tends to trump detail. Right now I'm testing the latter, but honestly... it pretty much never matters what I use as the majority of women that message or favorite me are extremely large.
I think it would be interesting to try a different approach related to "serious and to the point". Essentially, find out the information that most women like to see in a profile (living status, job status, etc.) and distill that down into a quick and easy to read morsel of awesomeness.
I've always wondered about message length vs. return. There are times when I just put too much effort into a message, which makes it all the more lame when you see "unread deleted". (I paid for PoF once a long time ago, and their site is so bad that they never removed my paid features. ) I think the one thing that gets me to write more is that you tend to see profiles that say something like, "send me more than just 'hi'."
I think the message length relates a lot to how messages are consumed. I see a lot of people messaging through their phones, and I assume the phone app presents it more like a text conversation. Since it looks like texting and people are used to fairly short texts, they end up preferring short messages.