Of Science and Choice In Online Dating 311
Must be summertime, as online publications turn to the contemplation of Internet dating. The NY Times's piece (registration may be required) takes a not particularly deep look at the reality behind the "science" claims of chemistry.com, eHarmony.com, and others. "The question is how much it really matters to users if the methods have any scientific basis. A friend of mine... said she looked at several dating sites and chose the ones that looked like they had 'the least riffraff.'" Technology Review focuses on studies showing that the overwhelming number of choices presented by many dating sites can be counterproductive: "...more search options lead to less selective processing by reducing users' cognitive resources, distracting them with irrelevant information, and reducing their ability to screen out inferior options." The article concludes with a look at the startup Omnidate, which offers technology for 3D virtual dating. The site has had twice as many women (by percentage) sign up as the other dating sites typically see.
There's also okcupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Run by a couple of maths grads. Last time I looked they were using a regression analysis to match people.
The site's also free.
Re:I found the perfect site (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course it can work the other way as well, but the key is to actually care and to take the time to consider all the angles.
As far as the free ones go... (Score:2, Interesting)
eHarmony "success" story (Score:4, Interesting)
I was divorced in 1998 after 18 years of marriage.
After a series of "fixups" and other misguided attempts by friends and family, I tried Match.com. I did the questions accurately and honestly. My profile text made it clear I was (a) highly intelligent, (b) looking for a permanent relationship, and (c) pretty particular about who I dated.
Within 72 hours of posting, I had over 400 "matches" in a 50 mile radius of me. WHAT? I don't live in NY or LA, so the statistics were mind-boggling. I imagined there must be a secret kingdom of single, middle-aged women in that 50 miles, just waiting for yours truly to show up on Match.com. The sad reality was that well over 99% of the so-called "matches" were train wrecks, literally and figuratively. I dated 10-12 women from Match and NONE were anything close to a "keeper".
So, one night, I waded through the eHarmony process, set the radius for 150 miles, and waited. ...and waited. ....and waited. Finally, after 6-7 weeks, I got TWO matches. One was a "crossover" from Match that I actually kind of liked, but she declared we had no chemistry on the 2nd and final date. The other match and I spent some time in communicating via eHarmony and finally agreed to a real date in September of 2003.
We got engaged on the following Valentine's Day...lured her into a jewelry store that I'd enlisted to help, and surprised her with a diamond ring. Everyone applauded...it was a nice moment.
The wedding was a few months later in July, so we've just celebrated our 5th anniversary.
A couple of years ago, eHarmony tried to get us to appear in one of their commercials, but we declined.
I don't know about the "science", but we do get along really well, so I have no complaint.
Re:Science, lol? (Score:4, Interesting)
I heard that E-harmony includes people that are no longer active on the site in your "matches". Back when I tried eharmony, I had written to a lot of people who never wrote back. I had a decent profile and am not a freak or too bad looking, (basically your average guy) so it's more likely I was just talking to a wall. The profiles I looked at indicated recent activity, but things like login times are easy to fake, especially if you have no choice but to trust what the service tells you. From what I observed, eharmony artificially inflates the count of your matches, plus they ration out only a few matches at a time to string you along for a few extra months on the service. (I had a lot up front but then only a few a week by the time I cancelled) Plus, you have no way of knowing if the matches that do respond to you are actually real people or just dummy accounts staffed by employees meant to keep you interested in the site. (the real test is if they bail out when you want to meet) The commercials you see are obviously designed to exploit lonely people in an emotionally vulnerable situation. When you sign up you have such optimism that you are going to find someone and then you get slammed hard with disappointment after a few weeks of it. The whole thing just seems really dishonest to me. Maybe I've grown cynical or just merely wiser about how these things work.
My advice is to date in the real world and get some friends to hang out with. Friends have other friends outside of your immediate circle (and out from there) and chances are the right one is in there somewhere.
Plenty of Fish (Score:2, Interesting)
Decision tree (Score:2, Interesting)
seems like a lot of it is a fairly straightforward decision tree.
There are things someone requires (gender, age bracket, willingness to relocate either for the relationship or for work etc), and an individual may have their own quirks/fetishes. Then you have things which are preferred but not necessarily required, height, haircolour, food preferences and so on. And then you're matching based on answers to other questions with a personality profile (which is largely psychologist nonsense but not entirely. if you ask 200 questions, even stupid questions each with a scale out of 5, you have 1000 possible points, you can do a fairly straightforward matching (0.5% each, want to assume some distribution etc.) then by virtue of the large sample size a close % match probably means something. Not necessarily a lot, but it does tell you something about how they answer questions at least.
I suppose the big advantage to online dating is if you know there is something you specifically do, or do not want that is not always immediately obvious when meeting somene (smoke, drink, shave, like harry potter, likes to travel whatever) you can immediately cull that lot from your target selection pool. People who would fall into an exclusionary category that isn't obvious can consume time otherwise spent looking for people who wouldn't be excluded. Esspeecially if they are mutually exclusive, I like to travel, she doesn't well neither party will be happy in the long run, it might be more efficient (albeit less fun) to simply skip each other and move on. You have to know what you want (which is a decidedly iterative process), and then be honest about it, one can see the advantages.
Re:Easy for you to say (Score:3, Interesting)
There is every chance that you'll just get out there and do your thing and live your life and be alone and lonely right up until the day you die.
Every relationship I've been in where I wasn't happy with myself has been a miserable failure. If I don't like me, how can anyone else like me? Meanwhile, if you're happy with yourself, it doesn't matter if you're in a committed relationship. But the simple truth is that being in a committed relationship with a good partner is not enough to bring happiness. I know, because I've been responsible (in retrospect, of course) for ruining good relationships. I've also been in relationships whose ends were not "my fault" (heh heh) so I don't have a complex [about that].
Of course, that sort of thing is easy to say when you're relatively happy. But I'm certainly no stranger to depression. I know how frustrating it is when someone says "You just need to..." Yeah, that's a bunch of shit. On the other hand, it's kind of true; what you need is to decide to do the thing. That's not easy either, but it's usually a lot harder than the actual doing turns out to be, when you're in that state. All I can say is, start small and keep trying. You don't learn to talk to people and relate to them by crouching in your house. Trust me.
Re:Science, lol? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do people even know what they want from a partner?
Yeah, they do. 99.9% of women want "a good man who loves to laugh and is fun and just an ordinary guy."
I'm a divorced man in a small (~100,000) town and have used online dating sites off-and-on for about five years--mostly Plenty Of Fish, but also LavaLife and OkCupid. I've met two absolutely wonderful women this way--both of whom were so wonderful that after a year or three with me their careers took them off to bigger, far-distant centres, although in both cases we're still friends.
I've also met the biggest collection of flakes, losers, liars, bores and nutjobs you could possibly imagine, and I am currently ready to slap anyone whose entire self-description is, "I love to laugh, like long walks on the beach and am just looking for an ordinary guy."
Seriously, have you ever met anyone anywhere who doesn't like to laugh? It's what we laugh at that's interesting, and hardly anyone ever says what that is.
The trick for all these sites is to weed out the common things that everyone has, and to reduce people who have zero self-awareness to abject silence until they come up with sufficient self-knowledge to say something about themselves that isn't woefully banal. OkCupid's system of questions does that, although I can think of some simple improvements that would make it better.
The key thing is to focus on the concrete. There should be very nearly zero abstraction in any of the information gathered from users, and the site should then generate the abstract categories the user is assigned to based on that information.
For example, don't ask people what their "body type" is (abstract category) but what their height and weight are, how fast they can run or walk a mile, how many miles they run or walk each week, when was the last time they walked more than a mile, or biked more than a five miles, or swam more than 500 m, and so on. Then generate the abstract category for them: "couch potato", "morbidly obese", etc, rather than letting users define "athletic" or "slim" or "average" any way they want to (I've seen morbidly obese people, who have posted pictures of themselves, categorize themselves as "average".)
Mostly, these sites are selling fantasies to liars (women) and idiots (men), so doing anything that would provide more accurate information about what differentiates one person from another is counter-productive relative to their business model. The few honest, intelligent people out there have to wade through a huge amount of dross to find each other. Fortunately, that is still possible, and despite their flaws these sites remain a sensible component of anyone's search for companionship. Just be prepared to do a lot of filtering by hand.
Re:It's the number of zeros that matter (Score:4, Interesting)
In the salary cheque that is.
If you ever want to get really depressed about the state of humanity, spend a little time coming up with the most egregiously sexist URL's you can imagine, and then type them into your browser.
http://www.sugardaddies.com/ [sugardaddies.com]
I tried this one day when a friend was bitching about men treating women like whores (there was some Craigslist ad he was pissed off about, offering free rent to a woman in exchange for sex) and I wanted to prove to him that women could be just as crass. It didn't convince him (he has a naively romantic view of women) but it sure as hell depressed me, even though I know full well that not all women--or even the majority--are quite as wretched as the ones who inhabit these sites (and in fairness, the site I've linked above has at least one link to a site for gay golddiggers... it's clear that a certain fraction of humans in every imaginable category are basically sleazy.)
Re:There's also okcupid (Score:4, Interesting)
There's women who aren't crazy?
Seriously, they have a decent attempt at it. I find the matching on sites like match.com don't work very well- it finds women I might find cute, but very few of them interest me beyond that. I can find that at any bar. The question and answer thing does a better job of getting people who match my personality. Nowhere near perfect, but it's a good start.
Re:I found the perfect site (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Westernized marriages could learn a thing or two from arranged couples (that do it right, of course). Of course, they could benefit from lots of other things (like doing away with the notion that marriages NEED to happen), but that's a start.
Re:It's the number of zeros that matter (Score:3, Interesting)
But now, with the divorce rate the way it is, people are looking for a perfect relationship that will last 50 years. I don't know if we are built to do that sort of thing. I think we are doing well when a couple manages to stay together through the raising of the kids. I do see couples that stay together for a very long time, but that is because the only thing that mattes to them is the marriage. There is no idea of a personal benefit. For example, I know men who work, make close to 6 figure salaries, and never see a penny of it. The are dedicated to the marriage.
The benefit of dating sites, are, then to limit the choice of partners. One way to do this is to require very large sums of money. People tend to value what they pay for, and if they pay a few thousand, then that may mean a relationship is valuable. On the other hand, a couple may just be looking for sex. There are sites for that. And sites in between.
For those who say they are lonely, going out is not enough. One has to be emotionally accessible. One has to separate the media typecast from reality. One has to be honest about what one wants. Physical attention, emotional support, validation, financial security? And I am beginning to think if we want marriage, we should worry about if the other person wants to get married as much as we do. There is quote from Moonlighting that I really like: "A relationship is when two people see a lot of each other while they wait for something better to come along." Dating does suck.
Re:It's the number of zeros that matter (Score:3, Interesting)
I was approached by one of those dating services 6 years ago ... and went in. .... They told me how nice it was to have a 'nice guy' come in
I expect they say that to all the guys.
if there truly were more women than men in this service, it's only because ...
If they told you women out-numbered men you should have asked for an age breakdown. Any surplus of women in that type of bureaux are in the 50+ age group. Been there.
Maybe people should just stop dating and learn how to experience life and just get out and do things. My friends that try the hardest to meet someone are the ones that are the least successful at it.
But that's not what you did, is it? You sent an e-Mail from your PC (in Ma's basement? Sorry, just joking!). Just "getting out" didn't work for me either. You go out - what do you see? A street with a few drunks (male), some muggers (male) and old ladies carrying shopping. So you go in a bar and what do you see? A few old geezers (male) getting drunk, and if you are really lucky a 50 yo tart drunk already. Then what?
So next you spend a few months swatting up on photography/literature/archery/whatever, enough to join a club. But find the only females in it are some 50+yo wives of the old male fogies who form most of the membership.
So then you spend $500 to attend evening classes on Italian/Art/History but find any women are 40+ and happily married.
So then you go to a singles bar or dance hall. Getting warmer, because at least you can (frustratingly) see some pretty girls, but any I approached told me to f#*k off because any such girl can recognise a geek at 1000 yards. Or think they can.
So that's why I joined a dating club. I have a background of good qualifications, good job, and naval officer training. But I quickly found that trying to match characteristics on paper was a waste of time - girls I met "similar" to me hated me. So, running out of "equivalent" girls in the club lists to contact I started contacting any that just met basic criteria of under my own age (24 then) and under my own height. I then in particular started meeting poorer, "working class" girls.
WOW!! That was different! Because working class girls do not have the qualifications and maybe not the brains, they tend to play their sexuality more. I might be wrong but it seems to me that they need bigger bra cup sizes too. In fact, one of the first I met, and dated for 6 months, had actually been a Bunny Girl in the London Playboy club (but left on her 1st day!). To think I had expected to find only prunes! Some of these girls seemed flattered to have a boyfriend "out of their league", who had a good job and who treated them as a "proper lady". That's something which the ones who told me to f#*k off at the dance hall never gave themselves the chance to find out.
But seriously, what I found was that many of these poorer girls, whom I would never have been matched with by computer criteria, were quite intelligent but had lacked opportunity. Some I just "clicked" with, for no obvious reason, being very different people in fact.
The best strategy for success is deliberately to meet as many as possible without worrying about any but basic criteria, until you find the one you really hit it off with. As I did.
Re:The biggest problem with dating... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:It's the number of zeros that matter (Score:2, Interesting)
Although estimate vary, the average life expectance was until the 15th to 19th century was not much more than 40, at least for the common person. This lead for just enough time to have a several children, some of which would survive to adult hood. I do not think choice was an overwhelming issue, and there were not a huge number of cases where people were married for 50 years.
That was average life expectancy AT BIRTH. Average life expectancy at age 21 was approximately 63. The "just enough time to have kids" idea is a misinterpretation of the life expectancy statistics.
You have to remember that average life expectancy is the mean age of death, not the age at which everyone dies.
Re:There's also okcupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Science, lol? (Score:3, Interesting)
If they put themselves as "average" then they'll probably also put themselves as an inaccurate weight.
People find it very hard to lie about specifics and stay consistent.
It's easy to lie when you say you "love sports and working out" but harder to answer "what sports to you play regularly (at least once a month)?" and "When did you last play sport X?" and "What was the score the last time you played sport X?" and (for team sports) "what position did you play in your most recent game?"
No system is going to catch every liar, but it should be possible to look at the pattern of answers and generate some estimate of how consistent they are.
I'd also like to see some kind of anonymous user rating system, so that if you go out with someone you can rate them as to the accuracy of their profile. There are various non-parametric and ROC-like analyses that can be used to factor out rater biases from this kind of system, given a sufficiently large number of ratings (five or ten is generally enough.)
But again, this assumes that the audience being served is the non-delusional and sincere, which in my experience is maybe 10% of the total online dating population.
Re:Science, lol? (Score:1, Interesting)
I know what I want from a partner...
Age - not wildly different from my own; geographic location - close enough to get to know; Family - no children or current partners... including pets. Shared interests - not sure here - I'll settle for sufficiently intelligent to cope in the modern world - I'm not interested in sport or celebrity - but, if that can be accepted, I can't imagine a problem. Superficially, physically, I'm only interested in a romantic relationship with someone physically 'normal' - and, by that, I mean within the ~80% of the population who'd seem of 'average' dimensions... I don't think I could cope with someone who has a significant physical disability - I realise this might seem callous, but I'm willing to accept the consequences.
Recently eHarmony has started advertising in the UK media (or, maybe, I've recently noticed...) Anyhow, I filled in their personality profile - as honestly as I could... though it would have been easier if I could have declined to answer the questions I considered ill-formed. Anyhow - the upshot was that the site told me not to join, since there'd be no-one compatible with me. I was amused - was this a rare emergence of honesty... or misunderstanding and prejudice, I wonder?
Re:Easy for you to say (Score:1, Interesting)
Are you a man? There is such a thing as a man being so hideously ugly that he will not find an attractive female willing to spend time with him, but women are much, much less picky in this area than men are (though they value being well groomed just as much if not more). You *cannot* generalize your own idea of what is attractive and then think women are attracted to those same kinds of things. You really can attract a woman with an attractive personality/behavior, indeed, it is by far the most important way to attract women for a man. The nice thing about this is that behavior, beliefs and habits are more malleable than looks, and your competition have little idea about what really make women tick, so if you find out, it won't matter so much if you don't look good. Even better, the kinds of changes that make you more attractive will often also make you a stronger, happier and more centered man (those three things are supremely attractive to women!). Physical attraction is just as important for women, but it isn't your *physique* that we are talking about here, it is what she feels in *her* body when she thinks about you, and it is foremost your behavior that triggers that.
Of course looking good is an advantage, and can be a large one, it just isn't at all as insurmountable a head start as it can be for women (although, let's face it, women can do a lot with whatever they have too, just perhaps not as much). So assuming you are male, and you don't have the kind of looks that could make you a circus attraction, this is a double edged sword. I'm telling you that (1) your problems extend far beyond just your looks, or being introverted, but (2) this is a good thing because it means you can fix it, whatever those additional problems are (I obviously don't know).
If you really are "taking responsibility for your happiness yourself", that sounds like a wonderful thing! This should have been step 0. Burdening your mate with being responsible for your happiness is a horrible thing to do. In your loliness, it may sound like a wonderful thing if someone did that to you, at least if you liked them, but after a while you'd figure out how bad it really is, and you'd be running for the hills too. On the flip side, having a fulfilling life of your own, independent of any mate (even if it is independent of any other people too, though you get points for that), is attractive. Being happy already is attractive, and if it doesn't score you a hot babe, hey, then life is still pretty good! (this may sound annoying, but it is exactly that attitude, when genuine, that is attractive, and that attitude has nothing to do with being introverted or extroverted) If you are happy already, you won't come across desperate, because you won't be desperate. You will do at least a little better in dating when you don't feel a crushing *need* to do well, and that happens when you no longer perceive that the rest of your life sucks donkey balls.
I have not much idea about your situation, but perhaps this is helpful to you, even in the case that you perceive it as snooty lecturing. In any case what really set me off to write this is that you implied that somehow women ought to be the central focus of happiness in your life, and that's just a recipe for failure both with women and for happiness.
Re:Easy for you to say (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, I'm also always rather put off by the whole "psychological problems don't exist" meme. What's up with that? Sorry, but no, they DO; not everyone who thinks they've got Asperger's or whatever actually does, but that doesn't mean NOONE does. And if you do, well, of course you can stick your head in the sand and pretend that your problems aren't real and that they'll go away if you just wish them away, but to believe that that'll work out is painfully naive.
Psychological problems definitely exist, but they're often used as an excuse not to do something (or anything). They're used as a reason to hide from the real world, to not get a job, etc.
I once knew a guy who was severely spastic. He sat in a heavy motorised wheelchair, could hardly talk, he was as disabled as you can be without being paralised. Whatever your problems are, I bet you they are way, way smaller than this guy's problems. Yet he went out a lot. He went to concerts, including ones that involved camping for a couple of days. He went on his own by train to concerts in other cities, and for some reason, this guy often ended up with a girl on his lap. It was a complete mystery to me how a spastic guy with unkempt hair hanging sideways in a wheelchair, can get a girl while I, tall, not too bad looking, couldn't.
I think the answer is confidence. What does he have to be confident about? No idea, but despite his complete disability, he did have a job. He may not be able to move, but he can think. He's good with computers, and computers are an easy way for him to communicate with people. So instead of simply sitting on the disability pay that he's more entitled to than anyone else I've ever met, he got a job as a programmer (with an employer who was willing to deal with the problems of having a severely disabled employee). He may not type very fast, but solving complex problems requires more thinking than typing, and he's good at that.
If that guy can hold a job, then Asperger's is not an excuse for being unemployed. Lots of nerds with Asperger's have very productive, well paying jobs. Sure, it may be harder to find one that suits you, but if you search hard enough, you'll find something. But an "I can't work" mentality isn't going to help you. Employers, like women, are looking for someone who's confident. In this case, someone who's confident that he can work.
(Eventually the department he worked at was dismantled, and you don't want to know how hard it is to get social security money when you lose a job while being severely disabled. You can't get unemployment money because you're disabled. The service in charge of new disabilities won't pay you because it's a pre-existing condition, and the service for young disableds won't pay you because you've had a job, which means it can't have been a pre-existing condition.)