ADVENTURES IN ONLINE DATING PART 1

About three months ago I started a new job. The company that produces Big Brother, Wipeout and Deal Or No Deal hired me to sit around all day and dream up ideas for new shows.

Contractually, I can't get too much into the specifics of those new shows, but I can say that early on there was a request for dating programs. For one of my show ideas, I wanted to explore the area of "the perfect match," but I wasn't sure how that would actually work in practice. How could degrees of compatibility actually be quantified?

I knew there were some websites that, in fact, do just that: Chemistry, JDate, eHarmony, and so on. Match.com, goes so far as to list your mates by percentage of compatibility (this girl is your 100% match... that one is an 88% match, etc.). So in October I signed up for a few of these sites to learn how each one attempts to quantify the unquantifiable.

By the time all my subscriptions expired last month, I had a few solid ideas for new dating programs (again, I can't get into the details), but in the process I also learned a lot about online dating and online daters. There's too much good stuff for one post, so I'll break it up over a few.

The first thing I noticed as I looked through the profiles was a pattern when it came to women and their profile photos.
The profiles of most women under 30 contained a photo taken at a bar or party with a drink in the gal's hand. I guess the intended message is "Look at me! I'm fun!" But the message I got was "How do you feel about cleaning up my vomit on a regular basis?" (One of these girls above actually seems to be drinking and driving in her profile photo.)

In contrast, most women over 30 had in their profile photographs of themselves as a bridesmaid at someone else's wedding. The unintended message is "Here's the precise moment when I decided I had to begin internet dating... (I can't believe that fat pig Kelly is getting married and I'm still single!)"

I also noticed the Height Thing. I have a 5'6" tall male friend who tried online dating, and he claimed that every woman who subscribes to an online dating service wants a man 5'10" or taller — even if she herself is only 5'0". I investigated, and it's true. Here's a link to a girl who is 5-foot even who won't settle for any man who's shorter than 10 inches taller than her! (And great news, fellas — she's Mormon!) I can't fathom why any gal would prefer a guy she'd literally have to climb in order to kiss (but that didn't bother me too much because I'm 5'10").

There were,  

of course,  

plenty of loonies. 

Check out the 

Crazy Eyes 

on this one. 

And just how many people were 

cut out of this picture? 

It looks like Cookie Monster 

ate most of this photo.

And then there were the foreigners. 

Their profiles were the most entertaining of all.

This one below might be the funniest thing I read in 2008:

(click on it to make it larger)


In order to test the various matching algorithms of each site, I put up a profile of myself. And in a development that I hadn't anticipated, as soon as I put a profile up, women Winked™ at me, they Flirted™ with me, and they emailed me. I had gone online for work research and ended up becoming a gazelle hunted by lions. But we'll get to all that in Adventures In Online Dating: Part 2 — Beyond Thunderdome.