online dating – St. Eutychus

Why complete disclosure isn’t always the best policy on your online dating profile

I’m a big fan of full disclosure as a PR tool when things go wrong. If you can get on the front foot and air your dirty laundry before other people air it for you, you rob others of the power of outing you, and your honesty and integrity will boost your credibility and reputation, buying yourself a bit of time to deal with any fall out… it’s great for PR crisis management. It’s terrible when you’re a “brony” and you’re putting together an online dating profile. Like patriotpony1986.

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This is perhaps the most honest dating profile ever written. So earnest that it is perhaps a clever parody.

My self-summary

I am a proud conservative American and brony (male My Little Pony fan). I work very hard to enmesh the philosophy of Ayn Rand within the framework of tolerance and love espoused by Pink Pie and friends. I’m something of an intellectual, and would love to discuss politics or cartoons with somepony near me in the future. Please understand that if we were to meet, I AM THE MAN in the relationship.

What I’m doing with my life
Trying to finish the first draft of my e-book entitled Serfdom in Equestria, an expose on the liberal agenda slowly eroding freedom in the My Little Pony universe.

August 30, 2012

Stuff White People Date

Online dating service Ok Cupid has a blog. A lot of users. And truckloads of data on those users. They also have a pretty gifted statistician/interpreter who makes that blog one of the most interesting things online.

This post explores the preferences of various racial groups, collated from the data on public profiles and presents it in little interactive graphics. I’ve included the white people graphics as images for your viewing pleasure, but the post itself is worth a read.

As for the interests of white women, you have romance novels, some country music, and a broad selection of Good Housekeeping type stuff. It’s also amazing the extent to which their list shows a pastoral or rural self-mythology: bonfires, boating, horseback riding, thunderstorms. I remind you that OkCupid’s user base is almost all in large cities, where to one degree or another, if you find yourself doing much of any of these things, civilization has come to an end.

If I had to choose over-arching themes for white people’s lists, for men, I’d go with “frat house” and for women, “escapism.” Whether one begot the other is a question I’ll leave to the reader.

White Men:

White Women:

October 11, 2010

Kiss online dating goodbye with the wrong profile photo

Online dating site OkCupid collects heaps of data about its clients. Which you should expect. That’s what good websites do. For instance I know that you’re currently wearing a daggy shirt and sitting with one foot under your leg. Freaky hey.

The insights provided by the OkCupid blog are just phenomenal. They track just about every interaction between people and produce posts like this one – about the type of profile picture that is likely to get you noticed – debunking some popular myths. And they make cool graphs.

Here are the graphs on the types of photos that get the most responses…

A “MySpace” shot apparently looks like this…

Luckily it’s the shots that actually involve you doing something interesting that produce long term results.

January 26, 2010

Statistically kissing dating goodbye

Here’s an interesting statistical breakdown of “match percentages” through OKCupid, an online dating service, based on indicated religious affiliation and level of seriousness.

It’s worth a read for no reason other than that it’s kind of interesting. There are a few other factors considered throughout the piece too.

“All OkCupid users create their own matching algorithms, so when we determine who matches who, we’re just crunching the numbers people give us. A match percentage between two people is a condensed, yet statistically valid, expression of how well they might get along.”

“In short, our method is this: we host an ever-changing database of user-submitted questions, covering every imaginable topic, from spirituality to dental hygiene. To build their own match algorithms, our users answer as many questions as they please (the average is about 230). When answering a question, a user also picks her how her ideal match would answer and how important the question is to her. It’s very simple, and it removes all subjectivity on our part. We simply crunch the numbers.”

Here’s a table. The average “match percentage” is 60.2%.

November 10, 2009