Dating in the Digital Age

not at all. I'm speaking as a layman on this issue. I am happily married and have never dated anyone online in any way. Well, to be fair, I met my wife through the internet. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so they had the internet back then. Yeah, at that point it was just tell net chat rooms, which is about are you serious? I am being serious. I met my wife and a telnet chat room. That is beautiful. That's a heartwarming story for a for a tech stuff. Forward clicked,

we clicked, We met in person. She uh, she totally swept me off my feet. Um. After a couple of years we got married and we've been married for sixteen years now. So Hey, there you go. The online dating works based on our sample size size of one. Yeah. In this case, again, it wasn't like, you know, we're going to talk a little bit about specifically using the

Internet in an effort to find a date. In this case, it was just one of those things where two people who had an attraction towards each other just happened to meet. It could have happened in any other kind of set of circumstances, right, It's not like It's not like I was going on this chat line hoping I could find a girlfriend. Uh but you know, hey, I wasn't gonna turn opportunity away. It only knocks the one time. So

I jumped on that ended up being great. So let's talk a little bit about Let's talk a little bit about using the great online age in a search for someone to date. Yeah, I got a question, go ahead. How does it work? All right? So how do you how do you meet? So? Do you just type in like date dot com or how do you? Well know it?

Pretty much it pretty much works in a very similar way to how you would I would imagine go about meeting people in other in other Hey, it's been sixteen years, lare she's laughing at me right now, I'm like, look, I've read my clay tablets I kept back in those days, and I recall that it would involve very much similar things as if you were meeting people in other in other sets of circumstances. Right, you might have different social

cues that you're trying to read off of. But but but but sure, you're you're you're gonna find someone who you know based on their their pictures or their profile. You know that the text that they've putten out there about themselves. Hey, I might be attracted to this person, and you know they might express reciprocating attraction. Yeah, okay, Well let's enumerate here. What are the different ways people

meet each other online? Well, sure, there's there's social media that we're going to talk about, you know, general like Facebook, Twitter, Tembler, that kind of that kind of you know, sites not

intended specifically for dating arguably. Yeah, And then and then there are sites that are specifically intended to make matches online dating services things like match dot com or okay Cupid or there dozens out there, and some of them cater to very specific populations and some are more general population and it all depends upon what you're looking for and who you are looking for, you know, So that's those are your basic approaches that we're going to cover

in this but we'll talk a little bit about how that happens and and and what people how people tend to behave on these sites when looking for a date. Okay, well, maybe we should start with something that we all have a little more experience with, which is just straight up everyday social media. Okay, your Facebook, you're my Space, you're well.

One thing I would say is that one thing that does not seem to change very much in in most dating situations, whether you're talking online or offline, is that you want to present to the other person your best self. Obviously, right right right. A psychologist talk about, you know, you

having an actual and ideal and an ought self. Um, the actual being what you are, the ideal being what you feel like you you know, your your ideal that basically sums it up, the best version that's possible of you, and ought being based on societal expectations, what you think you're expected to be. So in other words, it's like there's the one that people actually see when you're out

producing behavior in public. There's the one that you try to sort of cultivate when you're creating your social media profile that you want people to think of you as, or to to cultivate your presentation and to to other people in general. This happens in three dimensions just as often as it happens online. Yeah. Um. And then I guess there's the aught, which is maybe what you do when you're talking to a police officer. I don't what you what you ought to do? Yeah, um, well, okay,

so I think there's something really interesting there. Now. You mentioned that this cultivation of the presenting, the ideal personality happens in person too, and it certainly does. They're like different ways of behaving. There's how you behave at home versus how you behave let's say, like on a first day when you're really trying to get somebody to see

you how you want to be seen. But one thing I think that social media does change is it gives you even more power and control over exactly what you

look like. You have more time to plan what you're gonna say, to sort of like create a list of interests that you think makes you look good, to select photos that are flattering to you only that you have the time and the ability to look into what the person, assuming that you can see their profile, you can see how they behave and what they seem to like, and then cultivate your approach so that you actually fit that more than you would otherwise. So in other words, absolutely,

and well, I mean, I mean that that does happen. Still, there was research done way back into a way back into the eighties no one was alive then, um since before the interwebs, about how if you're meeting someone for the first time, if you expect them to be a potential mate, that you're going to check up on them first, You're going to do research, and you're going to tailor yourself on that day to what you think they're expectations will be. So there is and yes, you're right, Joe.

The research states that based on the fact that that you can you know, it's we do have greater self control over our presentation online than we do in other places, based partially on the fact that a lot of the cues that we pick up on in person are non verbal ones and have a little bit less purposeful control

over that. You know, people will pick up on things that we're that we're thinking or feeling by the way that we're holding ourselves, by the words that we use randomly when so, in other words, it's more than what you're just saying. So, for example, if I were single and I were trying to ask a girl out, and I was I was expressing something and I was not being sincere in that it might come across in my body language in a way that if I were to just type out a message, it might be more difficult

to detect whether or not I was being sincere. Sure. However, there are two arguments kind of countering this, and one is that, um, the the social cues that we pick up on online are are very deep and and rich, and that you know, I mean from from the way that, for example, for body language, the way that someone holds themselves in their photos, or what the photos are of, or what else is going on in the background, you

can judge a lot about a person. Um even if they're a very flattering photo that has been very carefully cropped. There's still cues that you can pick up on if you know enough about the culture of online dating to do so, or if you are paying enough attention to want to or um or specifics in the wording, or what they link to or what they don't link to, or you know, and just any number of things about

this person's profile that you can really nitpick. So intimacy is is developed partially through a process of self disclosure. You know, if if you want to get close to someone, part of what you're going to do is reveal stuff about yourself so that you feel like you're understood. Because that's kind of the point um for a lot of

people in a lot of situations. Uh, So there's a drive generally to to reconcile this this autonomy and an impression management that we're working with all the time with honesty and openness, right and and also, I mean when you look at things like Facebook where you are allowed to tweak how people see your profile, uh that can end up being a way of even just knowing that can mean that you end up getting a better idea of what the person is looking for, what they're not

looking for. Yeah, I think there's there's an interesting thing that comes out of the super talkument ways that social media might be changing dating. Um, So, before you would have to make judgments about the way a person carried themselves of their body language and all that. Um. But now I think maybe there's sort of these meta tells um that are not so much about the content of the profile, but analyzing the way the person put the

profile together. For example, you might totally be into the idea of a guy who is fairly muscular, But if a guy takes pictures of himself with his shirt off showing his muscles on Facebook, that's sort of like meta analysis of his process of creating the profile might give you clues that you would then use to analyze well maybe not right, right, absolutely, yeah, that's that's totally I mean, yeah, you know, like like physically fit is clearly and e

lutionary advantage. But I'd really appreciate if you wouldn't talk about my Facebook profile on the podcast. It's a thing though, right the Facebook. I lack the muscles to show, and even if I had them, I would not be showing them off. But but but but it does tell It does tell you something about a person if they have a great number of carefully posed selfies and you know, and yeah, and it doesn't necessarily mean this is a

good or a bad thing. It may very well just mean that this is something that tells you whether or not a person would be compatible with who you are, right, So we're not we're not trying to suggest that there are specific profiles out there and bad. Yeah, it's more like suitable or unsuitable based upon your own personal preferences. And that's that's the key thing to remember here is what what works for one person may totally not work

for someone else. That's I mean, that's romance, right, yeah, exactly, And that's that's the case. That's the case whether you're online or offline. We're just trying to say that, you know,

there's certain things that you start to learn to look for. Yeah, and and and also um, you know, there's some some research indicates that the the that anonymity of the internet, you know, frequently these days, the false anonymity because if your full name is on Facebook, then I mean, and you don't have to sign up using your real name, we all know. But but you know, people can find

you through that. And so being online and having a little bit of that disconnect from real life might actually enable you to be more open and honest than you might be in person. You know, if someone is sitting there across from you and goes like do you like football? You might go, what what do they expect me to say? Should I say yes? Should I say no? Like, based on their facial cues, I am going to form a

response in order to not hurt their feelings. But if you're doing it into an online profile, then yeah, yeah, well, I mean to me, the interesting thing about the social media approach is that, you know, normally I think of social media interactions, they tend to have been after someone's

met someone in real life already. I mean, occasionally they can happen where you're you realize someone else, you know, you know someone, and someone else knows that someone, and then the two of you connect, right, So in other words, you have a common friend, like show might be a common friend between uh, a guy and a girl who both discover one another because of their connection through Joe, because they both post on his in depth Star Wars argument threat on the Return of the Jedi, which that

we're not done with that discussion by the way, Joe, all right, So that's one way. I don't know. Again, since I've been out of the dating thing for so long and Facebook didn't exist when I was dating, I don't know how frequently people have that first interaction through social media, as opposed to a like someone meeting someone else in a different setting and then saying, um, you know, finding them on Facebook that way. That's a good question. Do we have any sort of sense generally how often

people just straight up meet through Facebook? It's a good question. I don't know that there's any specific study that I have not seen research on that, but that does not mean that it doesn't exist. Yeah. Yeah, I mean we'll also be talking a lot about stuff where the research has been performed, has been through different has often been funded by specific parties that are interested in the outcome

of those results. There are a lot of social media quote stats on the Internet that are unsourced and I don't know where they come from. Statistics are made up. Yeah, well, maybe we should move away from social media and into something that's a little more advanced. Like okay, so on social media you could be forging romantic relationships that way, just trying to sort of self select look at people's profiles, like, oh I might be interested in that person. You might

just fall into it. Yeah, what about a service that specific lead designed to foster romantic relationships? Joe, have you heard about tact tact tact T a C T. And I'm not talking about knowing what to say and when not to say something. Yeah, let me get out my tactle box. It's it stands for Technical Automated Compatibility Testing. That sounds like online dating sort of. It actually precedes online dating. Okay, turned back the clock to nineteen sixty four.

Oh yeah, Holy just know this story is gonna involve like vicarious embarrassment. No no, no, no no no. Lewis Altfest alright, he had gone to this event where he saw a computer that would match things together, and then he thought, huh, I bet we could make a computer program that could match people together. And he got with a computer programmer named Robert Ross, and together Ross and Altfest collaborated to create Project ACT. Like I said, Technical

Automated Compatibility Testing. It became New York City's first computer dating service. And so the way it would work is that clients would come in and answer multiple choice questions, a lot of them, like more than a hundred of them. And you would answer all these different multiple choice questions.

You would also be uh asked to choose dislike for things that you did not like to be like a twenty or something items on the list, and you would pick all the things on that list that you specifically did not like. Uh. And on top of that, you had a couple of other kind of general questions, like the men were asked to evaluate various ladies hairstyles. The hairstyles were drawn and the men had to just decide

which ones they liked him which ones they didn't. Ladies would be asked to what kind of mental uh image do they have of their ideal man? Is it a guy chopping wood or is it I'm totally not joking. So you'd fill you'd fill out, you fill out this whole whole sheet, and then you would have it fed in and it was essentially become like a punch card. It would fill. You turn that over to the computer. It was a IBM Foudred series computer and you would

get a you would get up to five matches. Um, it's not like you needed a bar in trade cards, and then you each have to take them to the computer dating And so you fill out the form and you turn it in, They put it through the computer and then based upon the other people who have also in the database, it would Yeah, so you would get five matches. Men would get five pink cards because pink is for ladies, and ladies would get five blue cards. So um, yeah, so you would get you would get

five matches, and then you could, Uh. The way it would work is that it would the computer program would match you up based upon other people's answers to those same questions. So there'd be a certain threshold there, right, and if you had someone above that threshold, they were considered a match. Below that threshold, it was considered to be incompatible and they would not be matched up. And this was in the uh, the East Side over in New York, where things were a little more kind of

fast and loose and crazy at the time. Things are pretty GROOVYIXI. Yeah, so yeah, it was, you know, originally it was one of those things that was kind of a niche market, but it quickly became very popular in all of New York. And that approach of taking the profile of questions and using that to match up against other potential dates, that is the basis of computer dating today, although now some sites go a couple of steps further to make it a little more complex, but that's the

basic idea, right right. I was listening to that, thinking like I did that on Okay Cupid, except instead of answering like a hundred questions, I probably spent like a thousand questions worth back when I was in college and really bored. Yeah, was it like Netflix, Like you could just keep on going and going basically forever. Yeah. And the idea being that the more, the more, the more

of amation you give, the more robust the profile will be. Now, this is not this is not meant for necessarily for the person who you're matched up to to see like, oh, this is how she answered all of her questions. Here's how I answered all my questions. And here's a compatibility, right, it's a you know, based on what you're looking for, you know, you know the same the same thing that might happen with a with a roommate matchup in college or something like that, like like like how clean or

messy are you? How like like how noisy are you? Versus? What's your expectation? Are you a smoker? Are you? Do you mind people who smoke? If you aren't a smoker, you know? Are you a drinker? Is your ideal Friday night going out to a bar? Is it staying home and reading? Is it going to have a game somewhere. How flexible are you about that kind of thing? Do you enjoy making decisions or having decisions made for you?

You know that kind of that kind of balance, right, And so of course the more questions you you answer, the more reliable your profile is, assuming and huge quoting marks, assuming that one you're being genuine and to that the algorithm is a decent algorithm. Oh, that's got to be something very interesting in designing these tests, because I bet people don't always say exactly what's true about themselves. I

bet in a lot of cases because they don't actually know. Well, sure you know that that and that idea of well, I mean if you know the same way that the what are the Myers Briggs tests will will repeat questions

in slightly different ways. That's I know that with stuff like Okay Cupid, they'll do that pretty often to get a more full concept of what you really meant by the yes or no or a bright Because every now and then, of course, you know, you get a question where you read the question, you look at the answers and you think, none of these answers really are representative of how I feel about this. But I'll choose this

one because it's close, or you do. I'll choose this one because I perceive that as being a better answer, even if I don't actually feel that way. So again, it becomes that thing about presenting your best self to the other person. But there are some sites that figured out how to get around that. Really. Yeah, yeah, they call it revealed preference. So that's brilliant. No, that's what

I was asking. Yeah, yeah, so this this the term I saw it, uh, revealed by a guy named Greg Blatt, who is the CEO of the parent company that owns match dot com. And um, he said, uh, what you do is more important than what you say, and that is where you get this revealed preference. The idea is that, uh, the algorithm takes into account not just the things you say you're looking for or the things you say are important to you, but also your actual behavior when you're

using the site. So let's say that Let's say I'm a single guy and I'm looking for a date, and I've said that I really like tall blonds, but I keep looking at tiny little redheads on there, and and even though I've said i want tall blonds for some reason,

on my profile. I'm constantly clicking on all the pictures of these these redheads were like five ft one or something, or or if you say, you know, appearance doesn't matter, but all of the profiles that you click on our people with a high level of symmetry in their faces, right, Or I say that that I think I want someone who has very similar political views as myself, but then I'm spending a lot of time looking at people who don't necessarily fit that maybe, or talking to like maybe

the only people that you continually chat with are ones who you can have a really good argument. Yeah, So these all of these kind of activities getting factored in, and so what they call it is they call it dissonance. It's the dissonance between what you have said you wanted and what your actual behavior is telling the computer. So

here's how they take that into account. They take the dissonance between your actual answers and your behavior, and they look for other people who have similar dissonance between their actions and their behavior, because I figure, if you're both being deceptive, whether it's the way exactly if you're if you're being deceptive, whether it's self deceptive or otherwise, you're probably a pretty good match that foster is a wonderful

kind of enabling relationship. Look, we're talking about forming relationships, right, We're not necessarily talking about finding someone to fix someone else. I think we've all sort of been at least we're aware of situations where people have tried to quote unquote fix other people and that rarely turns out well. Oh share. Also, also, the level of honesty and openness that you have with someone is going to depend on the involvement and intimacy

of your relationship. And that's whether it's online or offline. You know, it's it's you can't say that people lie on the internet as opposed to in real life, because I've people lie in real life all the time. Yeah, yeah, I usually do at least three times a podcast, But it's up to the listener to figure out what those three times are. So here's another interesting thing about these algorithms, Joe.

So we've already talked about the fact that it's it's looking at your behavior and figuring out what you really want versus what you say you want, and then looking for other people where you are what they really want versus what they say they want. It also starts to predict and extrapolate based upon what limited interaction you've had. So let's say that you do not go on the site regularly, but you use the site. You just you're just not on there. You're not contacting lots of people

sending messages. You've done it a couple of times, maybe, but you're not like blanketing the the entire website with your your comments or or or requests or anything along

those lines. What these algorithms will do as they will match you you up based upon your behaviors to all the past history of everybody else who has ever used the site, and then look for matches between you and the way other people have behaved in the past, and if it finds a match, it then predicts that you're gonna behave in pretty much the same way those people back then behaved. And therefore we'll start not unique. Well when you start, when you start looking at those big numbers,

that does seem to happen. Yeah, So so that's the thing is that it's actually saying that. All right, So Joe sent two messages over the past month, but based upon who he contacted and his behavior, these are the people we think he would be best suited to to be matched with because we've decided that Joe is just like this guy named Richard who used the site six years ago and behaved in the same way and was

way more active for a longer period. So we're just gonna extrapolate Joe's behavior to say he would follow in the same footsteps as Richard from six years ago. Unfortunately, Richard is dead now because on the site, all right, well you know there's Joe. Just watch your back, man.

So uh, At any rate, Yeah, it's kind of interesting that the algorithms not don't just look at at what you say you want versus what you apparently want based on your behavior, but it extrapolates future behavior based upon the huge sample size of data that some of these

sites have. That's really interesting. So when I thought about how these algorithms work before, I typically thought of them as um, I don't know, sort of creating some data that would quickly help other people know what they needed to know about you. But it seems like it can also help you figure out what you yourself want but

don't know that you want. Absolutely I would in the case of Okay Cupid and my early college experience with it, When I first joined the site, it was because they had a lot of quizzes up and I was in that I'm bored on the internet in college phase where I liked taking a whole lot of quizzes, and they made me sign up for They made me sign up for an account and I was like, well fine, and then they kind of sent me a personality profile and I was like, well, okay, fine, and then they were like, hey,

here's some people you might want to date. And I was like, whoa. That wasn't why I signed up for this thing, but I guess you're doing that now, and yeah, actually that was okay. Cupid took a very interesting approach

that way. Like you said, they had all these different sort of meme surveys where, you know, to the point now where there are thousands of them, right, but all personality profile stuff right Essentially, you know, it's it's stuff that you're meant to take for fun, but at the same time they're gathering in formation that are that could potentially set you up on quote unquote the perfect date.

That's a pretty smart marketing model, because I mean, who doesn't get a little bit curious about like, well, what don't I know about myself. Well, I got another. I got another. So let's let's go beyond algorithms. Have something else to tell you? Yeah, have you ever thought about well, I mean, obviously we're out of this one, Joe, Lauren, have you ever thought about trying to match yourself up with someone based upon your DNA and their DNA that

let's take the romance right out, Lauren. That's that sounds like a statistically awful Aren't there laws about that? I mean, there's a sounds like like an Eltis Huxley novel or something. There's a there's a a service called Scientific Match that tries to pair people up according to their DNA. Do we okay, look y'all like like we we just figured out this whole genome thing like like ten years ago.

I know, I'm going to be honest here. According to Scientific Match, if you have a really good DNA match, it supposedly it's the person better female orgasms, is what I was trying to say, because that's that's how they that's how they marketed as they say that a good DNA match leads to more frequent and intense female orgasm. What's your source on this Scientific Match that's their source.

That's what they're claiming. Okay, okay, hey, um so so so sexual reproduction and health issues are that's I I cannot even I think I need to laugh for another about five minutes before I can talk about this serious. That is so completely ludicrous that Okay, yeah, go ahead. Another question. So their idea is you want to be as genetically similar as that's what I said. I said DNA match. They're matching you based on your DNA, not

that you are a perfect match on DNA. Then my question would be, like, what is their rubric for making the match? Because I don't think genetic similarity is what you want to get. I don't imagine it's genetic similarity, but I have no it's just like if your brother is in the data base. Uh. And never mind the yeah that I don't know specifically what they're they're there

method is like I don't know what it is. And and no, none of these sites, by the way, none of the sites were talking about scientific match or okay, cubiter match dot com or any of the other ones talk about their actual algorithms because that's their quote unquote secret sauce. That's I'm skeptical of all this. It seems shrouded in mystery and causes some of us to laugh. Joe, you know, any any technology sufficiently advanced will seem as

if it were magic. Um, I would I would like to I would like to put in, as the medical correspondent, not only the single lady correspondent here today, that that that that orgasms are not, in fact that be all end all of any sexual encounter, and that that is in fact a mistake that I think has been really born of the increase in watching pornography. Not that I think that that's a bad thing at all, but I think that I think that there is perhaps more emphasis

than it's necessary on orgasm. I just wanted to put that in. I see. So you're suggesting that perhaps people have a realistic expectation exactly, and that much sexual pleasure can be gained without organs. This also leads to This also leads to the discussion that there are different people have different motivations for looking at online dating, right, So you have some people who are transition well, and that's

why I had that there. Actually, I mean, you know, of course some of us are are twelve and are all giggly. I'm counting myself there by the way, I've just managing to hold it down through uh mostly a lack of caffeine. Um. Anyway, there are different reasons for people to pursue online dating. Some people are looking to settle down. Some people want to find a long term relationship. They want to find that special someone and they want to be able to rely upon that person, and that's

that's what they're looking for. There are other people who are using online dating in order to find the next physical encounter, and that's that's all they are looking for, or just for companionship in a temporary way, or um for very temporary companionship. If they're you know, breezing through a city and they just want to to to have a conversation with somebody, or maybe they don't know what they're looking for, that's also a possibility to something. Yeah.

So this makes creating those algorithms even more tricky because let's say that you have uh, for example, men in general. We're gonna talk about generalities here, but we're just talking about general trends, not specific cases, because obviously we could

get anecdotal and this would go off the rails. But men in general tend to be more likely to be looking for a quick physical encounter than women, and they tend to send a lot of messages out in order to essentially casting out a lot of lines to try and get a bite. Also in in certainly in modern stern society, men are generally seen as the aggressors in a relationship and the initiators the initiators, right right, Yeah,

aggressor from mathias a strong word. Um, but in women, I mean, even from my personal sample size of one, I have seen a lot of friends, you know, even my absolute most feminist modern out there. Why could do friends? Um uh talking you know, asking like is it okay if I ask a dude on a date? Like it is it okay? If I ask a dude on a date? What will he think of me? Yeah, it's not okay to do it to me because my wife would kill you. So I don't even think about it. But yeah, no,

I I understand that entirely because it happen. No, it would never, It wouldn't have happened anyway. Uh, which is I'm perfectly fine with. I'm a happily married me. But you know, I think that it's still a societal UM question. I don't know how people contact each other well, because we definitely have we definitely have things in the Western society. We definitely have certain certain norms that are you know,

norms change over time, but they change very gradually. Well, that leads me to an interesting question, then, uh, is online dating changing these norms? Oh? I would feel like it's spent a lot of a lot of change and or or a lot of changing perception. There's at least an increased level of awareness I think now I wouldn't.

I would say that's not changing nearly fast enough. I mean just based upon things like getting outside the dating scheme entirely, but just looking at things like rampant misogyny online tells me that things are actually not even as um advanced advanced as I had thoughts. Yeah, that that even if people are saying I'm just joking to think that that's something okay to joke about, it suggests to me that that I was very naive and thinking that

we were further along than that. But the Internet also you can with that specific example, I think you could argue UM gives people an opportunity to say things that they know full well they would never say in public where they can get punched, right, But that just shows that just shows that that's the underlying that's this underlying problem though, right. It just it means that sure it wasn't voiced maybe as often before the Internet, but it was certainly there. It just wasn't it didn't have a

voice before. But that doesn't mean that there was an absence. Yeah, And I think that sometimes an unfortunately, like one of the unfortunate side effects of all the data that these kinds of dating sites gather is that people use them to to further attempt to illustrate a gender divide on issues like like a lot of the time, because we're collecting all of this personal data about people in this dating situation that is on many sites by and large,

straight hetersexual male female um that people use that to make assumptions about women and about men that are are really they're not necessarily realistic, They necessarily reflect the certainly not helpful. All right, Yeah, well, you know, I mean they may be to the users at that site who are looking for a heterosexual relationship. But there are some

other problems with this big data issue. One of them is, of course, something we've talked about before on this podcast with other things where you get lots and lots of options opened up called the tyranny of choice. That concept that when you have so many options that you don't know where to start, or that you it gives you an illusion that you have, uh, you know, you have to go with quote unquote the best choice. But the best choice is something that you're defining in your own head.

It doesn't necessarily mean that the person you end up sending a message to is actually your best match. You might be going by your own set of criteria and not even realize that you're passing up the opportunity to meet someone that could genuinely make you very happy wow or yeah. Yeah. You can even have this sort of like constant sense of dissatisfaction with whoever you end up with because you have this lingering idea that I hope, but there's so many other people in my inbox and

I've gone to the next dial over. I might have found the best girlfriends and this one's pretty darn good, but I bet the next one would have been even better, And now you know what am I going to do? And that there's also the issue of trading up the idea that you will start dating one person for a while, but if you see someone better online, you will then dump the first person and start dating the second person. There there's some psychologists who have said that this ends

up essentially reducing people to the role of products. That instead of thinking of, uh at someone on the other end as a potential a person you could potentially date and form a relationship with someone that you could have a meaningful relationship with, it's you know, your next step to the perfect mate, whatever that might be in your mind. Right. Although I do want to put in that that matchmaking and even mediated self matchmaking is not a new thing.

I mean, people can take out newspaper personals. It's it's the mid ninete century. Uh and and even even before then, you know, I I would assume that that in some way debutante announcements or something like that would be very structured in in this in this like check out what this nice lady? Yes, and you know, look how rich her family is. Yeah. The other issue, the other side of that coin, the idea of trading up that you know,

I'm gonna keep looking even though I found someone right now. Uh. First of all, going into the idea that the person that you connect with needs is going to be the one is as just as dangerous a mindset right to think that, oh, well, I found this person, the computer says we're a great match. Therefore everything's going to work out perfectly. That's not how reality works. So there tends

to be this real disconnect. And in fact, Chris Coin, who was one of the founders of okay Cupid, told The New Yorker that it's a selection problem when you round up a bunch of people who want to settle down. Some of them are really really key, so they will just turn down options that might have been fantastic for them. Others are not picky enough, and after they get maybe one message, they're like, all right, I gotta jump on this because who knows, you know, I may never have

this opportunity again. And it's this get burnt out potentially be based on poor experiences. Yeah, both both types of individuals could end up being very much unsatisfied in the

long run because of this these tendencies. So, and it's it's difficult to tell someone who you know, they they feel like there's something missing in their life and they want to find that it's really hard to say, Hey, slow it down, you know dat a few people see what see who out there is a good match, learn more about them, learn about yourself in the process, and that's going to make you the happiest when you're like, no, I have a hole in my heart right now and

it goes all the way to China. Hey, I should use that as my quote. Well, okay, so I feel like so far we have taken maybe an unduly kind of skeptical or negative tone when I don't think that was our intention, not at all. It kind of came up with the genetic matching and stuff like that. I I wanna say that I think online dating provides a lot of opportunities for people, especially I would imagine people who, um say, are looking for someone that they might be

unlikely to find in their home social circle. Sure, I mean, well, one thing, it can extend at home social circle well outside of what that would normally be. So, for example, we're here in Atlanta. There are a lot of different places in the metropolitan Atlanta area. I mean there's something like thirteen counties in the metropolitan Atlanta area. Uh. And I don't know about you guys, but I don't tend

to venture out of two of those. So, uh, so that the thing is that that might give you the opportunity to meet people that otherwise your social circle just never would overlap with. You know, that's the that's a possibility. But then on top of that, there's also, um, well, there have been a couple of studies about how frequently these sort of things, like how frequently online meeting someone

online accounts for the way you met your date. Although I should say that these surveys are almost always commissioned by some company that owns a dating site, so there's a question of bias there obviously. But one of them, for example, said that meeting people online is now the third most common way for people to meet for dating, So after work in school would be number one, and being introduced by friends or family would be number two.

So which that makes sense? Something, what are the others, like, you know, going out to some place like a bar or all right, all right now, or uh, you know, wandering aimlessly through neighborhoods. Um, that's what I tried in my teenage years. Did not work. Well, yeah, I don't recommend it, uh, but you know, it's it's it's a method of mass communication, and anytime that you have one of those, of course people are going to and and you know, like like many other things, you get out

of it what you put into it. Really at the end of the day, I think, sure, yeah, well, and also it's also there are other things as well. There's there's a real issue A lot of people point out an issue with the way that these dating sites make money. Some of them are subscription based, so you pay a certain amount per month in order to be a member.

Others are ad revenue based, and so it's a free service, but they get ad revenue and they possibly are using your information as part of that sort of like the way possibly yeah, well I'd say possibly only because I can't cover all of them, so there maybe one out there that doesn't. But in general, uh, these are the ways they're making money, and some people have said that

really there's a disconnect there. There's a disconnect between the way they're making money and whether or not they're actually providing a successful service. So in other words, they're making money whether or not the matches themselves are working. So there's a disconnect between performance and revenue. If their revenue

were tied directly to successful matchmaking. Then it would be a totally different thing, and you would have these companies have to really try and figure out how to make that you know, when when when when do they when? When do you ask someone to pay you, like, like when they're walking down the aisle, like you get a textification in. But see, that's the thing is that it's not that it's not that they're doing something wrong, it's

that the model itself doesn't work in that sense. There's no incentive to get it right other than you don't want to have customers just say I'm not going to pay for this anymore. So the problem though, is that it's just by the very nature of the business, there's no connection between your your your product, and your revenue in for I mean, you know, in one of these companies eyes, a very satisfied customer is the same thing as an extremely dissatisfied customer. Either way, they're not coming

back to the site. Well, yeah, I would almost argue that it would seem, just from an outsider's point of view, that the most uh the most productive business model for them would be to create a very engaging experience that keeps people returning, right so that they get matched with people who are almost but not quite right for them. Yeah, so that they continuous like, well, well it was nice or he was nice, but it just didn't work with the Twitter or Facebook kind of, you know, the scrolling

feed model. Like really, all you have to do is to create a site experience that people are going to be very glued to. Now here's the question for you. Do you know what demographic is the fastest growing demographic for online dating sites? I would guess or did you know? I would guess retired persons. Yeah, over fifty. That's because you've got a generation of you know, people who are

entering that age who are already computer savvy. Because when you look at previous generations, there were people who are like I don't know how this works, but now we've got people who have been using them. And the early adopters of these services I assume would have been people in the in the set probably yeah, I would imagine. So. But yeah, the fastest growing And keep in mind it's the fastest growing demographic, It doesn't necessarily mean that they dominate.

It just means there are the there are numbers, are the ones that are growing the fastest. And also I thought I'd talked about one other thing. It's a little bit of a duplicitous tactic that some dating sites use called ghosting. Ghosting, Yeah, that sounds creepy. So ghosting is where the dating site creates some fake profiles in order

to lure people to use the service. So, in other words, they might take a picture of a particularly attractive person and create a profile that makes them seem like a pretty good person, a pretty nice match, and they use that as the advertising for the site so that people will go and subscribe to it and look for people like the one they saw in the ad. You know, a pretty person who's like I really like music and dogs.

I like dogs who play music. Yeah, I mean that's and so it's it's something that a lot of sites use. In fact, I don't have the name of the site in front of me. I just remember this from reading the article that there was one site that had something like thirteen hundred fake profiles on it in an attempt to get people to use the service. I'm totally skeezed

out right now. Yeah, that's one thing that I think would be interesting to look into, would be to use these sites not for just information about the sites, but about dating in general, So like, is there a certain facial expression people make in profile pictures that is more likely to get clicked on? Or I think that it all ends up being very much. You know, obviously I would say that there there's some that I think would

discourage clicking. So for example, furrowed brow with blood all over your face is probably a big no no for a large percentage of the population. I don't know that. I mean, that's kind of That's kind of the point I was about to make, though, Joe, is that I think that I don't think there's like the universal this is the thing that's going to get the clicks I want, because there'd be and there would be curves, there would

be within certain social segments and and different demographics. So in other words, you would sit there and look like I'm looking for someone who belongs to this particular demographic. I'm going to see what this particular demographic statistically responds to,

and then I'm going to recreate that in picture. Well, I mean, if I'm going to be a tiny bit culturally insensitive, you know, For for example, I I'm looking for someone who I think is going to be basically like myself, which is like kind of nerdy and maybe like go team unphysically fit, and you know, and and

someone who is a real affinity for cupcakes. You know, so yeah, yeah, and and well but you know, and so so if someone has all the muscles and a really fake tan, I might go not that person, not that person at all. But but that might be exactly what somebody else is looking at. Well, and and there there is something else I saw that was kind of interesting. And again I don't have this. I didn't write down

the research here, so I apologize. But it was interesting in that it was another one of those general generalities where generally women liked men's pictures where they weren't looking directly into the camera, and men liked women's picture is where they were looking directly into the camera. And the armchair psychology response, because this is something else that we all discussed before we start recording this, is that a lot of the quote unquote research in this field are

bloggers just saying I think this is the case. But in this case, the armchair research was that perhaps a direct gaze into the camera by a man would be seen as aggressive to buy a woman, whereas men looking at women looking directly in the camera, I feel like their entire attention has been focused upon them, which men love. These are the generalities that were being said in that particular article. That sounds like an interpretation. Yeah, it doesn't

mean that. It doesn't necessarily mean that they are you know, invalid or valid. It just means that I don't know this. Yeah, yeah, this is a very We talked about hard sciences and soft sciences. This one is uh, anytime they've got psychology and yeah, this is this is a little yeah. And also, again, like we said, it's hard to get a it's hard to get a study funded that isn't funded directly by one of the interested parties that has a vested interest

in the outcome of that study. Right, So if there were more independent studies that we could look at that were you know, funded and completely independently so that we could feel better about the research, or if they had more than you know, a couple of hundreds of people in their sample size, then maybe we could cite that. But you know, not that many people have a really tackled it. I think it's due for an ignoble personally. So, um, what's the future of dating? Dating? And technology twenty to

fifty years years. Based on everything we've said, we'll all be in the singularity and so it won't matter. We'll all have robot boyfriends and girlfriends. Here's a question. So imagine we get to some of these other things we've talked about, like a negligible senescence. Uh, and you're living for you know, everybody's living for hundreds of years or something like that. Does that change relationships and dating? I mean, do people get married because they're like, well, it'll be

this many years. They have to endure her company for maybe fifty years? Seriously, I mean, I mean, you know a bit based on the documentary work of Say and Rice, you know, those those long term relationships don't necessarily work out.

But uh, you know, I think that and and different different futurists have talked about that very thing, about whether or not relationships would be a lifelong mating situation if lifelong equals three hundred years, because don't you eventually get sick of someone or you know, or might you decide that the way that you can learn about many different disciplines over the course of your extremely long lifetime, maybe you want to have many different relationship experiences, or or

just that the fact that people do change over time, and so that then it comes to that whole thing, do you grow together or do you grow apart the idea that if you have two people who were very much compatible early on in the relations and ship and their compatibility decreases over time, then what happens. I mean, it's like there'll be like standard units of matrimony, like your average marriage is a is a contract that is

designed from the beginning to last seventy years. Please make weddings, you know, try and reverse the trend of making weddings less and less romantic over time. I'm kind of sick of it going to a wedding where I'm like, yeah, this is I'm not saying we need to make it fancy. I'm just saying that needs to be genuine. I've gone to a lot of weddings where I felt like I'm in the middle of a production and it's everything is fake. Okay, son,

So let's not make it contractually obligated. So okay, agree, Yeah, I think I think it's you know, but but to answer your question, I don't think I would hope we would never formalize it I hope so too. Yes, I agree, I agree with that thing. Um. I I think that in general, consenting adults should be allowed to do what what they want to do as long as they're not hitting anyone. And then potentially the government doesn't even have new business being in it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's a

different podcast politics. Yeah, moving on. So yeah, I think the future of dating is essentially going to be the same old story as we've always seen, you know, people trying to find other people that they you know, they

are compatible with. And I'm I'm hoping that all of this math that we are we are compiling about about stuff and things and people's um is going to to lead to an actual better understanding of ourselves because you know, like like I'm not on Okay Cupid even though I am single, because it sounds exhausting and I don't really I don't really care what a computer has to say about my personality. UM, I would kind of rather meet people and figure it out for myself. And and there

are plenty of people who have that same reaction. Right, we haven't even mentioned this yet. The thing you just said brings up the whole aspect of fun. I mean, like isn't it a thing people do for fun, like dating is a fun. It's not just like I got to get through this find somebody. I don't know, there's there's that perspective. But you know, I've I've heard a lot of people talk about like needing to really settle down, and I'm like, well, don't you want to meet someone

that you want to settle down with? I mean, like, wanting to settle down should be kind of aside the point of meeting that person. Cuarly, the process is part of it. And if you're taking if your your goal

is to remove the process entirely. You both are so young, so young, you probably both think Romeo and Juliets just a genuine love story to kidding, kidding, but no, no, I think there are people who feel like they've reached a point in their lives where they have that feeling they want to settle down and they want to find the right person too. It's not I don't think it's an either or situation or even they have necessarily put

one ahead of the other. It's just that they feel like this is the time of my life where this is what I want and I want to find the right person to have that with, which means I've got to find someone who also it's this thing. So I think it's that kind of mentality. It's not necessarily like I need to find I need to find person, yeah, to fit in this this this person shaped whole I have in my life that I want filled, you know. I think that that's that's the way most people think

of it. I think that, uh, the computer dating thing can have its place. I also think that if you are putting all of your faith in it, then you're you're setting yourself up to fail. And that if you're putting too much faith in it means that you're putting so much pressure on it that the dates that you go on, even if they go well, you may not even recognize it at the time. And I've read a lot of reports about dates that were set up online that did not go well, which could certainly end up

making you feel um disenchanted with dating in general, you know. So, uh, I think if you go into it open minded and you don't have expectations of how it's going to come out ahead of time, then it can be a useful way of meeting new people and potentially someone that would be the last first date you ever had. But you know, it's the same can be said of all sorts of social interactions. So I don't think of it as replacing anything.

I think it's just another way, And as long as other people view it that way, I think that works out pretty well. If you start to put all your cards in one deck, then you start rank into trouble. That wraps up our discussion about dating in the digital age with your experts who read a lot have no idea what they're talking about. Yeah, we'll talk about particle

physics all day long, but girls, all right. So, but if you want to join us and joining on the discussion and talk a little bit more about your own dating experiences, perhaps go to fw thinking dot com. That's where we have all the blog posts, we have the videos, we've got the podcast, we've got articles, we have lots of information for you to look at. We want you to join the conversation. Also, remember we have our social media handles out there. It's f W thinking. You can

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