How Online Dating Works

at research too. It's not like there's I haven't been to the Sun, but we did one on the Sun. Yeah, that one's stunk. Yeah, that's a bad example. I do have to say, though, if I were single, uh here in this modern age, I would way way be into online dating. Well, it's it's normal. Yeah, you know. I was not um ever or skilled at wooing the ladies um like out in bars or whatever, like I would do find set up or like at a dinner party

or something. But this would have really benefited me back in the day if it was like a legit thing in the early nineties. Well, and there were some legit sites, but it was more like remember the movie singles, like the video profiles Great Expectations? Was that what it was called? Well, that's the in real in real life, there was something like that called Great Expectations. Yeah, well, should we talk about the history? Did you have a better intro than that? No?

I didn't, Okay, No, I just figured we'd go into the history of it because it does have a surprisingly long history. UM dating, I guess using computers, not necessarily online, because there wasn't such a thing as online. UM started in the sixties with a guy named Jeff Tar who was a mathematician at Harvard UM and he was interested in the girls. He was a little bit of girl crazy,

he said. He was so desperate to meet girls. And I think with your a mathematician at Harvard, it's probably not like, you know, bustling with hot chicks so prepared to have your socks knocked off. Because the lady who wrote this Slate article did a miscarriage of justice in describing Jeff Tar and his operation. First of all, apparently the computer that they used, the circuit board, spelled out the words sex. Yeah, just for fun? Yes, okay, no,

because like that was the point? Well right, and he was desperate to meet them because he was desperate to like give as he could. Apparently this guy had no problems whatsoever. Really, Yeah, you saw mathematician Harvard sixties and you thought, hey, I read a contemporary article and another one that UM written years later about this this thing.

It was. It was a thing. It was called Operation Match that he's set up and UM basically, for three dollars, you submitted a questionnaire and Jeff tar fed your questionnaire into a computer and you were guaranteed to get at least five names of people who the computer decided were a match based on your questionnaire answers. And they you know, he was doing it mostly in New England, for the

New England colleges. It was probably like back then, it was probably names, addresses and how they like to be touched pretty much, you know. Um. But they they got a kind of a tepid response, and then somebody mentioned it on like an interview on TV, and it took off after that, and then a few months they had a hundred thousand people in this database. And yeah, and they were these were undergrad college students charging three bucks apiece.

So in a few months they made like three hundred thousand dollars coming up with the first computer dating service. Whatso like? Ever did he go on to do anything great?

Oh he's a mathematician from Harvard, I'm assuming yes, Uh, well in the seventies, these great expectations is what you mentioned, was founded by Jeffrey Ulman, and he's the one that did the video presentations, like they made fun of in the Singles movie, where you would just do your little video profile and people would watch it and say, you know, I like that girl. She's she plays guitar and look

she's drinking coffee, she likes dogs. Can you can you imagine anything more clunky than getting like a videotape in the mail of video profiles of people could imagine it? It's not a sustainable system or making one man, especially in the day when you had to you know, it would take me like two weeks to do a video thing. And that's with modern computer editing, right or yeah or yeah editor who like had to put those things together? Yeah. Well in Singles it was Tim Burton. He had a

little cameo as the director of her dating video. Have you seen Singles recently? No? Wow, it really made quite impression it's I was about to say it's one of my favorite movies, but it's not on my top one h and movieless. Oh, I might have forgotten that one great movie you're gonna have to do a hundred and one perhaps, so uh. I like this this story about

Jeffrey Allman who found in Great Expectations. He was apparently on Montell Williams Show, and Montell Williams he was basically saying, like, doesn't your service just prey on lonely people? And Alman said yes, just like restaurants prey on the hungry, and doctors prey on the sick, and talk show hosts prey on the people who are too bored to read a book.

I love that guy, I know, and I remember. I'm old enough to where I remember these early services and it being like an embarrassment, Like, God, what, what a desperate person? So here's the sign up for something like this. I wrote an article that made that point that there's still that stigma surrounding online dating. No, it's a certain percentage of people pulled still feel that way for sure. I think people who are maybe involved in online dating

themselves desperate for online dating. And this author was putting this this assertion out there that just the very structure of online dating, the privacy settings, the um, the just general embarrassment surrounding it, just the way it's set up, it's treated like it's an embarrassing thing. And as long as it's treated like it's an embarrassing thing, it's never

going to become real dating. It's going to become some hybrid of it where only sad people or the desperate and or people who just want to hook up, or the dregs of humanity that's where they go. It will never be the de facto method of dating as long as it's structured as an embarrassing thing. Do you think it's still structured that way? Well, yeah, I think it is.

I think like the privacy settings are in part for you know, protection and to keep creeps at bay, but I think it's also so that like the average person can't see that you're trying online dating. Even still today, I guess I see that. I think there's nothing to be ashamed of too. I agree entirely very efficient way to meet a like minded person. You know, I would be way into it. I think maybe like in five years that will be a moot point because so many

other people will be using it. Yeah, because apparently it started to wane in two thou well that was more to do with the economy, I think, Oh yeah, yeah. They did a study from UH like over a ten year period and it definitely waned in the mid two thousand's, But now it's booming again. UM dating services report earnings of two billion dollars and uh they said that they're growing at a rate of three point one percent per year now. But it did when disposable income was in

shorter supply. That was definitely one of the first things to go. And yes, and I said, but I saw and now it's it's back. But I think in addition to that economic hitch upward, there was an attendant acceptance social acceptance of it as well that accounted for a growth in it. Between two thousand five and two thousand and thirteen, the number of Americans who said that they know somebody who online dated like doubled from like to thirty percent of Americans, and like of all Americans use

or have used online dating services. So it is definitely becoming more and more widespread. But again I do think that there is still just some tinge of whatever it's that. It is like some people might be a little reticent to say that in mixed company. Yeah, which is weird because it's like you if you're people aren't ashamed of dating or not dating. It's just adding that online to it changes everything for some reason. Yeah. And of course with the advent of smartphones and apps and GPS locators,

that has helped a lot to to increase news. You know. So thanks to the the technical revolution that was the advent of the Internet. In a little site called match dot com came about, which is interesting because that was the first online dating service and match was the name of that one from the from Harvard in the sixth Notice that I wondered if he got any juice out of that. Probably not. Probably not, um, and the Harvard

mathematicians he's doing all right, Um, we assume yes. And then a couple of years later another one that's still around and very prominent, Ja Date, was created, Yeah, for the Jewish community. Yeah. And then um the original version of Facebook was called face match, and it was basically a an online version of this way to check people out basically right exactly now, Chuck, like you said, like there's there's sites all over the place, there's apps, there's

it's just becoming more and more prevalent. Yeah, I made a list. If we can go ahead and get to this with my twenty favorite niche because you can go to the gentlemans like e Harmony or match or you know, the big the big daddies, or if you're really specific, you can go to uh A likewise for fellow book lovers.

Farmers only. City folks just don't get it exactly. Uh There's one called how about we dot dot dot, which is basically, instead of some huge profile that you have to set up, it's very very short and casual, like how about we go eat at a great restaurant tonight and someone can just respond to meet you. If you're an IVY leaguer, you might go to ivy Date. That's a site Equestrian Singles dot com. I'm sorry, that's an obnoxious dating site. Oh, totally obnoxious equestrian singles. If you're

into horses. There's one called cupid Tino dot com for fans of Apple products because they found the Apple people tend to be alike. Veggie Date Um if you're vegetarian, must look pets our Time is just one of many for people over fifty, which is kind of cool to see Geek to geek. There's obviously political ones Republican meet and Democratic Republican people meet and Democratic people meet. I don't know if there's a Tea party people meet or not.

I would guess Trek Passions. Yes, they're like the Hike. Nope. Man, My Lovely Parent is for single parents. Uh, Sea Captain Date. I think my favorite one. That's for real. Yeah, it's just for people looking for their first mate. That's awesome. Uh, find your face Mate. That's for people who think that want to find people that look like them. It's a little creepy. Wealthy men dot Com Stash passion if you're in the mustaches, not like drugs on you. Personals for

cat lovers, waiting till marriage for the virgins among us. Yeah. I found one that was um that was founded by a woman who had had cervical cancer. Are Oh that's nice? Who um founded a site for people who are incapable of having sex but still want to find love and apparently it's gotten a pretty great response. That's awesome. And the last one was Tall Friends that I thought was kind of interesting. Like they're just tall. You're just into tall people, or I guess you're I've heard of that

from a lot of tall people, especially tall women. Oh yeah, who don't like dating short guys and have a hard time, you know, finding dudes that are six three. You go to tall friends friends. I saw another one called the gaggle. Have you heard about that? Yeah? That that one's interesting. It's for um. It's basically so for a woman to date all of the various um prized parts of an individual's personality, but broken out and distributed among a whole group of men. Like I want to date an athlete,

so I'll go on a date with this guy. I want to like a brainy guy too, so I'll go on a different date with a brainy guy, right, and so on and so on a tall dude. Yeah, and then the woman, but she's dating all these dudes at once. Yea, hence the gaggle, A gaggle of dudes. Yeah we're powered to you, I guess. And yeah, and then of course the kids, as weird as your imagination can get weirder than farmers only, Oh yeah, our trek passions way weirder

or sea captain date even weirder. All right. Yeah, um, so that's some pretty good stuff. Chuck. Thanks, that was some good digging. Well those are, you know, like you said, one of many, many many. Um. But we're gonna be talking about sort of the basic online standard online dating scenario, and we're going to talk about that right after this message. All right, so welcome back to online dating. Um. I guess we should just walk someone through this process. Yeah,

step by step. Yeah, so the first thing you're gonna want to do, there's there's different kinds of sites. They're typically broken out into two categories. See aptains tall people. Uh no, I can't. Uh, it's um free sites and pay sites. No, that was serious that last one. No, no, no, I was still laughing at Okay, that's good. So you've got your freesighting at your pay sites and both of them.

It depends on the site. But for the most part, uh, if you are thinking of creating a profile, you will be able to go on to just about any dating site and give a very minimal amount of information and start browsing. Yeah, because they want you to check out the site and get the hooks into you, and they don't necessarily say you gotta pay right away, or you gotta give us all this information. Just browse around the

shop see if you like anything. Right, So, um, you're gonna give a little information like whether you're a man or a woman, or whether you're seeking a man or a woman. Maybe the year you're born, and then maybe your zip code. Yeah, you're not gonna get full profiles if you're browsing, no, unless you may not get pictures either. It depends. So if it's a free site, you may feel true. If it's a pay site, and we'll talk

about the pros and the cons in a minute of each. Um. If it's a pay site, you might be able to see yeah profile without pictures, or you might be able to see you know, both, but you won't. You can't contact anybody unless you pay. Um. But for the most part when you're when you're going online, you can check the people out, um with just a just a tiny

bit of information. Yea. Once you join, though, you're gonna have to start building a profile, and it kind of starts out easy and broad and then as you go through the creating the profile, I mean it takes a minute. Yeah, And um, I guess we should point out to that you're gonna have to input some kind of email address. Um, it's up to you if you want to create an email address for free, just for online dating. If you're really like super freaked out about privacy, might not be

a bad idea. But most of these um, you're not allowed to be emailed directly at first. It's either anonymous through the site or the site has their own messaging system. So it's pretty safe these days as far as protecting your privacy. You shouldn't get too freaked out, right, It's not like this nineteen seventies where there wasn't even not great expectations. Oh yeah, where it's like this is my address in the background exactly. Uh, you wanna your next step?

There is probably writing down some physical attributes about yourself, because as much as people like a good personality in a sense of humor, um, a lot of people are probably looking for something specific or maybe just general physically. So you've got height, weight, hair color, eye color, um, body type, Yeah, whether you have tattoos or pierce things,

that kind of thing. Um. And then it gets a little more involved in all of this is you're just clicking bubbles or selecting from dropped down menus um, but it gets a little a little more granular, like what are your interests? And these aren't people snooping. You're doing this for yourself to have a more complete profile. If you're in there going well, what do they want to know? What kind of movies I like? Then you you don't get online dating, you know, Yeah, but maybe you should

go to like suspicious Minds or Suspicious Hearts online dating service. There, Mike, you don't give out any personal information because yeah, or the drop down and he says I like this, this, that or none of your business and everyone just picked none of your business. So your interests and activities? You play guitar? Do you play sports? So you into reading? Um, there's your favorite filmmaker? What do you like to do

on the weekends? All that kind of stuff will give you a good give someone else a good idea of kind of what you're like. Yeah, um, your income level, Yeah, whether you have pets, how you feel about having pets, um, if you live with your parents. These are all things you can lie about. Well that's the thing, like, yeah, it's it's I read somewhere that one in ten profiles online or made up. Yeah. In fact, Okay, Cupe. It's as the top four things people lie about most are height, income,

their photo, and their sexuality, which I thought was weird. Yeah, that's weird. I didn't get that one. You're not doing yourself any favors if you're lying about your sexuality out of the gate. No, and supposedly also chock of people who submitted to a poll about online dating said that they had met somebody, met up with somebody in life. Um who quote seriously misrepresented themselves in their dating profile. Well we must just like, yeah, we should go and

talk about that. With your photo, you want to represent yourself well, obviously, but you want to be accurate because again, you're not going to do yourself any favors. You're not gonna get a second date if you show up looking like the hunchback of Notre Dame and you put a picture of Tom Selick up there. Hey, hunchbacks need love to and that's that's why there's hunchback mate dot com. Like, really, we could just sit here all day and come up

with like feasible uh naymes for goiterer touch. I think Jerry's grossed out. Did you you know? Goider's right. It's from hyper hypothyroidism, which is the result of an iodine deficiency. That's why there's iodie salt to prevent goiders hunt my grandmother.

That apparently also um, the the most preventable form of mental retardation is treated with iodine or it results from an iodine deficiency, which is the main reason why they started adding that to salt, supposedly, And they think there's this thing called the Flynn effect where inexplicably the intelligence as matt by i Q over the twentieth century rose like three points across the board in the West, and

they think it's possible that it's from iodiae salt. Oh, we actually talked about that that podcast a couple of weeks ago, did we really? I'm just very fast NATed by that, apparently so fascinated that knocks out all memories of speaking about it. But do you put that in an online dating profile and just watch your your computer light up? What do you think I talk about? For you? Me? Drives are crazy? She's like, tell me about I saw for the eight time. She loves that stuff. Um, all right,

so where are we here? Oh, you're gonna list all these things You're gonna fill out your profile and then you're gonna do that again, but under the notion of what you're looking for in someone else, like what your ideal mate do and look like, and then they're trying to match you. Yeah, the computer takes this stuff, choose it up like carrots and apples, and poops out some some matches. True. Is that true? Because I think it's made up frankly, now we'll get to the science of it.

So you call it that you mentioned your photo. Did we say, don't put any personal information on there? No, that seems like a no brainer. They won't ask for that stuff. But there are times where you can write things about yourself. So don't feel free to say this is where I live and this is my Social Security number? Right, or this is where I work? Yea, which is one that I I mean I could see overlooking that. Yeah, that seems certainly, you know, like I work at Discovery Channel.

It's something like that. Yeah, where oh in d C Oh cool, I'll be right there. Which floor I want to show you how I can hold a knife in my teeth. You're gonna love it. That'd be Pirates Love dot Com. Uh No, that's Sea Captain. That's a sub branch of that one, right, yeah, probably so. Alright, so you mentioned free versus subscription. They both have their pluses and minuses. Free is good because it's free and we like that, Yes, but so do twelve year old boys. Exactly?

Who poses other people? Yeah, exactly. That is one of the problems with free websites like this is that you will get impostors. Uh that just jokes, ads, scam scams. There's like a whole Nigerian prince scam that's going on. Um. Actually, apparently there's something you can do. Uh, if you see a photo of somebody that you're interested in, you can put it to the test. Yeah, you can drag and copy it on your desktop and then dragon drop it on Google image search. You know you can search by image.

Does it reverse look up? Huh? It looks up that image and it will show you all this stuff and it may say this is a scam. This is if that same picture shows up all over the place under different names of an alisis whatever, that's a scamp. What if what if you would if I did that to your picture, would have said this is Josh Clark. Uh. Yeah, probably it's a pretty pretty smart computer. They got there. Yeah. Yeah,

that's pretty creepy though, But I guess that's good. Like it's creepy on one hand, to be able to find out who someone is from a photo. Oh no, no, no, no, no no, not like that. Sorry, no. If it if if it were like on a dating site and it was just supposed to be somebody's photo, gotcha. If it came up as like, yeah, here's this photo that you found, here's the place that you found it, and here it is on these eighteen other profiles with eighteen other names,

then you know it's a scam. But you can go back. It's kind of like a back door way to figure out if the person's made up profile. All right, So I guess that's good. My brain is not quite functioning today. Really, I'm saying things just a little out of syntax. Josh is going on vacation tomorrow. You're in vacation mode. Last day of school, I told him to rip up his research and throw it up in the air and run out of the building after. I'm pretty sucked. You should

do that. Um. All right. So the free ones, like we said, are good because they're free, bit bad because of all that other stuff. The pay ones you gotta pay for, which isn't great, but a lot comes with that, which is like an identify identity verification process because they're gonna be using your credit card and stuff, so your information is going to be valid, valid and safe with the paid site supposedly, or you can see the pants off of that paid site for failing to verify correctly. Yeah,

I guess. So you can also access uh other features if you're a paid member, like maybe they'll bump you up in search, or you'll have access to more information that seems wrong, like paying for your profile to come up higher. That's that's the basis of the Internet. I guess, you know, search referral. So, Chuck, we talked about making a profile. Let's talk about making a good profile. Yeah. And by the way, this was ed Grabanowski, right, the Grabster,

I believe, so, yeah, an early grabster. Yeah. I think reading some of his examples here, I think we're learning about the grabster. Oh yeah, for sure. And I think he's talking about himself. But he does have some good ideas and I go out with him some good some good examples. Like he's basically saying, like, um, don't be a hack when you're coming up with your profile, especially when you're freewriting stuff. You know, like she was a

cool picture of yourself. Chose a picture of yourself where, um, you're like, there's no not other people around, and you have a shirt on and you just don't look like a sleeves bag, you know. Um, use humor, Like, don't just say I'm funny, be funny. Yeah, don't just say I'm interested in something, Demonstrate how you're interested in like, and he said, beginning with the subject line, and he used two awesome examples. Frankly, yeah, bogart fan seeking unusual suspects. Okay,

it was a half awesome example. The next one's awesome. Go ahead, Uh, come sail away with this boating enthusiast slash sticks fan. I think that is the grabster. I bet you anything that's Yeah, how would you come up with that? Like just using your imagination, I'd go out with that person. Um, you want to make sure that you fill out your whole form everything. Don't be lazy.

If you're lazy, it sends a very clear signal that one you're lazy, which is not a good prospect for anybody unless people are in that well that's then you go on lazy date. Uh. And then it also says, um that I'm not really that into this. Yeah, this is halfhearted. Yeah, and definitely don't say my friends put me up to this. I'm usually don't do things like this, but I'm not a loser, so I don't know. I don't normally do that because you're insulting the very people

that you're reaching out to. Yeah. Not not a good idea. Um. And like we said, you want to not just talk about yourself, you want to you want to demonstrate yourself. Yeah. And Ed again says instead of saying I enjoy Stanley Kubrick film, say the other night, I was watching a clockwork Orange and I found myself thinking, would be a lot more fun to watch and discuss with someone else, to suddenly punch as we're walking down along the waters movie about random violence and rape and torture. Be a

lot more fun to watch it with someone. Or instead of I'm funny, say I love quoting Monty Python or Simpson's lines. You know that could be us. Well, we do that all the time. Uh. He says. Another way to be successful is to just know who you are and know what you want and know what you're looking for. And that's a big plus for people who get fixed up on dates. Like your friends might think someone's perfect for you, but who really knows best but yourself who's

perfect for you? Yeah, so you can avoid all that the clap trap of getting set up on a bad date. Well, that's the whole role of online dating. Computer algorithms and apps and individuals are have taken over from these traditional roles of family friends, um, who co workers, Yeah, of of match of matchmaking. It's people taking it into their own hands or relying on a computer algorithm to do it. Yeah, which is I mean, that's the whole basis of online dating.

That's the whole point of it. To me, it makes sense. It's just a timesaver, like who's got time to go through just the random maybe I'll meet someone thing. I think that's probably what ultimately a hundred years from now, historians anthropologis will look back on and explain the prevalence of online dating. That's why it's just more efficient, I guess. Um. And then lastly, this one's extremely important too. When you're

creating a good profile, use grammar wisely. Yeah, don't don't like check from misspellings punctuation, like put some thought into it, because you'll look like a dummy if you have a poorly worded profile. Yeah. Or again, if that's your thing, if you want to type the letter you instead of y O U, then go to dumb Dumb love dot com. Do that and find fellow dumb dumbs. You're in the finding like minded people. You should be honest, you know, all right. You can also go to the rival site,

oh dot com, so check before we go on. I like lazy date dot com. Pretty pretty soon. Uh, you're going to um be getting ready. You're gonna put on some aftershavee. You're very nice for off old tuxedo shirt, some palm made in your hair, and your high waiter pants with your white sox. It's time to go out there in the big wild world and actually meet somebody. Yeah. And this is after you have paying to this person. Yeah. And that's after this message and we're back chucking. It's

time to go out in the world. Yeah. Like I said, this is um after you have been pained or paying someone else. That's right, so we should we should probably talk about that first. Like it's it's not just like you make a profile, and all of a sudden, you have a date and you go out like there is a first contact procedure. Sure, and um, it doesn't necessarily happen very quickly. Um, and some people choose to make contact. Apparently, you don't have to say much in your in your message.

When you're making contact with somebody, the grabster says something like, UM, hey, I saw your profile and it seems like we have some common interest. Take a look at my profile and if you're interested, would send me a message? Is probably sufficient? Uh, And he says you might send a message to several people at once, one at a time, and then after you sent your messages, there's nothing you can do but wait. Yeah, And that I think goes back to how you are

generally as a person. If before online dating, you're the kind of dude that would go to a bar and try and get like fifteen phone numbers, then you might want to scatter. You might take the shotgun approach. Uh. Or if you're not that kind of guy, if you're like me and never talk to girls at bars because you were just hanging out with your your buddies, then you might want to be a little more singular in your approach and say like this, this lady sounds really nice.

Not these twelve ladies sound really nice. Let me see if one of them likes me back. She sounds like such a super lady. It depends on what kind of a hurry you're in. I guess it would be a little more methodical. But I've known I have friends that you know, take the shotgun approach. And I shouldn't keep saying that because that implies like you're killing somebody, right, I just mean you're spreading a wide, uh, testing a wide. So that's the capturing people in nets approach. That's right, um.

And we should also point out to that there are a couple of ways ago about it. You can either get matched with someone through their algorithms that we talk about, or you can just do the searching yourself, like they can narrow down for you, and you could do it, you know, just search through until you find someone you like. Right, And there's a lot of sites out there that have

no algorithm whatsoever. It's just that questionnaire you filled out is matched up with other questionnaires, and the the more similar answers there are in the two questionnaires, the higher the ranking of the person who um is suggested that you contact like you've got twelve things in common with this person. And then there's other sites um, which we'll talk about a little more that do use algorithms that have like basically UM proprietary algorithms supposedly do a lot

more than that, just um comparing Simler questionnaires. Yeah, which one is that? Well? E harmony? Does they compare twenty nine dimensions of compatibility key dimensions? Yeah, that's right. I believe match dot com uses algorithms. UM. Chemistry dot com, which is apparently a subsite of match dot com, uses a personality inventory that the anthropologist Helen Fisher came up with. Yeah. Yeah, um, it's supposedly is kind of worky. Yeah. I don't know if that's the thing. No one has any idea how

well this stuff works. Well, the company each side is going to tout their own method and say that we're really pairing you with someone who's like you. But I think in general they probably do a decent job for filling out all these things and someone has a lot of similar interest. It's not brain surgery to pair those people up and say you might like each other. Well,

supposedly like people who are professional personality inventorists. That's a real thing out, Um, have sat down and taken these things and still are only scoring about and grabs their points out like these these people are professionals. If they set the average person down in front of the one of these personality inventories, they're they're they're not. We have a terrible ability to express what we want and who we are, right um. And as Helen Fisher was pointing out,

like we were terrible at that kind of stuff. But if you can pay attention to people's behavior, then you can start making predictions very accurately, so they were saying in this article, and from what from other places I've seen, like those those algorithms don't necessarily do anything more than just the two comparing inventories. Would like comparing the two questionnaires and finding, you know, twenty eight similarities and there's your match right there. But like you said, the other

way to go is to browse. Yeah, and I would recommend and this is just how I would do it, is that there are sites that give weighted answers to certain attributes. Like it's too black and white to me to say, I like blonde, I want a girl who's twenty five and who's a democrat. Um, you might feel really strongly about like a political belief, so you can say that's that one's super important to me, But Hair

Keller really is not that big of a deal. So then that's down into the algorithm and you get a little more specific, like they're not gonna pair some super liberal person with a tea party person if they both say that's really important to them, it's like that's one of their values that they stick by it. Or I hate dogs and they pair to you with a dog lover,

like you need to tell someone I really hate dogs. Well, that that goes back to being upfront and saying knowing what you want and saying it yeah, because apparently that that saves a lot of time as well. All Right, so you've made contact with some people, some people who have gotten in touch with you. You've messaged back and forth and you said, hey, let's meet in real life.

The next step that you have to take, unless you're insane or just a dummy and you're on dumb Dumb dot com um, is to talk to this person on the phone, go to a pay phone, have them go to a pay phone. It doesn't matter. Good luck finding a payphone. You have to talk on the phone, because right then and there you're going to find out if it is a twelve year old boy. And we talked about earlier who liked who made a joke profile on a free site. Yeah, it's a good way to root

out just some Uh, the biggest piece of dishonesty. Sure. I also imagine that you could probably find out pretty quickly if they're actually boring. Yeah. Sure, you can learn a lot by talking to someone. And if you think you can learn everything you need to know from emails, you're wrong. Well yeah, I mean, like it's not true. We've figured out by now how to perform online, you know, like people just know how to be online and what's expected of them online. It's it is much more difficult

to talk. Yeah, as we quite often find ourselves saying things aren't good. Right, good. So then you want to go out in the real wide world, and you're going to arrange for Chuck a very public meeting YEA, A crowded place ye, lots of people a k A. Witnesses. Uh, And you should set up a date that is going to last no more than about an hour quick dinner, yeah, meet for coffee, maybe a movie, but a short one. Yeah,

and that's that's. Um, we'll meet for a TV show right. Um. That is for your own safety and for your own sake, because sometimes you get it wrong or the dating site gets it wrong and you end up with someone who's not a match, and you don't want to waste each other's time, So make it quick. You can all if a feeling, if you're having a great time you both are, you can always extend that date. Sure, say hey, let's go that wine bar too, because dinner, dinner was great.

I'd like to keep talking to you, right. It's harder to shorten a date, right, Like, remember how we were going to go to that wine bar after this, Let's not do that. And if I found out I hate your guts. Yeah, and it's real easy to say, you know what, I lied, I don't have to go help my mom clean out her sock drawer. I really like you. Let's keep the staate going. And it's super easy to say, no, I really do have to go help my mom clean

under sock drawer. It's crazy. Yeah. Um, you also want to meet in public, like we said, for your safety as um, there's a woman from Las Vegas who's suing Match dot Com for ten million dollars right now because there was a man who she met and dated for like eight days who four months later came to her house and stabbed her a bunch of times and like kicked her head and neck and left her for dead. Was this after their relationship had gone bad or just yeah?

So they dated for eight days. Four months later he shows up at her house and this guy apparently confessed to murdering another woman he met on match dot com too, and then killed himself in jail. Wow. Yeah, And there's it happens to men as well. There's a man who arranged to meet a woman and was beaten and robbed by the woman and her son. So you you don't want to invite people to your house and he's like,

you didn't tell me you how to son? That's nice? Um, So you don't want to meet him at your house, You want to meet him in public? Yeah, just protect yourself. He has common sense and caution. Don't be a dummy that'd suggests a college sporting event. Yeah, you know, I Colledge was very because Ed wants to take a girl to a college sporting event, not pro. It doesn't like pro. If it's like pro, he would have written pro. Yeah, that's true. Uh you got anything else? Yeah, I totally do.

So we were saying that, um, the this online dating thing, the sites themselves, there's they're still growing and it's becoming more and more normal. But then apps are becoming a little more um prevalent as well. Yeah, Like there's one called Tinder where you can see based on GPS. Is

it Facebook profiles? I don't know, or maybe you have to make a Tinder profile I don't know, of the people who are literally right around you at like a coffee house or a bar or a club or whatever, and you can basically say I'm interested in this person, I like how this person looks, I like this person. And if the those people on Tinder say the same thing about you, then you can communicate with one another. Apparently,

like that's a big thing now. Yeah, some of them are are less about dating and more about just kind of hooking up. Maybe like, hey, I found someone who's two blocks for me. Do you want to go kiss each other for a little while in that alley? You can and do that, and I don't I don't know, I don't know if that's an online dating site, but it's a thing that exists. Now. Well, yeah, dating, it

depends on your interpretation of the word date. Um. And then lastly, Chuck Wired got together with Okay Cuping and match dot com and did some data mining and came up with some tips for um, how to optimize your online dating profile. Uh so, for example, this is real. This is based on Okay cuping and match dot COM's figures. And apparently that's another surprising byproduct is these dating sites, the raw data they do have are serving the fields

of like anthropology and sociology. They're starting to open up their their raw data archives and say go go get whatever you want from us, and it's helping. It's helping things like wired. So if you're a guy and you have a tattoo, it's cool. If you're a woman you have a tattoo, you're you're going to have a harder time getting a date. Really, statistically speaking, mass dot com and Okay keeping all right, if you talk about karaoke, you're going to bomb. Really yeah wow, this one says

be hotter than you are. Now that's a good tip. Send a picture that underrepresents yourself slightly and then show up and be like, oh, yeah, actually dropped ten pounds. Check check it out if you if you are a female, you want to talk about London, New York City, yoga, surfing, and the word athlete. If you use those in your profile, you are likelier to get dates. You all, you want to always refer to yourself as a girl, never as

a woman. Okay, and if you're a boy, you never want to use the word girl when referring to women. You always use the word women. Interesting. Someone took us to task the other day in an email about saying female like we should say or should you should not say female? Saying you guys don't say male, you say female though, And I was like, I didn't know that was a bad association with about what I would have

think saying like dames or broads would be superfensive. But I thought female was like a like kind of the straight and narrow way to go with identification of someone's gender. Yeah, I'm confused, I almost dude. I didn't get a response, so maybe I misunderstood it. Apparently Wired says men who use the word whom get more contacts from women. The word what whom? W h O m oh, yeah, even when it's used incorrectly, I guess that's that's that's an impressive thing to say. Whom. Uh. If you're a man,

you can talk about crafting and your children. If you're a woman, don't ever bring up crafting and never bring up your children. Man, that is just so wrong. It is very wrong, you know. I mean like, this is this is what I'm talking about. Anthropologically speaking, This is like misogyny is alive. And yeah, what else you got? Uh? Radio Head is the only band you should ever talk about? Apparently, Um, let's see, that's funny. The word retirement is attracted as

far as it's related to men's profiles, but not women's. Yeah, if you're on wealthy men dot com and you see the word retirement, that's probably pretty good, I'm sure. Uh. And then also, if you have a shureless pick of yourself, you're not gonna do very well if you put a shortless pick of yourself as a man or woman, I imagine either way, but probably it's even worse with men. But it is true. I mean, like, even if you're a girl and you just put up like kind of

a smudgy selfie or something like that. Yeah, it definitely says a certain amount too, and you're gonna attract like a certain kind of guy that you might not be interested in. You just said smutty selfie. Ye. Yeah, it's almost like the Golden rule. Treat others as you want to be treated. Its represent yourself how you want to be viewed. Well, yeah, I mean, if you want to represent yourself as a smutty person, then put a smutty selfie.

But you're the people you get, you know what you're gonna be getting, right, that's exactly I think that's well, well put like you're you're asking for it in that case from the dregs of society to send you a date request at that point and to try like hell to find out your address. That's right. Uh. If you want to learn more about online dating, go give it a shot. There's free sites and stuff. You don't have

to listen to us we've never even done it. Or you could also look up this article from Ed Grabanowski for some pointers and tips. Um by by typing online dating in the search bar at house to works dot com and let's see, everybody has the search bar, which means it's time for listener. Mail you said it's muddy selfie, so it's time for listen. If there's something wrong with it, I just think it's a funny pairing of words. Well, it's the on a montopia. No know that alliteration, Yeah, literation,

It sounds funny. Aunt amount of would be like um smooty popping, right, I think so? Or yeah? Is that when the word sounds like the sound? Okay, hey guys, I'm gonna call this pinged from Sacramento. Hey, guys, have just finished the podcast on robots replacing human doctors. There's a reason I don't think we'll see that soon. Um. Doctors are trained scientists who specialize in human health. The whole reason we need trained scientists doctors is that human

physiology and chemistry very enough. That's not sufficient to treat each patient in the same way. If we can treat all patients the same way, nurses and diagnostic manuals or computer systems would be sufficient. Because all humans don't respond the same to the same treatment, you actually do need

a specialized scientists actively involved in the process. Still, I think robots or computer systems will replace many human doctors in time, though, we just need more intelligent robots, ones that are capable of thought beyond a simple preprogrammed or spots. Our current tech as you indicated, suitable for initial screening

and such. With thinking machines, we could actually replace doctors, as you said, With thinking machines, we could actually replace doctors, and as you said, they'd be more current on their medical knowledge. The big question would be whether such machines would consent to serve humanity as our current automatons do. And that is from Andy Ping and Sacramento. Nice. Thanks a lot, Andy Ping. That's the kind of name you say first and last. Never just say Andy or Mr Ping,

Andy Pink or Dr Pain Maybe is he a doctor? No? I don't think so. Is the evil super villain? Yes? Okay, then Dr Pain it is uh. If you want us to make a nickname for you, or just say your first and last name together, because that's how it should be said. You can get in touch with us by tweeting to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com and is always check us

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