2010-01-24 03:49:06.974464+00 by Dan Lyke 6 comments
Okay, if you're not reading OkCupid OkTrends blog about the mining of their dating website data they do, you should be. Fascinating sociology, the latest making the rounds is The 4 big myths of profile pictures in which they look at all the things they thought they knew about effective profile pictures.
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comments in descending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2010-01-25 23:21:16.450707+00 by: Nancy
You couldn't TELL he was naked. I had NO idea until he told me. That would likely have scared me away.
#Comment Re: made: 2010-01-25 22:39:32.863985+00 by: ebradway
I may be a push-over, but I still long for here... does that make me vanilla or a pining sap?
#Comment Re: made: 2010-01-24 16:38:37.768916+00 by: Dan Lyke
Dave, that depends. I'm pretty sure much of what's pitched as vanilla is just derived from pine sap.
#Comment Re: made: 2010-01-24 16:33:28.064805+00 by: DaveP
I prefer "vanilla" over lemming.
I just can't decide whether it's French Vanilla, the good Mexican Vanilla, or the real beans where you have to cut 'em in half and scrape out the goodness. Pretty sure it isn't the cheap imitation stuff.
#Comment Re: made: 2010-01-24 14:30:19.560368+00 by: meuon [edit history]
And sometimes, if you aren't a mundane lemming, breaking all of those "norms" with a picture of yourself naked, at Burning Man, with an odd profile, on match.com, get you an e-mail from the (non-lemming) woman you eventually marry.
If you are a lemming, looking for a lemming, post a lemming profile and picture will 'net you a lemming. There are lots of lemmings out there.
#Comment Re: made: 2010-01-24 12:18:21.701477+00 by: DaveP
The OKCupid stuff has been fascinating, but most of it has been filed in my "Huh. People are funny." pile for more pondering. Mostly because I'm not sure if they're testing for the right thing. Is it better to get more email responses, or fewer quality ones? I had a friend during my college years who brought home a (different) gal from a bar almost every night by simply being confident and asking around until one said yes. More is not necessarily better. Or worse. It's just more.
As for the other, yeah. I looked at the first post about that and immediately said to myself, "She didn't control for weight." But she also didn't control for the quality of the smile or a lot of other things. Mostly I think I was disappointed by my own expectations. I'd seen a link to it with some comment along the lines of it being an interesting experiment, so when I saw it wasn't much of an experiment at all, away I went. There's plenty of room for half-assery on the web (as I prove frequently on my own site).