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from the I-was-using-the-wrong-colour-all-along dept.
Rachel Nuwer writes in the New York Times that Dr. Sameer Chaudhry’s online dating persona was garnering no response from the women he reached out to so he synthesized 86 literature studies on the subject of online dating in the fields of psychology, sociology, and computer, behavioral, and neurocognitive sciences.in hopes of improving his odds. As it turns out, success begins with picking a user name. While men are drawn to names linked to physical traits (e.g., Cutie), the researchers found, women prefer ones that indicate intelligence (e.g., Cultured). Both sexes respond well to playful names (e.g. Fun2bwith) and shy away from ones with negative connotations (e.g., Bugg).
User names that begin with letters from the first half of the alphabet do better than those from the latter half. “As human beings, we have a tendency to give things at the top of a pile more value,” says Khan. As for your profile photo, pick a photo with a genuine smile, one that crinkles the eyes, and with a slight head tilt (it’s linked to attractiveness). And if you’re looking for a male partner, go for that photo of you in siren red—a color that enhances men's attraction to women.
"For those attracted to browse into the profile, a description of personal traits increased likeability when it: showed who the dater was and what they were looking for in a 70:30 ratio; stayed close to reality; and employed simple language with humor added. Invitations were most successful in obtaining a response from the potential date when they: were short personalized messages addressing a trait in their profile; rhymed with their screen name or headline message; and extended genuine compliments." And finally, don't wait too long before arranging a face to face meeting.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @06:39AM
The real reason Westerners are forming lasting relationships at steadily decreasing rate:
http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.html [singularity2050.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @07:33AM
Who needs men, when there are vibrators, strap-ons, and lesbians? Eventually someone will invent a process to convert menstrual blood into artificial sperm, and then we can just gendercide all the worthless obsolete males, for a feminist utopia!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @07:48AM
hah
That's all that will exist as long as it is filled with crazies. There's nothing wrong with having a men's rights movement or advocating equality in divorce etc
Teen birth rates are on the decline. [hhs.gov]
This is an attractive position. "Traditional marriage" is based on outdated notions of property, estate etc. Financial responsibility coupled with a refusal to marry could save some men a lot of cash.
Shockingly, even Muslim children can become feminists.
Maybe not "many men well before 2020". I'll cut a futurist some slack
Rating women on a 1-10 scale is stupid. 1-3 or 1-4 is more accurate, or even a binary.
hmm [bbc.com]
Absolutely true as the above link shows
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday February 22 2015, @11:05PM
3-D/holographic images with haptic interfaces and sufficient AI will make rudimentary 'virtual sex' a technology available to many men well before 2020
Maybe not "many men well before 2020". I'll cut a futurist some slack
I'm about to post a NSFW link. In it, you will find a video of a man having sex with a computer. [youtube.com]
"Well before" is a funny term to use when you're predicting events less than ten years out (the site seems to indicate that this was written in 2010).
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday February 22 2015, @07:00AM
We met online when she wrote to commend me for my first web page about my mental illness.
While we did correspond regularly, I generally wrote very brief, quick responses to her lengthy, well-thought-out letters.
What she didn't know was that I was less than a month away from a major product shipment.
What clinched our relationship was that I visited an old friend in Rome, then called Bonita at home. She wasn't home, which made me said, but she was very excited that some guy she met online would call her from Rome. At the time she was a starving student in Nova Scotia.
Things didn't work out in the end. There's a lot I would like to say about it, but in much the same way as I am reluctant to speak ill of the dead, I am reluctant to speak ill of her ex-wife. However I do plan to write a great deal - not just now I'm tired - about what I would do differently with my next lady.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by frojack on Sunday February 22 2015, @07:46AM
I came very close to blowing off my future wife ... I am reluctant to speak ill of her ex-wife.
Um...,
no, never mind. I don't want to know.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Sunday February 22 2015, @07:05AM
omg! I have to change my user name on Soylent, because I just realized that it is negative! I mean, it sounds foreign! Of course, it is Greek, and that should be sexy, if totally broke. But it is intelligence and humor that wins over conservative talking points and libertarian memes, right? And don't wait too long? I am Aristarchus of Samos, been waiting for millenia. At least I am at the front of the alphabet, both Phonecian and Latin. And I tilt my head a lot. That usually means I am asleep. And a photo of me in red, or a photo of me dressed in red? So confusing, the dating scene these days. Make me wonder why anyone would bother.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @07:44AM
I miss the gold old-old-old days when dating involved beating each other with clubs, followed by rape, and then consent, in that order.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Sunday February 22 2015, @08:06AM
Go for a bloody profile pic. It's red AND you'll automatically get sympathy. Chicks love fixer-uppers.
(Score: 4, Funny) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Sunday February 22 2015, @09:29AM
User names? Dude, I've got this. I'm like a freakin' Makefile; TOP of the PILE, baby!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @02:50PM
At least you'e not Ethanol-Fooled
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday February 23 2015, @03:51AM
We should all be thankful for the little things.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Monday February 23 2015, @02:53PM
Well, on the plus side, your user name does start with a letter from the first half of the alphabet (Latin, Greek, and Cyrilic! That makes you a triple threat).
That is all.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @07:22AM
Dating is nothing but scam artistry and confidence tricks, and don't forget to lie about yourself, because people are genuinely offended by honesty.
In our next article, find out which keywords to put on your employment dating profile (aka "CV" or "resume") to scam your way into a high-paying job, and how to lie your ass off during interviews. Because getting a job is exactly like getting a date: both are achieved by social trickery and deception.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @07:51AM
brutal honesty is the new lying scam artistry
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @08:48AM
yeah this approach works every time ... if you're bond, james bond
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @06:26PM
To people of high intellectual ability, this trickery and immoral behavior are indistinct such that they are not of disclosed honesty with intent to provide a specific result. For the rest of the population these things are called soft skills, charisma, social competence, or simply just being amicable. Of course there is a middle road where you use soft skills and then point out what you are trying to do. Most people, men and women alike, enjoy others that know what they want and know how to get it.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @07:50AM
Everyone who sees the user name is confused by both positive and negative prejudices.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @08:02AM
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, or by the content of their character, but by the user names on their dating profiles.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by q.kontinuum on Sunday February 22 2015, @10:44AM
By formalising the criteria for successful online dating, it becomes possible for nerds to create the perfect online profile. That means, "normal" people will have a higher "risk" to run into nerds on their first date even though they scanned the profile for clues and didn't find any. In the long run, I'm not sure this will increase the odds for the odds. Maybe it will just make people more suspicious and make it more difficult to connect through online profiles, or it will take some other means of first communications (voice-chat, video-chat) where it is more difficult to prepare for (unless having actual social skills)
PS: I don't consider "nerd" or "odd" an insult. Variety is great, good or evil are not measured in socially skilled or not, and I think a main reason nerds try to hook up with "normals" is that nerds are more scarce, making it harder to find a good match, thus settling with the next best thing - normal people. Of course, to keep a sensible ratio off talking about own interests and listening to the others is useful for us as well. But it might be worthwhile to keep searching a bit longer and find someone likewise odd instead of settling for "normal".
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 1, Troll) by anubi on Sunday February 22 2015, @10:59AM
just reading the responses above mine.
I now know my observations are not by no means unique to me.
I have been suspecting this kind of stuff for a long long time.
However, I also see a few people with mod points trying like hell to silence those who say things that upset the apple cart of selling dreams of love.
I wish this 50's love thing was still true, but my experience tells me that messing around with such things in today's world is riskier than anything else I could do.
From what I can tell, our society has done very well, and we no longer need each other to survive. Relationships now seem to be just entertainment, and the same old movie over and over gets boring.
I guess a few moths ( males ) aren't flying into the fire, buying the rings, and signing the marriage papers. And that concerns a lot of people whose livelihood is furnishing courtship materials or court services, both of which are real moneymakers.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @03:05PM
> I now know my observations are not by no means unique to me.
That doesn't make them any more correct.
For all you know you are experiencing the MRA equivalent of a pro-ana website. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday February 24 2015, @02:50AM
People get all sorts of different experience. I guess I am still reeling over "falling in love" back in university days, and it didn't work out. I never did figure out what I did wrong, but my ass got handed back to me, sans wallet. Try as I might, I saw how futile my efforts were.
I was there, trying to learn a skill, so I could support a family. Sure, I graduated with honors and all that kinda stuff, but my work seemed the only thing I could do right. It slowly dawned on me some guys have "what it takes" to get a woman interested in them. I watched gang-bangers, bad-boys, slackers of all sorts, interest the women. I was trying all I could to better myself, but found myself now going at it alone. Even then, trying to do things properly earned me the title of "perfectionist", when what I wanted was to be known for "attention to detail".
I feel I just plain fucked up.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday February 22 2015, @12:53PM
And if you’re a woman looking for a male partner, go for that photo of you in siren red—a color that enhances men's attraction to women.
FTFY. Unless siren red works on gay men, too.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @04:54PM
I'm the last person on the planet to say anything about dating, but ... this is a great example of why people don't take social science seriously or think it is real science. The advice is to wear red and change your name to Aaron Aardsma so you show up first? And don't wait to meet someone? That's all they could come up with? Is this a parody article? Was The Onion involved? Otherwise, we should consider deleting everything that's ever been published in "the fields of psychology, sociology, and computer, behavioral, and neurocognitive sciences" for the betterment of the human race.
And, hey, I use simple language and add humor, and all I get is -1 moderation. But at least my online handle doesn't have negative connot--oh, wait.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @05:43PM
Early letter names do have a lot of advantages. I remember teachers in my youth who's seating chart was front to back alphabetical by last name. So anyone with late letter last names ends up in the back of the class more often. Same thing with class projects. Early letter kids end up presenting on day one all the time, so they don't have the opportunity to procrastinate. This can has an effect on performance expectations at an early age. Call it what you will, but cultural adaptations to syntax does create bias, in a number of ways.
Really anyone thinking of having kids would do well to change their last name to: "1A". You fill out one piece of paper, and insure that your kid is chosen first with higher frequency over the entire span of their life? It is a bargain by any measure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @06:33PM
Sometimes the best we mere mortals can do is increase the odds oh so slightly. A science that can do that is certainly better than floundering in ignorance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @08:55AM
One way to recognize real science is the authors stick to what their results show and don't exaggerate the worth of their findings. If social science is not your cup of tea, there are plenty of other fields to choose. Try to be more positive, people respond better to that.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday February 22 2015, @05:54PM
Evidence-based dating and somehow there seems to be a clear lack of data or evidence. For all we know, from the article, the author scored one date and that is the one he took to Rome. So for being an article based on a paper submitted to the BMJ, or at least one of it's sub-publications (evidence-based medicine --- dating is now medicine?) there is a distinct lack of data to support this theory. The paper is naturally hidden behind a pay-wall, insuring that nobody beyond the world of academia will ever read it and very few in academia will bother either, and the entire article seems to be written on the basis of the presented abstract. Quality journalism right there. Perhaps there is some actual evidence in the paper itself but quite frankly it seems to be a-grade fluff so I don't see why anyone would bother.
(Score: 0) by Balderdash on Sunday February 22 2015, @09:32PM
I have compiled a cut-and-paste script (not a script of code, but a script of lines, as in a performance) which gets a woman to the point of meeting for coffee.
Give me 3 hours of one-to-one interaction via private message and I'll have her number with a date for coffee the coming weekend.
It is not difficult.
You are a nerd. You understand cause/effect. Make an account, use it to drill down your script, then make a new account and use what you've learned to meet women.
I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23 2015, @07:06AM
Please let me know when you have it in a script of code.
Perl would be great, but I am open even to Python.
(no Ruby though, I'm not THAT desperate).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hellcat on Monday February 23 2015, @01:12AM
Studies like this were carried out in the 50s, 60s, ad 70s. Not online, but using the latest in "social science" methods and new-fangled statistics. (I stopped caring after the 70s.)
Bottom line. Physical features like physical tone (butts, biceps), hair, confidence and dress scored high on initial approach. Long terms success - no one ever figured it out.
What we concluded (back in the 70s) was that everyone should just BE THEMSELVES. Be honest, not picky. Be respectful, not demanding. Enjoy the dating process and have fun.