DailyDirt: The Mating Behavior of Online Daters

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Online dating sites provide a vast amount of interesting data for researchers studying human behavior. These sites record how much people lie about themselves to try to impress others, and dating sites contain a wide variety of personal data that can be sliced and diced according to age, gender, income, education, interests, you-name-it. Here are just a few studies that have looked at digital dating databases for insights into the minds of people searching for soul mates and long walks on the beach. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
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Filed Under: marriage, matching, online dating, personal data, relationships, romance
Companies: eharmony, match.com


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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2013 @ 7:04pm

    Online dating sucks

    Or dating sucks in general

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Jun 2013 @ 7:06pm

    "dating sites contain a wide variety of personal data "

    No, dating sites contain a very narrow variety of personal data, unless you think people who use dating sites are a unbiased representational cross section of a population, but of course IT'S NOT.

    "About 81% of online daters misrepresent the facts about how tall, how heavy, or how old they are. "

    See what I mean!!!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous, 6 Jun 2013 @ 7:49pm

    It's all a scam.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Jun 2013 @ 6:34am

    Haha, the conservative part is hilarious.

    I went on tons of online dates and I found that as time went on over the past 5 years people have gotten more honest in general and typically it wasn't that far from their actual selves. Maybe 2 people in 5 years of off and on internet dating did I meet people that were wildly different than their profiles and 5 people were different but in completely positive ways (IE complete bombshells that undersold themselves because they didn't want people messaging them based on their looks).

    The part about conservatism is funny though, I did notice that conservatives aren't that much self aware as liberals are. You can sniff out a super liberal pretty easy, they are out there loud and proud. Super conservatives though... they don't know how weird they are to non super conservative people cause typically they are conservative because "Well that's just how everyone is."

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      John Fenderson (profile), 7 Jun 2013 @ 9:29am

      Re:

      Your experience matches mine about misrepresentation. The only outright liars I met were ones who portrayed themselves as less physically attractive than they actually were.

      But, if by "lying" they mean fudging their age, weight, or height by an insignificant amount, 81% is about right.

      By the way, I met my wife through an online dating site. And thank God. She's the best thing that ever happened to me.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 7 Jun 2013 @ 2:40pm

      Re:

      Wouldn't the fact that conservatives are less likely to openly admit the fact suggest that they are more (not less) aware of people thinking they're weird for it?

      I think it comes down to the fact that it's easier to hide being a conservative than being fat once you meet.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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