Social Experiment: The zany profile

I’d make a crappy scientist. I started my dating site “social experiment” just over two weeks ago and I’m already done with it. I haven’t even had time to sit down and write out what the whole experiment is even about and it’s over. Well to bring you up to speed let’s discuss the purpose of this experiment and then we’ll get into what little I’ve discovered.

The backstory. When my friend asked me to help out with their Match.com profile a few weeks back, I spent a little time browsing through profiles to see what love-hungry internet users were posting in an effort to find their next hookup or lifelong soul mate. And I’ve got to say, I was appalled. Seriously appalled. The dating sites I looked at gave you anywhere from 400 to maybe 1000 words for your intro and I swear nearly every user on every site must have copied and pasted the same 400 words into the space provided. With few exceptions, all the profiles I read said exactly the same thing. Apparently everybody in the world – if these profiles are anything to go by – everybody is “laid back” or “easy going.” Everybody “doesn’t take life too seriously.” Everyone has a “good sense of humor” and everyone “loves to laugh.” Everybody enjoys “partying in bars” but they also – every single one of them – enjoy “cuddling up with a movie.” And dear Lord if there wasn’t also a heavy percentage of people who used that old cliché line about “long walks on the beach.” The headlines these people came up with, the headings that are supposed to entice others to click on your profile, were equally lame and repetitious: “Nice girl seeking a friend” or “Single Guy in Philly” or simply, “Hi.” And that’s the people that actually took the time to write something. There were nearly as many people on these sites who only put in a token sentence or two which primarily consisted of the statement, “I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” or “My friend told me about this so I figured I’d give it a shot,” or some other similar variation that doesn’t really tell us anything about the person.

Lauren and I spent time browsing through profiles, men’s and women’s, and we both agreed that it was overwhelming how generic the dating pool seems to be – again, if these profiles are anything to go by. How do serious users of sites like Friendfinder and Match.com actually pick and choose who to contact when every person you find sounds almost identical to person before? It must come down to the pictures they post. Since everyone sounds like they have essentially the same interests and personality, you might as well focus your efforts on only the hot ones. After maybe an hour of browsing through profiles, Lauren and I looked at each other and thanked God that we’d found each other. What would we do right now if we were still single in a world where online dating has become the most popular way of hooking up?

Now, I must step back for a moment and stress that I am not saying any of this to be holier-than-thou toward single people, or toward people who use dating sites. I am certainly not insinuating that marriage is the be all end of all human accomplishment, or that singledom is somehow a lamentable condition. I’m merely pointing out the fact that judging by the crop of people we browsed through on these dating sites, the modern dating world is apparently a bleak place with boring selections.

Mind you, the same was true back when I was frequenting the dating site circuit. In fact, it probably looked even bleaker back then because there was a higher percentage of people who simply didn’t put anything in their profiles. To be quite honest, any profile that had at least a full paragraph stood out from the crowd no matter what they wrote. And the thing is, what they wrote was essentially the same thing that everybody is writing these days. Namely, “I’m a laid back, easy going guy who doesn’t take life too seriously and I love to laugh.” So the climate really hasn’t worsened since I left the dating scene, it’s just that it’s more saturated with people saying the same thing. But here’s the thing, as I said in my previous post, back then all of the sites were free. It didn’t cost you a dime to post your dumb and generic profile. So I think what blows my mind more than anything is that not only are people boring and unimaginative to the point of making me physically nauseous, but they’re actually paying money to be boring and unimaginative. And paying a good amount of money too. So, like I’ve said, I have absolutely nothing against people using dating sites. I’m all for them. I used them myself back in the day and had a relative amount of luck with them. I think in this modern technological age, sites like these really are the best ways for a plugged-in and over-scheduled public to meet and hit things off. What I don’t get is why people would go through all the trouble and expense of having an online dating profile and not say something, anything to make themselves stand out from the crowd.

It was with that in mind that I decided to create my own profile. I figured I would post something so entirely off the wall, so completely out of line from the typical dating profile, and see what kind of response it got. So I ended up copying and pasting the text from an old humor column of mine. It tells a true story from my childhood about how my friends and I, in an effort to get back at the mean cooks in our school cafeteria, spent an entire lunch period smearing sloppy joes and blueberry cobbler all over our faces. For my headline, I used the title of the piece: “Hot Lunch Uprising.” I figured a line like that would be enough to pique people’s interest, make them say, “What the hell is this?” and click on my profile. Once they were in, my theory was that it would make them chuckle enough to at least write me a short email saying they liked what I wrote. After all, nearly every woman on this site claimed that they wanted a man who could make them laugh. Well rather than saying I could make them laugh, I just tried to make them laugh. Rather than posting a general description about the whole of my personality, I posted a story about one specific thing that hopefully gives someone an even better insight into it.

And you know what, it actually worked, though not as well as I had been hoping. Of course to be fair, it’s hard to really say how good or bad the response was since I couldn’t really respond to most of the emails I had received without paying for a membership – and in the case of Match.com, I couldn’t even read my mail without ponying up. In my first few days, I got a few emails from people on True.com, several of whom were actually quite attractive and all of whom actually had their own witty and intelligent things to say – the kind of women I likely would have tried to date had I done this as a single guy. I set up a free a three-day trial with True and emailed several of them back to let them know what I was really up to. I apparently got three emails from people on Match.com but, again, was unable to actually read them for lack of payment. I got one email from somebody on Yahoo personals who I was able to send a generic pre-written message back to with my free membership, and she was intelligent enough to write back with enough information that I could figure out how to contact her for real. Other than that though, without the ability to openly communicate, it was difficult to differentiate between emails I got from people who were legitimately interested in me, or emails from spammers and shills.

So for the amount of money and effort I actually put into this little experiment, I’m rather impressed with the results. The quantity of women contacting me may not have been as high as I’d have liked, but the quality of women was definitely noteworthy. I think if I were single and had actually gone all out, paid my money and gotten the ability to send and receive email freely, I would have done very well with this weird but apparently effective approach.

So, here’s advice from ye olde sage Brian to all those who are currently using a dating site, or are considering it. First of all, avoid True.com at all costs. I got more spam from that site than any of the others. You know the kind; pretty “ladies” who say things like, “I am liking for my one true love that you are sexy too.” So there’s that. My more important advice is this: don’t tell people about yourself in the intro to your profile. No matter how charming or witty you think you’re being, in the end all your interests, personality traits and suggestions for “the perfect date” are just going to sound like everybody else’s on the site. The better route as far as I’m concerned is to either tell a story or talk about one specific thing that interests you. Rather than saying you like hiking, tell the story of a hike you went on. Rather than saying you like to go out and party, talk about one particularly cool night when you were out. Rather than saying you have a sense of humor, actually tell a funny story. Make it random. Make it weird. Make it stand out. I think random stories tell a lot more about a person than even the best intentioned “introductions.”

So that’s my advice. If you take it and it works out for you, please let me know. I’m very curious to see how this tactic works for people who can actually benefit from it. As for me, I’m just glad I met my wife the way I did, at a wedding so she never had to read my boring and generic dating intro. Where would we be today if she had? And that’s really the end for this social experiment. I wish I had more fascinating data to share, but I frankly have neither the money nor the patience to pursue this line of thought any farther.