When you’re in love with a beautiful woman, it’s hard
When you’re in love with a beautiful woman, you know it’s hard
(And if it isn’t there’s always help from the medical fraternity in pill form)
- Dr Hook (with additional lyrics by me)
One reason I recently gave up Facebook – again - was the revelation that Facebook had been conducting social experiments on its user base in 2012 to see if they could influence people’s moods by manipulating their timeline.
It’s just been revealed that the dating site OKCupid has also been running experiments on its users, running tests on “bad” matches to see if people would still get together despite all odds saying they normally wouldn’t.
To be fair, dating is a massive experiment unto itself. I’ve found there’s no real specific pattern other than possibly interests and hobbies – but even then, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will (or won’t) make a good partnership.
For example, I’ve met women with very similar interests but we’re nevertheless absolutely not compatible.
Many dating sites claim they have the a specific matching algorithms that produces the best matches. But I’ve certainly found (certainly from e-Harmony in that with a match you both could almost the same person, but God help you if you’re divorced) that it really doesn’t matter.
In order of success:
Match.com (5 dates, a few more casual contacts) – one of the most popular dating sites out there.
Encounters Dating (1 date, 1 cancelled, a few casual contacts)
e-Harmony (0 dates, half a contact (until they found out I was divorced). e-Harmony appears to be a Christian based organisation and as such divorce seems to be frowned upon. Consequently when I came to mention it in my correspondence with potential matches, people ran away screaming – okay, not literally, and come to think about it, possibly not figuratively either ,but they sure as hell don’t seem to like divorcees in any event.
I found that Encounters tended to put me in touch with more older women than around my own age; e-Harmony offered more matches around my own age, and Match.com was similar.
My point is that it’s rather odd to think that looking at tinkering with people’s emotions on social networks such as Facebook seems creepy, but not on dating sites where it’s one great bundle of potential emotional turmoil.
And it’s rather an odd thing. I personally don’t think ANY algorithm can be used to create the perfect match. There are too many factors that come into play. But if OKCupid can do it – good for them.
In the mean time, I’m definitely not ready to go back to any of those sites. Indeed, I’m perfectly happy being single for the time being.
