LOVE THURSDAY

Chances are highly likely that I was part of a social experiment. Well, haven't we all been part of some social experiment or another? I think the first one was called High School. Any way, on Monday, OKCupid published the results of three different tests conducted on users. Yes. A very popular online dating site was performing social experiments in the name of love. Some people are really bothered by this. They feel like they were being duped and I get that. I probably would be feeling a little annoyed by their antics if I had taken the website more seriously. One of the tests they did was to "fix" or lie about compatibility percentages. For instance, statistics may show that you're 30% compatible with this one person, but in reality you were 90% compatible. Or the other way around. 

A good example of this would be Caesar. According to OKCupid, we were 90% compatible. Now don't get me wrong. Caesar is an amazing human being, definitely entertaining. But I couldn't see us together in a romantic way. First of all there would be no way I could have ever kept up with his energy level. Also....he told me something about his penis that made me think sex would have been a problem. When I was on the dating site, I knew those percentages where there. I just really never paid much attention to them. The only reason I know that it said I was 90% compatible to Caesar is because I was curious after I'd met him. I used OKCupid as that pal who likes to introduce you to their single friends. I never felt that the profiles or even a lot of the pictures were an accurate representation of the person and the only way to really find out who a person is was to meet them. In person. Like as in real life. Face to face. 

In fact, OKCupid did an experiment where they only showed peoples pictures and not their profiles and found that more people responded to the pictures. Meaning, no one cares to read your profile. I read profiles just to help gauge intelligence. I wanted to make sure the guy I was about to meet could write a sentence with out "lol" and "omg". This didn't stop me from meeting some of them for a drink though, like the guy who wrote in his profile "If you're looking for a guy to wine and dine you and take you on trips to Vegas, I am not that guy". I just wasn't surprised when he rolled his eyes when I ordered food or that I'd end up paying for my own dinner. I found that if I relied too much on the profile picture, I was completely lost at the first meeting. So many people use photos that do not represent how they look now. My favorite profile pics where ones where the guy was posing with a group of his buddies. Which one of you are asking me out?

I had lost interest in online dating and was about to close down my profile when Michael emailed me. He told me that of all the girls he'd contacted, we had the lowest compatibility percentage. He said it was something like 58%, which I don't think is all that low, but he's better at math and paid more attention to those things. I think he even struggled with the idea of reaching out to me because of that number. He says that he contacted me because he liked my spiritual beliefs and my "legs looked sexy" in my picture. I don't know if we are a product of OKCupid's social experiments or we just got lucky. Or we were just brave enough to give each other a chance.

I like to think we are brave. Happy Love Thursday.