Tag: dating

Lets talk about dating in the 21st century – Sunday 1st November

I have the absolute pleasure of sharing my knowledge, experiences and thoughts about online dating (or as I prefer dating generally) as a ragged university talk at one of my favourite venues, the royal exchange in central Manchester.

It on Sunday 1st November from 2pm – 5pm and its free to attend, so there is no excuse for not coming out to listen and take part in the discussion! I won’t even be using slides this time, it will be just me talking and throwing some thought out for people to discuss and fire back at me. Its going to be pretty raw or even ragged… (pun!)

I’m going to refer to quite a bit of stuff Aziz talks about in modern romance and heck might even use some of his open data source.

It won’t just be me, there will be Amber from Bristol University talking about the Mafia if you are less interested in the ways people meet and date in the 21 century.

I was introduced to Ragged talks when I attended one a while ago in the Castle Hotel. I liked the idea and instantly signed up to give a talk about something , of course I was pleased when I was given the green light to talk about dating and how much its changed from previous years gone by.

So what you waiting for…? Sign up now and I’ll see you at the Royal Exchange for a good discussion about dating. In the meanwhile, here’s my surface level talk about the same subject at the royal institution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvyJ8gpgyD0

Horizon dating, I’m doing it for the science

https://twitter.com/cubicgarden/status/640069744746475520

The good news is I have been accepted by BBC horizon!

Next week I’ll be in London taking part in the Horizon data/dating thing. I am expecting a better version of the MOSI event at least. The email I got was vague, but the questions in the sign up process were very interesting having done a load of OK cupid ones previous

horizon beer question

Heres the Beer question which always makes me laugh because of this OKTrends post.

Will my date have sex on the first date?

Ask…

  • Do you like the taste of beer?

Because…

Among all our casual topics, whether someone likes the taste of beer is the single best predictor of if he or she has sex on the first date.

No matter their gender or orientation, beer-lovers are 60% more likely to be okay with sleeping with someone they’ve just met.

Here’s a few more.

are geeks sexy

Of course I like this question a lot.

nuclear war

This one of course is fun to think about in a abstract light. This what I thought first time I answered it on OKcupid.

Horizon takes on the science of online dating?

https://twitter.com/rachelclarke/status/638659802097405952

Its happening again… I swear everybody has caught on to the fact dating has changed and are studying it from a data point of view.

This time its Horizon who are sniffing around doing some dating research, and they actually have someone who really knows there stuff involved. Hannah Fry… yes the same woman who did the Tedtalk about the popularity in online dating. Ironically the most scientific dating experience was using her work around popularity at Manchester’s MOSI.

But even with Hannah Fry involved  I’m nervous because of 2 experiences.

  1. The year of making love – I mean I couldn’t believe it was actually the BBC behind this smoking cluster of a show. I should have known with it being aired on BBC Three.
  2. How to have more sex – Ok it was ITV and I guess it was the first time I had speed dating but seriously, when the guy tapped me on the shoulder in Brighton during the d.construct after party I was so shocked.

Saying all that, am I going to sign up?

Yes I did… I really hope its not a mistake I will regret! Now time for 150 questions, in the style/vein of OkCupid. I have a feeling I could be in for something interesting…

horizon goes okcupid on us

When Tinder met Vanity, we all got popcorn and watched

TechCrunch Disrupt Europe: Berlin 2013 (Day 2)
…at the helm of the company that’s changing society in ways they can’t stop, or even fathom because they’re right in the middle of it. Scary.

Tinder (which I have written about and am now somewhat convinced will be seen as a bad bad joke in many years time) was recently written about in Vanity Fair and… Oh dear, tinder took to twitter to complain!

The best deconstruction of the whole thing comes from David Evans over at onlinedating insider.

I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the VF article. Story after story about relationship-challenged New Yorkers. Men in New York treat women terribly and brag about it in Vanity Fair. Wow, you don’t say?

The VF article is a retread of a topic that’s been beaten to death by the media and dating bloggers for almost two years, but VF decided to hang out with a bunch of New Yorkers who rack up Tinder sex-mates like there’s no tomorrow and talk to them like they are adults or something. The writer clearly emerged from a cave last week and the first thing they did was go on a Tinder date and now she’s scarred for life.

Tinder is simply a throw back to old skool dating (when it was al about looks and not the personality), but it doesn’t stop a whole host of articles, posts and shows being written about it… even in mid 2015! Tinder has become the symbol of our misogynist culture much like how the game was a few years ago?

“It’s an eye-opener and validation of a woman’s worst fear. The guys are swiping right to hook up and it’s all just a game.” Give me a break. The women who enable men to behave this way are just as complicit in the degradation of modern courtship as Tinder is. And Tinder is at the bottom of the pile, along with Ashley Madison.

Add gamification and repeat

The gamification of online/social dating can be scary stuff which I’ll cover in my TedX Talk early next year… Don’t miss it, its going to be pretty wild…! Ironiclly it will be on Valentine day, so expect a blood path of broken hearts and trashed dreams

Its so clear there is a problem, as many people including Sherry Turkle and even comedian Aziz Ansari’s modern romance, identifies. They wonder about current social impact of not just its users but on the mating process as a whole!

David really gets into to the metric problem of the throw away action of a swipe.

What is the equivalent of a right-swipe on a dating service? Replied to emails? If I email you and you email me back, that’s a match. Sam Yagan at Match told me that years ago. Back when he was the Co-founder of OkCupid, and they always said Match wasn’t worth the money and nobody should have to pay for a dating site…

…Tinder’s definition of a match as two people physically moving their fingers about a quarter of an inch to the right compared with writing and responding to emails. Comparing swipes to responded-to emails is ridiculous; they’re not even comparable. But we’re talking about Tinder here, so anything goes.

How about this. Whenever two people like or favorite each other’s photos on a dating service, they are a match. Is that comparable to Tinder mutual swipes? I don’t know and I really don’t care anymore. And neither does anyone else, because all I read about in the media are stories about people on Tinder hooking up three times a week and 25 million matches a day.

He’s right, no body is really thinking about what the metrics mean when  writing about Tinder. It might as well be 25 millions acorns! There is so much more David writes in the post but I love the ending line, and I’m really starting to agree (even though I know a few friends who have successfully had serious relationships via tinder)…

Tinder is the worst thing to ever happen to the online dating industry. End of story.

Psychology of dating in the technosexual era

https://twitter.com/cubicgarden/status/624880650164830208

The psychology of dating in the technosexual era is a nice title and something I’ve been collecting stories about in my diigo group dating troubles. (diigo wants more money for it to be public, but you can look at this tag for most of it)

So my first reaction was… uhhh duhhh? Who doesn’t know this?

But then I have spoke and wrote about this to death.

Tinder is hardly original, yet it has taken the mobile dating market by storm: despite launching only last year, an estimated 450 million profiles are rated every day and membership is growing by 15% each week. More importantly, and in stark contrast with the overwhelmingly negative media reception, Tinder has managed to overcome the two big hurdles to online dating. First, Tinder is cool, at least to its users.

Indeed, whereas it is still somewhat embarrassing to confess to using EHarmony or Match.com, Tinderers are proud to demo the app at a dinner party, perhaps because the alternative – logging off and talking to others guests – is less appealing.

As I also said… It switched from physical first & personality second to personality first & physical second during the first phase of the  internet’s affect on mating. But then came the fightback, starting with social dating. Now all the big sites all have a social dating app of some kind.

 

I found the Guardian piece interesting because of one two things…

  1. Yes its absolutely right and its fair to say its still scratching at the surface.
  2. Its written by !

You may wonder who on earth is he?
Let me refresh your memory…

This reminds me of a TV show we created a couple of years ago; we profiled over 3,000 singletons using state-of-the-art psychological tests and created 500 couples based on psychological compatibility… but ignored looks and race. When the couples finally met – even though they trusted the science of the matching process – they were 90% focused on looks and only decided to date a second time if they were deemed equally attractive or worthy of each other’s looks.

Yes remember the terrible dating show I took part on (not that one!) 2 years ago? Yep that one… saying the name still conjures up a certain amount of hate and distress. The year of making love!

Clearly, psychologists have a lot of work to do before they can convince daters that their algorithms are more effective.

I found this sadly ironic, especially with everything discovered over the last 5 years. I am hoping to present a spectrum of this and other issues as a conference talk in the very near future.

Enviable things about online dating

ber-antem

Online site reviews wrote a piece titled, 4 truths about online dating you have to accept. It well worth reading and the basic list is …

  1. Eventually you will run into someone you know.
  2. You will be ghosted.
  3. Photos will lie.
  4. A 99% match could be meaningless.

I tend to agree but I would add…

  • You will be misunderstood and even blocked, for something which seems trivial
    It happens, people misread something or misunderstand the context and before you know it, the response is frosty or returned with a block. This also leads to ghosting…
  • You will be stood up
    Dates… where do I even start, I could do a enviable sublist about this alone. Its going to happen, you will be stood up and theres no point getting angry about it, its part of single dating life.
  • It will be attracted to somebody far away
    You edit your filters to only include people so far away and then somebody you think is local pops up in the search. Maybe they are visiting friends,  living locally for a short while or just about to leave the area. It will happen at some point, how you deal with it is the question.
  • You will come across women doing gang signs or men with their tops off in photos
    Self explanatory I think? Of course if you are a woman or a gay man, expect dick pics at some point too…

Stop the slut shaming crap…

The Morning After.

A friend of mine read the post I was sent from Tony. They commented on the post and I will power phrase it as this…

The casual hook-up crap in that post is really awful… Hookups aren’t people you feel nothing for. they can be intense, lovely experiences that make you feel alive and fulfilled. You can learn a lot about what you want, what you like and who you are through them. that post was just nasty “slut shaming” crap.

And they are right… lets read the key parts in full

We sleep around — a lot.

Some less than others, but most individuals have multiple partners every year. Don’t get me wrong, I like sex just as much as the next guy, but sleeping around ends up leaving us feeling empty.

It starts out feeling exciting and gratifying, but ends up making us feel even more alone. Worse yet, it makes finding someone to love infinitely more difficult. You’re wasting your time with people who mean nothing to you and, to top it all off, you are likely to turn sex into a sport.

When that becomes the case, good luck trying to make love. Good luck enjoying sex when sex is no longer a special or unique experience, but just another trivial evening.

Bollox, yes there are some people whom see it as a sport or game with achievements but having casual sex does not mean you are wasting your time, not capable of making love or even having a long term relationship.

This reminds me of the talk about non-monogamy in Manchester when somebody suggested that people in a poly relationship might as well forget about falling in love because there love couldn’t be as deep. Once again Bollox!

We need to get over this crap, this is the type of thing which breeds ignorance and terrible sex educational black spots. This is why I have a new found respect for the Japanese and their age laws around sex. At least they are dealing with it, instead of the head in the sand approach or simply con-damming it.

Did you see the Channel4 Tinder documentary?

Tinder

Did I see it, did you see it?

Well I finally saw it and I was not impressed. Sensational and stereotypical topics. What a load of rubbish I’m sorry to say. There was no depth whatsoever! The tinder title says it all… It was mainly about dating apps in general, but of course the secret life of dating apps wouldn’t have worked on TV.

To be fair it will make popular TV but I was just waiting for the catfish and danger aspects to come along. I mean who invites a date to their home on the first date? Seriously WTF! Thats dating 101!

They bumped against the paradox of choice but it was for about 5 secs. I far preferred Dawns guide online dating, which was also from Channel4.

Thanks Claire, Mr Brislr and others for highlighting it to me… but I say garbage!

Am I losing the ability to be in love? Nope

Love...

Tony sent me a link to 10 Reasons Why This Generation Is Losing The Ability To Be In Love. I quoted a few bits from it in my thoughts about narcissism and selfies. But theres much more to be quoted…

My greatest worry is our generation will be looked at as the generation that gave up on love. We date for the sake of dating. The generation that forgot how to love — which is ridiculous. Most people have never had a good understanding of love, just a poor interpretation of it.

I’m not sure why Tony sent this to me but I have thoughts why… you see why as I go through some of the points I think are levelled at me?

We sleep around — a lot.

Although I have dated quite a bit, I don’t sleep around a lot. This is a common misconception when I talk about dating. If I mention serial dater, the first thing which comes to mind is sex.  I won’t even go there about what is sex…

We’re becoming even more egocentric.

Not so…  Although I agree culture is leaning that way, sadly. But its nothing to shrug about, the future is not written.

We date for the sake of dating.

Many people have asked me over and over again, if I date for the sake of dating? Everytime I say something about enjoying dating, mainly because I might be sapiosexual (more about this in the future as I do agree its a little silly but this a bit strong, thanks Tom).

But I do also say, I date because I would like to meet somebody special. Heck in the context of this post, I would like to fall in love again. Feels weird saying that but its true but I’m not scared of doing so. I will look forward to it.

We aren’t fans of making compromises.

I do agree, I don’t like to compromise much but I do understand I do need to compromise. For the person who sweeps me off my seat, I’ll compromise and some.

We believe in fairytale endings.

Nope, I don’t buy it at all. I would say I have come to the realisation that love take a very different path for everybody. This includes non-monogamy too. Wheres the fairytale endings for that? Exactly, don’t believe the hype… silly rabbit!

We’ve been fooled into believing perfection is attainable.

Rubbish, perfection is an illusion. Just like the fairytale endings, being open to more creditable influences and meeting more people, its clear as day whats actually attainable and what is sustainable.

We’re goal driven, but often forget to include our partners in the mix.

I don’t know about this one, I feel this generation is much more collaborative than previous ones. The slow but sure balancing of the sexes also insures both or more partners goals and aspirations are more important than ever before.

Most of us are really bad at loving.

As Haddaway said, What is love?  Although I joke, its a serious question. Love is different for everybody. We have evolved and so has the sense of what love is…  I don’t disagree that the paradox of choice and other factors have made finding love much more complex but millions fall in love everyday. Be it physically or virtually. With one person or multiple people.

On top of that, there are so many different ways to tell our loved one(s) that we love them. From a text message with emoji at the right moment to turning on a light in the connected objects domain.

I think the writer is unfair in the statement that we are really bad at loving.

For me, its not a resistance to fall in love but to get it somewhat right. I listen to my gut reaction a lot more than I use to. Does this mean I don’t have the ability to fall in love? No, it means I will only fall in love when the conditions are right and not for some artificially manufactured reason.

Dating after a long relationship

Chess on the High Line

Lifehacker has a well reasoned piece about returning to dating at a older age. Its something nobody really wants to think about, married and happy then things go wrong. Before long you are separated or divorced and you are pondering what to do.

For me I decided to get back into dating as its very easy to slip into a endless cycle of regret and depression. To be fair I wasn’t really dating much beforehand just like the Thorin.

I’ve always felt dating was a weird experience in general, but somehow, coming back to it in the last few years feels different. I was married for several years in my late 20s, so I missed out on the earlier days of online dating sites. It was also a much more carefree time, when if you liked someone, that was enough. But now that I’m in my 30s, the rules and expectations are completely different—making it a lot harder to get back in the game.

I have said it before many times, this is why when talking to people in long term relationships, its hard to explain why things are different now.

…you have billions of other human beings at your fingertips through a variety of channels. As always, you can hit up bars, clubs, and shows. You can venture off to parties and barbecues. You can also go online and have access to loads of single people in your area. It’s a far cry from even high school, when your dating pool was largely pretty much your friends and their friends.

Online dating gives you more options than ever. Not just in people, but in sources. Dating sites like OkCupid, Tinder, Match, eHarmony, and Plenty of Fish all give you access to other single people in a matter of seconds.

I have a talk inside of me all about this and much much more. I gave a 10min overview at Best of British, which you can watch on youtube.

There are some really good points raised

The Deal Breakers Have Changed, and They’re Much Bigger Deals.
Yes the deal breakers are serious now, if something isn’t right for you. There are enough other people to give try. There is the downside to this of course, paradox of choice and people seeking the greener grass on the other side.

The “Game” Is Different, and Bluntness Is King
No body likes time-wasters and you need to be blunt and to the point otherwise things will drag on.  It doesn’t mean you have to be super rude, just honest and direct. People will thank you for it deep down, even if its painful at first. Of course you got get a think skin and be prepared for honest and direct feedback too. This is why getting over the fear of rejection is so important.