Tag: dating

Should I apply for a BBC Three dating experiment?

I’m trying to decide if I should apply for this groundbreaking dating experiment or rather TV dating show

We’re looking for single people to take part in a groundbreaking dating experiment.

Are you looking for Miss or Mr Right?

Would you like to be set up with your ideal date?

Using the science of compatibility testing, our relationship experts will be creating 500 compatible couples who will meet for the first time at an exciting TV dating event.

This is the week that our compatibility test goes live, so make sure that you don’t miss out on the chance of meeting your perfect date by getting in touch now!

I might not be able to apply due to being a BBC member of staff but you never know… Actually the only reason I’m considering it is because its BBC. However its BBC Three, so who knows what it might end up like.

I’ve asked on Twitter and Google Plus and its been a mixed response, but now the deadline is coming up and I need to decide.

Can I remind you about the last time I was on TV, and that was without me even signing up to anything!

And they ask, how can you judge…?

Josh (technicalfault) will never let me forget about my idles to not date anyone who regularly shops in Aldi supermarket…

After reading my latest blog post he took to Twitter to tell me I’m a hypo-critic 🙂

He then puts forward a scenario…

how about this. a lady shops in Aldi so she can save money to help pay for parents medical treatment. yet you judge her!

Actually no… maybe I do but for good reason. We all have filters, preferences, likes. Like it or not, its being human

So why the dislike of Aldi? Well its a complex one, and can not be put down to some simple snobbery. Heck even I shop there between supermarket deliveries… But I don’t like it. Its about my own values…

Here’s some justification, which may make me sound like a snob but I’m not…

  1. Good food costs good money…
    I buy free-range eggs instead of barn eggs (even with the huge cost increase). Even when I was a student and had no money at all, working in starbucks coffee, I would still mainly buy free-range eggs. Very occasionally I bought barn eggs and although I knew they were basically the same, I felt terrible for doing so… That was my own values being stretched – not anyone elses. My own values tell me food pricing is screwed up… Good food should cost quite a bit and specially in the case of fresh food, the premium we pay should go to the people who help bring us that fresh food. This is why although Aldi does provide very cheap food, I’m not a fan because I feel good food should cost. (To note: I’m not saying everyone should pay that if they can’t afford it. Our values and priorities change through our lives, and right now I don’t have a problem paying for good food, I know that makes me very lucky)
  2. Quality of food…
    In my honest opinion, fresh food at Aldi is generally crappy… Things like Grapes and Apples taste really bad to me. When compared to Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys, Booths and even from the Arndale local Market. I can’t stand to buy fresh goods from Aldi no more after multiple tries. Maybe its just my taste buds but I believe its about right for the money you pay. Yes they have a reasonable selection of meats and cheeses but there fresh food is very poor in my view. So I would have a slightly tarnished view of people who enjoyed the fresh food… Its not me looking down, well at least no less than those who enjoy Apple products 🙂
I can go on for ever about Aldi but I just have so many problems with our local Aldi beyond what I said above…
Josh will hate my justification but frankly its a small filter and a little more context, we were originally talking regarding Asda’s supermarket dating service. I joked Asda dating (at least in Eastlands Manchester) would be a poor state of affairs. It would be like dating on Plenty of Fish while something like Sainsburys or even Booths supermarket dating would be more like dating on Okcupid. The later certainly would attract more of the type person I’d personally like to meet… Its not a snobbery thing, actually Sainsburys and Booths are both in Salford.
I’ll be hiding from the comments and twitter wraff for the rest of the week… I’m never too far from controversy it seems…

Places to meet partners…?

oberlin mudd library 5

I warn you I don’t always follow my own advice, but I had a little read of CTS’s post in the telegraphy titled, If you’re looking for love in London make sure it’s in the right places.

But before I start my comment, I’ve been reading and following (thanks to the forever good friend Kate Norman for the pointer) CTS’s 52 first dates, which really intrigues me and makes me wish I had blogged my many dates…

Here’s the deal. I’ve been single since time immemorial. So, in an attempt to remedy my eternal singledom, and to get over my nauseatingly pathological fear of dates, I’ve decided to challenge myself. The challenge? To go on one first date a week for a year! So in 52 weeks time, I will have either found my Mr Right, or I’ll stay forever Miss Write. This is what happens…

Here are the rules to the 52 First Dates challenge…

1. A first date must be had once a week, EVERY week, for 52 weeks.

2. Taking someone home after a drunken night on the cider does NOT count, otherwise this challenge would just be slutty, and none of us want that do we?!?

3. Second and third dates are allowed, I must continue first dates unless there are exceptional mitigating circumstances. For example, God forbid, the start of a relationship.

4. Each date must be blogged.

Great concept and to be honest I’m kind of hooked reading some of her blog posts… I’m sure I’ll comment more about them in future.

So now on to, places to meet…

in reality, the prospect of catching a fellow passenger’s eye on the Tube is unheard of and the very notion of verbalising a cheeky flirt during rush hour would probably cause the entire Underground system to implode. It just doesn’t happen, it’s not the done thing.

Although I do agree mainly its not totally unheard of… In my time living in London half the time I was married but before that, I had some great experiences communicating with people on the tube. Yes they were very rare but there is nothing better than when the driver/announcer makes a mistake or says something funny. You can’t help but just look at the person opposite you and smile or even laugh. Well next time say something, don’t try and be funny just say something which refers to the current situation. You will be surprised what might happen…

Yes it breaks the silence and yes Londonners don’t talk in public much but hey who knows what can happen if you cease the moment? Reason why I mention it is I’ve met some interesting people on the tube this way. Now to be honest its never been a romantic type of thing but I’m sure with enough times something might have happened…

CTS (really need to find out her real name) ends with this…

Regardless, if you want to meet someone in this heaving city perhaps it’s best to dive right in and see who’s available online. They say there are plenty of fish in the sea but reeling them in at bars and clubs is hard work – online dating could well be the best way to find a lifeguard.

I agree, online has been better but like when me and Sarah first met in reality, that was when things really clicked.

The thing I’ve always done (or at least tried to do) is keep an eye open when you go places you personally enjoy. Chances are if you enjoy that place, the person you want to meet also will be there. So enjoy shopping in ikea, the person you may want to meet is maybe there too. I personally love Manchester’s cafe culture and spend plenty of time hanging out in them, yes nothing to show yet but a few twitter name swaps for example. But likewise if your not a fan of say old man pubs (like me), then its not going to be the kind of place you may want to meet someone else romantically…

I can talk quite a bit about the social objects/places thing but I’ve done enough of that here.

Poll: On the first date who pays?

On the first date, who pays? My Qriously poll

For those who can’t read the poll, 100 people answered from around the world via Qriously the question of who should pay on the first date? Something I talked at length about before.

60% said the man should pay on the first date, 27% said the woman and only 13% said go dutch (thinking I should have put split it instead of go Dutch, to avoid any language misunderstanding). Yes the man should pay is the number one option but what totally surprises me is the small amount of votes for going dutch?

I didn’t tweet the poll and to be honest I forgot to change it because it was meant to be part of the Leeds ignite talk I was going to give on the 15th November. This has now been put back to early next year…

The Insight…
60% (60) people are in favour of The Man (Top Geographies are United States, United Kingdom, India)
13% (13) people are in favour of Go Dutch (Top Geographies are United States, Thailand, India)
27% (27) people are in favour of The Woman (Top Geographies are United States, Spain, Chile)
The poll was answered by 46% Female and 54% Male and the average sentiment is strongly towards The Man
There was 100 Answers and 2,963 Views over only 18mins uptime, not bad for a first time without any additional push from myself.
I will run it again during my talk at Leeds Ignite and change the “go dutch” note and focus it on just the UK and maybe Europe?

 

 

OK Cupid Locals (beta)

Okcupid locals

It wasn’t long ago that I removed the OKCupid application from my android phone because frankly it wasn’t all that and it was more like an extension of the website. But I was talking to my friend Nicola who I had been telling for a while to stop paying for online dating sites. In the past she has filled me in on the problems Guardian Soulmates was having post there redesign. But today she filled me in on OKCupid’s new beta application feature called Locals.

In actual fact Locals I’d heard about but hadn’t tried till she explained it.

Simply its Grindr for the OKCupid crowd… Sam Yagan (OKC founder) explains why its anti-grindr

So Grindr is obviously the most successful mobile dating app out there. The things that make it so successful—I’m going to terribly stereotype this community—but it’s larger used as a vehicle for short-term, physical relationships. Now it turns out, taking the stereotypical heterosexual case, that the vast majority of women don’t want that. In fact that’s what creeps them out the most about this. They’re worried about stalkers, they’re worried that it’s 10:30 at night on a Friday and you know someone at the bar next to you thinks you want to have sex with them.

How is OkCupid Locals different?

Number one, we’re populating Locals with the OkCupid database. Our entire reputation is built around the fact that we have this data-oriented way to understand people’s personalities. We can actually layer in compatibility. So now, when you make yourself available in Locals, it’s not just, “Oh, who are the people around me who are hot and horny at this moment.” It’s sliced by who are the people around me who are compatible with me. Instead of it being like everyone’s out there in this meat market, it’s more like I can say, “Who wants to go to karaoke.” You can post that not to just everyone in the West Village, but you can say: everyone in the Village who has a compatibility with me over 80 percent.

It sort of cleans the unwashed masses. It’s like, ohhhhh. You’ve been on OkCupid for a couple years, you know that people with high match percentages tend to be people that you could tolerate having a beer with. (Or not—there are creepy people everywhere in every compatibility index.) But in general we’ve got this sort of filter of the users, which I think is super valuable.

And I he’s right, you can just say something like I’m in X place for Y amount of time. Then set who you would like to see there (based on your OKC profile), so for example mine options is Girls who like guys and everybody.

The thing which makes me think this could be a success is the fact I was already doing this on twitter as such. For example I’d say, I’m in central London tonight, anyone fancy joining me for a meal or a drink. Because I have quite a few twitter followers I tend to always catch someone but now I can do the same and hopefully meet some real cool people who, who knows might be rather cute.

Locals really hits the head of what makes OKCupid so cool. One of the secrets of OKC is its social nature. Its more like a place to hangout, do quizes, talk to people, etc, etc. Dating is a massive part but I know people who just use to chat to people in passing, read there journals and fill out the weird and wonderful quizes. If they can get people to do locale too… then there on to a new massive success

I know most people will screw up there face at the notion of Locals but for someone as public as myself, its going to be a whole lot of fun…

On your first date? The man must pay?

::Throughout life you will meet one person who is like no other,,, ::

I was in a meeting today with 3 female collages (I won’t say which ones for now) about BarCampMediaCity and somewhere along the conversation we got talking about my love life… don’t ask me how we got there but something happened…

One of the ladies said something about first dates and I replied saying I’ve got some crazy experiences over the last few years I’ve been dating. We had a brief chat and somewhere along the conversation she said something which I had to unpick.

It came about that she believed that on the first date, men should always pay for the meal.

I was shocked! Like totally dumbfounded…

So shocked I had to pose the question on twitter… a few people replied including my sister and very good friend.

I can’t believe in 2011 we still have these old fashioned views. I was under the illusion that woman had moved on and wasn’t buying all this chauvinistic crap. I was also under the illusion that insisting to pay for the whole dinner put the woman in a difficult position, like you owe the man something.

It turns out I might have been wrong all this time.

But to be honest, I say rubbish… This sounds like something straight out of the rules.

I might be wrong but I certainly like to think the woman I go out with are not bound by such frankly stupid ideology. Its 2011 for goodness sake! I can make a lady feel better in much better ways than paying for her meal. I mean, come on… Is she meant to be grateful that I unimaginatively paid for her meal instead of something creative and from the soul?

Just because I don’t pay for the whole meal doesn’t mean I’m not into you, maybe I respect you so much that I’m not going to undermine you by paying for the whole bill. I understand you have a great job and would like to share the bill with me also out of respect…

Maybe in there lies my problem, I show too much respect for woman and I should also adopt this chauvinistic take? To be fair its worked for lots of my other friends but I deep down like to think the woman who I end up growing old with (in the end) is smart enough to see through this crap and is happy to take her own path and make her up her own mind. Not be pressured by this old fashioned legacy…

What do other people think? Should I cover the costs of all the dates I go on? It certainly will restrict how many dates I will go (time to loose the serial dater tag then) on in the future if so…

Lastly this is certainly something for the 2nd season of geeks talk sexy… Maybe its time to start thinking about it

Continue reading “On your first date? The man must pay?“

Supermarket dating

Cashback Film

From the Asda dating site via Tim Dobson,

Forget speed dating, supermarket dating is where it’s at.

Research reveals the supermarket has overtaken the pub and the internet as the nation’s number 1 spot to find love.

Supermarkets have always been a great way for singles people to meet.

So it makes sense that if you’re now shopping online for your groceries, why not find love online too?

Heard the idea of supermarket dating a while back but I’m not convinced. Can I also add that if I was going dating in a supermarket, it certainly wouldn’t be Asda, even though there is one just up from me.

Without sounding like a snob, can you even imagine what kind of people you would bump into? When ever I’ve personally gone into Asda, I’ve been frankly a little shocked at the people walking around. It might just be the prices but to be fair I’m looking for a lady who understands its not about getting the cheapest price of food. Quality costs…

Can you imagine going supermarket dating in Aldi or Lidi? I’m sure the cheap prices has a effect on the type of people who will go in there. However there are isolated cases like Manchester central where supermarket dating could actually turn up a whole bunch of young, lovely and beautiful women.

I imagine the inner city Sainsburys local and Tesco Metro’s would be a great place to meet such young and lovely ladies.

I am a ethical serial dater?

Dating for Domokuns

I heard the term a while ago while watching a channel4 documentary and someone was talking about it in a cafe once. but forgot about it till recently after seeing another documentary about a similar topic.

From Urban Dictionary, a serial dater

One who engages in the process of systematically dating an obscene amount people in short span of time. This definition encompasses but is not limited to internet dating, bar dating, long distance flirtations, phone service dating, blind dating, expiration dating, match making, one night stands, friends with benefits, and personal ad surfing. Can be considered a politically correct alternative to word "player" both with and without a negative connotation.

Examples

  1. You do not want to date my roommate, that guy is such a serial dater.
  2. Good luck getting anything meaningful out of her, she’s too much into serial dating.

People I know have committed that I go on a lot of dates, but they only know the half of it. I tend to keep that side quiet because it would be very unfair for me to blog, tweet, etc about someone else. Specially those who turned out to be… well… best say… interesting dates. Maybe I should start a secret blog and write about my experiences on dates many other have.

I reject the notion that I’m a player because I’m not, I just enjoy meeting new people and well I love meeting woman. In actual fact I have 2 dates this week *smile*

What more can I say… I’m a ethical serial dater?

Talking of which, we’re currently planing the complete series of Geeks talk Sexy after our most successful episode yet. Following the success of Tara Hunt, we’ve been thinking about having more guests join us. It looks like we may have roped in some great guests including a couple of pickup artists. More news soon…

I really want dataportability for online dating as OKcupid gets bought by Match

Tim Dobson sent me a tweet earlier this today but I only saw it recently because he usually sends dodgy and crap stuff (*smile*). Anyway the news threw me…

OkCupid Acquired by Match.com for $50 Million.

I’m shocked… and to be honest I really want to get off OKcupid pretty soon. But I really want to take my data with me. I’m already considering building some kind of scaper so I can get my data out. The only good thing is…

OkCupid co-founder and CEO Sam Yagan will stay on at the site to run operations.

Sam Yagan also recently said

We Will Not Charge Users Following Match.com Acquisition

“Our goal is that [the acquisition] will have no effect whatsoever,” Yagan told us, saying that no positions will change within the company, and that it will continue full-steam ahead as usual — sans censorship or fees.

Sounds great but is this all lip service? To be honest, as some people have already noticed. A article about paid vs free online dating has been taken it down!

Internet denizens have also pointed out that a popular OKCupid article from last year titled “Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating” has been taken down from the company’s blog.

“I chose to take that down. Match didn’t ask,” Yagan says, denying that the other site was attempting to censor OkCupid. Apparently, the story was pieced together from public information, and Yagan has learned that some of the assumptions made in it were untrue.

Also, he says, “It’s a common sense thing to do. We’re joining a bunch of new colleagues, there’s no need to have that post.”

There is the google cache of course. And no wonder it was removed… It starts this way…

Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating

Today I’d like to show why the practice of paying for dates on sites like Match.com and eHarmony is fundamentally broken, and broken in ways that most people don’t realize.

For one thing, their business model exacerbates a problem found on every dating site…

Oi! No wonder it was removed, its a scaving deconstruction of the match.com business model, oh whoops I mean our new boss.

And if that wasn’t so bad enough, this bit will have you in stitches.

Match.com’s numbers are just as grim. They’re a public company, so we can get their exact subscriber info from the shareholder report they file each quarter. Here’s what we have from Q4 20094:

And finally this flow diagram kills it dead. The owners of Match.com must have been having kittens by the point.

Remember, sites like Match and eHarmony are in business to get you to buy a monthly subscription. There’s nothing wrong with profit motive, but the particular way these sites have chosen to make money creates strange incentives for them. Let’s look at how the pay sites acquire new subscribers.

That for me is a clear sign that we’re about to be shafted. Yagan might be right that he was not told to remove the blogs but to be honest the fact he felt that he had to take it down speaks volumes! And its going to be a very bumpy ride down to the bottom, I can feel it now. And I want to get off now.

I want out! And I’m not the only one. I’ll be interested to see what kind of protest the people of okcupid put up. Might be worth starting off a specially branded avatar… Bit like whats been done on flickr before.