sex – Page 4 – Cubicgarden.com…

Little social test, how men on tinder react to makeup?

Tim is once again on a roll with this little test of the effect of makeup on profile pictures in the domain of online dating. Or how men on tinder reacted to three different levels of makeup.

As many of you know, on Tinder you cannot view any reciprocated likes (matches) until you indicate your interest in that person by swiping to the right. So, when planning my experiment, I decided to swipe right for the first 100 suggested matches per account, then allow one hour afterward to see what kind of messages and matches it turned up. I then counted the reciprocated likes, messages and ages of my matches to see any general trends when it came to my level of cosmetic “enhancement.”

To be clear this isn’t a scientific in anyway… but the results did surprise me and the conclusions were slightly interesting… I say slightly…

Despite my reservations about the entire concept, however, the guys on Tinder surprised me. More men flocked to a bare-faced girl than a heavily made up one, yet they seemed most aggressively interested in a face adorned in average levels of makeup. Their language seemed to reflect what they thought of the woman behind the makeup, treating my bare-faced account as a friend before a hook-up. While it’s unfortunate to me that many of these men treated a woman as more sexualized because of her cosmetics, their cordiality in most of the messages was refreshing.

Part of this could be the out of your league thing? Or maybe its a good thing for once…? Because heck nothing else good seems to come from Tinder 🙂

OkTrend pipes up…

3 Years later, Ok trends (OKCupid’s blog about trends across the Okcupid service) pipes up with a new entry, titled We experiment on human beings. In a cynical move to get in on the facebook controversy. Maybe they are feeling the heat from Facebook and its enviable rise to take over online dating. So threaten, they decided to let everyone know they are still around and relevant ? Maybe I’m being too skeptical?

However there are some interesting parts… to this rare and burst of information.

A while ago, we had the genius idea of an app that set up blind dates; we spent a year and a half on it, and it was gone from the app store in six months.

Of course, being geniuses, we chose to celebrate the app’s release by removing all the pictures from OkCupid on launch day. “Love Is Blind Day” on OkCupid—January 15, 2013.

All our site metrics were way down during the “celebration”, for example:

But by comparing Love Is Blind Day to a normal Tuesday, we learned some very interesting things. In those 7 hours without photos:

And it wasn’t that “looks weren’t important” to the users who’d chosen to stick around. When the photos were restored at 4PM, 2,200 people were in the middle of conversations that had started “blind”.

Those conversations melted away. The goodness was gone, in fact worse than gone. It was like we’d turned on the bright lights at the bar at midnight.

Basically, people are exactly as shallow as their technology allows them to be.

I think OKCupid is right on this. The technology drives the way people decide to use it. This is why its critical not to drive people into a gamified model or cognitively overload them with information.

I also wondered what happened with OKcupid’s blind date app? Not so frank this time about the lack of take up! I’m pretty sure it received a flurry of activity but now no ones actually using it at all. Nice idea OKCupid but your own results prove it, no ones using it and its time it was retired me thinks…

I’ll be interested to see if more stats will be coming out of oktrends in the near future. They took away the paid for dating one and who knows what else they are going to do to

Paying the Price of Admission

It was my ex-wife Sarah who introduced me to Dan Savage many years ago. She use to listen to his radio show and podcasts about life and relationships. Ever since I have kept a ear out for his insightful notes on relationships and life.

Paying the price of admission is a fascinating idea.

…the personal sacrifices, large and small, that make long-term relationships possible. For some, the price of admission—what it costs to ride a particular ride—includes “taming one’s sexual desire for the sake of another.”

I would say this is the compromise, but it always sounds like a negative thing. And to be fair theres a lot of negativity towards compromises.

The price of admission sounds a lot more like a neutral and when ever I hear it, I think roller coasters and that can’t be a bad thing…. *smile*

The other thing I find fascinating about the price of admission is the notion of act as if or fake it till you make it.

…the idea is to go through the routines of life as if one were enjoying them, despite the fact that initially it feels forced, and continue doing this until the happiness becomes real. This is an example of a positive feedback loop.

Its makes clear sense when thinking about one person but is really interesting when thinking both people in a relationship is doing this for the benefit of their partner first and themselves secondly.

The tainted eyes of the beholder

At breakfast today with Chris and Kat, we were talking about previous people we’ve been out with and the question of chemistry. I mentioned the eye of the beholder and how everyone has a different things they like. Therefore the chemistry is going to be different too.

Kat agreed and gave a great example, which I hadn’t ever thought about.

Do you think people who you found attractive become almost ugly at certain times? Like if they cheat on you…?

And she makes a great point. Perception is a interesting thing. Someone which seems great, then becomes tainted because of their actions. And I think Tainted is the right word too, because it becomes impossible to see them as attractive again ever after. No matter what people say or think.

Freemium dating gone horrifically wrong

Lunch time at work is a interesting experience. Somehow we got into a discussion about online dating and Elizabeth asked me what kind of sites I’m on, out of curiosity. I mentioned I only do free dating sites and before you knew it we were on to a discussion about freenium dating sites vs paid sites.

The logic seems to conclude that a paid for sites would attract a better match, however in my own experience this is not true. Actually the opposite seems to apply, with the tricks the paid for dating sites pull on you. But we started wondering… If you were really evil or lack in moral judgment, what kind of things would you do?

Here’s some suggestions,

Default all profiles would be ugly (there was a suggestion of green on brown with comic sans) unless you pay for colour changes and font faces changes.
There would be a charge for every character over 320 characters (it was suggested 140 actually). Bit like plenty of fish’s extended profile.
Depending on the time of the month certain words would cost less and more. Of course there would be a algorithm working out the most likely used words in profiles. But the cost would be reversed, as to charge the most for those words in their prime like selfie. Likewise Phrases go down in price depending on over use of the word across the site.
There would only be allowed one photo like eBay use to have. More photos can be added at a cost of course. Oh and the one photo would be restricted to 256 colours and a size of 640×480. If you need colour, you can choose a animal photo which best represents you. One photo to impress… make it a good one.
Messages can only be accessed on the site or the application. There will be strict limits of 10 meg storages and of course all messages will be monitored and fiddled with. So there will be no swearing, rude or lude content (lots of dating sites do this to kill off email and phone number exchange in messages). It would also have the right to change words and sentences to aid with communication. Well I say aid but expect all type of nonsense and mucking around.
All messages will start at 200 characters maximum and grow by 10 characters based on the messages exchange. You
Matching algorithms will be switch depending on paid membership. If you want the super-dooper algorithm you got to pay. And remember you have no idea how good it is till you try it out, at which you are offered the mega search for another upgrade in membership… Of course this time it includes advance options, thankfully. Okcupid already has multiple methods/algorithms for search and some are only accessible to paid members.
Conditions for using the site is allowing the site to have access to your Facebook account. Not just for authentication but so it can read and write to your friends. If you want to stop the spamming, you need to pay for the yearly membership. Remember when Plaxo and many others did this to convince your friends to join?
Don’t even get me started on adverts, you never seen adverts like this before, well maybe. Not only will you see them on the site, but also in your facebook timeline because you allowed us to do so, duhhh stupid…! Of course we could hijacking your cookies for even more fun, unless you pay the subscription money but that would be so… wrong!
Feeling the pitch when it comes to the matches, well don’t worry most of them will be automated bots sent to lure you into paying even more or at least another few months of subscription. Hummm where did I hear this before?
Of course our starred profiles will be ranked highly and you will need to digg through those before you get to the cheapskates. As a free user, you will have to do this with no sort and no option of how many users per page. Good luck with that…
Did I forget to say, how our search doesn’t work correctly for free users. You will have to search through male and female users from all over the world till we can find a way to fix it. Of course paid users get access to the beta server which does support these (some people say) essential things.
Random username allocation. Don’t like your username which was randomly given to you? Well if you pay the money, you can change it. Don’t pay, and you will have to put up with snugglemuffin666 or even snddjoidjidb81.

I could go on but frankly you go the picture. Some sounds a little crazy while others you may recognise from being on paid for dating sites. Free dating sites are rarer than they should be, but the freemium sites are going to be the next big thing. Don’t believe me? Look at Tinder.

Can explicit big data replace implicit chemistry?

20130101 Experimenting with a Lott's Chemistry Set c.1956

I’m happy to say the BBC News business section has a piece which I found via Zoe, Is big data dating the key to long-lasting romance? Of course I have many thoughts about this whole piece including the memory that I still need to read Love in the Time of Algorithms.

Dating agencies like OKCupid, Match.com – which acquired OKCupid in 2011 for $50m (£30m) – eHarmony and many others, amass this data by making users answer questions about themselves when they sign up.

Some agencies ask as many as 400 questions, and the answers are fed in to large data repositories. Match.com estimates that it has more than 70 terabytes (70,000 gigabytes) of data about its customers.

Applying big data analytics to these treasure troves of information is helping the agencies provide better matches for their customers. And more satisfied customers mean bigger profits.

US internet dating revenues top $2bn (£1.2bn) annually, according to research company IBISWorld. Just under one in 10 of all American adults have tried it.

Just look at those numbers! 1.2bn a year and 70 Terabytes of data plus its growing all the time! You can just imagine the shareholders hovering up the profits… However this is all explicit data, stuff you got to type in. Stuff that people tell porkies about, specially when having to fill in 400 questions…!

Dr Zhao’s algorithm can then suggest potential partners in the same way websites like Amazon or Netflix recommend products or movies, based on the behaviour of other customers who have bought the same products, or enjoyed the same films.

The facebook angle is good and recognised by the likes of Tindr and Grindr. Collaborative filtering of people implicit actions is good but its still not the missing element, aka chemistry.

We already know there is something to the theory that opposites attract. How does this work when your algorithm is based on matching? You almost need a inverse of that but you need to understand human needs and wants, and thats not as simple as copying what we do. Its the whole don’t do what I say and don’t do what I do problem? Imagine somewhere someone is looking at this thing in a totally different way, via a different lens. Because frankly I think all the explicit and implicit data in the world won’t describe why people get together. It looks to be unquantifiable and thats quite surprising from someone like me.

Moneysavingexpert asks: Should men still pay on a first date?

Josh tweeted me today… Seems the moneysavingexpert Martin Lewis wants to understand if men should still pay on the first date.

Of course you know my views and to be honest its interesting to see the answers and the results.

Currently (19:27 on 18/3/2014) 1,556 votes have been received

**I’m a man (506 votes)**

Yes. The man should always pay – chivalry’s not dead yet!		125 votes (25%)
Yes. The correct etiquette is the man offers, the woman says “let’s go Dutch”, the man says no and pays.		131 votes (26%)
Yes. But only if he earns more than his date.		14 votes (3%)
No. It should be split equally.		136 votes (27%)
No. The person who invited the other should pay.		57 votes (11%)
No. In the modern world, the woman should pay.		6 votes (1%)
Don’t care either way.		37 votes (7%)

**I’m a woman (1050 votes)**

Yes. The man should always pay – chivalry’s not dead yet!		222 votes (21%)
Yes. The correct etiquette is the man offers, the woman says “let’s go Dutch”, the man says no and pays.		371 votes (35%)
Yes. But only if he earns more than his date.		22 votes (2%)
No. It should be split equally.		251 votes (24%)
No. The person who invited the other should pay.		132 votes (13%)
No. In the modern world, the woman should pay.		3 votes (0%)
Don’t care either way.		49 votes (5%)

This is of course kind of good news but I think the balance of males to females might be causing the sway. I expected a lot more people to be thinking the man always pays. However, it also shows we are driven by tradition and social etiquette more than the fear of rejection etc. Its also interesting that money plays less of a role in the voting that I would have thought on a site all about saving you money.

The last couple of dates I have been on, we have split the bill and theres been no issues or concerns. I’ll stick to that for myself…

Why internet dating makes me angry

Rosie shared with me a post from Girl on the Net, titled The ‘science of dating’ and why it should make you angry…

When Rosie shared it on Twitter, I did what I usually do. Add it to Instapaper for a more relaxed time and so I can read it on my Kindle. Days later, I found some time during a lunch break, while eating my soup and started reading. I was unprepared for how much I wanted to scream “YES!”

I’m aware of Girl on the Net, but there’s so much great points in the post I can’t help but say “I knew I wasn’t crazy!”

Here’s a few of the points which had me shouting yes inside!

Relationship advice, on the other hand, screams absolutes no matter how little data the authors have. I recently received an email advertising a site that claimed to give me the “science” behind dating – by “science” it looked like they meant a survey they did of 100 single women. From this tiny sample not only did they draw conclusions like “all women want you to text back within 48 hours” but also that they could tell which of the survey respondents was a “hot babe”.

If only people would see relationship advice as just that… Advice! You can take it or leave it, but its certainly not something you can quote and put money on. The advice is also Anecdotal, which leads on to…

Anecdotal evidence is always popular – whether it’s Peter, who managed to overcome his fears about talking to women after reading The Game, or a few quotes on a forum for pick-up artists assuring us that this magic method helped our hero get laid three nights in a row, honest. The anecdotal evidence of dating advice is rarely challenged in the same way as we’d challenge it elsewhere

Anecdotal at best. But the problem is people treat it like fact. The fact is my advice is as good as their’s. They will never admit it but it is full of holes and bias, just like mine.

This is why, when Northern Lass 32, said in the Guardian… I was the human dating Wikipedia. I quite liked it.

Wikipedia isn’t always correct and is very human with its mistakes, lack of citations and verification. While this is fine for me, not claiming to be a expert. Its not so good for those who claim to be experts and know exactly what you’re doing wrong.

I’ve found things which work for me, but I can only suggest they may work for others. I try and caution the advice I give. But ultimately I could also be seen as adding to the dubious information state. Never meant to, I always felt I was just opening peoples eyes to the possibilities which they never took.

…this onslaught of dubious info will prevent us from doing what’s natural – meeting people and having relationships with them – but it certainly hurls a few obstacles in the way of people who might be struggling. What’s more, it matters because all such misinformation matters: it demonstrates to people that you can package waffle as wisdom and make money from it. It teaches us that anecdotal evidence, vague appeals to authority and ad hominem are perfectly valid ways to win an argument.

I feel the difference here is, I am always welcomed to be challenged and I am by friends and strangers. Like testing a new formula or concept, I welcome push back. Oh and get it from those who say I’m too picky, too data centric and trying to quantify the unquantifiable.

Ultimately there is simply not enough clearly non-bias open data to give sound advice about online dating. Unfortunately in the void of this, the dating company’s get away with making insane statements and the dating experts go unchallenged. And as Girl on the net makes very clear…

…above all it matters because it paints a skewed and inaccurate picture of reality: in which women want nothing more than a free lunch and an open door, and men must jump through hoops and clap their flippers like performing seals in order to secure a gesture of love.

Sobering words for us all to think about…

When should you start paying??? Really?

Thanks to Hollie for sending me this… When I watched it I almost screamed at the laptop screen.

Seriously! I wonder which decade do we live in…?

How to get the guy worries me deeply… Anyone who says

…All Without The Risk Of Rejection…

Is frankly chatting out there ass. Rejection is a normal part of the process. The important part is learning to get over it and understanding how it effects you.

I’m sure this won’t be the last time I speak about Matthew Hussey…

The effect of Internet p0rn, no fap…

You may have come across the term “No Fap” once or twice while browsing Youtube or Reddit. What does it mean?

Well its simply a made up term for no internet porn. There is enough evidence to show internet porn is somewhat addictive (theres a lot of thoughts this could be the same addictive level as Farmville, World of Warcraft, etc, etc. So maybe more addictive that reasonable) and has a negative effect on men.

Interestingly Hollywood got in on the act recently with a film called Dom Jon.

A New Jersey guy dedicated to his family, friends, and church, develops unrealistic expectations from watching porn and works to find happiness and intimacy with his potential true love.

The film is quite good and feels quite well done. Of course theres no spoilers here, but seek it out but be prepared as the subject matter is uncomfortable for many.

Now I can imagine david cameron, mary whitehouse and many more of the same crowd, standing up and saying. “Yes we told you so! This is why we must ban it and block it.”

Well banning it isn’t the idea here but there is something which I touched on in hacking that instant spark of chemistry. I said “We’re all junkies to the buzz” Internet porn seem to have the instant buzzing effect our brain thinks is a good thing, and of course it wants more and more of it. But what makes it more like crack is the chasing of the high. There seems to be a super quick drop off with seeing the same porn and because theres plenty of it around, your brain seeks out more different porn.

Of course this has a negative effect on monogamous relationships. Specially ones based around sex.

I’ve only started to scratch the surface, but the bulk of the no fap movement is around the negative effect it can have. And its not just men, but women too…

Everything in moderation and resist the temptation to keep doing the same thing over and over again. It could be a legacy trap in our minds…