The Dating Problem
Ok, let??s take a look at dating Web sites in general. Seems logical given that my last post was on dance partnering. I studied this with a group of scientists and other people as part of a social software development project.
The online dating process has certain steps. The first is what I call ??attribute-shopping?. People search and browse profiles to find people they think are good candidates. Once they have a candidate then the move to the ??online-attribute-verification? stage. This is where they try and see if the claimed attributes in the profile are true and predict if the right chemistry will occur. This involves chatting, email, phone etc.
It takes in the neighbourhood of 4h per lead to get through the first two stages (shopping and online verification).
Then the next stage is the facilitation of a face to face meeting. That??s a lengthy process to. Then there??s the facilitation of a face to face relationship.
So if a person is meeting 3 people per week, they are spending a minimum of 12h per week online.
Now, just for fun, let??s look at my Salsa dancing hobby. (Which by the way, I classify as a constructive face2face activity).
In the Thursday dance class and practice (which is about 3h of time used), I can realistically meet 5 nice ladies. I chat with them, collect their phone and email addresses.
That??s a better return. One might argue that they necessarily aren??t single but this can be argued in the online dating community as well. The difference is the expense in time of the verification process.
But let??s say for a moment that nothing comes forward from those ladies or I elect not to attempt to meet any ladies. At the end of my 3h, I??ve taken a fun dance lesson in Salsa. I??ve been listening to a collection of cool music that makes me very happy. I??ve been participating in a community that contains instruction, mentorship, partnership, teamwork and many other social elements. The activity in itself is worth doing.
The ladies I will have met have a common interest. Secondly they do constructive activities. Thirdly, they are closely linked to my own social network already because they are in the dance community so lots of information on them may be available from my other dance friends. So the verification of their personality is intrinsic.
So why then would a person go to an online community where there is a 4h overhead per lead? Further, they will be meeting with someone who wasted all of their spare time online instead of doing something constructive. The answer is a little disappointing. The reason is that there are many people out there who do not get a good return on constructive fact2face activities. The specifics range from social dysfunction such as extreme shyness to personal grooming issues. Not to over generalize because obviously there will be anomalies and exceptions but the time spent looking for them is very great and you can find the good people in a constructive face to face activity while benefiting from the activity.
The online people don??t really do much horseback riding, walking in the sunset and looking at the stars, which apparently are popular activities according to online profile databases. The reality is that they??re busy shopping for attributes online.
There is another exception and it??s those who are desk bound. Single mothers who don??t have the resources to leave their house as much and various workers who are chained to a desk and have excess computer time on hand. So rather than read, study, and better one??s self otherwise, let??s get busy attribute shopping!
I can go a step further. There is an attribute mentality in online social networks. Some people exhibit the same mentality in face to face activities. It??s a bit of an intuitive leap, but the end result is cliques. Cliques are weak social structures. By that I??m suggesting that the members do not reap the benefits of the social network fully.
Attribute focus is for all practical purposes a bias. In any problem solving situation, a bias can be a barrier to solving the problem.
Here??s a real life example of how a bias can block you from getting what you want.
I was at Darcy??s pub (Sparks Street in Ottawa) a while back with some guys who had a tendency to complain that they didn??t have a girlfriend. I had one and was meeting her at the end of our social. I still took time to meet with my single friends. Well, I spotted a table of ladies that I knew from my volleyball team. I went over to them and chatted briefly. When I returned to my original group, one of the ladies came with me. I introduced her around. There was some chatty-chatty and then she returned to her group. After she left, two of the men made negative comments. I won??t repeat them here but in a nutshell, they didn??t want to date her or ??get-busy? with her.
I took offense to this on two fronts. A) Just because she??s a lady and the men didn??t like her for dating or other purposes, they didn??t have any use for her at all. This is bad. B) The attribute focus causes closure on the whole volleyball team??s social network.
The attribute focused attitude keeps them from meeting the ladies on the volleyball team (not to mention the volleyball league and their friends).
Needless to say, after hearing them complain of not having a girlfriend or that there are no girls and other examples, I became prone to drop the group from my regular activities. I was starting to prefer to go ballroom dancing on the Fridays or meet up with my girlfriend. (My girlfriend at the time did not take dance lessons yet).
In my opinion this silly bias that many people have, (that they will only interact with the exact people that they want for a particular purpose), is exactly what??s happening in an online attribute shopping situation. There is so much focus on the attributes of a particular person that people aren??t really participating in the network that is available. In the face to face community people tend to travel in groups which behave like cliques. Not only do they often tend to fail to network with the community because of attribute focus, I also noticed that some of the groups that I was in (such as the one I mentioned in my example above), would reprimand members for interacting outside the group too much.
In the online dating community, people tend travel in groups of one.
There are many face to face activities that are populated by these cliques and individuals. I call it a sink-work or clique-work because the people are limiting who they interact with so much that the whole thing is stagnant for years.
Darcy