OkCupid.com analyzed over 500,000 first contacts on their online dating site to see how certain keywords and phrases affected reply rates. The results could be considered a set of rules for what you should and shouldn’t say when introducing yourself online.
Thinking of mentioning religion? The graph below shows reply rates of messages containing the listed keywords, plotted against the average reply rate of 32%.
OkCupid’s analysis of how your looks affect your online dating results is chock full of interesting insights. The one that really jumped out at me is that while men’s rating of women’s looks follows a normal distribution — some low, some high, most in the middle — women rate 80% of men as worse-looking than average, but then go ahead and date them anyway.
Who knew Carrie Fisher has a blog? –
I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality . . .
When I date someone, I generally have about three months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much.
Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.”
“These women look worse than the Australian basketball team,” the boy says.
“Some of them would be cute,” I say, “if they lost about 150 pounds.”
An eHarmony commercial comes on . . .
We prescreen candidates for compatibility . . .
“Good,” the boy says, “because I don’t want to date any women weightlifters.”
