Finding Love Online

I go on enough horrible dates on my own; I really don’t need to pay a fee to do that. Hence, online dating has never really been for me. It just seems too impersonal. You learn so much from face-to-face interactions with people that “meeting” online just doesn’t compare. But, I suppose if I could create an algorithm with all my wants and needs, like a digital strategist and journalist, Amy Webb, I’d be more apt to risk all of the horrible dates I imagine come along with online dating.

Masa Miteraoka, New Wave Series/ Catfish Love, 1992

Love is a mystery. That’s what we’re told. Some people make looking for love their full time job, an obsession they can’t seem to shake. If you’re a girl in college below the Mason-Dixon Line, I’m sure you’ve been told, or at least heard someone say, that “you really need to find your husband in college.” I imagine that if you’re playing that game, the pressure to find the love of your life while you’re still finding yourself is incredible.

Sample Data, A Love Story with Amy’s entertaining, enlightening, very comical TEDx talk:

Cheat the system

But if you were like Webb, you’d create your own method to beat the online dating system to find your perfect partner. She literally created a scoring template for all of her needs and wants in a man and scored every online profile that contacted her. Not only that, to improve her system, she then faked profiles of men to see how women interacted with them. Essentially, she catfished her way to love. But at the end of her story, it doesn’t seem so bad. She created a few frogs, which ultimately found her the love of her life.

In her book, she shares more of her experience. And by the chapter titles alone, it has found its way onto my summer reading list.

Data: A Love Story

1. Missed Connections: He Quoted Me
2. Single in the City: Learning How to Date — And To Hate Dating — Again
3. Signing On: You’re A Woman: Seeking a Man
4. The Dates: Two Hundred Dollars for Dinner and a Roadside Flare of Weed
5. Bad Algorithms: Online Dating Sites Are Broken
6. The List: Must Not Like Cats!
7. The Mirror of Truth: I Am Not Cameron Diaz
8. Fuck You Imposters! You Are a Man Seeking a Woman
9. Gaming the System: In Which I Outsmarted the Algorithms
10. You’re a 5-Apatow, 5-Seinfeld: What The Popular Girls Know
11. The Super Profile: Fun, Outgoing Breasts!
12. Finding Bobo: My Last First Date
13. The Train Home: Subtlety Wasn’t My Strong Suit

Article by: Tiffany Williams, Flirty Editor