Hacking the Online Dating Algorithm

There are an increasing number of online dating websites that advertise that love can be found after a series of questionnaires and personality tests. I have always found this concept of “love is one SUBMIT button away” confusing and flawed. However, the statistics apparently suggest otherwise. More than one third of US married couples met through online dating sites, 5.96% of online couples broke up compared to 7.67% offline couples, and about 35% of relationships now start online.

I have always struggled with how people answer all the questions that these sites ask them. Take for example this stereotypical question: What is your ideal date? I think there are two ways to answer this question. (1) What you actually prefer your ideal date to be and (2) what you think someone else thinks is an ideal date. So then which answer do you give? Personally, I think the issue is in how easy it is for someone to lie and completely make up who they claim to be online. What is stopping someone from falsely advertising who they are in order to attract a certain demographic?

I recently came across a Ted Talk by Amy Webb and her experience with the online dating world. Webb managed to hack online dating. Apparently, the perfect man is a few Excel spreadsheets, mathematical formulas, and fake profiles (for research purposes on the competition only, of course) away. Her method of hacking the online dating world consisted of working backwards; formulating the criteria for her dream man, creating a scoring system, collecting data on the competition, and re-vamping her own profile in order to attract the kind of man she wanted. It also helps if you have the Type A personality and determination to undergo her process. Webb gave me a new perspective on the algorithms of online questionnaires and personality tests by tearing them down and exposing their basic blueprints. She demonstrated that there is a way “cheat” the system so to speak and to navigate the world of online dating in order to get what you really want — in her case, a man that fit her perfect-husband-material criteria. Watch the Ted Talk here to hear her interesting search for a husband amid a sea of online tests!

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