I promised, a while ago, a post about the differences and similarities of online vs speed-dating. So since I have mad jet lag and no other urgent tasks to attend to** here it is:

People who online date are embarrassed about it. But less so than people who speed date. Actually, I only say that because I have never met anyone who admitted to speed dating (apart from the people I've met speed dating, who might not admit to it to the outside world but would have trouble denying it to me) but that really might just be a base rate issue. This base rate issue is really one of the dominant dimensions upon which to compare the two. People, I guess, think that online dating is more effective than speed dating. Otherwise they'd do more of the latter. Or else speed dating is much more difficult to arrange, so fewer companies are willing to try it out as a business. But let's assume it's the former explanation. Why would online dating be more effective? Well, potentially there are a whole lot more people one can "encounter". Except I doubt that people actually *do* encounter more people. But, anyway, there are more candidates to choose from. Additionally, there is a lot more information one can learn about these candidates. One can (sometimes) judge online profiles on some very "important" criteria (i.e. what we seem to think is important, regardless of its relationship to, um, relationship onset or satisfaction). Like, what someone's alleged favourite books are, how he spends his time. How tall he claims to be. Depending on the site, how interested he is in matrimony, how important religion is to him, and so on. These kinds of value-matches or interest-matches are impossible to arrange in most speed-dating scenarios. Anyone who has ever been speed dating will know that 5 minutes is really not enough time to get even the barest of skinnies. Sure, one can go to the "active lifestyle" speed dating event, or the "Ivy Leaguers" speed-dating event, but this is not a guarantee of an actual match on those criteria (personal experience, 2010). Which, in effect, makes it super similar to online dating, where people lie all the time.*** But, potentially, much much more information is available online than is after a 5-minute "date". One might assume, then, that even though the matches we *meet* IRL are *fewer* from online sites, they are in fact *better*. Which is why there is this generally accepted rule about the 10th person one meets from the online world being pretty much The Guy.****

Now, here's where I think all of those people are wrong. What one *can* glean from speed-dating but *not* from an online profile is whether someone is a someone one'd like to spend more than 5 minutes with. Whether someone is nutto (sometimes they very clearly are!), whether they speak in a voice one likes to listen to and, here's a really big one, what they look like. How they act.

So, on the one hand: information about the person's insides. On the other: information about the person's outsides. Which is more important on a date? And maybe in a relationship? The outsides. How they treat me and how they interact with the rest of the world. Seriously. I don't care about how they perceive themselves. That is utterly non-diagnostic for how they behave. I think because the dimensions we judge ourselves on are rarely the dimensions that are actually important in an interaction. Like, I might self-identify as athletic. And abstract-thinking. But those characteristics (even if they are true) are not what people necessarily notice when they first meet me in a dating context.

To be clear, I think speed-dating is not great. I honestly think that, for me, it is useful mainly for weeding out weirdos, because I personally don't have a real physical "type" and I don't judge so fast (I'm the chick who says "yes I'd date him again" to all but the sociopaths). But it is also useful for weeding out men who immediately reject me -- so those who *do* like to make snap judgements (and do not find me appealing; I guess the ones who quickly decide I'm OK aren't weeded out). Which turns out to be a real stress-saver when one goes on an actual follow-up date.

Anyway, since I'm back in the land of no dating at all, this is sort of a moot discussion. But I'm interested to read Your thoughts about this oh-so-yuppie-21st-century-first-world juxtaposition!


* are You wondering why there wasn't a single asterisk before there was a double? It's because of all the single asterisks I used for emphasis. Wouldn't want You down here in the footnotes too often. Reading this same footnote.

** this is a joke. a sad, sad joke.

*** Or so I'm told. The only time I experienced this first-hand is with a married man who claimed to be single. Well, and I suppose all those people who present themselves as the person they would like someone else to shape them into.

**** I've had, let's see.... 6 first online dates. Does the guy who stood me up count? I wasn't counting him.

I had to make an order today over the phone because the website wouldn't take my PL credit card, and when the woman asked what message I'd like to attach (it was a gift purchase) I said "YAY" and when I got the confirmation email it turned out she wrote "YEAH!! From, Jasia." Should have been more precise.

Today was the first day in a long time that I didn't wake up exhausted. I have since become exhausted, in the few hours I've been up, but it was a good feeling.

Bonus! Here's a little update on the dating scene:

Boy do I hate it when people text me 4 times before I respond to their first text. And when it's all in a row, don't even imagine I'll appreciate it. HOW and WHY would anyone decide it's a GOOD IDEA to send me SIX TEXTS IN A ROW containing information that a) could have fit into one text message b) was probably not that crucial to convey at all!!! JJJEEEEEEEZZZUUUSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!


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My 200th post! Welcome to it! It's not a treat:

I read a few things about facebook privacy today, and while I've been pretty vigilant about most settings, this was an opportunity to go in and explore what things that should be (un)checked weren't, so I did. And for some reason something happened that made my profile all differently structured than I wanted it to be. Maybe this just happened with everyone's profile when they did that change from "fan pages" to "liked pages" or whatever, but in any case I had to remove all my likes and interests because I had written "I don't watch TV, but when I do I'm a news junkie" and so fucking facebook linked my profile to 2 separate "pages" that were supposed to reflect this preference: the "I don't watch TV" page, which was populated I'm sure by people who are nothing like me at all, and the "when I do I'm a news junkie" page, which was populated by me and one other person. Same thing with "the kind with rhythm and melody" statement I had written under "musical preferences". Goddamn, I don't want to be linked to a page called "the kind with rhythm" for fuck's sake. And a "melody" page. Is facebook really that intent on uniformizing their users?

Here's something I took off my dating profile today, because Lalee said I should write less negative stuff. Ha ha. So out of my whole sardonic profile I chose to take out this. Funnnnnyyyyyyy. Anyway. Thought I'd keep it around somewhere. This was under "most private thing You're willing to share here" or something like that.


I have relocated Way. Too. Many. Times.

I think it's because I have trouble compromising the various characteristics that are important in a place to live. Does open sky outweigh rampant uniformity? Should proximity to family be prioritized over congruence of societal values to mine? Can a short distance to a reasonable running path compensate for a long distance to a modern art museum? Where is my promised land?! Why can't I have it all?! I WANT ROOM SERVICE!

I went to get a pedicure today. The colour on my toes is "Italian Love Affair" which is a colour I wore once before in about 2002 (for some reason my memory contains almost no autobiographical details but the name of every colour I've ever worn on my toes*) when I was ga-ga over an Italian economics grad student who, after completing his degree, got a job in Turkey, which I thought would suit his cigarette-smoking habit wonderfully. So, anyway, "Italian Love Affair" is a very point-blank pink colour. I like it very much, but I really was looking for something darker or more purple in tone. But the overwhelmingly many polish bottles were all set on backlit shelves that my hungover self could not possibly face for too long. Plus I started knocking bottles over as I browsed. Then I decided that my hungover self that should perhaps not follow my hungover self's instincts too much today.

* You remember, perhaps, "Need a Vacation"? I considered that colour too. "Feelin' Hot-hot-hot"? "Sweetie Pie"? Swoją drogą, nail polish colours are the most punny realm of "creative writing" I've ever seen. "Eiffel for this colour"? "Bastille my heart"? "Shootout at the OK Coral"? Some writer is really self-actualizing with these.

I feel like one of the things (THE main thing?) that determines whether a relationship will materialize after a few dates, or not, is the match between the level of maintenance one party gives and the level of maintenance the other party wishes to receive. For example, it is not atypical to hear that someone doesn't want to see a date again because he calls too seldom, or because he just keeps calling (this second variant is more typical for me). I don't like it when they call too much. It's great--really wonderful--when they communicate that they like me. That is super. The problem appears because they almost always follow that up (before I respond) with numerous other communications about what they think and feel about me. This is not OK* for 2 reasons: a) this often happens before I feel that they have any real idea of who I am, so I think they are egregiously premature in their judgements; b) in terms of general rules of engagement, it seems to me that convention dictates that one party says something, and then should wait for the other to respond before offering up more of itself. If the other party isn't responding, it doesn't always mean that the silence has to be filled. Or maybe, it would be nice, instead of externalizing some more, to ask the other person to externalize?**

So when I get all these calls/text messages/whatever, it feels like a) they are overconfident in their judgements of people b) they are not following basic rules of communication c) they are trying to maintain me in a way that I don't want to be maintained. In a way that doesn't work for me. This makes me think less of the guy. But all this might just be rationalization.

Really what it is, is that I think that this frequency of calling indicates the level of maintenance one is willing to put into a relationship, and probably will expect in return. I don't maintain too much. I can't be with someone, I think, who requires so much maintenance. So this is a sign for me that we are not a good match.***

I think for every person there is a sweet spot between aloofness and overeagerness that most other people don't hit -- and it's not because they are necessarily bad matched on other dimensions, but bad matches on this particular dimension, which could be taken as symptomatic for how a longer relationship would look, in terms of depth/frequency/kind of interactions. But could also be entirely inaccurate.

So, basically, I'm trying not to let that affect my opinions of men who otherwise seem alright.

* for me.

** This might be the most important part of this post. Truer than the other parts. Maybe it's that I want someone to help me externalize, and most people don't know how to do that.

*** Of course the flip side are the people who don't maintain at all, and that is a whole other disappointed blog post.