JData
by Rabbi Josh Yuter
under Date Night,100hookup,Online Dating,Single Life
Way back in 2004, when I was a student at the University of Chicago studying Sociology of Religion, I got the crazy idea to use hookup dating sites as a data set for social research. Not having access to the database, I could only search like any other end user, which naturally restricted what I’d be able to find. This was a thoroughly tedious process, and what I did manage to uncover was — in my opinion — trivial and pointless.
Since then dating sites have grown in their popularity and robustness, and “Big Data” is a field unto itself. Unsurprisingly, we now have the book Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking) by Christian Rudder, a founder of OkCupid who turned one of the world’s largest dating sites into a gold mine of social research. Rudder found some fascinating trends among Americans, not just in terms of dating approaches, but in terms of personal preferences and identities across geographical and racial lines.
Using this Big Data might even help some people with their approaches to dating, online or otherwise. Amy Webb describes in her TEDx video how she “hacked” 100hookup, taking meticulous records and using spreadsheets to spot trends in her own life. The knowledge of these patterns allowed Amy to better focus her energies and give her the maximum chance for success.
Obviously, this sort of thing isn’t for everyone. Many of us don’t have the time, patience, or inclination to start collecting random data, let alone trying to make sense and find the few metrics which actually do make a difference. However, even if opening up Excel gives you anxiety attacks, keep in mind we’ve all amassed some degree of data from our experiences. We meet people and hit it off with some more than others. We know the types of people we’re attracted to simply because we’ve been attracted to them. It’s not unreasonable to work “backwards” to figure out what’s really important to us. If you keep a journal, you even have a record of how you felt at that time, unbiased from the retrojections of however you’re feeling in the present.
It’s probably not a horrible idea to periodically check in with yourself for a dating-inventory. Hopefully, we have continued to mature over time and what might have “worked” for us five years ago might not be relevant to who we are today. The advantage of Big Data numbers is that they can often show us what we’d rather not see ourselves. On the other hand, it also means sometimes being honest and self-aware can be the best algorithm for finding what we need to know about ourselves.
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