March 6, 2014 • 47 mins
No longer weird, possibly still desperate and approaching normal, online dating's been around almost as long as the Internet itself. So what exactly is the best way to find love online if one were so inclined to do so? Josh and Chuck hook you up.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry
over there. So it's stuff you shad know, that's right,
the online Dating edition. Yeah. Uh, we are all in
(00:26):
committed relationships in this room, and so I doubt if
any of us have ever online dated. Probably right, I
have not. I have not, Jerry probably haven't. We're all
like long term monogamous. But I mean we're also good
at research too. It's not like there's I haven't been
to the Sun, but we did one on the Sun. Yeah,
that one's stunk. Yeah, that's a bad example. I do
(00:48):
have to say, though, if I were single, uh here
in this modern age, I would way way be into
online dating. Well, it's it's normal. Yeah, you know. I
was not um ever or skilled at wooing the ladies
um like out in bars or whatever, like I would
do find set up or like at a dinner party
(01:09):
or something. But this would have really benefited me back
in the day if it was like a legit thing
in the early nineties. Well, and there were some legit sites,
but it was more like remember the movie singles, like
the video profiles Great Expectations? Was that what it was called? Well,
that's the in real in real life, there was something
(01:29):
like that called Great Expectations. Yeah, well, should we talk
about the history? Did you have a better intro than that? No?
I didn't, Okay, No, I just figured we'd go into
the history of it because it does have a surprisingly
long history. UM dating, I guess using computers, not necessarily online,
because there wasn't such a thing as online. UM started
(01:50):
in the sixties with a guy named Jeff Tar who
was a mathematician at Harvard UM and he was interested
in the girls. He was a little bit of girl crazy,
he said. He was so desperate to meet girls. And
I think with your a mathematician at Harvard, it's probably
not like, you know, bustling with hot chicks so prepared
(02:10):
to have your socks knocked off. Because the lady who
wrote this Slate article did a miscarriage of justice in
describing Jeff Tar and his operation. First of all, apparently
the computer that they used, the circuit board, spelled out
the words sex. Yeah, just for fun? Yes, okay, no,
because like that was the point? Well right, and he
(02:33):
was desperate to meet them because he was desperate to
like give as he could. Apparently this guy had no
problems whatsoever. Really, Yeah, you saw mathematician Harvard sixties and
you thought, hey, I read a contemporary article and another
one that UM written years later about this this thing.
(02:53):
It was. It was a thing. It was called Operation
Match that he's set up and UM basically, for three dollars,
you submitted a questionnaire and Jeff tar fed your questionnaire
into a computer and you were guaranteed to get at
least five names of people who the computer decided were
a match based on your questionnaire answers. And they you know,
(03:16):
he was doing it mostly in New England, for the
New England colleges. It was probably like back then, it
was probably names, addresses and how they like to be
touched pretty much, you know. Um. But they they got
a kind of a tepid response, and then somebody mentioned
it on like an interview on TV, and it took
off after that, and then a few months they had
(03:36):
a hundred thousand people in this database. And yeah, and
they were these were undergrad college students charging three bucks apiece.
So in a few months they made like three hundred
thousand dollars coming up with the first computer dating service.
Whatso like? Ever did he go on to do anything great?
Oh he's a mathematician from Harvard, I'm assuming yes, Uh,
(03:59):
well in the seventies, these great expectations is what you mentioned,
was founded by Jeffrey Ulman, and he's the one that
did the video presentations, like they made fun of in
the Singles movie, where you would just do your little
video profile and people would watch it and say, you know,
I like that girl. She's she plays guitar and look
she's drinking coffee, she likes dogs. Can you can you
(04:21):
imagine anything more clunky than getting like a videotape in
the mail of video profiles of people could imagine it?
It's not a sustainable system or making one man, especially
in the day when you had to you know, it
would take me like two weeks to do a video thing.
And that's with modern computer editing, right or yeah or
yeah editor who like had to put those things together? Yeah.
(04:44):
Well in Singles it was Tim Burton. He had a
little cameo as the director of her dating video. Have
you seen Singles recently? No? Wow, it really made quite
impression it's I was about to say it's one of
my favorite movies, but it's not on my top one
h and movieless. Oh, I might have forgotten that one
great movie you're gonna have to do a hundred and
(05:04):
one perhaps, so uh. I like this this story about
Jeffrey Allman who found in Great Expectations. He was apparently
on Montell Williams Show, and Montell Williams he was basically saying, like,
doesn't your service just prey on lonely people? And Alman
said yes, just like restaurants prey on the hungry, and
(05:26):
doctors prey on the sick, and talk show hosts prey
on the people who are too bored to read a book.
I love that guy, I know, and I remember. I'm
old enough to where I remember these early services and
it being like an embarrassment, Like, God, what, what a
desperate person? So here's the sign up for something like this.
I wrote an article that made that point that there's
(05:47):
still that stigma surrounding online dating. No, it's a certain
percentage of people pulled still feel that way for sure.
I think people who are maybe involved in online dating
themselves desperate for online dating. And this author was putting
this this assertion out there that just the very structure
of online dating, the privacy settings, the um, the just
(06:12):
general embarrassment surrounding it, just the way it's set up,
it's treated like it's an embarrassing thing. And as long
as it's treated like it's an embarrassing thing, it's never
going to become real dating. It's going to become some
hybrid of it where only sad people or the desperate
and or people who just want to hook up, or
(06:32):
the dregs of humanity that's where they go. It will
never be the de facto method of dating as long
as it's structured as an embarrassing thing. Do you think
it's still structured that way? Well, yeah, I think it is.
I think like the privacy settings are in part for
you know, protection and to keep creeps at bay, but
(06:53):
I think it's also so that like the average person
can't see that you're trying online dating. Even still today,
I guess I see that. I think there's nothing to
be ashamed of too. I agree entirely very efficient way
to meet a like minded person. You know, I would
be way into it. I think maybe like in five
years that will be a moot point because so many
(07:14):
other people will be using it. Yeah, because apparently it
started to wane in two thou well that was more
to do with the economy, I think, Oh yeah, yeah.
They did a study from UH like over a ten
year period and it definitely waned in the mid two thousand's,
But now it's booming again. UM dating services report earnings
(07:34):
of two billion dollars and uh they said that they're
growing at a rate of three point one percent per
year now. But it did when disposable income was in
shorter supply. That was definitely one of the first things
to go. And yes, and I said, but I saw
and now it's it's back. But I think in addition
(07:57):
to that economic hitch upward, there was an attendant acceptance
social acceptance of it as well that accounted for a
growth in it. Between two thousand five and two thousand
and thirteen, the number of Americans who said that they
know somebody who online dated like doubled from like to
(08:18):
thirty percent of Americans, and like of all Americans use
or have used online dating services. So it is definitely
becoming more and more widespread. But again I do think
that there is still just some tinge of whatever it's that.
It is like some people might be a little reticent
to say that in mixed company. Yeah, which is weird
(08:41):
because it's like you if you're people aren't ashamed of
dating or not dating. It's just adding that online to
it changes everything for some reason. Yeah. And of course
with the advent of smartphones and apps and GPS locators,
that has helped a lot to to increase news. You know.
(09:01):
So thanks to the the technical revolution that was the
advent of the Internet. In a little site called match
dot com came about, which is interesting because that was
the first online dating service and match was the name
of that one from the from Harvard in the sixth
Notice that I wondered if he got any juice out
of that. Probably not. Probably not, um, and the Harvard
(09:23):
mathematicians he's doing all right, Um, we assume yes. And
then a couple of years later another one that's still
around and very prominent, Ja Date, was created, Yeah, for
the Jewish community. Yeah. And then um the original version
of Facebook was called face match, and it was basically
(09:44):
a an online version of this way to check people
out basically right exactly now, Chuck, like you said, like
there's there's sites all over the place, there's apps, there's
it's just becoming more and more prevalent. Yeah, I made
a list. If we can go ahead and get to
this with my twenty favorite niche because you can go
to the gentlemans like e Harmony or match or you know,
(10:06):
the big the big daddies, or if you're really specific,
you can go to uh A likewise for fellow book lovers.
Farmers only. City folks just don't get it exactly. Uh
There's one called how about we dot dot dot, which
is basically, instead of some huge profile that you have
(10:27):
to set up, it's very very short and casual, like
how about we go eat at a great restaurant tonight
and someone can just respond to meet you. If you're
an IVY leaguer, you might go to ivy Date. That's
a site Equestrian Singles dot com. I'm sorry, that's an
obnoxious dating site. Oh, totally obnoxious equestrian singles. If you're
into horses. There's one called cupid Tino dot com for
(10:49):
fans of Apple products because they found the Apple people
tend to be alike. Veggie Date Um if you're vegetarian,
must look pets our Time is just one of many
for people over fifty, which is kind of cool to
see Geek to geek. There's obviously political ones Republican meet
and Democratic Republican people meet and Democratic people meet. I
(11:12):
don't know if there's a Tea party people meet or not.
I would guess Trek Passions. Yes, they're like the Hike. Nope. Man,
My Lovely Parent is for single parents. Uh, Sea Captain Date.
I think my favorite one. That's for real. Yeah, it's
just for people looking for their first mate. That's awesome. Uh,
(11:34):
find your face Mate. That's for people who think that
want to find people that look like them. It's a
little creepy. Wealthy men dot Com Stash passion if you're
in the mustaches, not like drugs on you. Personals for
cat lovers, waiting till marriage for the virgins among us. Yeah.
(11:55):
I found one that was um that was founded by
a woman who had had cervical cancer. Are Oh that's nice?
Who um founded a site for people who are incapable
of having sex but still want to find love and
apparently it's gotten a pretty great response. That's awesome. And
the last one was Tall Friends that I thought was
kind of interesting. Like they're just tall. You're just into
(12:15):
tall people, or I guess you're I've heard of that
from a lot of tall people, especially tall women. Oh yeah,
who don't like dating short guys and have a hard time,
you know, finding dudes that are six three. You go
to tall friends friends. I saw another one called the gaggle.
Have you heard about that? Yeah? That that one's interesting.
It's for um. It's basically so for a woman to
(12:39):
date all of the various um prized parts of an
individual's personality, but broken out and distributed among a whole
group of men. Like I want to date an athlete,
so I'll go on a date with this guy. I
want to like a brainy guy too, so I'll go
on a different date with a brainy guy, right, and
so on and so on a tall dude. Yeah, and
(13:00):
then the woman, but she's dating all these dudes at once. Yea,
hence the gaggle, A gaggle of dudes. Yeah we're powered
to you, I guess. And yeah, and then of course
the kids, as weird as your imagination can get weirder
than farmers only, Oh yeah, our trek passions way weirder
or sea captain date even weirder. All right. Yeah, um,
(13:22):
so that's some pretty good stuff. Chuck. Thanks, that was
some good digging. Well those are, you know, like you said,
one of many, many many. Um. But we're gonna be
talking about sort of the basic online standard online dating scenario,
and we're going to talk about that right after this message.
(13:44):
All right, so welcome back to online dating. Um. I
guess we should just walk someone through this process. Yeah,
step by step. Yeah, so the first thing you're gonna
want to do, there's there's different kinds of sites. They're
typically broken out into two categories. See aptains tall people.
Uh no, I can't. Uh, it's um free sites and
(14:06):
pay sites. No, that was serious that last one. No, no, no,
I was still laughing at Okay, that's good. So you've
got your freesighting at your pay sites and both of them.
It depends on the site. But for the most part, uh,
if you are thinking of creating a profile, you will
be able to go on to just about any dating
site and give a very minimal amount of information and
(14:28):
start browsing. Yeah, because they want you to check out
the site and get the hooks into you, and they
don't necessarily say you gotta pay right away, or you
gotta give us all this information. Just browse around the
shop see if you like anything. Right, So, um, you're
gonna give a little information like whether you're a man
or a woman, or whether you're seeking a man or
a woman. Maybe the year you're born, and then maybe
(14:49):
your zip code. Yeah, you're not gonna get full profiles
if you're browsing, no, unless you may not get pictures either.
It depends. So if it's a free site, you may
feel true. If it's a pay site, and we'll talk
about the pros and the cons in a minute of each. Um.
If it's a pay site, you might be able to
see yeah profile without pictures, or you might be able
to see you know, both, but you won't. You can't
(15:11):
contact anybody unless you pay. Um. But for the most
part when you're when you're going online, you can check
the people out, um with just a just a tiny
bit of information. Yea. Once you join, though, you're gonna
have to start building a profile, and it kind of
starts out easy and broad and then as you go
through the creating the profile, I mean it takes a minute. Yeah,
(15:33):
And um, I guess we should point out to that
you're gonna have to input some kind of email address. Um,
it's up to you if you want to create an
email address for free, just for online dating. If you're
really like super freaked out about privacy, might not be
a bad idea. But most of these um, you're not
allowed to be emailed directly at first. It's either anonymous
(15:55):
through the site or the site has their own messaging system.
So it's pretty safe these days as far as protecting
your privacy. You shouldn't get too freaked out, right, It's
not like this nineteen seventies where there wasn't even not
great expectations. Oh yeah, where it's like this is my
address in the background exactly. Uh, you wanna your next step?
(16:18):
There is probably writing down some physical attributes about yourself,
because as much as people like a good personality in
a sense of humor, um, a lot of people are
probably looking for something specific or maybe just general physically.
So you've got height, weight, hair color, eye color, um,
body type, Yeah, whether you have tattoos or pierce things,
(16:41):
that kind of thing. Um. And then it gets a
little more involved in all of this is you're just
clicking bubbles or selecting from dropped down menus um, but
it gets a little a little more granular, like what
are your interests? And these aren't people snooping. You're doing
this for yourself to have a more complete profile. If
(17:02):
you're in there going well, what do they want to know?
What kind of movies I like? Then you you don't
get online dating, you know, Yeah, but maybe you should
go to like suspicious Minds or Suspicious Hearts online dating service. There, Mike,
you don't give out any personal information because yeah, or
the drop down and he says I like this, this,
that or none of your business and everyone just picked
(17:24):
none of your business. So your interests and activities? You
play guitar? Do you play sports? So you into reading? Um,
there's your favorite filmmaker? What do you like to do
on the weekends? All that kind of stuff will give
you a good give someone else a good idea of
kind of what you're like. Yeah, um, your income level, Yeah,
whether you have pets, how you feel about having pets, um,
(17:45):
if you live with your parents. These are all things
you can lie about. Well that's the thing, like, yeah,
it's it's I read somewhere that one in ten profiles
online or made up. Yeah. In fact, Okay, Cupe. It's
as the top four things people lie about most are height, income,
their photo, and their sexuality, which I thought was weird. Yeah,
(18:08):
that's weird. I didn't get that one. You're not doing
yourself any favors if you're lying about your sexuality out
of the gate. No, and supposedly also chock of people
who submitted to a poll about online dating said that
they had met somebody, met up with somebody in life.
Um who quote seriously misrepresented themselves in their dating profile.
(18:30):
Well we must just like, yeah, we should go and
talk about that. With your photo, you want to represent
yourself well, obviously, but you want to be accurate because again,
you're not going to do yourself any favors. You're not
gonna get a second date if you show up looking
like the hunchback of Notre Dame and you put a
picture of Tom Selick up there. Hey, hunchbacks need love
to and that's that's why there's hunchback mate dot com. Like, really,
(18:55):
we could just sit here all day and come up
with like feasible uh naymes for goiterer touch. I think
Jerry's grossed out. Did you you know? Goider's right. It's
from hyper hypothyroidism, which is the result of an iodine deficiency.
That's why there's iodie salt to prevent goiders hunt my grandmother.
(19:18):
That apparently also um, the the most preventable form of
mental retardation is treated with iodine or it results from
an iodine deficiency, which is the main reason why they
started adding that to salt, supposedly, And they think there's
this thing called the Flynn effect where inexplicably the intelligence
(19:43):
as matt by i Q over the twentieth century rose
like three points across the board in the West, and
they think it's possible that it's from iodiae salt. Oh,
we actually talked about that that podcast a couple of
weeks ago, did we really? I'm just very fast NATed
by that, apparently so fascinated that knocks out all memories
of speaking about it. But do you put that in
(20:05):
an online dating profile and just watch your your computer
light up? What do you think I talk about? For you? Me?
Drives are crazy? She's like, tell me about I saw
for the eight time. She loves that stuff. Um, all right,
so where are we here? Oh, you're gonna list all
these things You're gonna fill out your profile and then
you're gonna do that again, but under the notion of
(20:28):
what you're looking for in someone else, like what your
ideal mate do and look like, and then they're trying
to match you. Yeah, the computer takes this stuff, choose
it up like carrots and apples, and poops out some
some matches. True. Is that true? Because I think it's
(20:48):
made up frankly, now we'll get to the science of it.
So you call it that you mentioned your photo. Did
we say, don't put any personal information on there? No,
that seems like a no brainer. They won't ask for
that stuff. But there are times where you can write
things about yourself. So don't feel free to say this
is where I live and this is my Social Security number? Right,
or this is where I work? Yea, which is one
(21:10):
that I I mean I could see overlooking that. Yeah,
that seems certainly, you know, like I work at Discovery Channel.
It's something like that. Yeah, where oh in d C
Oh cool, I'll be right there. Which floor I want
to show you how I can hold a knife in
my teeth. You're gonna love it. That'd be Pirates Love
dot Com. Uh No, that's Sea Captain. That's a sub
(21:35):
branch of that one, right, yeah, probably so. Alright, so
you mentioned free versus subscription. They both have their pluses
and minuses. Free is good because it's free and we
like that, Yes, but so do twelve year old boys. Exactly?
Who poses other people? Yeah, exactly. That is one of
the problems with free websites like this is that you
(21:55):
will get impostors. Uh that just jokes, ads, scam scams.
There's like a whole Nigerian prince scam that's going on. Um. Actually,
apparently there's something you can do. Uh, if you see
a photo of somebody that you're interested in, you can
put it to the test. Yeah, you can drag and
copy it on your desktop and then dragon drop it
(22:17):
on Google image search. You know you can search by image.
Does it reverse look up? Huh? It looks up that
image and it will show you all this stuff and
it may say this is a scam. This is if
that same picture shows up all over the place under
different names of an alisis whatever, that's a scamp. What
if what if you would if I did that to
your picture, would have said this is Josh Clark. Uh. Yeah,
(22:39):
probably it's a pretty pretty smart computer. They got there. Yeah. Yeah,
that's pretty creepy though, But I guess that's good. Like
it's creepy on one hand, to be able to find
out who someone is from a photo. Oh no, no, no,
no, no no, not like that. Sorry, no. If it if
if it were like on a dating site and it
was just supposed to be somebody's photo, gotcha. If it
(23:01):
came up as like, yeah, here's this photo that you found,
here's the place that you found it, and here it
is on these eighteen other profiles with eighteen other names,
then you know it's a scam. But you can go back.
It's kind of like a back door way to figure
out if the person's made up profile. All right, So
I guess that's good. My brain is not quite functioning today. Really,
(23:23):
I'm saying things just a little out of syntax. Josh
is going on vacation tomorrow. You're in vacation mode. Last
day of school, I told him to rip up his
research and throw it up in the air and run
out of the building after. I'm pretty sucked. You should
do that. Um. All right. So the free ones, like
we said, are good because they're free, bit bad because
of all that other stuff. The pay ones you gotta
(23:43):
pay for, which isn't great, but a lot comes with that,
which is like an identify identity verification process because they're
gonna be using your credit card and stuff, so your
information is going to be valid, valid and safe with
the paid site supposedly, or you can see the pants
off of that paid site for failing to verify correctly. Yeah,
(24:05):
I guess. So you can also access uh other features
if you're a paid member, like maybe they'll bump you
up in search, or you'll have access to more information
that seems wrong, like paying for your profile to come
up higher. That's that's the basis of the Internet. I guess,
you know, search referral. So, Chuck, we talked about making
a profile. Let's talk about making a good profile. Yeah.
(24:28):
And by the way, this was ed Grabanowski, right, the Grabster,
I believe, so, yeah, an early grabster. Yeah. I think
reading some of his examples here, I think we're learning
about the grabster. Oh yeah, for sure. And I think
he's talking about himself. But he does have some good
ideas and I go out with him some good some
(24:49):
good examples. Like he's basically saying, like, um, don't be
a hack when you're coming up with your profile, especially
when you're freewriting stuff. You know, like she was a
cool picture of yourself. Chose a picture of yourself where, um,
you're like, there's no not other people around, and you
have a shirt on and you just don't look like
(25:11):
a sleeves bag, you know. Um, use humor, Like, don't
just say I'm funny, be funny. Yeah, don't just say
I'm interested in something, Demonstrate how you're interested in like,
and he said, beginning with the subject line, and he
used two awesome examples. Frankly, yeah, bogart fan seeking unusual suspects. Okay,
it was a half awesome example. The next one's awesome.
(25:33):
Go ahead, Uh, come sail away with this boating enthusiast
slash sticks fan. I think that is the grabster. I
bet you anything that's Yeah, how would you come up
with that? Like just using your imagination, I'd go out
with that person. Um, you want to make sure that
you fill out your whole form everything. Don't be lazy.
If you're lazy, it sends a very clear signal that
(25:55):
one you're lazy, which is not a good prospect for
anybody unless people are in that well that's then you
go on lazy date. Uh. And then it also says,
um that I'm not really that into this. Yeah, this
is halfhearted. Yeah, and definitely don't say my friends put
me up to this. I'm usually don't do things like this,
(26:16):
but I'm not a loser, so I don't know. I
don't normally do that because you're insulting the very people
that you're reaching out to. Yeah. Not not a good idea. Um.
And like we said, you want to not just talk
about yourself, you want to you want to demonstrate yourself. Yeah.
And Ed again says instead of saying I enjoy Stanley
Kubrick film, say the other night, I was watching a
(26:38):
clockwork Orange and I found myself thinking, would be a
lot more fun to watch and discuss with someone else,
to suddenly punch as we're walking down along the waters
movie about random violence and rape and torture. Be a
lot more fun to watch it with someone. Or instead
of I'm funny, say I love quoting Monty Python or
(26:58):
Simpson's lines. You know that could be us. Well, we
do that all the time. Uh. He says. Another way
to be successful is to just know who you are
and know what you want and know what you're looking for.
And that's a big plus for people who get fixed
up on dates. Like your friends might think someone's perfect
for you, but who really knows best but yourself who's
perfect for you? Yeah, so you can avoid all that
(27:20):
the clap trap of getting set up on a bad date. Well,
that's the whole role of online dating. Computer algorithms and
apps and individuals are have taken over from these traditional
roles of family friends, um, who co workers, Yeah, of
of match of matchmaking. It's people taking it into their
(27:42):
own hands or relying on a computer algorithm to do it. Yeah,
which is I mean, that's the whole basis of online dating.
That's the whole point of it. To me, it makes sense.
It's just a timesaver, like who's got time to go
through just the random maybe I'll meet someone thing. I
think that's probably what ultimately a hundred years from now,
historians anthropologis will look back on and explain the prevalence
(28:04):
of online dating. That's why it's just more efficient, I guess. Um.
And then lastly, this one's extremely important too. When you're
creating a good profile, use grammar wisely. Yeah, don't don't
like check from misspellings punctuation, like put some thought into it,
(28:25):
because you'll look like a dummy if you have a
poorly worded profile. Yeah. Or again, if that's your thing,
if you want to type the letter you instead of
y O U, then go to dumb Dumb love dot com.
Do that and find fellow dumb dumbs. You're in the
finding like minded people. You should be honest, you know,
all right. You can also go to the rival site,
(28:47):
oh dot com, so check before we go on. I
like lazy date dot com. Pretty pretty soon. Uh, you're
going to um be getting ready. You're gonna put on
some aftershavee. You're very nice for off old tuxedo shirt,
some palm made in your hair, and your high waiter
pants with your white sox. It's time to go out
(29:09):
there in the big wild world and actually meet somebody. Yeah.
And this is after you have paying to this person. Yeah.
And that's after this message and we're back chucking. It's
time to go out in the world. Yeah. Like I said,
this is um after you have been pained or paying
someone else. That's right, so we should we should probably
(29:30):
talk about that first. Like it's it's not just like
you make a profile, and all of a sudden, you
have a date and you go out like there is
a first contact procedure. Sure, and um, it doesn't necessarily
happen very quickly. Um, and some people choose to make contact. Apparently,
you don't have to say much in your in your message.
When you're making contact with somebody, the grabster says something like, UM, hey,
(29:55):
I saw your profile and it seems like we have
some common interest. Take a look at my profile and
if you're interested, would send me a message? Is probably sufficient? Uh,
And he says you might send a message to several
people at once, one at a time, and then after
you sent your messages, there's nothing you can do but wait. Yeah,
And that I think goes back to how you are
generally as a person. If before online dating, you're the
(30:17):
kind of dude that would go to a bar and
try and get like fifteen phone numbers, then you might
want to scatter. You might take the shotgun approach. Uh.
Or if you're not that kind of guy, if you're
like me and never talk to girls at bars because
you were just hanging out with your your buddies, then
you might want to be a little more singular in
your approach and say like this, this lady sounds really nice.
(30:38):
Not these twelve ladies sound really nice. Let me see
if one of them likes me back. She sounds like
such a super lady. It depends on what kind of
a hurry you're in. I guess it would be a
little more methodical. But I've known I have friends that
you know, take the shotgun approach. And I shouldn't keep
saying that because that implies like you're killing somebody, right,
I just mean you're spreading a wide, uh, testing a wide.
(31:01):
So that's the capturing people in nets approach. That's right, um.
And we should also point out to that there are
a couple of ways ago about it. You can either
get matched with someone through their algorithms that we talk about,
or you can just do the searching yourself, like they
can narrow down for you, and you could do it,
you know, just search through until you find someone you like. Right,
(31:23):
And there's a lot of sites out there that have
no algorithm whatsoever. It's just that questionnaire you filled out
is matched up with other questionnaires, and the the more
similar answers there are in the two questionnaires, the higher
the ranking of the person who um is suggested that
you contact like you've got twelve things in common with
(31:44):
this person. And then there's other sites um, which we'll
talk about a little more that do use algorithms that
have like basically UM proprietary algorithms supposedly do a lot
more than that, just um comparing Simler questionnaires. Yeah, which
one is that? Well? E harmony? Does they compare twenty
nine dimensions of compatibility key dimensions? Yeah, that's right. I
(32:08):
believe match dot com uses algorithms. UM. Chemistry dot com,
which is apparently a subsite of match dot com, uses
a personality inventory that the anthropologist Helen Fisher came up with. Yeah. Yeah, um,
it's supposedly is kind of worky. Yeah. I don't know
(32:29):
if that's the thing. No one has any idea how
well this stuff works. Well, the company each side is
going to tout their own method and say that we're
really pairing you with someone who's like you. But I
think in general they probably do a decent job for
filling out all these things and someone has a lot
of similar interest. It's not brain surgery to pair those
(32:50):
people up and say you might like each other. Well,
supposedly like people who are professional personality inventorists. That's a
real thing out, Um, have sat down and taken these
things and still are only scoring about and grabs their
points out like these these people are professionals. If they
set the average person down in front of the one
(33:12):
of these personality inventories, they're they're they're not. We have
a terrible ability to express what we want and who
we are, right um. And as Helen Fisher was pointing out,
like we were terrible at that kind of stuff. But
if you can pay attention to people's behavior, then you
(33:33):
can start making predictions very accurately, so they were saying
in this article, and from what from other places I've seen,
like those those algorithms don't necessarily do anything more than
just the two comparing inventories. Would like comparing the two
questionnaires and finding, you know, twenty eight similarities and there's
your match right there. But like you said, the other
(33:56):
way to go is to browse. Yeah, and I would
recommend and this is just how I would do it,
is that there are sites that give weighted answers to
certain attributes. Like it's too black and white to me
to say, I like blonde, I want a girl who's
twenty five and who's a democrat. Um, you might feel
(34:16):
really strongly about like a political belief, so you can
say that's that one's super important to me, But Hair
Keller really is not that big of a deal. So
then that's down into the algorithm and you get a
little more specific, like they're not gonna pair some super
liberal person with a tea party person if they both
say that's really important to them, it's like that's one
of their values that they stick by it. Or I
(34:38):
hate dogs and they pair to you with a dog lover,
like you need to tell someone I really hate dogs. Well,
that that goes back to being upfront and saying knowing
what you want and saying it yeah, because apparently that
that saves a lot of time as well. All Right,
so you've made contact with some people, some people who
have gotten in touch with you. You've messaged back and
forth and you said, hey, let's meet in real life.
(35:01):
The next step that you have to take, unless you're
insane or just a dummy and you're on dumb Dumb
dot com um, is to talk to this person on
the phone, go to a pay phone, have them go
to a pay phone. It doesn't matter. Good luck finding
a payphone. You have to talk on the phone, because
right then and there you're going to find out if
(35:23):
it is a twelve year old boy. And we talked
about earlier who liked who made a joke profile on
a free site. Yeah, it's a good way to root
out just some Uh, the biggest piece of dishonesty. Sure.
I also imagine that you could probably find out pretty
quickly if they're actually boring. Yeah. Sure, you can learn
a lot by talking to someone. And if you think
(35:43):
you can learn everything you need to know from emails,
you're wrong. Well yeah, I mean, like it's not true.
We've figured out by now how to perform online, you know,
like people just know how to be online and what's
expected of them online. It's it is much more difficult
to talk. Yeah, as we quite often find ourselves saying
(36:05):
things aren't good. Right, good. So then you want to
go out in the real wide world, and you're going
to arrange for Chuck a very public meeting YEA, A
crowded place ye, lots of people a k A. Witnesses. Uh,
And you should set up a date that is going
to last no more than about an hour quick dinner, yeah,
(36:29):
meet for coffee, maybe a movie, but a short one. Yeah,
and that's that's. Um, we'll meet for a TV show right. Um.
That is for your own safety and for your own sake,
because sometimes you get it wrong or the dating site
gets it wrong and you end up with someone who's
not a match, and you don't want to waste each
(36:50):
other's time, So make it quick. You can all if
a feeling, if you're having a great time you both are,
you can always extend that date. Sure, say hey, let's
go that wine bar too, because dinner, dinner was great.
I'd like to keep talking to you, right. It's harder
to shorten a date, right, Like, remember how we were
going to go to that wine bar after this, Let's
not do that. And if I found out I hate
(37:11):
your guts. Yeah, and it's real easy to say, you
know what, I lied, I don't have to go help
my mom clean out her sock drawer. I really like you.
Let's keep the staate going. And it's super easy to say, no,
I really do have to go help my mom clean
under sock drawer. It's crazy. Yeah. Um, you also want
to meet in public, like we said, for your safety
(37:31):
as um, there's a woman from Las Vegas who's suing
Match dot Com for ten million dollars right now because
there was a man who she met and dated for
like eight days who four months later came to her
house and stabbed her a bunch of times and like
kicked her head and neck and left her for dead.
Was this after their relationship had gone bad or just yeah?
(37:53):
So they dated for eight days. Four months later he
shows up at her house and this guy apparently confessed
to murdering another woman he met on match dot com too,
and then killed himself in jail. Wow. Yeah, And there's
it happens to men as well. There's a man who
arranged to meet a woman and was beaten and robbed
by the woman and her son. So you you don't
(38:14):
want to invite people to your house and he's like,
you didn't tell me you how to son? That's nice? Um,
So you don't want to meet him at your house,
You want to meet him in public? Yeah, just protect yourself.
He has common sense and caution. Don't be a dummy
that'd suggests a college sporting event. Yeah, you know, I
(38:36):
Colledge was very because Ed wants to take a girl
to a college sporting event, not pro. It doesn't like pro.
If it's like pro, he would have written pro. Yeah,
that's true. Uh you got anything else? Yeah, I totally do.
So we were saying that, um, the this online dating thing,
(38:58):
the sites themselves, there's they're still growing and it's becoming
more and more normal. But then apps are becoming a
little more um prevalent as well. Yeah, Like there's one
called Tinder where you can see based on GPS. Is
it Facebook profiles? I don't know, or maybe you have
(39:18):
to make a Tinder profile I don't know, of the
people who are literally right around you at like a
coffee house or a bar or a club or whatever,
and you can basically say I'm interested in this person,
I like how this person looks, I like this person.
And if the those people on Tinder say the same
thing about you, then you can communicate with one another. Apparently,
(39:42):
like that's a big thing now. Yeah, some of them
are are less about dating and more about just kind
of hooking up. Maybe like, hey, I found someone who's
two blocks for me. Do you want to go kiss
each other for a little while in that alley? You
can and do that, and I don't I don't know,
I don't know if that's an online dating site, but
(40:04):
it's a thing that exists. Now. Well, yeah, dating, it
depends on your interpretation of the word date. Um. And
then lastly, Chuck Wired got together with Okay Cuping and
match dot com and did some data mining and came
up with some tips for um, how to optimize your
online dating profile. Uh so, for example, this is real.
(40:29):
This is based on Okay cuping and match dot COM's figures.
And apparently that's another surprising byproduct is these dating sites,
the raw data they do have are serving the fields
of like anthropology and sociology. They're starting to open up
their their raw data archives and say go go get
(40:49):
whatever you want from us, and it's helping. It's helping
things like wired. So if you're a guy and you
have a tattoo, it's cool. If you're a woman you
have a tattoo, you're you're going to have a harder
time getting a date. Really, statistically speaking, mass dot com
and Okay keeping all right, if you talk about karaoke,
you're going to bomb. Really yeah wow, this one says
(41:15):
be hotter than you are. Now that's a good tip.
Send a picture that underrepresents yourself slightly and then show
up and be like, oh, yeah, actually dropped ten pounds.
Check check it out if you if you are a female,
you want to talk about London, New York City, yoga, surfing,
and the word athlete. If you use those in your profile,
(41:37):
you are likelier to get dates. You all, you want
to always refer to yourself as a girl, never as
a woman. Okay, and if you're a boy, you never
want to use the word girl when referring to women.
You always use the word women. Interesting. Someone took us
to task the other day in an email about saying
female like we should say or should you should not
(42:01):
say female? Saying you guys don't say male, you say
female though, And I was like, I didn't know that
was a bad association with about what I would have
think saying like dames or broads would be superfensive. But
I thought female was like a like kind of the
straight and narrow way to go with identification of someone's gender. Yeah,
I'm confused, I almost dude. I didn't get a response,
so maybe I misunderstood it. Apparently Wired says men who
(42:24):
use the word whom get more contacts from women. The
word what whom? W h O m oh, yeah, even
when it's used incorrectly, I guess that's that's that's an
impressive thing to say. Whom. Uh. If you're a man,
you can talk about crafting and your children. If you're
(42:45):
a woman, don't ever bring up crafting and never bring
up your children. Man, that is just so wrong. It
is very wrong, you know. I mean like, this is
this is what I'm talking about. Anthropologically speaking, This is
like misogyny is alive. And yeah, what else you got? Uh?
Radio Head is the only band you should ever talk about? Apparently, Um,
(43:09):
let's see, that's funny. The word retirement is attracted as
far as it's related to men's profiles, but not women's. Yeah,
if you're on wealthy men dot com and you see
the word retirement, that's probably pretty good, I'm sure. Uh.
And then also, if you have a shureless pick of yourself,
you're not gonna do very well if you put a
(43:31):
shortless pick of yourself as a man or woman, I
imagine either way, but probably it's even worse with men.
But it is true. I mean, like, even if you're
a girl and you just put up like kind of
a smudgy selfie or something like that. Yeah, it definitely
says a certain amount too, and you're gonna attract like
a certain kind of guy that you might not be
interested in. You just said smutty selfie. Ye. Yeah, it's
(43:56):
almost like the Golden rule. Treat others as you want
to be treated. Its represent yourself how you want to
be viewed. Well, yeah, I mean, if you want to
represent yourself as a smutty person, then put a smutty selfie.
But you're the people you get, you know what you're
gonna be getting, right, that's exactly I think that's well,
(44:16):
well put like you're you're asking for it in that
case from the dregs of society to send you a
date request at that point and to try like hell
to find out your address. That's right. Uh. If you
want to learn more about online dating, go give it
a shot. There's free sites and stuff. You don't have
to listen to us we've never even done it. Or
you could also look up this article from Ed Grabanowski
(44:39):
for some pointers and tips. Um by by typing online
dating in the search bar at house to works dot
com and let's see, everybody has the search bar, which
means it's time for listener. Mail you said it's muddy selfie,
so it's time for listen. If there's something wrong with it,
I just think it's a funny pairing of words. Well,
it's the on a montopia. No know that alliteration, Yeah, literation,
(45:01):
It sounds funny. Aunt amount of would be like um
smooty popping, right, I think so? Or yeah? Is that
when the word sounds like the sound? Okay, hey guys,
I'm gonna call this pinged from Sacramento. Hey, guys, have
just finished the podcast on robots replacing human doctors. There's
(45:22):
a reason I don't think we'll see that soon. Um.
Doctors are trained scientists who specialize in human health. The
whole reason we need trained scientists doctors is that human
physiology and chemistry very enough. That's not sufficient to treat
each patient in the same way. If we can treat
all patients the same way, nurses and diagnostic manuals or
computer systems would be sufficient. Because all humans don't respond
the same to the same treatment, you actually do need
(45:45):
a specialized scientists actively involved in the process. Still, I
think robots or computer systems will replace many human doctors
in time, though, we just need more intelligent robots, ones
that are capable of thought beyond a simple preprogrammed or spots.
Our current tech as you indicated, suitable for initial screening
and such. With thinking machines, we could actually replace doctors,
as you said, With thinking machines, we could actually replace doctors,
(46:08):
and as you said, they'd be more current on their
medical knowledge. The big question would be whether such machines
would consent to serve humanity as our current automatons do.
And that is from Andy Ping and Sacramento. Nice. Thanks
a lot, Andy Ping. That's the kind of name you
say first and last. Never just say Andy or Mr Ping,
(46:29):
Andy Pink or Dr Pain Maybe is he a doctor? No?
I don't think so. Is the evil super villain? Yes? Okay,
then Dr Pain it is uh. If you want us
to make a nickname for you, or just say your
first and last name together, because that's how it should
be said. You can get in touch with us by
(46:49):
tweeting to us at s Y s K podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you
should know. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at Discovery dot com and is always check us
out at our home on the web. Stuff you Should
Know dot com for more on this and thousands of
(47:10):
other topics. Is it How stuff works dot com? Hey.
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(47:31):
com slash stuff and sign up now.
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry
over there. So it's stuff you shad know, that's right,
the online Dating edition. Yeah. Uh, we are all in
(00:26):
committed relationships in this room, and so I doubt if
any of us have ever online dated. Probably right, I
have not. I have not, Jerry probably haven't. We're all
like long term monogamous. But I mean we're also good
at research too. It's not like there's I haven't been
to the Sun, but we did one on the Sun. Yeah,
that one's stunk. Yeah, that's a bad example. I do
(00:48):
have to say, though, if I were single, uh here
in this modern age, I would way way be into
online dating. Well, it's it's normal. Yeah, you know. I
was not um ever or skilled at wooing the ladies
um like out in bars or whatever, like I would
do find set up or like at a dinner party
(01:09):
or something. But this would have really benefited me back
in the day if it was like a legit thing
in the early nineties. Well, and there were some legit sites,
but it was more like remember the movie singles, like
the video profiles Great Expectations? Was that what it was called? Well,
that's the in real in real life, there was something
(01:29):
like that called Great Expectations. Yeah, well, should we talk
about the history? Did you have a better intro than that? No?
I didn't, Okay, No, I just figured we'd go into
the history of it because it does have a surprisingly
long history. UM dating, I guess using computers, not necessarily online,
because there wasn't such a thing as online. UM started
(01:50):
in the sixties with a guy named Jeff Tar who
was a mathematician at Harvard UM and he was interested
in the girls. He was a little bit of girl crazy,
he said. He was so desperate to meet girls. And
I think with your a mathematician at Harvard, it's probably
not like, you know, bustling with hot chicks so prepared
(02:10):
to have your socks knocked off. Because the lady who
wrote this Slate article did a miscarriage of justice in
describing Jeff Tar and his operation. First of all, apparently
the computer that they used, the circuit board, spelled out
the words sex. Yeah, just for fun? Yes, okay, no,
because like that was the point? Well right, and he
(02:33):
was desperate to meet them because he was desperate to
like give as he could. Apparently this guy had no
problems whatsoever. Really, Yeah, you saw mathematician Harvard sixties and
you thought, hey, I read a contemporary article and another
one that UM written years later about this this thing.
(02:53):
It was. It was a thing. It was called Operation
Match that he's set up and UM basically, for three dollars,
you submitted a questionnaire and Jeff tar fed your questionnaire
into a computer and you were guaranteed to get at
least five names of people who the computer decided were
a match based on your questionnaire answers. And they you know,
(03:16):
he was doing it mostly in New England, for the
New England colleges. It was probably like back then, it
was probably names, addresses and how they like to be
touched pretty much, you know. Um. But they they got
a kind of a tepid response, and then somebody mentioned
it on like an interview on TV, and it took
off after that, and then a few months they had
(03:36):
a hundred thousand people in this database. And yeah, and
they were these were undergrad college students charging three bucks apiece.
So in a few months they made like three hundred
thousand dollars coming up with the first computer dating service.
Whatso like? Ever did he go on to do anything great?
Oh he's a mathematician from Harvard, I'm assuming yes, Uh,
(03:59):
well in the seventies, these great expectations is what you mentioned,
was founded by Jeffrey Ulman, and he's the one that
did the video presentations, like they made fun of in
the Singles movie, where you would just do your little
video profile and people would watch it and say, you know,
I like that girl. She's she plays guitar and look
she's drinking coffee, she likes dogs. Can you can you
(04:21):
imagine anything more clunky than getting like a videotape in
the mail of video profiles of people could imagine it?
It's not a sustainable system or making one man, especially
in the day when you had to you know, it
would take me like two weeks to do a video thing.
And that's with modern computer editing, right or yeah or
yeah editor who like had to put those things together? Yeah.
(04:44):
Well in Singles it was Tim Burton. He had a
little cameo as the director of her dating video. Have
you seen Singles recently? No? Wow, it really made quite
impression it's I was about to say it's one of
my favorite movies, but it's not on my top one
h and movieless. Oh, I might have forgotten that one
great movie you're gonna have to do a hundred and
(05:04):
one perhaps, so uh. I like this this story about
Jeffrey Allman who found in Great Expectations. He was apparently
on Montell Williams Show, and Montell Williams he was basically saying, like,
doesn't your service just prey on lonely people? And Alman
said yes, just like restaurants prey on the hungry, and
(05:26):
doctors prey on the sick, and talk show hosts prey
on the people who are too bored to read a book.
I love that guy, I know, and I remember. I'm
old enough to where I remember these early services and
it being like an embarrassment, Like, God, what, what a
desperate person? So here's the sign up for something like this.
I wrote an article that made that point that there's
(05:47):
still that stigma surrounding online dating. No, it's a certain
percentage of people pulled still feel that way for sure.
I think people who are maybe involved in online dating
themselves desperate for online dating. And this author was putting
this this assertion out there that just the very structure
of online dating, the privacy settings, the um, the just
(06:12):
general embarrassment surrounding it, just the way it's set up,
it's treated like it's an embarrassing thing. And as long
as it's treated like it's an embarrassing thing, it's never
going to become real dating. It's going to become some
hybrid of it where only sad people or the desperate
and or people who just want to hook up, or
(06:32):
the dregs of humanity that's where they go. It will
never be the de facto method of dating as long
as it's structured as an embarrassing thing. Do you think
it's still structured that way? Well, yeah, I think it is.
I think like the privacy settings are in part for
you know, protection and to keep creeps at bay, but
(06:53):
I think it's also so that like the average person
can't see that you're trying online dating. Even still today,
I guess I see that. I think there's nothing to
be ashamed of too. I agree entirely very efficient way
to meet a like minded person. You know, I would
be way into it. I think maybe like in five
years that will be a moot point because so many
(07:14):
other people will be using it. Yeah, because apparently it
started to wane in two thou well that was more
to do with the economy, I think, Oh yeah, yeah.
They did a study from UH like over a ten
year period and it definitely waned in the mid two thousand's,
But now it's booming again. UM dating services report earnings
(07:34):
of two billion dollars and uh they said that they're
growing at a rate of three point one percent per
year now. But it did when disposable income was in
shorter supply. That was definitely one of the first things
to go. And yes, and I said, but I saw
and now it's it's back. But I think in addition
(07:57):
to that economic hitch upward, there was an attendant acceptance
social acceptance of it as well that accounted for a
growth in it. Between two thousand five and two thousand
and thirteen, the number of Americans who said that they
know somebody who online dated like doubled from like to
(08:18):
thirty percent of Americans, and like of all Americans use
or have used online dating services. So it is definitely
becoming more and more widespread. But again I do think
that there is still just some tinge of whatever it's that.
It is like some people might be a little reticent
to say that in mixed company. Yeah, which is weird
(08:41):
because it's like you if you're people aren't ashamed of
dating or not dating. It's just adding that online to
it changes everything for some reason. Yeah. And of course
with the advent of smartphones and apps and GPS locators,
that has helped a lot to to increase news. You know.
(09:01):
So thanks to the the technical revolution that was the
advent of the Internet. In a little site called match
dot com came about, which is interesting because that was
the first online dating service and match was the name
of that one from the from Harvard in the sixth
Notice that I wondered if he got any juice out
of that. Probably not. Probably not, um, and the Harvard
(09:23):
mathematicians he's doing all right, Um, we assume yes. And
then a couple of years later another one that's still
around and very prominent, Ja Date, was created, Yeah, for
the Jewish community. Yeah. And then um the original version
of Facebook was called face match, and it was basically
(09:44):
a an online version of this way to check people
out basically right exactly now, Chuck, like you said, like
there's there's sites all over the place, there's apps, there's
it's just becoming more and more prevalent. Yeah, I made
a list. If we can go ahead and get to
this with my twenty favorite niche because you can go
to the gentlemans like e Harmony or match or you know,
(10:06):
the big the big daddies, or if you're really specific,
you can go to uh A likewise for fellow book lovers.
Farmers only. City folks just don't get it exactly. Uh
There's one called how about we dot dot dot, which
is basically, instead of some huge profile that you have
(10:27):
to set up, it's very very short and casual, like
how about we go eat at a great restaurant tonight
and someone can just respond to meet you. If you're
an IVY leaguer, you might go to ivy Date. That's
a site Equestrian Singles dot com. I'm sorry, that's an
obnoxious dating site. Oh, totally obnoxious equestrian singles. If you're
into horses. There's one called cupid Tino dot com for
(10:49):
fans of Apple products because they found the Apple people
tend to be alike. Veggie Date Um if you're vegetarian,
must look pets our Time is just one of many
for people over fifty, which is kind of cool to
see Geek to geek. There's obviously political ones Republican meet
and Democratic Republican people meet and Democratic people meet. I
(11:12):
don't know if there's a Tea party people meet or not.
I would guess Trek Passions. Yes, they're like the Hike. Nope. Man,
My Lovely Parent is for single parents. Uh, Sea Captain Date.
I think my favorite one. That's for real. Yeah, it's
just for people looking for their first mate. That's awesome. Uh,
(11:34):
find your face Mate. That's for people who think that
want to find people that look like them. It's a
little creepy. Wealthy men dot Com Stash passion if you're
in the mustaches, not like drugs on you. Personals for
cat lovers, waiting till marriage for the virgins among us. Yeah.
(11:55):
I found one that was um that was founded by
a woman who had had cervical cancer. Are Oh that's nice?
Who um founded a site for people who are incapable
of having sex but still want to find love and
apparently it's gotten a pretty great response. That's awesome. And
the last one was Tall Friends that I thought was
kind of interesting. Like they're just tall. You're just into
(12:15):
tall people, or I guess you're I've heard of that
from a lot of tall people, especially tall women. Oh yeah,
who don't like dating short guys and have a hard time,
you know, finding dudes that are six three. You go
to tall friends friends. I saw another one called the gaggle.
Have you heard about that? Yeah? That that one's interesting.
It's for um. It's basically so for a woman to
(12:39):
date all of the various um prized parts of an
individual's personality, but broken out and distributed among a whole
group of men. Like I want to date an athlete,
so I'll go on a date with this guy. I
want to like a brainy guy too, so I'll go
on a different date with a brainy guy, right, and
so on and so on a tall dude. Yeah, and
(13:00):
then the woman, but she's dating all these dudes at once. Yea,
hence the gaggle, A gaggle of dudes. Yeah we're powered
to you, I guess. And yeah, and then of course
the kids, as weird as your imagination can get weirder
than farmers only, Oh yeah, our trek passions way weirder
or sea captain date even weirder. All right. Yeah, um,
(13:22):
so that's some pretty good stuff. Chuck. Thanks, that was
some good digging. Well those are, you know, like you said,
one of many, many many. Um. But we're gonna be
talking about sort of the basic online standard online dating scenario,
and we're going to talk about that right after this message.
(13:44):
All right, so welcome back to online dating. Um. I
guess we should just walk someone through this process. Yeah,
step by step. Yeah, so the first thing you're gonna
want to do, there's there's different kinds of sites. They're
typically broken out into two categories. See aptains tall people.
Uh no, I can't. Uh, it's um free sites and
(14:06):
pay sites. No, that was serious that last one. No, no, no,
I was still laughing at Okay, that's good. So you've
got your freesighting at your pay sites and both of them.
It depends on the site. But for the most part, uh,
if you are thinking of creating a profile, you will
be able to go on to just about any dating
site and give a very minimal amount of information and
(14:28):
start browsing. Yeah, because they want you to check out
the site and get the hooks into you, and they
don't necessarily say you gotta pay right away, or you
gotta give us all this information. Just browse around the
shop see if you like anything. Right, So, um, you're
gonna give a little information like whether you're a man
or a woman, or whether you're seeking a man or
a woman. Maybe the year you're born, and then maybe
(14:49):
your zip code. Yeah, you're not gonna get full profiles
if you're browsing, no, unless you may not get pictures either.
It depends. So if it's a free site, you may
feel true. If it's a pay site, and we'll talk
about the pros and the cons in a minute of each. Um.
If it's a pay site, you might be able to
see yeah profile without pictures, or you might be able
to see you know, both, but you won't. You can't
(15:11):
contact anybody unless you pay. Um. But for the most
part when you're when you're going online, you can check
the people out, um with just a just a tiny
bit of information. Yea. Once you join, though, you're gonna
have to start building a profile, and it kind of
starts out easy and broad and then as you go
through the creating the profile, I mean it takes a minute. Yeah,
(15:33):
And um, I guess we should point out to that
you're gonna have to input some kind of email address. Um,
it's up to you if you want to create an
email address for free, just for online dating. If you're
really like super freaked out about privacy, might not be
a bad idea. But most of these um, you're not
allowed to be emailed directly at first. It's either anonymous
(15:55):
through the site or the site has their own messaging system.
So it's pretty safe these days as far as protecting
your privacy. You shouldn't get too freaked out, right, It's
not like this nineteen seventies where there wasn't even not
great expectations. Oh yeah, where it's like this is my
address in the background exactly. Uh, you wanna your next step?
(16:18):
There is probably writing down some physical attributes about yourself,
because as much as people like a good personality in
a sense of humor, um, a lot of people are
probably looking for something specific or maybe just general physically.
So you've got height, weight, hair color, eye color, um,
body type, Yeah, whether you have tattoos or pierce things,
(16:41):
that kind of thing. Um. And then it gets a
little more involved in all of this is you're just
clicking bubbles or selecting from dropped down menus um, but
it gets a little a little more granular, like what
are your interests? And these aren't people snooping. You're doing
this for yourself to have a more complete profile. If
(17:02):
you're in there going well, what do they want to know?
What kind of movies I like? Then you you don't
get online dating, you know, Yeah, but maybe you should
go to like suspicious Minds or Suspicious Hearts online dating service. There, Mike,
you don't give out any personal information because yeah, or
the drop down and he says I like this, this,
that or none of your business and everyone just picked
(17:24):
none of your business. So your interests and activities? You
play guitar? Do you play sports? So you into reading? Um,
there's your favorite filmmaker? What do you like to do
on the weekends? All that kind of stuff will give
you a good give someone else a good idea of
kind of what you're like. Yeah, um, your income level, Yeah,
whether you have pets, how you feel about having pets, um,
(17:45):
if you live with your parents. These are all things
you can lie about. Well that's the thing, like, yeah,
it's it's I read somewhere that one in ten profiles
online or made up. Yeah. In fact, Okay, Cupe. It's
as the top four things people lie about most are height, income,
their photo, and their sexuality, which I thought was weird. Yeah,
(18:08):
that's weird. I didn't get that one. You're not doing
yourself any favors if you're lying about your sexuality out
of the gate. No, and supposedly also chock of people
who submitted to a poll about online dating said that
they had met somebody, met up with somebody in life.
Um who quote seriously misrepresented themselves in their dating profile.
(18:30):
Well we must just like, yeah, we should go and
talk about that. With your photo, you want to represent
yourself well, obviously, but you want to be accurate because again,
you're not going to do yourself any favors. You're not
gonna get a second date if you show up looking
like the hunchback of Notre Dame and you put a
picture of Tom Selick up there. Hey, hunchbacks need love
to and that's that's why there's hunchback mate dot com. Like, really,
(18:55):
we could just sit here all day and come up
with like feasible uh naymes for goiterer touch. I think
Jerry's grossed out. Did you you know? Goider's right. It's
from hyper hypothyroidism, which is the result of an iodine deficiency.
That's why there's iodie salt to prevent goiders hunt my grandmother.
(19:18):
That apparently also um, the the most preventable form of
mental retardation is treated with iodine or it results from
an iodine deficiency, which is the main reason why they
started adding that to salt, supposedly, And they think there's
this thing called the Flynn effect where inexplicably the intelligence
(19:43):
as matt by i Q over the twentieth century rose
like three points across the board in the West, and
they think it's possible that it's from iodiae salt. Oh,
we actually talked about that that podcast a couple of
weeks ago, did we really? I'm just very fast NATed
by that, apparently so fascinated that knocks out all memories
of speaking about it. But do you put that in
(20:05):
an online dating profile and just watch your your computer
light up? What do you think I talk about? For you? Me?
Drives are crazy? She's like, tell me about I saw
for the eight time. She loves that stuff. Um, all right,
so where are we here? Oh, you're gonna list all
these things You're gonna fill out your profile and then
you're gonna do that again, but under the notion of
(20:28):
what you're looking for in someone else, like what your
ideal mate do and look like, and then they're trying
to match you. Yeah, the computer takes this stuff, choose
it up like carrots and apples, and poops out some
some matches. True. Is that true? Because I think it's
(20:48):
made up frankly, now we'll get to the science of it.
So you call it that you mentioned your photo. Did
we say, don't put any personal information on there? No,
that seems like a no brainer. They won't ask for
that stuff. But there are times where you can write
things about yourself. So don't feel free to say this
is where I live and this is my Social Security number? Right,
or this is where I work? Yea, which is one
(21:10):
that I I mean I could see overlooking that. Yeah,
that seems certainly, you know, like I work at Discovery Channel.
It's something like that. Yeah, where oh in d C
Oh cool, I'll be right there. Which floor I want
to show you how I can hold a knife in
my teeth. You're gonna love it. That'd be Pirates Love
dot Com. Uh No, that's Sea Captain. That's a sub
(21:35):
branch of that one, right, yeah, probably so. Alright, so
you mentioned free versus subscription. They both have their pluses
and minuses. Free is good because it's free and we
like that, Yes, but so do twelve year old boys. Exactly?
Who poses other people? Yeah, exactly. That is one of
the problems with free websites like this is that you
(21:55):
will get impostors. Uh that just jokes, ads, scam scams.
There's like a whole Nigerian prince scam that's going on. Um. Actually,
apparently there's something you can do. Uh, if you see
a photo of somebody that you're interested in, you can
put it to the test. Yeah, you can drag and
copy it on your desktop and then dragon drop it
(22:17):
on Google image search. You know you can search by image.
Does it reverse look up? Huh? It looks up that
image and it will show you all this stuff and
it may say this is a scam. This is if
that same picture shows up all over the place under
different names of an alisis whatever, that's a scamp. What
if what if you would if I did that to
your picture, would have said this is Josh Clark. Uh. Yeah,
(22:39):
probably it's a pretty pretty smart computer. They got there. Yeah. Yeah,
that's pretty creepy though, But I guess that's good. Like
it's creepy on one hand, to be able to find
out who someone is from a photo. Oh no, no, no,
no, no no, not like that. Sorry, no. If it if
if it were like on a dating site and it
was just supposed to be somebody's photo, gotcha. If it
(23:01):
came up as like, yeah, here's this photo that you found,
here's the place that you found it, and here it
is on these eighteen other profiles with eighteen other names,
then you know it's a scam. But you can go back.
It's kind of like a back door way to figure
out if the person's made up profile. All right, So
I guess that's good. My brain is not quite functioning today. Really,
(23:23):
I'm saying things just a little out of syntax. Josh
is going on vacation tomorrow. You're in vacation mode. Last
day of school, I told him to rip up his
research and throw it up in the air and run
out of the building after. I'm pretty sucked. You should
do that. Um. All right. So the free ones, like
we said, are good because they're free, bit bad because
of all that other stuff. The pay ones you gotta
(23:43):
pay for, which isn't great, but a lot comes with that,
which is like an identify identity verification process because they're
gonna be using your credit card and stuff, so your
information is going to be valid, valid and safe with
the paid site supposedly, or you can see the pants
off of that paid site for failing to verify correctly. Yeah,
(24:05):
I guess. So you can also access uh other features
if you're a paid member, like maybe they'll bump you
up in search, or you'll have access to more information
that seems wrong, like paying for your profile to come
up higher. That's that's the basis of the Internet. I guess,
you know, search referral. So, Chuck, we talked about making
a profile. Let's talk about making a good profile. Yeah.
(24:28):
And by the way, this was ed Grabanowski, right, the Grabster,
I believe, so, yeah, an early grabster. Yeah. I think
reading some of his examples here, I think we're learning
about the grabster. Oh yeah, for sure. And I think
he's talking about himself. But he does have some good
ideas and I go out with him some good some
(24:49):
good examples. Like he's basically saying, like, um, don't be
a hack when you're coming up with your profile, especially
when you're freewriting stuff. You know, like she was a
cool picture of yourself. Chose a picture of yourself where, um,
you're like, there's no not other people around, and you
have a shirt on and you just don't look like
(25:11):
a sleeves bag, you know. Um, use humor, Like, don't
just say I'm funny, be funny. Yeah, don't just say
I'm interested in something, Demonstrate how you're interested in like,
and he said, beginning with the subject line, and he
used two awesome examples. Frankly, yeah, bogart fan seeking unusual suspects. Okay,
it was a half awesome example. The next one's awesome.
(25:33):
Go ahead, Uh, come sail away with this boating enthusiast
slash sticks fan. I think that is the grabster. I
bet you anything that's Yeah, how would you come up
with that? Like just using your imagination, I'd go out
with that person. Um, you want to make sure that
you fill out your whole form everything. Don't be lazy.
If you're lazy, it sends a very clear signal that
(25:55):
one you're lazy, which is not a good prospect for
anybody unless people are in that well that's then you
go on lazy date. Uh. And then it also says,
um that I'm not really that into this. Yeah, this
is halfhearted. Yeah, and definitely don't say my friends put
me up to this. I'm usually don't do things like this,
(26:16):
but I'm not a loser, so I don't know. I
don't normally do that because you're insulting the very people
that you're reaching out to. Yeah. Not not a good idea. Um.
And like we said, you want to not just talk
about yourself, you want to you want to demonstrate yourself. Yeah.
And Ed again says instead of saying I enjoy Stanley
Kubrick film, say the other night, I was watching a
(26:38):
clockwork Orange and I found myself thinking, would be a
lot more fun to watch and discuss with someone else,
to suddenly punch as we're walking down along the waters
movie about random violence and rape and torture. Be a
lot more fun to watch it with someone. Or instead
of I'm funny, say I love quoting Monty Python or
(26:58):
Simpson's lines. You know that could be us. Well, we
do that all the time. Uh. He says. Another way
to be successful is to just know who you are
and know what you want and know what you're looking for.
And that's a big plus for people who get fixed
up on dates. Like your friends might think someone's perfect
for you, but who really knows best but yourself who's
perfect for you? Yeah, so you can avoid all that
(27:20):
the clap trap of getting set up on a bad date. Well,
that's the whole role of online dating. Computer algorithms and
apps and individuals are have taken over from these traditional
roles of family friends, um, who co workers, Yeah, of
of match of matchmaking. It's people taking it into their
(27:42):
own hands or relying on a computer algorithm to do it. Yeah,
which is I mean, that's the whole basis of online dating.
That's the whole point of it. To me, it makes sense.
It's just a timesaver, like who's got time to go
through just the random maybe I'll meet someone thing. I
think that's probably what ultimately a hundred years from now,
historians anthropologis will look back on and explain the prevalence
(28:04):
of online dating. That's why it's just more efficient, I guess. Um.
And then lastly, this one's extremely important too. When you're
creating a good profile, use grammar wisely. Yeah, don't don't
like check from misspellings punctuation, like put some thought into it,
(28:25):
because you'll look like a dummy if you have a
poorly worded profile. Yeah. Or again, if that's your thing,
if you want to type the letter you instead of
y O U, then go to dumb Dumb love dot com.
Do that and find fellow dumb dumbs. You're in the
finding like minded people. You should be honest, you know,
all right. You can also go to the rival site,
(28:47):
oh dot com, so check before we go on. I
like lazy date dot com. Pretty pretty soon. Uh, you're
going to um be getting ready. You're gonna put on
some aftershavee. You're very nice for off old tuxedo shirt,
some palm made in your hair, and your high waiter
pants with your white sox. It's time to go out
(29:09):
there in the big wild world and actually meet somebody. Yeah.
And this is after you have paying to this person. Yeah.
And that's after this message and we're back chucking. It's
time to go out in the world. Yeah. Like I said,
this is um after you have been pained or paying
someone else. That's right, so we should we should probably
(29:30):
talk about that first. Like it's it's not just like
you make a profile, and all of a sudden, you
have a date and you go out like there is
a first contact procedure. Sure, and um, it doesn't necessarily
happen very quickly. Um, and some people choose to make contact. Apparently,
you don't have to say much in your in your message.
When you're making contact with somebody, the grabster says something like, UM, hey,
(29:55):
I saw your profile and it seems like we have
some common interest. Take a look at my profile and
if you're interested, would send me a message? Is probably sufficient? Uh,
And he says you might send a message to several
people at once, one at a time, and then after
you sent your messages, there's nothing you can do but wait. Yeah,
And that I think goes back to how you are
generally as a person. If before online dating, you're the
(30:17):
kind of dude that would go to a bar and
try and get like fifteen phone numbers, then you might
want to scatter. You might take the shotgun approach. Uh.
Or if you're not that kind of guy, if you're
like me and never talk to girls at bars because
you were just hanging out with your your buddies, then
you might want to be a little more singular in
your approach and say like this, this lady sounds really nice.
(30:38):
Not these twelve ladies sound really nice. Let me see
if one of them likes me back. She sounds like
such a super lady. It depends on what kind of
a hurry you're in. I guess it would be a
little more methodical. But I've known I have friends that
you know, take the shotgun approach. And I shouldn't keep
saying that because that implies like you're killing somebody, right,
I just mean you're spreading a wide, uh, testing a wide.
(31:01):
So that's the capturing people in nets approach. That's right, um.
And we should also point out to that there are
a couple of ways ago about it. You can either
get matched with someone through their algorithms that we talk about,
or you can just do the searching yourself, like they
can narrow down for you, and you could do it,
you know, just search through until you find someone you like. Right,
(31:23):
And there's a lot of sites out there that have
no algorithm whatsoever. It's just that questionnaire you filled out
is matched up with other questionnaires, and the the more
similar answers there are in the two questionnaires, the higher
the ranking of the person who um is suggested that
you contact like you've got twelve things in common with
(31:44):
this person. And then there's other sites um, which we'll
talk about a little more that do use algorithms that
have like basically UM proprietary algorithms supposedly do a lot
more than that, just um comparing Simler questionnaires. Yeah, which
one is that? Well? E harmony? Does they compare twenty
nine dimensions of compatibility key dimensions? Yeah, that's right. I
(32:08):
believe match dot com uses algorithms. UM. Chemistry dot com,
which is apparently a subsite of match dot com, uses
a personality inventory that the anthropologist Helen Fisher came up with. Yeah. Yeah, um,
it's supposedly is kind of worky. Yeah. I don't know
(32:29):
if that's the thing. No one has any idea how
well this stuff works. Well, the company each side is
going to tout their own method and say that we're
really pairing you with someone who's like you. But I
think in general they probably do a decent job for
filling out all these things and someone has a lot
of similar interest. It's not brain surgery to pair those
(32:50):
people up and say you might like each other. Well,
supposedly like people who are professional personality inventorists. That's a
real thing out, Um, have sat down and taken these
things and still are only scoring about and grabs their
points out like these these people are professionals. If they
set the average person down in front of the one
(33:12):
of these personality inventories, they're they're they're not. We have
a terrible ability to express what we want and who
we are, right um. And as Helen Fisher was pointing out,
like we were terrible at that kind of stuff. But
if you can pay attention to people's behavior, then you
(33:33):
can start making predictions very accurately, so they were saying
in this article, and from what from other places I've seen,
like those those algorithms don't necessarily do anything more than
just the two comparing inventories. Would like comparing the two
questionnaires and finding, you know, twenty eight similarities and there's
your match right there. But like you said, the other
(33:56):
way to go is to browse. Yeah, and I would
recommend and this is just how I would do it,
is that there are sites that give weighted answers to
certain attributes. Like it's too black and white to me
to say, I like blonde, I want a girl who's
twenty five and who's a democrat. Um, you might feel
(34:16):
really strongly about like a political belief, so you can
say that's that one's super important to me, But Hair
Keller really is not that big of a deal. So
then that's down into the algorithm and you get a
little more specific, like they're not gonna pair some super
liberal person with a tea party person if they both
say that's really important to them, it's like that's one
of their values that they stick by it. Or I
(34:38):
hate dogs and they pair to you with a dog lover,
like you need to tell someone I really hate dogs. Well,
that that goes back to being upfront and saying knowing
what you want and saying it yeah, because apparently that
that saves a lot of time as well. All Right,
so you've made contact with some people, some people who
have gotten in touch with you. You've messaged back and
forth and you said, hey, let's meet in real life.
(35:01):
The next step that you have to take, unless you're
insane or just a dummy and you're on dumb Dumb
dot com um, is to talk to this person on
the phone, go to a pay phone, have them go
to a pay phone. It doesn't matter. Good luck finding
a payphone. You have to talk on the phone, because
right then and there you're going to find out if
(35:23):
it is a twelve year old boy. And we talked
about earlier who liked who made a joke profile on
a free site. Yeah, it's a good way to root
out just some Uh, the biggest piece of dishonesty. Sure.
I also imagine that you could probably find out pretty
quickly if they're actually boring. Yeah. Sure, you can learn
a lot by talking to someone. And if you think
(35:43):
you can learn everything you need to know from emails,
you're wrong. Well yeah, I mean, like it's not true.
We've figured out by now how to perform online, you know,
like people just know how to be online and what's
expected of them online. It's it is much more difficult
to talk. Yeah, as we quite often find ourselves saying
(36:05):
things aren't good. Right, good. So then you want to
go out in the real wide world, and you're going
to arrange for Chuck a very public meeting YEA, A
crowded place ye, lots of people a k A. Witnesses. Uh,
And you should set up a date that is going
to last no more than about an hour quick dinner, yeah,
(36:29):
meet for coffee, maybe a movie, but a short one. Yeah,
and that's that's. Um, we'll meet for a TV show right. Um.
That is for your own safety and for your own sake,
because sometimes you get it wrong or the dating site
gets it wrong and you end up with someone who's
not a match, and you don't want to waste each
(36:50):
other's time, So make it quick. You can all if
a feeling, if you're having a great time you both are,
you can always extend that date. Sure, say hey, let's
go that wine bar too, because dinner, dinner was great.
I'd like to keep talking to you, right. It's harder
to shorten a date, right, Like, remember how we were
going to go to that wine bar after this, Let's
not do that. And if I found out I hate
(37:11):
your guts. Yeah, and it's real easy to say, you
know what, I lied, I don't have to go help
my mom clean out her sock drawer. I really like you.
Let's keep the staate going. And it's super easy to say, no,
I really do have to go help my mom clean
under sock drawer. It's crazy. Yeah. Um, you also want
to meet in public, like we said, for your safety
(37:31):
as um, there's a woman from Las Vegas who's suing
Match dot Com for ten million dollars right now because
there was a man who she met and dated for
like eight days who four months later came to her
house and stabbed her a bunch of times and like
kicked her head and neck and left her for dead.
Was this after their relationship had gone bad or just yeah?
(37:53):
So they dated for eight days. Four months later he
shows up at her house and this guy apparently confessed
to murdering another woman he met on match dot com too,
and then killed himself in jail. Wow. Yeah, And there's
it happens to men as well. There's a man who
arranged to meet a woman and was beaten and robbed
by the woman and her son. So you you don't
(38:14):
want to invite people to your house and he's like,
you didn't tell me you how to son? That's nice? Um,
So you don't want to meet him at your house,
You want to meet him in public? Yeah, just protect yourself.
He has common sense and caution. Don't be a dummy
that'd suggests a college sporting event. Yeah, you know, I
(38:36):
Colledge was very because Ed wants to take a girl
to a college sporting event, not pro. It doesn't like pro.
If it's like pro, he would have written pro. Yeah,
that's true. Uh you got anything else? Yeah, I totally do.
So we were saying that, um, the this online dating thing,
(38:58):
the sites themselves, there's they're still growing and it's becoming
more and more normal. But then apps are becoming a
little more um prevalent as well. Yeah, Like there's one
called Tinder where you can see based on GPS. Is
it Facebook profiles? I don't know, or maybe you have
(39:18):
to make a Tinder profile I don't know, of the
people who are literally right around you at like a
coffee house or a bar or a club or whatever,
and you can basically say I'm interested in this person,
I like how this person looks, I like this person.
And if the those people on Tinder say the same
thing about you, then you can communicate with one another. Apparently,
(39:42):
like that's a big thing now. Yeah, some of them
are are less about dating and more about just kind
of hooking up. Maybe like, hey, I found someone who's
two blocks for me. Do you want to go kiss
each other for a little while in that alley? You
can and do that, and I don't I don't know,
I don't know if that's an online dating site, but
(40:04):
it's a thing that exists. Now. Well, yeah, dating, it
depends on your interpretation of the word date. Um. And
then lastly, Chuck Wired got together with Okay Cuping and
match dot com and did some data mining and came
up with some tips for um, how to optimize your
online dating profile. Uh so, for example, this is real.
(40:29):
This is based on Okay cuping and match dot COM's figures.
And apparently that's another surprising byproduct is these dating sites,
the raw data they do have are serving the fields
of like anthropology and sociology. They're starting to open up
their their raw data archives and say go go get
(40:49):
whatever you want from us, and it's helping. It's helping
things like wired. So if you're a guy and you
have a tattoo, it's cool. If you're a woman you
have a tattoo, you're you're going to have a harder
time getting a date. Really, statistically speaking, mass dot com
and Okay keeping all right, if you talk about karaoke,
you're going to bomb. Really yeah wow, this one says
(41:15):
be hotter than you are. Now that's a good tip.
Send a picture that underrepresents yourself slightly and then show
up and be like, oh, yeah, actually dropped ten pounds.
Check check it out if you if you are a female,
you want to talk about London, New York City, yoga, surfing,
and the word athlete. If you use those in your profile,
(41:37):
you are likelier to get dates. You all, you want
to always refer to yourself as a girl, never as
a woman. Okay, and if you're a boy, you never
want to use the word girl when referring to women.
You always use the word women. Interesting. Someone took us
to task the other day in an email about saying
female like we should say or should you should not
(42:01):
say female? Saying you guys don't say male, you say
female though, And I was like, I didn't know that
was a bad association with about what I would have
think saying like dames or broads would be superfensive. But
I thought female was like a like kind of the
straight and narrow way to go with identification of someone's gender. Yeah,
I'm confused, I almost dude. I didn't get a response,
so maybe I misunderstood it. Apparently Wired says men who
(42:24):
use the word whom get more contacts from women. The
word what whom? W h O m oh, yeah, even
when it's used incorrectly, I guess that's that's that's an
impressive thing to say. Whom. Uh. If you're a man,
you can talk about crafting and your children. If you're
(42:45):
a woman, don't ever bring up crafting and never bring
up your children. Man, that is just so wrong. It
is very wrong, you know. I mean like, this is
this is what I'm talking about. Anthropologically speaking, This is
like misogyny is alive. And yeah, what else you got? Uh?
Radio Head is the only band you should ever talk about? Apparently, Um,
(43:09):
let's see, that's funny. The word retirement is attracted as
far as it's related to men's profiles, but not women's. Yeah,
if you're on wealthy men dot com and you see
the word retirement, that's probably pretty good, I'm sure. Uh.
And then also, if you have a shureless pick of yourself,
you're not gonna do very well if you put a
(43:31):
shortless pick of yourself as a man or woman, I
imagine either way, but probably it's even worse with men.
But it is true. I mean, like, even if you're
a girl and you just put up like kind of
a smudgy selfie or something like that. Yeah, it definitely
says a certain amount too, and you're gonna attract like
a certain kind of guy that you might not be
interested in. You just said smutty selfie. Ye. Yeah, it's
(43:56):
almost like the Golden rule. Treat others as you want
to be treated. Its represent yourself how you want to
be viewed. Well, yeah, I mean, if you want to
represent yourself as a smutty person, then put a smutty selfie.
But you're the people you get, you know what you're
gonna be getting, right, that's exactly I think that's well,
(44:16):
well put like you're you're asking for it in that
case from the dregs of society to send you a
date request at that point and to try like hell
to find out your address. That's right. Uh. If you
want to learn more about online dating, go give it
a shot. There's free sites and stuff. You don't have
to listen to us we've never even done it. Or
you could also look up this article from Ed Grabanowski
(44:39):
for some pointers and tips. Um by by typing online
dating in the search bar at house to works dot
com and let's see, everybody has the search bar, which
means it's time for listener. Mail you said it's muddy selfie,
so it's time for listen. If there's something wrong with it,
I just think it's a funny pairing of words. Well,
it's the on a montopia. No know that alliteration, Yeah, literation,
(45:01):
It sounds funny. Aunt amount of would be like um
smooty popping, right, I think so? Or yeah? Is that
when the word sounds like the sound? Okay, hey guys,
I'm gonna call this pinged from Sacramento. Hey, guys, have
just finished the podcast on robots replacing human doctors. There's
(45:22):
a reason I don't think we'll see that soon. Um.
Doctors are trained scientists who specialize in human health. The
whole reason we need trained scientists doctors is that human
physiology and chemistry very enough. That's not sufficient to treat
each patient in the same way. If we can treat
all patients the same way, nurses and diagnostic manuals or
computer systems would be sufficient. Because all humans don't respond
the same to the same treatment, you actually do need
(45:45):
a specialized scientists actively involved in the process. Still, I
think robots or computer systems will replace many human doctors
in time, though, we just need more intelligent robots, ones
that are capable of thought beyond a simple preprogrammed or spots.
Our current tech as you indicated, suitable for initial screening
and such. With thinking machines, we could actually replace doctors,
as you said, With thinking machines, we could actually replace doctors,
(46:08):
and as you said, they'd be more current on their
medical knowledge. The big question would be whether such machines
would consent to serve humanity as our current automatons do.
And that is from Andy Ping and Sacramento. Nice. Thanks
a lot, Andy Ping. That's the kind of name you
say first and last. Never just say Andy or Mr Ping,
(46:29):
Andy Pink or Dr Pain Maybe is he a doctor? No?
I don't think so. Is the evil super villain? Yes? Okay,
then Dr Pain it is uh. If you want us
to make a nickname for you, or just say your
first and last name together, because that's how it should
be said. You can get in touch with us by
(46:49):
tweeting to us at s Y s K podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you
should know. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at Discovery dot com and is always check us
out at our home on the web. Stuff you Should
Know dot com for more on this and thousands of
(47:10):
other topics. Is it How stuff works dot com? Hey.
Netflix streams TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer,
wireless device, or game console. You can get a thirty
day free trial membership. Go to www dot Netflix dot
(47:31):
com slash stuff and sign up now.
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