I met my girlfriend online…

…so I thought it might be interesting to read a study about online dating and throw some academic critical analysis at that fateful day when i hit send on the email responding to her Craigslist post.

I’ve gotten my hands on this study published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication that looks at self presentation in ‘the online dating environment’.

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Researchers interviewed 36 volunteers about their online dating profiles on a site I’ve never heard of – Connect.com (which appears to have gone under twice over).

The best part of the study is the number of excerpts taken directly from interviews where people talk about their thought processes when setting up their profiles and interacting with strangers.

One girl intentionally avoided sexually explicit language:

I really analyzed the way I was going to present myself. I’m not one of these people who write all cutesy type things, but I wanted to be cute enough, smart enough, and not sexual at all, because I didn’t want to invite someone who thought I was going to bed with them as soons as I shook their hand. (PaliTOWW, Los Angeles Female)

One guy intentionally inserted sexually explicit language:

The reason I put the language in there is because I had some experiences where I got together with someone, we both really liked each other, and then it turned out that I was somebody who really liked sex and she was somebody that could take it or leave it. So I put that in there to sort of weed those people out. (imdannyboy, Los Angeles Male)

This dude didn’t want to sound desperate:

In the course of corresponding with others on the site I became aware of how I had to present myself. Also, I became quite aware that I had to be very brief…More often than not when I would write a long response, I wouldn’t get a response…I think it implied…that I was too desperate for conversation, that I was a hermit. (joet8, Los Angeles Male)

Here’s a lady that lost a bunch of weight (we can only hope she achieved this through proper nutrition and exercise):

I’ve lost 44 pounds since I’ve started online dating, and I mean, that’s one of the reasons I lost thet weight so I can thank online dating for that. Because the first guy that hit on me, I checked my profile and I had lied a little bit about the pounds, so I thought I had better start losing some weight so that it would be more honest. That was in December, and I’ve lost ever week since then. (MaryMoon, Los Angeles Female)

One participant exclaimed sarcastically “I’ve never known so many incredibly athletic women in my life”…

The dude that didn’t want to sound desperate above is quoted again as he learns the complexities of female body image:

There was one gal who said that she had an “average” body shape.… When I met her she was thin, and she said she was “average,” but I think she has a different concept of what “average” is. So I then widened my scope [in terms of search parameters] and would go off the photographs. What a woman thinks is an “average” body and what I think is an “average” body are two different things. (joet8, Los Angeles Male)

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The study goes on to make some interesting claims:

Although much of the public debate about online dating has centered on the medium’s inability to ensure participants’ truthful self-descriptions, our interview data suggest that the notion that people frequently, explicitly, and intentionally “lie” online is simplistic and inaccurate. Exploring the question of whether participants created a playful or fantastical identity online or were more open and honest, we found that the online dating participants we spoke with claimed that they attempted to present an accurate self-representation online, a finding echoed in our survey data. This study highlights the fact that creating an accurate online representation of self in this context is a complex and evolving process in which participants attempt to attract desirable partners while contending with constraints such as those posed by technological design and the limits of self-knowledge.

I do think they could have been more tactful in their prescriptions for online dating sites:

Online dating sites could adopt some of the design features used in e-commerce sites, such as testimonials, user rating systems, or social network visualizations…

And here they get kind of deep:

Online dating sites may need to reconsider the ways in which profiles are structured and the characteristics they include; as Fiore and Donath argue, “the features of a person that Match.com presents as salient to romance will begin to have some psychological and cultural influences if 40 million Americans view them every month” (2004, p. 1395). If we accept this claim, then it stands to reason that participants’ vision of self may be impacted by their online self-presentation, especially if these presentations are constrained.

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Monet and I still get looks of bewilderment when we tell people we met online. She likes to preemptively tell people that we met in a strip club to flank the inevitable how-you-met conversation (which usually works pretty well).

In any event, I think Craigslist is the way to go…you can keep the upfront communication short and sweet and use the site as the bulletin board it’s designed to be, avoiding the issues wrought by having to maintain a profile among a zillion profiles.

I once was chided by a girl I met on Match.com who called me on continuing to log into the site even after we had been on a date or two…

In any event, while I may not be able to literally hunt online yet or ever, searching for a significant other online worked for pretty well for me.