One of the wonderful and terrible things about the internet is how it allows people seeking others with hard-to-find traits to find them: advertisers can find people thinking about buying a refrigerator; people who think they might be trans can find others in the same boat and make common cause; people with the same rare disease can form support groups, and Nazis can find sociopaths to march through the streets of Charlottesville carrying tiki torches and chanting "Jews will not replace us." Read the rest

Tinder has been added to the Russian "Register of Information Dissemination Organizations," a regulatory designation that requires companies to turn over user data on request, without a warrant, to Russian law-enforcement and state agencies (America has a similar regime with a few check-and-balance figleafs). Read the rest

In this video, a 27-year-old Korean woman is playing an odd dating game, kind of like a live-action Tinder.

She first chooses her ideal type of guy using options on her phone (e.g. "isn't cocky," "funny," "buff") and then 10 men (in masks) who meet her qualifications are seated in front of her. Communicating with them individually only in a chatroom, she then spends the next 30 minutes deciding who is the best guy for her.

She finally picks one after eliminating the others. Pulling her chair closer to his, he then quietly takes his mask off, and the video awkwardly ends. Will they go on a date? Was he tall enough for her? Did his stamina meet her requirements? We may never know!

(Honestly, I was surprised that not one guy sent her a dick pic.)

(reddit) Read the rest

Looking incredibly hip and youthful in a bright blue hoodie, comedian Jim Gaffigan had way too much fun swiping right and trolling potential suitors through someone else's Tinder account. Watch in the video as he hijacks the Tinder of Blair, a brave female Vanity Fair staffer. It starts off a little slow but gets much funnier when the guys start responding to Gaffigan's oddball messages.

Gaffigan is starting a worldwide tour on February 8. Read the rest

After swapping online dating disasters with friends for hours, writer and poet Erin Bealmear decided she didn't want to be the kind of woman who spends all her time "talking about boys."

She joked with these friends that she was going to create an OkCupid profile for Emily Dickinson, to see how she'd "fare in the world of online dating." She pondered, “Would a lovelorn poet, obsessed with death and privacy, be able to woo a modern man?”

Then Bealmear took it one step further and started humorously answering the dating site's questions, imagining how Dickinson herself would answer them. For an extra layer of authenticity, she included specific details from the 19th-century American poet's life:

What I’m doing with my life

Being a hermit. Overusing the dash.

I’m really good at

Breaking rules, specifically capitalization and punctuation.

Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food

Movies: What is a movie?

Books: Wordsworth, Browning, Keats, Emerson, Shakespeare (i.e. dead people)

Music: Yes, I do enjoy playing the piano on occasion. Thank you for asking.

Food: Baked goods, especially my famous gingerbread. I love making it for the neighborhood children, but I can’t leave the house. Instead, I stand at the window and lower it down to them in a basket. It’s so much easier that way.

Then, she decided to publish it. Once she did, "Emily's" inbox started filling with messages. Some men were amused, others were not. Many were just confused. Some curious responses came from men that Bealmear calls, "'Hi' guys."

Every woman who has participated in online dating knows them.

Read the rest

First dates are often cringey, so a first date with cameras rolling will be next-level cringe. To take it to the next level, ask one date participant wear eye-tracking goggles. Enjoy! Read the rest

Lauren Urasek, 25, "the most popular heterosexual on OKCupid" according to the dating site, has a new book out, Popular: The Ups and Downs of Online Dating from the Most Popular Girl in New York City. As you might imagine, Urasek's got lot of fun, funny, and horrifying stories to tell, of guys who went for a kiss ten minutes into the first date, outright offered her cash for sex, and interviewed her as if being girlfriend was a job she had applied for. From an interview in The Daily Dot:

Let's talk strategy: What makes you most likely to respond to a guy from an online dating site?

As long as you’re not writing a really horrible message, it’s really about your pictures and your profile, whatever you say. If I’m attracted to you and you don’t come across like an idiot, then I’ll respond to you. It seems so simple, but it’s really not.

I always find it very weird that you can always tell a lot about someone from one picture, or the type of hat that they’re wearing, or the way their facial hair is—if it’s messy or really clean cut, what does that say? And I don't care how attractive you are, shirtless pictures are an automatic turn-off.

I keep hearing this thing about guys posing for pictures with tigers. Is that a thing that you’ve seen?

Yeah. Girls do it, too. Posing for pictures with, like, exotic animals, and in front of national landmarks and wonders of the world.

Read the rest

I love Qawwali music, and I am really loving this cute viral Qawwali-themed ad for India dating service TrulyMadly. Read the rest

The sneering condescension and pearl-clutching panic about young people's relationship to sex and technology willfully misses the fruits of an impressive creative movement.

As I write this, one of the city pigeons that has cruelly overtaken our little bird feeder is cooing in a raw, almost threatening way. I guess you ought to check out this game.

Why do human beings experience jealousy, what is its function, and what are the warning signs that signal this powerful emotion may lead to violence?

Once reserved for the contemplation of poets and playwrights, jealousy is now the subject of intense scientific scrutiny. "Mate poachers abound," explains this week's guest, psychologist David Buss, who says that his research supports his hypothesis that human jealousy is an adaptation forged by evolutionary forces to deal with the problems of infidelity. Moderate jealousy, he says, is healthy and signals commitment, but there is a dark and corrosive side as well that follows a clear, predictable pattern before it destroys lives.

David Buss is a professor of psychology who studies human mating at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies Of Human Mating, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is As Necessary As Love and Sex, The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill, and Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge. You can learn more about him and his work at DavidBuss.com. Read the rest