Here's my take.
By answering a standard set of questions, we're supposed to produce this readily-searchable digest of our personality traits. Fine, but there's no context calling for any particular information. When you meet someone in the real world, your shared circumstances give order to how you reveal your personality. And most importantly, the reveal goes both ways.
Maybe we meet at a ballgame, and I crack a joke about the dumb mook in front of us who has dropped his cell phone into a bucket of popcorn while reaching for a fly ball. Whether you laugh or not, at least now we both know how the other person feels about guys who think it's a good idea to clean their phone by pouring beer on it. It's not the first thing you'd write about in an online dating profile, but it's the first thing we've shared. That means so much more, and it's not the kind of thing you can replicate by finding someone who's listed the same ten movies and books as you.
Is there a solution for this? Probably. It involves getting past this awkward, context-free, online-shopping part as soon as possible. The price is the weirdness you feel messaging someone apropos of nothing. The payoff, of course, is just getting back to the way people are supposed to meet.
By answering a standard set of questions, we're supposed to produce this readily-searchable digest of our personality traits. Fine, but there's no context calling for any particular information. When you meet someone in the real world, your shared circumstances give order to how you reveal your personality. And most importantly, the reveal goes both ways.
Maybe we meet at a ballgame, and I crack a joke about the dumb mook in front of us who has dropped his cell phone into a bucket of popcorn while reaching for a fly ball. Whether you laugh or not, at least now we both know how the other person feels about guys who think it's a good idea to clean their phone by pouring beer on it. It's not the first thing you'd write about in an online dating profile, but it's the first thing we've shared. That means so much more, and it's not the kind of thing you can replicate by finding someone who's listed the same ten movies and books as you.
Is there a solution for this? Probably. It involves getting past this awkward, context-free, online-shopping part as soon as possible. The price is the weirdness you feel messaging someone apropos of nothing. The payoff, of course, is just getting back to the way people are supposed to meet.
