Lots of questions are phrased as "How do you feel about your partner doing xyz?" This is bad form, since all questions have that component inherent to them in the "how should your partner respond?" followup. Asking "how should your partner feel about you feeling" needlessly complicates the question and disrupts the radio-button/ checkbox response format.

So this is probably just a massive confirmation bias on my part, but it sure seems like there are a lot of bi girls on this site. A large part of this probably stems from the filters and preferences I've set up, but it still seems like a statistically irregular amount; that is, it feels like the site attracts people of less-popular orientations.

Of course, it's a bit more complex than that. I've seen a few pretty common patterns in the Bi female profiles:

1. Single women that are a little interested in women but are probably going to settle into long-term hetero relationships 

2. Single women that are a little interested in men, but are probably going to settle into long-term gay relationships

3. Women that have boyfriends but are looking for girls, on the side or for threesomes

4. Members of big polyamorous pile.

(There must be some women in lesbian relationships that are looking for men on the side, but I haven't seen any yet.)

The same must be true for men; I haven't been browsing a lot of their profiles, but I'd likely put myself in the equivalent to category 1, with aspirations of being the male partner in category 3.

Now, a member of any one of these categories will be listed as Bi on their profile, but clearly they all have distinct needs, and this site should try to accommodate them. I propose that, instead of listing your orientation and availability, you list only what you are seeking. Therefore, instead of my status being 24/Bi/Single, it would say that I am seeking (in order of preference) women, groups, men. Were I to end up in a monogamous relationship, then I would simply change my status such that I am not seeking anyone. 

This may seem like its unnecessarily complicating things, but this is how Facebook handles sexual preference, and people seem to understand that.

"what the hell is a journal for?" post. I respect the OKcupid guys a lot - I even bought a Bishop Allen record once - but this seems like a "hey, web 2.0, let's stick a blog on it!" kind of idea. Cause lord knows you cant get a blog anywhere else! But the staff robot insists that I write something here, and I tend to do whatever a robot tells me. Anyways, I'm gonna use this space to talk about my relationship with this site and a little about gender identity or whatever. 

I first joined this site ages and ages ago, pretty much right when it started. I was a freshman in college for the first time, and I had and on and off thing going with my high school girlfriend. I never really used it much then because I was still prejudiced against internet dating, but I really liked filling out all the tests and that sort of thing, being a 17 year old and all.

Years later, after meeting a girl on myspace(!) and basically living with her for four years, I find myself back in the pool, and in a peculiar situation. I look back at a lot of the answers I gave and don't recognize the guy - when I joined I had never smoked, never drank, and was strongly anti-drug. (I had also just read a bunch of Ayn Rand, as angry teens often do.) 

But in a lot of ways, I am the same guy I was then; I'm just less of a dick about it. Most of what I've changed since then reflects not a dramatic shift in my opinions or lifestyle, but just a more open mind.

This is the part where I bitch about how the site reinforces the certainty of young adulthood. While they make great strides in accommodating every lifestyle with the questions, they don't give nearly enough granularity with the sidebar info. For example: the biggest change I've made to my profile is in sexual orientation. However, this isn't some big shift from me; I was starting to be interested in boys and trans in college; I'm just man enough to admit it now. However, I still strongly prefer people with the opposite set of parts; I suspect there are a lot of men like me on the site that identify as straight out of social pressure. Conversely, there are tons of women who identify as bi here, but that can range all the way from "tee hee, i'll let you imagine me having a threesome" to "i've always preferred women but i'm keeping an open mind." For frig's sake, the Kinsey scale has been around for like fifty years.

On a similar note, I'm a little worried that I'm giving the wrong impression with the other lifestyle questions. Does pot still count as a drug? In MA you get a fine for possession. Yet okcupid treats "I take a puff when I'm at a party and they pass the pipe around" the same as "I bought an eight-ball for the weekend."