Two women, one OkCupid profile
Source: Maya Shwayder
Do men realize, when they’re talking to a woman, how many women they’re actually talking to?
It was this thought that floated through my mind as I sat in alone in my room in Berlin last summer, a city where I had only a few friends and fewer ways to socialize. I resorted to OkCupid for entertainment, but after weeks of clicking through nice but rather indistinguishable messages from anonymous Internet guys, no one seemed particularly exciting and no one seemed especially horrible.
I wished there were someone in my life who knew my preferences, and could filter my matches and help me decide whom to actually meet in person.
A few months later, I moved back to New York. A friend of mine ― the definition of a social butterfly ― promptly began showing me the OkCupid profiles of several guys she had been talking to, counseling me that if I were interested in meeting any of them, she would arrange it.
That’s when I realized: Why not just make a profile together, to more easily give each other advice on whom to date? We decided to embark on an experiment: We would share a profile and split up dates in an attempt to bring a little more excitement to an algorithmic matchmaking process that had become dull and rote.
Yes, I know OkCupid profiles are free to set up and maintain, so there’s no economic reason to share one. And no, we weren’t looking for threesomes. We made that abundantly clear.
We put our profile, a sort-of dating game out into the universe to see what would happen if we confronted the men of the Internet with the common mysteries: When you’re talking to people online, do you really ever know who you’re talking to? Or who’s going to show up in person?
The friend with whom I shared a profile is a master at online messaging. The way she roots out the jerks and shuts them down is beautiful to behold. Her specialty is guys in bars who try to pull moves from “The Game” on her. Often she’ll flip the play around on him and end up coaching him on what he did wrong and how to do better next time. Then she’ll take his wingman’s number instead.
The profile clearly had both of us on it: Both our pictures, both of our personalities described using pseudonyms. Guys would message us as though it were a normal profile, it just wouldn’t be clear which one of us they were talking to, or who would show up on the date. Along the way, my friend could teach me how to better determine who is worth meeting and who might be a waste of time.
We launched in November 2014, and we received about 500 messages in six months. To our pleasant surprise, the vast majority of those messages were positive. We responded to ― and usually went out with ― the guys who sent us something fun and creative.
We ignored or laughed at the trolls, jerks and copy-pasters. Then there were the guys in the middle, who sent some variation of this message:
Wow! This is so cool! How’d you come up with this idea? Which one of you came up with this idea? Do you ever fight over who gets to go on the date? How do you decide who goes on the date? Do you play rock paper scissors?
Hundreds of messages with the same questions. And no, we never fought about which one of us would show up on these dates.
There were the guys who tried to outsmart us with: Hey, why don’t all three of us meet up for coffee?
That’s not how it works. We decide who goes on the date, not you.
There were the guys who messaged us a plain old: I don’t get it.
Well, then you’re probably not smart enough to go out with either of us.
A few expressed outright outrage at our little game. How dare you tilt the power dynamic of online dating even slightly in your favor?!
Yes, how utterly unfair. Yawn.
We started dating. Overall, the quality of the dates we were going on was incredibly high.
My friend met an Australian who told her “I don’t know what I would have done if your friend had shown up.” We both met an enigmatic dating consultant who lived in New York on $6,000 a year and liked to troll Tinder pretending to be Jesus Christ. He was our one exception to our “no double date” rule.
I met a start-up guru who helped me make a difficult career decision; a camera operator for a local TV station who somehow managed to afford a huge two-bathroom, one-bedroom apartment in a doorman building on the Upper West Side; the host of a dating podcast; a Russian refugee with a fascinating life story; a handsome struggling actor who sent me a script detailing the emotional horror of his divorce and then stopped texting me; and a very sweet employee of a major newspaper whose penchant for “Game of Thrones” led to a short affair and a long friendship.
In the middle of our experiment, I got a job offer overseas and prepared to move. Two weeks before my departure, a message came in from a handsome man with a short beard and a British accent (or so his profile claimed).
“I should warn you, apparently I have a thing for brunette midwestern Jewish girls,” he wrote.
Obviously, I had to meet him ― and my friend agreed. He turned out to be a Latin American who grew up in Europe. He shared my taste in opera and delicious food; he speaks multiple languages; brought me roses on our third date; and now he travels across the world to visit me.
It was almost as though someone, somewhere, who intuitively knew my preferences, filtered my results and found me what I was looking for.
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