What Brings Us Together

In the first part of the book, Rudder wrote about things that have common ground and general trends that persist in the world of online dating. One of the main concepts explored in this chapter is the similarity of preferences among users, notions of attractiveness, and usage of messaging for efficiency and effectiveness. From his data analysis, Rudder concludes that men prefer women that are younger than them, while women prefer men who are roughly the same age with them. A male’s preference towards younger women can be understood from an evolutionary perspective. From a male’s perspective, gene transmission requires a fertile mate. Therefore, in order to ensure that they mate with fertile women, males prefer partners younger than them as they grow older (Isaacson, 2000). Rudder added that this difference in age preferences sometimes creates a challenge for single men and women who are trying to find their lifelong partners. 

Rudder measures attractiveness of women by looking at the attractiveness ratings given by men on the dating site. However, these attractiveness ratings are not made visible on the site. Based on Rudder’s finding, the number of messages women receive is highly correlated to the variance of ratings given by the male users. In Rudder’s point of view, this can be explained because a man, who is attracted to unconventionally looking women, knows that there are other men who are not attracted to those women. Because of that, the man may sense that there is less competition and a higher chance for success. Therefore, he is more likely to send a message to the unconventional looking women and try to form a relationship. On the other hand, a woman who is average looking with consistent ratings is less likely to receive messages from men because she might seem more popular than she is. This means that men may think that a lot of other men are after her and thus find her less appealing to pursue. 

Rudder did more analysis on the first time messages sent to the opposite sex. From his analysis, he can see that the average message length is now just 100 characters long. The messages giving the highest response rates are only 40-60 characters long. Rudder also realized that some men copied and pasted their messages and sent roughly the same message to multiple women. He found that on average the copying and pasting strategy is 25% less effective than composing a message from scratch. However, copying and pasting wins when comparing effort to results. In other words, copying and pasting is more efficient by generating replies with less effort. From this analysis about messaging, Rudder believes that writing has adapted to the development of technology but its purpose remains the same. The rise of social media with character limits, such as Twitter, encourages people to write less while conveying the same amount of information. Additionally, smartphones with smaller type keys also encourage the development of the lowering word count trend.