Why Dating Needs More Politics

By Cristen Conger

If you’re looking for love during this Presidential campaign season (or any time, as a matter of fact), there’s a quick way to figure out whether that online profile incarnate is a genuinely compatible match: talk about politics. Oh, wait. That’s one of the four topics -- alongside money, sex and religion -- Emily Post says young ladies must never, ever broach on a first date, right? Well sure, if you want to be a polite and all, don’t mention the electoral college and super PACs. That said, personal experience has taught me that etiquette quickly curtsies and exits once you’ve found a keeper. And at the end of the night, isn’t dating really just a search for someone who won’t recoil at the sight of you polishing off a couple dozen chicken wings in bed while watching Girls?

Just as we’re loathe to divulge secret habits, such as the embarrassing places we consume take- out, to prospective suitors, a 2011 study quaintly titled “Do bedroom eyes wear political glasses?” found that political views (not-so-surprisingly) aren’t interests we readily advertise in the dating market. Out of the 2,944 online dating profiles the political scientists analyzed, only 14 percent acknowledged politics, with most blandly describing their stances as “middle of the road.” Furthermore, people’s red or blue leanings ranked fourth-from-last out of 27 dating profile interest categories, cozily sandwiched between video games and business networking.

Granted, a Pew Research Center survey published that same year also found an increasing number of Americans shying away from Republican or Democratic affiliations, so maybe that online dating data represented a broader distaste for all-things-Beltway. However, the survey also found that people’s political ideologies were nevertheless entrenched in conservative or liberal values and platforms, which implies that many of those online daters probably weren’t as “middle of the road” as they might’ve wished to appear in hopes of casting a wide dating net. Either way, we clearly seem to think politics and romance don’t go together.

But all of that dainty tiptoeing around donkeys and elephants might do an eventual disservice for folks who are sincerely interested in long-term relationships because like it or not, people tend to end up with politically like-minded people. Another study published in 2011 put thousands of American married couples who had been together anywhere from one to 67 years under a sociological microscope to find out to what extent spouses see eye-to-eye on political and social issues, compared to how they match up on more biologically and genetically influenced traits, like physique and personality. The in-depth data finagling unearthed a bit of fascinating insight: above and beyond similar personality traits, affect and beauty, attitudes on politics and religion held much stronger correlations between husbands and wives. In other words, a tall, introverted Romney fan is statistically more likely settle down with a short, social butterfly Republican than a statuesque bookworm Obama-ite.

It’s also worth noting that the study didn’t just ask participants to check their preferred political parties and call it a day. It polled them on a 28-item index of political and social issues, including abortion, gay rights, living together and immigration. Regardless of how long a couple had been canoodling, those similarities also remained strong. In the words of the study authors: “It would appear humans place more importance on finding a mate who is a kindred spirit with regard to politics, religion and social activity than they do on locating similar mates in terms of physique or personality...”

So even though we’re most likely to end up with someone who shares core values like politics, as opposed to hot-or-not ranking and grade-A personalities, we don’t want to spoil the superficial fun quite so quickly, those two studies imply. Despite the overwhelming empirical evidence that humans generally adhere to assortative mating in which birds of a feather flock together, we want to believe, for whatever reason, that opposites attract. Not to say there aren’t potential benefits of bucking the study findings and crossing party lines. A Bush-Kerry era New York Magazine story profiled a cluster of liberal-leaning singles who had inadvertantly slept with or dated conservatives and reported back red-hot romps, in the words of one source, “because of the forbidden aspect,” dampened only by their guilt of fraternizing with the political enemy.

Now, if playing a round of “Would You Rather: Mitt or Barack Edition” on a date still doesn’t sit well, OKCupid offers another way to deduce a person’s probable political affiliations. Just toss out this head-scratcher: “Do you prefer people in your life to be complex or simple?” According to the dating site’s enormous vault of personal information on would-be lovers, “complexity-preferrers are 65-70% likely to give the Liberal answer. And those who prefer simplicity in others are 65-70% likely to give the Conservative one.”

Or, if you’re looking for a kind of love like I am that knows no political bounds (and aren’t we all?), you can ask extend a more straightforward inquiry -- chicken wings in bed: Check yes or no.

Any Website Can Be a Dating Site

(CNN) -- Recently, a reader dropped the following query into our inbox:

“This may be a stupid question, but recently a friend told me he’s heard of people using Facebook as a dating service. My FB friends and I (admittedly middle-aged) can’t figure out how you “meet” people on Facebook. I (and most of my friends) are FB friends with people we actually know. How would one use Facebook as a dating site?”

- Flummoxed by Facebook Flirting

Oh, Flummoxed! There are no stupid questions -- only painfully, painfully stupid people. But I digress.... .

Social media flirting is a phenom that has been around since the message board/chatroom days, when starry-eyed 13-year-olds and rheumy-eyed 61-year-olds traded “A/S/L?"s with optimistic abandon.

A quick survey of my social followers -- on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram -- revealed that, among my socially savvy circle of folks, people have dated/married suitors they met on MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, MyYearBook, Yahoo Messenger and Usenet, to name a few.

In fact, this past week, the story of how one couple met on Words With Friends swept the blogosphere: Megan Lawless and Jasper Jasperse started playing the smartphone-based word game and were pitted against each other randomly. After talking via the game’s “Chat” feature and later communicating on Skype and e-mail, the pair met in person, and, eventually married -- Jasperse moving from his native Netherlands to Chicago to be with his bride.

While all of this may seem weird/creepy/slightly sad to anyone who didn’t grow up a digital native, consider this: Americans now spend about a quarter of their online time using social networks. If you’re giving your monitor the old glassy eyeball instead of tipping back highballs at your local TV-plastered sports bar, that’s likely where you’re going to make connections.

However, the actual process of meeting people via social media is still rather, well, creepy. (Less creepy than back in the days of message boards and AOL chatrooms, but creepy all the same.)

Assuming that you are not, in fact, a weirdo who collects spleens (we give you guys so much leeway on this factor), here are some tips on how to make any social media site a dating site without being a creep.

Don’t:

Compliment incessantly: You know that dude who staggers up to you at the bar, breathes whiskey into your face and murmurs, “Hey lady, you got mad cleavage, yo.” He’s creepy, right? He’s even kind of creepy when he goes a less aggressive route and compliments something benign, like your eyes ("You have lovely orbs... May I have them?”). Why? Because he’s stating his intentions off the bat, and our society -- addled by years and years of romantic comedy-viewage -- prefers a bit of a chase.

When engaging with people via social media, talking about their appearance/demeanor/eyeballs is even more unsettling than at the bar, because you don’t know the person in question and you can’t see their face in the flesh. Instead of going directly for flattery, start up a conversation with the object of your desire, thereby charming them with your wit and whimsy rather than empty poesy (or straight-up sexual harassment).

Come to think of it, that’s probably good advice for comporting yourself at ye olde sports bar as well.

Repeat yourself: If your hoped-for intended doesn’t reply to the first five tweets you send him about your shared love of fossils and tesseracts, cease and desist with your wooing. He doesn’t like you. Here’s a tissue.

Erase your face: No one wants to date a picture of a donut. When choosing your avatar, make sure to show your face, or, at the very least, link to a website featuring a picture of your mug. If you’re sensitive about your big-ass nose or your shiny head, just chill out. Ugly people get married, too -- I see their progeny on the subway daily.

Exhibit your courtship: Some initial public bantering is fine -- via Twitter, Facebook Walls, etc -- but if you carry on your heavy flirting ("OMG! I love the shape of your broken nose! You look like a matador!”) in a public forum, you risk annoying your friends and followers or, worse, embarrassing your potential date -- especially if you ask out said potential date publicly.

Have we learned nothing from that dude who asked that girl to marry him on the JumboTron? Twitter allows you to DM people, Facebook boasts private messages and even Tumblr has an internal messaging service called Fan Mail now -- there’s no excuse for blithely PDA’ing the hell out of your swain.

Play phantom: We’re assuming that you actually want to meet the object of your late-night Google stalking, so when it comes to digital flirting -- bring it offline ASAP. We’re also assuming that said person wants to meet you (we’re trusting you again here, guys -- hopefully you possess the social skills to recognize interest, unlike that aforementioned dude in the sports bar).

So why not ask them to hang in person? Or, better yet, in the presence of tons and tons of friends who can waylay a possible kidnapping/murder scenario.

Has Facebook Changed the Dating World?

In a society that is driven by gadgets, money and social networking sites, it is no wonder that Facebook has become a part of everyday life. The ability to share news and photographs at the click of a button from the comfort of your own home is certainly appealing. Sure, Facebook makes communicating easy and sure, Facebook allows you to stay in touch with people you would otherwise never see, but using these sites to date over the internet? Is that really what the world has come to? Gone are the days where one had to actually drive to someone’s house and knock on their front door if they wanted to see them.

Technology, including Facebook, has made us lazy and stolen our social skills. It is so easy to make a flippant request over the net when you’re not talking to someone face-to-face; heaven forbid if we actually had to pick up a landline phone to ask someone to the movies so that they could hear the sincerity, or lack of it, in our voice. Social networking sites such as Facebook have made it too easy to organise dates with people that we know, and people we don’t. Honestly, how well can you know someone that you meet over the internet? So what if they’ve made a couple of jokes, made you laugh and seem genuinely nice? A lecherous old man could be sitting behind the computer screen!

What we also need to realise is that the internet gives people fake courage. Some people might be able to ask their monitor out for dinner, but if it came to asking you out to your face, they would most probably flee. As a seventeen year-old female, I can honestly say I’ve seen my fair share of dates organised through technology. Sadly, the majority of these dates end the same way. Through an e-mail, an SMS, or simply a line on your Facebook wall where it is visible to everyone.

The teenagers of today have become cowardly, and when I say teenagers, I mean both male and females. People who wouldn’t normally talk are communicating online, and what good is it doing? Does this mean the relationship will remain solely online or via mobile phones? If you’ve never spoken a word to their face before, what happens when you see them down the street? They might be you’re number one friend online, but what do you say when you actually see them? To me, these unexpected, casual meetings in real life will be, at the minimum, extremely awkward.

And no, I’m not being naA?ve or narrow-minded. I’ve heard the love stories where the average, single girl meets her prince charming online and they live happily ever after. I’ve heard the people who claim they would never have met their soul mates had Facebook not been created. I know their stories, but how often does this actually happen? We all know the answer. Not much. Not much at all. Out of all the Facebook members and people who have a social networking account, these fairytales occur maybe one in a million cases, maybe less. Either way, the badly ended relationships far outweigh these magic, romantic stories.

Facebook is a great way to communicate; I honestly believe that. But when dating is involved, a little, old-fashioned bravery in terms of face-to-face communication would not go astray. I mean, really, how can you honestly know who you are talking to online? You can’t truly know a person simply from interacting with them online, not even in this day and age. We’re all waiting for our fairytale. We all want our very own happy ending. But Prince Charming, if you really are out there, please just give me a call. I’d rather hear you’re voice.

Social Gaming Meets Dating

The dating game has gotten more social with sites such as Zoosk incorporating Facebook-like features. But why not tap into one of the most popular aspects of Facebook — social games — to make dating more fun? That’s the idea of CupidsPlay, a new startup based in Bellevue, Wash. looking to leverage the power of games to bring potential matches together.

The site, which is officially launching Wednesday, is designed to use social games as a bridge to help singles break the ice. It’s an idea that’s still largely untapped, but it makes sense. Social games have a lot of engagement, are very viral and boast a good balance of genders, which is necessary for any dating site.

“If you look at the demographics of social games, it’s 54 percent female, 56 percent single and 74 percent said they’ve met new people in games,” said Founder and CEO Philip Yuen. “It’s really perfect for meeting new people.”

CupidsPlay is launching with about a dozen casual titles, including familiar genres like farming and restaurant-themed games. Users create profiles and identify the kind of people they’re looking for. As they play games, they publish their progress and requests for help, which other potential matches can see. A player can then choose to engage another person or help him or her out by buying them a virtual good.

Yuen said the goal is to enlist social and Flash game makers to build their games atop CupidsPlay, so CupidsPlay is making it easy for Facebook developers to port their games to the site. Developers can also run cross-platform titles on both Facebook and CupidsPlay. The attraction for developers is added distribution and the potential of making more money via sales of virtual goods. Yuen said the site will be free, but users will be able to buy virtual goods to help them progress in games or share as gifts for others. He expects members will not be shy about buying goods to help potential matches level up. CupidsPlay is not taking a cut of the virtual good sales yet though that could change in the future.

Yuen created CupidsPlay last year following three years at Amazon ( s amzn), which bought his mobile payment start-up TextPayMe. CupidsPlay closed half a million in seed funding two weeks ago from Clearstone Venture Partners and Yuen’s old boss, Amazon VP of Product Michael George. Yuen said the company will look to add more games, including more synchronous real-time titles instead of single-player social games as well as a video chat service. He said CupidsPlay will also eventually expand to mobile platforms as well.

The dating world is crowded with a lot of established players getting competition from more social and mobile-minded upstarts. We’re seeing more companies look at group-dating ideas to help bring people together. But with social gaming already a huge hit, it’s not a bad idea to integrate dating into the mix. Yuen said people still struggle to strike up conversations with other singles based on their dating profiles. Building conversations around games can be more fun and casual for gamers.

“When I look at profile and look at eye color and age and then have to think of something witty to say, it’s not very natural or effective,” said Yuen. “But when you want to talk to this girl or guy and they need help in leveling up, you can use that as a catalyst to start conversations.”

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Five Tips for Dating a Blogger

Bloggers are a rare breed, indeed. The die-hard blogger spends every waking (and sleeping) moment consumed with blogging, social media and metrics. Therefore, everything you’ve learned to-date about how to keep a man happy, like the old adage “the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”, has to be tossed out and it’s time to create a new arsenal. Understanding what makes a blogger tick will get you there, but first, take this little quiz to see how deep in you are.

Blogger Intensity Quiz:

Are the words page views, clicks, pickups and for the win used in high frequency?

Is his BlackBerry in hand, or very close by, at all times?

Is he able to post a picture to Facebook, or send a Tweet, before you can even blink an eye?

Is he constantly thinking of story ideas and testing headlines out loud?

Does he break into hashtags at any moment?

If you answered yes to three or more questions, you’ve got a die-hard on your hands. Don’t panic. You don’t have to dive into the deep end of the blogosphere to survive live happily together but, immersing yourself just a little bit will go a long way. Here are five tricks for the new arsenal.

1. Speak the language: Consolidate your communication to 140 character sound bites. Men already have an upper limit on how many words they can absorb at any given time, a trait that is only heightened for someone who lives in a world of 140 character @replies, DM’s and status updates. It actually wouldn’t be the worst habit to get into, given our female tendency to wordiness, plus it’s good training for your own tweets. For maximum impact, launch with attention grabbing headlines. “The REAL TRUTH behind ...”, or “What you DIDN’T KNOW about ...”, have proven to be particularly effective.

2. Present things in lists: Lists are a very effective tool since the blogger lives and breathes by the Top 5 and Top 10 tips, ways, reasons, etc ... Trust me, he’ll melt the second you propose “The top 5 restaurant choices for dinner tonight”, or whisper “The Top 5 reasons I love you” in his ear.

3. Master social media messaging: If you really want to rock his world, ditch voice in favor of text and social media messaging. DM’s, @replies, Facebook messages and chat all rule above the phone. Bonus: simultaneously message him across multiple platforms, pay back will be sweet.

4. Respect the Mayorship: Do yourself a favor and let him be the first to check in on Foursquare when you’re out and about. Although he’ll say he wants you to check in first so you’ll show up in his twitter stream and people will see you together (<3 <3), the almighty mayorship is the holy grail, don’t deprive him.

5. Find Twitter religion: Twitter is by far the most sacred of the social media platforms for a blogger, so this is the place you’ll really want to jump in. Some easy rules: RT his stuff, don’t compete for first twitpic and, most importantly, familiarize yourself with the twitter lexicon, aka hashtags.

Adopting some blogger-esque tendencies will pay off in spades. First, he’s always easy to reach, which makes communication a breeze any time, anywhere. Second, it’s admittedly a lot of fun, particularly if you go all and out share pics and videos socially as well. Third, and most important of all, you’ll make your blogger very happy and I don’t have to translate what that means ... get creative!

How Facebook Changed Dating As We Know It

Since its arrival years ago – at a time when most of the Carroll student body was in high school – Facebook has managed to ingrain itself into our daily existence, and change the ways we look at both our friendships and romantic relationships. It’s hard to imagine a time where we didn’t hear the words “poke”, “creep”, or “Facebook official” in everyday conversation. And like it or not, the popular social network site is here to stay.

Mashable.com, one of the internet’s leading news sources for all things social media, examined the ways Facebook has changed dating and came up with some key points that college students can likely agree on. The first, it gives the user a chance to obsess – more than usual – about their significant other (or potential significant other). Did they write on my wall? Will he or she poke me back? They didn’t put me in their profile picture, what gives? These anxieties can lead to Facebook stalking (better known as “creeping”), and a blow to the confidence level of the user.

Another downside Facebook has made to the dating world is the ability to constantly see what your ex-partner is up to – whether you like it or not. It’s hard enough to get back on your feet after a breakup, but having to look at posts in your NewsFeed seeing that he or she is so happy to be single again, or with their latest main squeeze, can be rough. The easiest way to bypass this is simply to defriend your ex, but if you can’t bring yourself to do that, another option is blocking their posts from showing up in your NewsFeed.

Keep in mind that when something is “Facebook official”, everyone can see that. And that includes when you break up. Breaking up on the social networking site is awkward and uncomfortable – having all your friends and classmates see that you are suddenly single – and running the risk of someone “liking” your newly-single ex’s changed relationship status – can be slightly overwhelming. The best thing to do in this situation is to stay classy – avoid any depressing statuses or digs at your ex. Keep the drama to a minimum and you can keep the peanut gallery from chiming in.

Finally – remember to utilize those privacy settings and use common sense while on the site. Just because Facebook has become such a commonplace thing in our lives shouldn’t mean you let your guard down. Practice safe behavior on Facebook – and all social network sites – so you won’t have anything to haunt you later.