Show me your ...

Like a lot of people a few years back, I subscribed to a great number of internet-based services that were attempting to commoditize some aspect of communications. Online dating/personals, auctions, 'social networking' and other sites promised to speed things up through the miracle of the Internet. In retrospect there are some good reasons why these attempts were destined to be in vain. The free rider problem is one of them, of course, but the human element is the other. There's a couple of aspects to humanity that doom almost all of this stuff.

The first problem, of course, is chemistry. Why hasn't "social networking" taken off? The premise is simple: put your rolodex online in the same format as everyone else's, and it will be trivial to find "friend-of-a-friend" connections, a la the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game, that nobody knew about. Looking for a plumber? Your coworker's cousin Diane is dating one. Who knew! But this basically makes a game out of building and traversing a graph. Woo-hoo!

I'm sorry folks, but if someone walked up to me and said, "According to the Internet, you know my cousin Steve, and so I'd like to meet a friend of yours, David, in order that he may introduce me to his brother the architect," I don't know whether I'd laugh or just smack him. Social networking is a fantasy. It's a fantasy that can work over the Internet, of course. But usually it takes the same form it takes off-line: people actually communicating with each other. The Lions, Elks, Rotarians, and so forth were based on the same premise: get to know these guys and then benefit from the social network. But they're not real popular right now for a couple of good reasons, both of which are spelled "value."

First of all, as Francis Fukuyama has pointed out, (review) Americans don't share values any more. This is something that profoundly bothers me, and it's on my list of things to think about. It bothers me so much, in fact, that I tend to see this as an explanation for a lot of things. Maybe I'm fixated, or maybe I'm right. But fraternal groups like these require membership that shares a set of core values, and gains satisfaction from working toward the stated values of the organization. This means charitable works, usually, but it could mean the pursuit of politics or preservation of animals or any of a number of things.

Anyway, the second reason is that fraternal organizations just don't provide much value any longer. Most Americans are no longer independent entrepreneurs, nor laborers. The value of local networking is to local businesses and local workers. Americans now commute miles to work, and work mostly in white-collar or service positions. The home-town fraternal lodge can't offer them much in the way of support because the wrong people show up.

This would suggest that social networking sites should be going like gangbusters: after all, the Internet lets groups self-select, so the left-handed, red-haired, albino Republicans for responsible abortion laws should be able to find each other on-line. But there's a difference between social networking and networking. It's one thing to mention to your red-headed buddies that you're needing a job. That's networking and we all became adults the moment we truly understood that jobs come from people you know, not the classified ads.

Social networking, as in "social networking website," claims to do the same job only universally. But there's no shared values there. And with no shared values, there's no trust, and Fukuyama scores again. No trust, and no relationship, means we're back to your girlfriend's sister's boyfriend's roommate, the plumber. Yes, you're better connected to him than to Kevin Bacon, but why should you trust him?

Likewise online dating. What every guy wants, of course, is DominHoes: we'll have a stripper at your house in thirty minutes or less. Just pull up our website, pick the hot babe you want, and type in your credit card number! Of course online dating sites are swamped with guy registrations, but have to pull teeth to get girls. In fact, until the advent of cross-country stalking with supersites like Yahoo! Personals and AdultFriendFinder, most dating sites charged money for guys but admitted girls for free. If this sounds like "Ladies Night" at your local bar, there's a reason for it.

The dating thing actually sounds better than the social networking idea, and in fact I know of at least two couples who met via computer and are married: success stories, surely. But let's look at the human elements of online dating:

• There is a strong element of distrust.

Online dating is basically an automation of one particular form of networking: meeting new people. The reason it's successful is that meeting new people is itself filled with distrust. Neither men nor women trust recommendations from their friends, because they know their friends, and so know what a bunch of disfunctional whackos their friends are likely to recommend (including themselves, to the other person). Likewise, social activities like music and dancing have been subverted by commercial interests: towns no longer have fairs and dances because bars and theaters have commercialized and commoditized the experience. But the bars and theaters impose their own levies: you have to buy drinks, or pay for admission, or both. This means that when the average person tries to meet new people, they're usually in a situation where they can't trust anyone: the venue owners just want money; their friends just want them (and their cousin's girlfriend) to stop whining about not having a date. In short, meeting someone via the internet can't really be any worse than doing it the 'normal' way.

(It's telling that so many relationships get started in school or at work. The difference, obviously, is continued exposure in a setting that isn't overtly designed to coerce taking the least-bad-choice as quickly as possible. With the exception of summer breaks in high school, there isn't really a "closing time," with all the implied pressure.)

Anyway, once you're at a bar or club, the level of distrust continues to rise. Girls and women cannot go out "solo" -- a herd is necessary for mutual defense. Worse, even with herd behavior there is the new risk of drug-based attack. Once a drink has been out of eyesight it can no longer be trusted: it might be laced with chemicals. At some level it's surprising that men and women manage to get together at all.

This means online dating is essentially a change in ordering, nothing more. The distaff side of the equation are now able to do the sort of "take home to mother" calculation about their prospective dates in advance. "Oh, he's cute and a lawyer -- mom would love him!" And if it ever comes time to meet in real life, to discover how much of the electronic version is horse (and how much is manure), well the distrust rears its head once again but in a much lower intensity. We're not going out hoping to meet anyone, we're going out to meet a specific someone. The level of control, and therefore safety, is actually higher.

• There is a stigma of desperation.

If you're using an online service, it must be because you can't hack it in the competitive world of high-stakes bar-hopping. From craigslist to Yahoo!, a huge percentage of personal ads start out with "I'm tired of the dating scene" or "I can't believe I'm doing this, but ..." More than anything else, they remind me of all those "Letters to Penthouse" from yesteryear: "I never thought I'd be writing to you, but ..."

The stigma isn't just one-sided, though: a huge percentage of ads disclaim "I'm not interested in one-night stands." If all the disclaimers are based on experience, the women who use personal ads must be surprisingly easy to get into bed. But I suspect that sixty to eighty percent of women, because of distrust if nothing else, aren't having sex in the parking lot with a guy they just met online. (If they are, then Yahoo! stock is lower than it should be.) Instead, I think they are projecting the same stigma onto the guys who might eventually respond to their ads: "I feel a little soiled just posting this ad, but I know that you guys are a bunch of desperate losers for reading them."

• There is a desperate search for objectivity.

This one is driven by the online personals creators themselves. "How can we make our service more attractive?" they ask. "Make customers more successful!" But how can they make their customers successful? Well, they could return more results, but that requires more customers, which requires a more attractive service.

Or they could do a better job matching the customers they already have! More algorithmic assistance. "We need to sort the customer's future spouse right to the top. And put a little icon: "You're going to marry this one!" Of course, we can only do that if we have more "facts" about the customers. So we'll have to ask more questions!" How much do you weight? How much do you earn? Do you prefer dogs or cats? Paper or plastic? Democrat or Republican? Mushrooms or pepperoni? Jedi or Sith?

• There is grim acceptance of futility.

Given the opportunity to break themselves down into smaller and smaller quanta, few do. Income: 30-32k, 32-34k, 34-36k, what difference can it really make? Anyone who fills in the data subjects themselves to the risk of being rejected on the basis of that data. James Surowiecki talks a little about this mutuality of expectation in his "The Wisdom of Crowds" in addressing the behavior of the stock market. Specifically, he mentions that unlike a television, that you buy to use and own until it's time for a new one, investments are purchased with an eye to the expectation of other people's appreciation of its value.

Consider his example, the "beauty contest problem." A newspaper publishes 100 photos of girls. Each contestant is to choose and rank the 6 prettiest girls. The winner of the contest is not a girl, but the respondent whose answers most closely model the aggregate opinion of all the respondents. In this contest, entries aren't based on "which one I think is prettiest," but rather on "which one I think all the other entrants will think all the other entrants will think is prettiest." (You may want to parse that sentence again. Take your time. There should be four "think"s.)

Similarly, in on-line dating ads the "objective" answers so obviously differ from reality in many cases that it takes a moment to understand that no, this person is probably not a pathological liar with delusions of grandeur, but rather is unwilling to write down an answer that is likely to be filtered out. That isn't lying, folks, it's competing: the same hormones that prompt men to risk rejection over and over again, and make women risk date-rape drugs and back seat mauling are at work again. If there is any hope of success from an online dating site, there's just exactly that much pressure not to tell the truth. Where honesty will penalize you, lie! Five foot six and 250? That's "a few extra pounds". Drug and disease free? Isn't everyone?

• There's no willingness to commit.

So what do on-line personal ads have to offer, really? Unquestionable objectivity, private information, and subjective evaluation. The unquestionable objectivity comes with the inevitability of truth. Nobody will expect to be rewarded for a glaring lie, so the 5' 6" 250# respondent answers "a few extra pounds" and not "thin" because the bluff will be called if a date results. Height and number of kids are probably going to be honest. Similarly, "unsignificant" questions will likely get truthful answers, especially if the risk is higher than the reward: who would answer "Liberal" if they weren't willing to date another liberal? Finally, of course, the photos provide some objective data: how many chins does it take to get out of "a few extra pounds" and into "thick"?

Another option, which dating sites surprisingly haven't pursued to my knowledge, is keeping the answers to some questions private. "Tell us the truth," the argument would go, "because we're not going to reveal the answers." This may have been tried already: I haven't encountered it but then I don't spend that much time searching the web for dating sites (when I'm ready to marry, I'll send off to some second- or third- world country and eliminate all the uncertainty). I suspect that the one remaining risk to the "private information" approach is the fear of fear itself. "I'm a loser for using an online site. I must have low self-esteem. My answers will tend to be low." Regardless, I think the notion of "public criteria but private data" would put the value back into on-line services. Instead of an entity that was holding your future amor hostage, they would be a valuable service that respects your privacy by suggesting connections without explaining quite why.

Everyone, of course, wants to be judged on their own merits. "I want a partner that values me for myself!" Preferably, of course, one with big hooters. This is the "subjective evaluation" part. Every user is looking for something for them. Not the general consensus prettiest girl, but the one that they like best. The only subjective areas are photos and the dreaded "essay" parts of the ad. The photos, of course, are hit or miss. 250 pounds looks better on Ben Miller, tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles, than it does on Anna Nicole Smith, former porn star. Some people have lots of digital pictures of themselves and can post the best of the bunch. Others have none, or only a few, and have to suck it up.

But the thing that motivated me to write this entire post was the "essay" responses I saw in a few ads. There seems to be two different ways to approach the essay. The first way, increasingly common, is "ask me when we get together." These tends to have a short list of either descriptive snippets ("My friends think I'm funny and cute") or requirements ("No drama. No baby's mama. No pet llama!"). Short, regardless of viewpoint, but essentially useless.

Alternatively, there's a long response. It's hard to write a long response. It's hard to write anything, according to me and everyone else in my ENG-xxx classes, and writing a persuasive essay about why some stranger should want to "love me and squeeze me and call me 'darling'" is even harder. You've got to drag out all those uncomfortable personal self-critiques, find something you like about yourself, and expose it to other people. Worse, of course, would be talking about the things you don't like.

It feels like you're putting your soul on display. And of course there's that fear of rejection. We avoid the honest "objective" answers because we know they'll be used against us in some unseen stranger's query. Putting down a long, meaningful description of yourself is worse, in a way, because you'll be judged. Everyone wants to be judged on their own merits, but what if being a good writer isn't one of those merits? Worse yet, of course, what if you mention the wrong merit. Should you mention being a stamp collector? That embarrassing mole?

What it comes down to, though, is a question of value. On-line personals aren't valuable as a list of people looking to meet other people. Anyone who wants a list of people's names can just go to a bar. Sure, it's a little hard to break the ice, but once you get a rhythm going you can probably get one name (with email or phone #) every minute. Just act extroverted, like any show host from MTV. Where's the value, though, in that? The next day, it's "Hi, I'm the weird extrovert you thought was a host for a TV show. Wanna go out?" Suddenly we're back where we started from. How not cool is that?

What then is the real, tangible value to me (or anyone else) from a personals website? What can I trust? What useful information will I get?

Well, the quantized "objective" data will be so biased as to be useless, at least to me: I like girls with "a few extra pounds", especially (ahem) well-distributed ones. A few, though, doesn't mean "more than eighty," which means all those answers are pretty much out. So the extent to which I use an on-line service will depend on the subjective stuff: the photos, and the essay responses.

Show me your tits, ladies. Or show me your soul.