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Modern Mating Methods: Dating Services & Strategies


As an avid watcher of old media, one of the situations that often come up is the plotline of computer dating. As presented in old shows, it is usually eager people who fill out questionnaires and, while waiting for the computer to tell them who to date, accidentally find somebody on their own and then have to prove to the corporation or computer that their human choice is the right one. Or, the computer sets them on a date with somebody completely wrong for them based on a mistaken answer, like a Love, American Style episode where two straight guys with ambiguous first names were set up on a date. It was so present in culture, I thought that it might be interesting to see what the history of computer dating was.

I found this article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...eird-tech-computer-dating-of-the-1960s/71217/


I certainly had never heard of the Scientific Marriage Foundation, so I thought I'd look for it, and discovered that it was founded in 1957 by George W. Crane, MD, PhD.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/05/marriage

So it only ran for three years! But it had an effect on pop culture stories for years to come. The same article above indicated that he started the thought process behind computer dating in the 30's:



This website has examples of the Marital Rating Scale tests with both the Wife's and the Husband's Chart. Can your partners pass the test??:
https://dustyoldthing.com/1939-marriage-quiz/

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!!! Argh!!! I remember the newspaper column from this guy, in the 1960s. I hated him and his "boudoir cheesecake" advice. He actively contributed to making me a feminist. A good wife was to subordinate her wishes and desires to her husband in ALL aspects of life. He even gave gratuitous advice on how often a wife should change the bedsheets, based on the types of pyjamas (cotton less frequently than nylon) and types of wifely duties. Argh....

I hope he is reincarnated as a woman, preferably as a ... well, I'll stop with my private, violent revenge fantasies :)
 
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!!! Argh!!! I remember the newspaper column from this guy, in the 1960s. I hated him and his "boudoir cheesecake" advice. He actively contributed to make me a feminist. A good wife was to subordinate her wishes and desires to her husband in ALL aspects of life. He even gave gratuitous advice on how often a wife should change the bedsheets, based on the types of pyjamas (cotton less frequently than nylon) and types of wifely duties. Argh....

I hope he is reincarnated as a woman, preferably as a ... well, I'll stop with my private, violent revenge fantasies :)
A man telling women not to wear cotton pyjamas?
Hilarious!
 
I actually met my Mrs-to-be through a dating service. We've been together almost 40 years, so I would say it's a good match.

No credit to the dating service, though-- I think their "scientific matching process" consisted of taking one name from the "Male" box and one from the "Female" box. They set me up with a lot of stinkers before I met "The One". I think it was just dumb luck that we wound up together.

An interesting factoid about the married couple that ran the dating service: The wife left her husband and ran off with the bookkeeper. Ah, romance . . .
 
Interesting. I thought about this as a potential biz. a good bit back, using FFM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits), and possibly others... and concluded that probably:

(1) Both partners need to be about the same level of conscientiousness. Lazy and industrious don't mix.
(2) Ditto orderliness. Tidy and wildly untidy don't mix.
(3) At least one half of every partnership must be quite agreeable.
(4) One half of every relationship needs to be emotionally stable.
(5) Extraversion/Intraversion need to be in the same ballpark, but a little difference might be a good thing.

Hypothesis only...

Since then I've concluded that it may be problematical if there's a >20 point IQ spread as there's some evidence that effective communication becomes a problem after that.

The same moral compass might not be a bad thing. If both partners are more-or-less ethical, then great. If both are weasels, then at least they're off the street and not fecking up a decent person's life. :)

One of each...not so good...
 
Some various vids on computer dating:

This first one is from Bloomberg about the history of computer dating:

Which talks about a Stanford experiment, the Happy Families Planning Service from 1959:
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/punch-card-love
In 1959, Jim Harvey, ’58, and Phil Fialer, ’60, MS ’64, enrolled in Math 139, Theory and Operation of Computing Machines. The draw: getting to do a project using Stanford’s IBM 650 mainframe computer. The pair chose to try their hand at matchmaking and put together questionnaires for the Happy Families Planning Service. The students were limited to five or 10 minutes on the mainframe, so they initially were able to run the punch cards for only 10 couples. But with the help of some lock-picking skills, Fialer and Harvey returned to the lab late one evening and ran the data for the rest of the questionnaires—a total of 49 couples.

The “dates” met up at a party hosted by Fialer and Harvey at their rented house on Los Trancos Woods Road in Portola Valley. A few of the pairings were unfelicitous: the computer matched a freshman from Wilbur with a divorcee with two children who lived in Los Trancos Woods. None resulted in a long-term match.

Fortunately, there is a recent interview with Jim & Phil:

An educational film on computer dating - starring Jennifer Grey!
This early '80s educational film shows us how the miracle of computer dating got started. A pre-Dirty Dancing Jennifer Grey tries hard to convince us she’s a high school girl who can`t get a boyfriend except through dizzyingly sophisticated computer technology (primitive line drawings on a screen). I checked, and this performance DOESN’T appear on her IMDB profile. “Nobody puts Baby in the corner!” was still a few years in the future.

Comedy routine on computer dating starring Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara:

A fairly late 1986 commercial for "Comdates" Computer Dating Service:
 
Some ads from back in the 60s / 70s - I guess they didn't go for computer dating:

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Some ads from back in the 60s / 70s - I guess they didn't go for computer dating:

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!!! Well, we really have advanced socially. I found both the female and male advertisements kinda sad. A lot of the misery for both men and women has been reduced for American society.

Dr. Crane's horrible advice column helped shape me as a feminist. I looked him up in Wikipedia, and found links to his two sons:

One was a congressman from Illinois, whose single claim to fame was - so he claimed - breaking Singapore's ban on chewing gum via a new American-Singaporian trade agreement.
One was a congressman from Indiana, whose claim to fame, unfortunately, was getting caught banging a 17 year old congressional page. Well, at least the page was female. Dad would have approved! I vaguely remember reading this at the time, but had no idea he was related to the advice columnist.
 
!!! Well, we really have advanced socially. I found both the female and male advertisements kinda sad. A lot of the misery for both men and women has been reduced for American society.

Dr. Crane's horrible advice column helped shape me as a feminist. I looked him up in Wikipedia, and found links to his two sons:

One was a congressman from Illinois, whose single claim to fame was - so he claimed - breaking Singapore's ban on chewing gum via a new American-Singaporian trade agreement.
One was a congressman from Indiana, whose claim to fame, unfortunately, was getting caught banging a 17 year old congressional page. Well, at least the page was female. Dad would have approved! I vaguely remember reading this at the time, but had no idea he was related to the advice columnist.

You're right - The Village Voice did a review of this George Crane, which no one should miss (LOL):

https://www.villagevoice.com/2013/02/11/heres-the-1950s-quiz-that-proves-you-are-a-terrible-wife/

Thank goodness for the rise of Gloria Steinem and the feminists!
 
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Surveys indicate a substantial portion of the people using dating apps are not in fact single ...
What the Hell Are Non-Single People Doing on Dating Apps?

Dating apps are a source of endless trust issues. Sometimes, you think you’ve met someone nice, but then suddenly, you’re crippled by doubt – Are they really single, or are they just omitting some of the details? ...

This common hunch is confirmed by the data – in a 2015 survey of 47,000 dating app users, the research firm GlobalWebIndex found that a whopping 42 percent of participants weren’t single. Among them, 30 percent were married and 12 percent were in a relationship. Other studies put the figure of partnered dating app users between 18 and 25 percent. ...

A 2018 study looked into why partnered people use Tinder. The main reasons they found were that they were using it either to look for hookups, or to see what was out there on the dating market and estimate their own value as a dating partner. On top of that, non-single users tended to have a more laissez-faire approach and were more likely to let other users approach them first. About half of non-singles surveyed said they had actually met up in person with someone from the app, while the other half didn’t feel the need to act on the curiosity. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5vv5w/why-are-non-single-people-on-dating-apps
 
There's been a crisis of confidence in using dating apps, and there are different opinions concerning whether the whole dating app approach is in decline.
‘Why am I talking to 10 guys?’ The rise and fall of dating apps

... It has been 10 years since Tinder revolutionised the landscape of dating by allowing its users to swipe right to like someone, and left to say no. In February it celebrated an impressive 75m monthly active users, but apps are coming under increased criticism as more of us begin to question the benefits of our constant swiping. The rate at which people download and delete dating apps is second only to online gambling, and a recent study from the Pew Research Center found that 45% of people who used dating apps recently said they left them feeling more frustrated than hopeful. ...

... [A]pps have moved dating from the public into the private sphere and in doing so they have removed any accountability. Now we connect with people when we’re shut away at home, under duvets, behind closed doors, which makes it so much easier to behave badly. We bench (put partners on hold until we find someone better), breadcrumb (provide enough attention to keep someone interested without ever actually committing) and ghost (disappear without explanation).

Others complain of “swipe fatigue”, when the pressure to match with and talk to multiple people at once starts to feel overwhelming. ...

The growing backlash against dating apps sounds like an exciting prospect. Will we lean over and start chatting up people on trains, asking them what they think of the book they’re reading, that you just happened to have finished two weeks ago? ...

Emily Rhodes, creative foresight analyst at the Future Laboratory consultancy is not so sure. “It’s become so formalised to look for dates through apps now that we’ve forgotten how to approach people in person. We worry if it’s inappropriate, if we might say something wrong or that the other person isn’t interested. On an app you can see on the profile what a person is looking for, something serious or casual. It’s all about communication and without apps maybe we’d have to relearn these social cues.” ...

Dating apps have changed us and in reality there’s probably no going back. When people don’t use apps, it doesn’t mean they start meeting in person, it just means they don’t meet anyone at all. ... We’re now so used to conducting our dating life via our phones, when we’re out we never think of meeting anyone. ...

In an attempt to forge deeper and more meaningful connections, apps are now responding to the current crisis in dating with personality-first or more niche formats. There’s Schmooze which attempts to match singles based on their humour. Ilios uses astrology to find your perfect partner, and Kippo allows you to date in the metaverse as a playable character. Snack, meanwhile, is a video-based dating app. And on the even more obscure side, there’s apps for clowns, farmers and people with beards.

“When we see app companies introducing new features, we’re just like, fantastic, you’re missing the point yet again,” says Matt McNeill Love, co-founder of Thursday, the rapidly growing dating app and events company. “No amount of gimmicks, videos, voice notes on your profiles, icebreaker games, vegan-only dating apps, gym lover-apps, is going to fix the issue with the singles market which is that at some point you’re going to have to get face-to-face and you’re better doing that sooner rather than later. ..."

Thursday isn’t the only place people are seeking offline connections, there’s been a spike in speed dating events, singles nights and matchmaking services at a more grassroots level. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/nov/20/the-rise-and-fall-of-dating-apps
 
Video dating was really the zenith. As demonstrated here... (NSFW)

 
Techy and I met online, not through a dating site though. Just chatting on AOL. We've been together 25 years this summer! :)

My brother also met a partner online, but he drew the relationship short straw and pulled a nutter. :rollingw:
 
I went on a blind date once with a lady who turned up completely drunk, wearing tracksuit trousers with a suit jacket, and walked into a wall.

It actually ended up being a pretty good night though.
Her dress sense could have been worse- I once saw a woman waiting at a bus stop in Liverpool wearing a pink shell suit and high heels. Her, not the bus stop.
 
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