Amy Webb was having no luck with online dating. The dates she liked didn't write her back, and her own profile attracted crickets (and worse). So, as any fan of data would do: she started making a spreadsheet. Hear the story of how she went on to hack her online dating life -- with frustrating, funny and life-changing results.
Relationships
TED: Christopher Ryan presents Are We Designed To Be Sexual Omnivores?
Here's a recent clip of Dr. Christopher Ryan discussing his theories on (non-)monogamy. Keep in mind that many in the academic community take issue with his data and his interpretation of that data, even though most agree with the overall message that non-monogamy may not be the boogeyman that it's made out to be.
Creepy facial recognition app.
From the CBC:
NameTag: Facial Recognition App Criticized as Creepy and Invasive by Lauren O'Neil
If all goes well for the developers of a new facial recognition app, getting detailed personal information about a stranger in your midst could one day be as easy as glancing in their direction.
Released in beta for Google Glass last month, "NameTag" works by scanning the face of a person captured in Glass' video feed against photos from dating sites and social media networks to determine who they are - everything from their name and occupation, to their latest post on Instagram.
The app's creator, FacialNetwork.com, says it uses "some of the most accurate facial recognition software in the world" to compare millions of public records, returning a stranger's name, additional photos, and links to their public social media profiles within seconds.
"No longer will social media be limited to the screens of desktops, tablets and smartphones," reads a press release issued by the company. "With the NameTag app running on Google Glass a user can simply glance at someone nearby and instantly see that person's name, occupation and even visit their Facebook, Instagram or Twitter profiles in real-time."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVwBXr_nU9Q
While currently only available to Google Glass beta testers, FacialNetwork.com hopes to bring the app to smartphones in the future. This would allow users to snap photos of people around them, upload said photos to the app, and scan for personal information on the spot.
The company also claims its technology can let users scan more than 450,000 entries in the U.S. National Sex Offender Registry, potentially identifying another person's criminal background upon site.
"It's much easier to meet interesting new people when we can simply look at someone, see their Facebook, review their LinkedIn page or maybe even see their dating site profile," said NameTag's creator Kevin Alan Tussy. "Often we were interacting with people blindly or not interacting at all. NameTag on Google Glass can change all that."
Change things it could, but not if privacy advocates have their way.
Despite the company's claim that anyone can opt out of its database, many are discomforted by the idea that such a tool may exist in the first place.
Read the rest here.
Romantic Short: Paperman.
in Attraction, Love, Relationships
From Disney Studios:
New research: Decreasing frequency of sex associated with electronic devices in bed.
From the CBC:
People having less sex because of social media distractions: study by Jennifer Dunning
Next time you're feeling frisky, consider leaving your smartphone or tablet out of the bedroom.
A new study out of the U.K. suggests Britons are having less sexbecause they are distracted by social media and are taking their portable technology with them into the bedroom.
The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles found that, between 2010 and 2012, men aged 16 to 44 had sex 4.9 times a month, and women of the same age range 4.8 times a month.
For men, this compares to:
- 6.2 times a month from 1999 to 2001
- 6.4 times a month from 1990 to 1991
For women, this compares to:
- 6.3 times a month from 1999 to 2001
- 6.1 times a month from 1990 to 1991
"We... think modern technologies are behind the trend. People have tablets and smartphones and they are taking them into the bedroom, using Twitter and Facebook, answering emails," Dr. Cath Mercer of University College London told BBC.
Brits not getting enough nookie? The study's sexual nature has quickly become fodder for jokes online.
If someone has to step up to the challenge, I guess i will have to volunteer. RT Britons having sex less often
-- Mark Leiser (@mleiser) November 26, 2013
The results of the study, which is done every 10 years, was published in The Lancet Tuesday.
More than 15,000 adults aged 16 to 74 participated in the study between September 2010 and August 2012.
"Two previous ... surveys have taken place, in 1990 and 2000, making it one of the biggest and most comprehensive studies of sexual behaviour undertaken in a single country," according to The Lancet.
Researchers say unemployment is also a factor that contributes to Brits having sex less often because it can result in depression followed by low libido -- but technology is a definite part of the equation.
"At the other end of the scale iPads and computers have all breached the boundary between the home and the bedroom," said professor Kaye Wellings, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which helped interview participants.
New Zealand MP on gay marriage.
Worthy of a repost. New Zealand recently passed law making gay marriage legal. This MP managed to be funny and cutting at the same time. It's brilliant.
Meghalaya: home to two matrilineal tribes.
From Aljazeera:
Meghalaya: Where women call the shots Many Indian women cry out for equality, but a matrilineal culture thrives with little parallel in the northeast. by Subir Bhaumik
Shillong, India - In a far corner of India, a country where women usually cry out for equality, respect and protection, there's a state where men are asking for more rights.
Meghalaya - "Home of Clouds" - is picturesque state with its capital Shillong a regional hub for education and the trend-setter for the Westernised culture that's accepted by most tribes in the country's northeast.
The two major tribes of Meghalaya, Khasis and Jaintias, are matrilineal with a vengeance. Children take the mother's surname, daughters inherit the family property with the youngest getting the lion's share, and most businesses are run by women.
Known as the "Khatduh", the youngest daughter anchors the family, looking after elderly parents, giving shelter and care to unmarried brothers and sisters, and watching over property.
The Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Act protects the matrilineal structure.
Some trace the origins of the system to Khasi and Jaintia kings, who preferred to entrust the household to their queens when they went to battle. This custom has continued to provide women the pride of place in the tribal society.
"Matriliny safeguards women from social ostracism when they remarry because their children, no matter who the father was, would be known by the mother's clan name. Even if a woman delivered a child out of wedlock, which is quite common, there is no social stigma attached to the woman in our society," says Patricia Mukhim, a national award-winning social activist who edits the Shillong Times newspaper.
Mukhim says her society will not succumb to the dominant patriarchial system in most of India.
"We have interfaced with several cultures and our women have married people from other Indian provinces and from outside India. But very few Khasi women have given up their culture," says Mukhim. "Most have transmitted the culture to their children born out of wedlock with non-Khasis."
Anirban Roy, a Bengali married to a Jaintia woman whom he met as a fellow student in a veterinary college, says he faced no problem adjusting to the matrilineal culture of his wife's family.
"Everyone in the wife's clan made it a point to come and introduce themselves, and invite me to their houses either for lunch or dinner to know each other better. Whenever we face a problem, the members of my wife's clan rushed to our help," said Roy. "As a groom, I enjoyed great respect and privilege."
Read the rest here.
Vice: Boyfriends for Hire in Japan.
From Vice:
In Japan, it's not uncommon for successful women to pay attractive young men huge sums of money for a few cocktails and an hour of platonic companionship. VICE in conjunction with Schweppes sends correspondent Joel Cornell to Shibuya to explore this strange world and to find out if he can cut it as a professional boyfriend for hire.
New show: Masters of Sex.
Showtime will be featuring a new series about Masters and Johnson starting this fall! They cast some excellent actors - hopefully the writing is good, too.
The homepage for the show: link.
Here's the trailer for the series:
New research: Friends with benefits relationships (FWB).
Despite the fact that FWB relationships have become very common, there's still little research examining the nature and impact (both positive and negative) of these types of relationships. This recent study was just published online in the Archives of Sexual Behavior:
Friendship After a Friends with Benefits Relationship: Deception, Psychological Functioning, and Social Connectedness Abstract
Friends with benefits (FWB) relationships are formed by an integration of friendship and sexual intimacy, typically without the explicit commitments characteristic of an exclusive romantic relationship. The majority of these relationships do not transition into committed romantic relationships, raising questions about what happens to the relationship after the FWB ends. In a sample of 119 men and 189 women university students, with a median age of 19 years and the majority identified as Caucasian (63.6 %), we assessed relationship adjustment, feelings of deception, perception of the FWB relationship and friendship, social connectedness, psychological distress, and loneliness. Results demonstrated that the majority of FWB relationships continued as friendships after the sexual intimacy ceased and that about 50 % of the participants reported feeling as close or closer to their FWB partner. Those who did not remain friends were more likely to report that their FWB relationship was more sex- than friendship-based; they also reported higher levels of feeling deceived by their FWB partner and higher levels of loneliness and psychological distress, but lower levels of mutual social connectedness. Higher levels of feeling deceived were related to feeling less close to the post-FWB friend; also, more sex-based FWB relationships were likely to result in post-FWB friendships that were either more or less close (as opposed to unchanged). FWB relationships, especially those that include more attention to friendship based intimacy, do not appear to negatively impact the quality of the friendship after the “with benefits” ends.
The reference, for those who would like to read the full article (search through UBC Library, PsycInfo):
Owen, J., Fincham, F. D., & Manthos, M. (2013). Friendship after a friends with benefits relationship: Deception, psychological functioning, and social connectedness. Archives of Sexual Behaviour, DOI: 10.1007/s10508-013-0160-7 (published online first).
DOMA struck down.
This is a huge day in the States. The Supreme Court ruled that the Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA), banning same sex marriage, is unconstitutional. This means that the federal government will now legally recognize same sex marriages. While this is a massive victory for gay rights at the federal level, it still leaves room for individual states to write their own laws regarding gay marriage. As it stands, 30 stated have amended their constitutions to forbid same-sex marriage. So the battle will now be taken to the state level.
Not surprisingly, this story has been all over the news. Here's a sample from the Huffington Post:
Supreme Court DOMA Decision Rules Federal Same-Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional
WASHINGTON -- The Defense of Marriage Act, the law barring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages legalized by the states, is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday by a 5-4 vote.
"The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. "By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment."
Justice Kennedy delivered the court’s opinion, and was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito all filed dissenting opinions. Justice Clarence Thomas joined Scalia's dissent in whole and parts of Alito's opinion.
As Kennedy read the majority opinion from the bench, cries were heard in the courtroom when the justice delivered the verdict that DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment. A number of same-sex couples sitting in the audience looked up at the ceiling, while others wiped away tears.
DOMA, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, prevented same-sex couples whose marriages were recognized by their home state from receiving the hundreds of benefits available to other married couples under federal law. During the Obama administration, the Justice Department initially defended DOMA in court despite the administration’s desire to repeal it. But the Justice Department changed course in early 2011, finding that the law was unconstitutional and declining to defend it any longer. (The majority opinion slightly criticized that decision on Wednesday, writing that the "failure to defend the constitutionality of an Act of Congress based on a constitutional theory not yet established in judicial decisions" had "created a procedural dilemma.") House Republicans have since spent hundreds of thousands of dollars taking over that defense.
Read the rest, plus tons of video and photos from around the web, here.
This American Life: The Sanctity of Marriage.
If you've never had a chance to check out the radio show, This American Life, you really should. Each week they address a theme through documentary real-life stories and interviews. It's very popular, and rightly so.
Jasmine sent me the following email:
Not sure if you've heard this before - I actually came across this while listening to some older episodes of This American Life a while ago! It has clips of audio from Gottman's recordings of couples and their interactions, and is pretty entertaining! The rest of the stories in this episode all revolve around marriage/divorce and relationships as well, so I think it's a good listen, so thought I'd pass it along!
Go listen to it here.
New app: Lulu.
From The Gloss:
Review Men Like Restaurants With New Lulu App, The Yelp Of Romance (For Girls!)
Someone once Tweeted, ”Yelp.com: explore where local illiterates have recently stopped eating.”
If you are one of the many people who find Yelp to be a source of valuable information (not in the social anthropology sense), however, you may be receptive to this new Lulu app, which is to men as Yelp is to restaurants. All you need is a Facebook profile confirming your femaleness and you can go on Lulu and review exes, crushes, hook-ups, current loves, friends and relatives. Like meat, but with abs.
According to founder Alexandra Chong, she “created Lulu because my girlfriends and I needed it.” But also because people will download and use such a service, seeing as how any technology that promotes and cultivates human vileness tends to be very popular.
Here is a description of Lulu for you, by Lulu:
Lulu is the smart girls’ app for private recommendations and reviews on guys.
Lulu takes its cues from the real world: we meet a guy and think he’s cute, but want to know if he’s the charmer he appears or really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. So we ask our girlfriends, and look him up on Facebook and Google. It’s a private, fun ritual we all indulge in, often complicated by the fact that we don’t want the guy to know we’re checking out his creds.
Enter Lulu—the first database of men, built by women, for women. Through Lulu, you can read and write reviews of guys, which are pulled from a variety of tools, questionnaires, and fun features. The reviews show numerical scores across a number of categories, putting the emphasis on collective wisdom.
[...]
But there are obviously bigger and grosser aspects than the stupid hashtags. Namely, this whole thing is really objectifying. People aren’t movies. Or restaurants. They shouldn’t be reviewed and then ranked, publicly, according to their score. That’s what Maxim does.
It’s also impressive how poorly Lulu manages to reflect on both genders. Not every woman internet stalks dudes and then gabs with her “girlfriends” about it over lemon drops or half-caff beverages or fat free stuff because life isn’t the first act of a fucking romcom. Moreover still, not everybody’s straight (though Lulu is only concerned with them). Things just harken back to a simpler time with the Lulu app, a time when men were men (with lots of money and cars and love-believing!) and women were kind of sad and desperate with no real personality to speak of. Per the brand’s press release: Lulu aims “to create a discreet, private space for girls to talk about the most important issues in their lives: their relationships.” The worst.
Though we’re certainly more used to seeing stuff like this with women as the target, we’d like to emphasize this sucks when it’s done to anyone. Regardless of gender, we’re not in favor of anything that offers a space for people to say mean things about other people* under the guise of helping… though the glossy, airheaded faux female empowerment makes it even harder to swallow.
Read the rest here.
The homepage for the app is here.
Some enterprising young man has created an app that allows men access to the Lulu database (which they can't normally access) and see their own reviews, and reviews of their Facebook friends. Check it out here.
Polyandry.
From The Atlantic:
When Taking Multiple Husbands Makes Sense
For generations, anthropologists have told their students a fairly simple story about polyandry -- the socially recognized mating of one woman to two or more males. The story has gone like this:
While we can find a cluster of roughly two dozen societies on the Tibetan plateau in which polyandry exists as a recognized form of mating, those societies count as anomalous within humankind. And because polyandry doesn't exist in most of the world, if you could jump into a time machine and head back thousands of years, you probably wouldn't find polyandry in our evolutionary history.
That's not the case, though, according to a recent paper in Human Nature co-authored by two anthropologists, Katherine Starkweather, a PhD candidate at the University of Missouri, and Raymond Hames, professor of anthropology at the University of Nebraska. While earning her masters under Hames' supervision, Starkweather undertook a careful survey of the literature, and found anthropological accounts of 53 societies outside of the "classic polyandrous" Tibetan region that recognize and allow polyandrous unions. (Disclosure: I first learned of Starkweather's project while researching a controversy involving Hames and he is now a friend.)
Indeed, according to Starkweather and Hames, anthropologists have documented social systems for polyandrous unions "among foragers in a wide variety of environments ranging from the Arctic to the tropics, and to the desert." Recognizing that at least half these groups are hunter-gatherer societies, the authors conclude that, if those groups are similar to our ancestors -- as we may reasonably suspect -- then "it is probable that polyandry has a deep human history."
Read the rest here.
Research from Match.com.
Back in 2011 Match.com, a massive online dating site, bought OKCupid, another massive online dating sites. Someone at OKCupid, being a total data dork and genius, started analyzing data the site collected and published the findings on the OKCupid blog, OKTrends. It was amazing, and became very popular. I've posted about it before (here, here, here and here). When Match.com bought OKCupid, they were smart enough to keep the blog going, albeit under a new name (link here). They've started creating videos based on their data. Here is the most recent one:
They also still publish their data in text format, too. Here's some recent data on FWB relationships:
Friends with Benefits: An Emerging Stage in Romance? 47% of singles are have had a friend with benefits relationship in the past (40% of women and 53% of men). More than ever before, friends with benefits are turning into long-term relationships (2012: 44%, 2011: 20%).
More than ever before, singles are having friends with benefits situations and one-night stands:
One-night stand: 2011: 13%; 2012: 54% Friends with benefits: 2011: 20%; 2012: 47% One Night Stands
1/3 (33%) of singles have had a one-night stand turn into a relationship; more men than women (35% vs. 30%) have experienced this 1/3 of singles (31%) had a one-night stand last year (2012) 44% of single women have had a one-night stand in their past 63% of single men have had a one-night stand in their past
Much more here.
Josey Vogels talks about being too busy for sex.
Josey Vogels is Canada's best known sexpert. She writes two sex advice columns, has authoured several books and is regular contributor on radio, TV and on the web. She recently sat down with Q guest host Jann Arden to discuss sex for busy couples.
From the CBC:
The start of a romantic relationship can be intense and exciting -- a time filled with an abundance of passion, desire, and a lot of times, sex. But as time passes with the same partner, the intimate connection can also fade. The focus shifts from romantic gestures to asking, "why there are socks on the floor?"
The lack of spark between long-term couples is why Canadian sex expert Josey Vogels wrote Better Sex in No Time: A Guide for Busy Couples. There are a ton of sex and relationships books on the market. With this one, Vogels wanted to address what she sees as a universal problem.
In an interview on Q with guest host Jann Arden, Vogels says her book is about getting down to the basics: What is intimacy in a relationship? What does it mean to stay connected? How do you keep intimacy in your relationship one gesture at a time?
"Romance is whatever it takes in your relationship to make your partner feel appreciated, like you're noticing them and that you still care that they're there," she says.
The way romance is portrayed in pop culture hasn't helped.
"You see in movies these huge gestures and romances like a man in tights playing a lute. It's these weird abstract ideas of romance. It's really intimidating for men because they don't know what the heck it is, and women have this weird idea about what it is because they've been fed all this garbage in movies and what it should be."
Everyone thinks everyone else is having more sex than them. Vogels tells them to stop thinking about others and to focus on their own relationship.
"It's important to reenergize the brain pattern we had at the beginning. I always tell women to start thinking with their genitals a little bit. Try to rekindle that sexual being inside yourself."
She says it's the simple things that matter and to focus on the positive. Be kind to one another. Verbalize the things you like about the partner. Hold hands and kiss each other. Dress up for dinner. If you're going to wear pyjamas, make them silk.
"Put yourself in a sexual frame of mind once in a while. You need to take care of your sexual being."
Listen to the interview here.
Drugs for relationships.
in Attitudes, Love, Relationships
This piece from The Atlantic has been getting tons of attention over the last little while. It's a long read, but fascinating (and polarizing), if you've got the time.
The Case for Using Drugs to Enhance Our Relationships (and Our Break-Ups)
George Bernard Shaw once satirized marriage as "two people under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, who are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part."
Yikes. And yet, nearly all human cultures value some version of marriage, as a nurturing emotional foundation for children, but also because marriage can give life an extra dimension of meaning. But marriage is hard, for biochemical reasons that may be beyond our control. What if we could take drugs to get better at love?
Perhaps we could design "love drugs," pharmaceutical cocktails that could boost affection between partners, whisking them back to the exquisite set of pleasures that colored their first years together. The ability to do this kind of fine-tuned emotional engineering is beyond the power of current science, but there is a growing field of research devoted to it. Some have even suggested developing "anti-love drugs" that could dissolve abusive relationships, or reduce someone's attachment to a charismatic cult leader. Others just want a pill to ease the pain of a wrenching breakup.
[...]
At first blush, love may seem like a poor prospect for pharmacological intervention. The reflexive dualist in us wants to say that romantic relationships are matters of the soul, and that souls ought to be free of medical tinkering. Oxford ethicist Brian Earp argues that we should resist these intuitions, and be open to the upswing in human well-being that successful love drugs could bring about. Over a series of several papers, Earp and his colleagues, Anders Sandberg and Julian Savulescu, make a convincing case that couples should be free to use "love drugs," and that in some cases, they may be morally obligated to do so. I recently caught up with Earp and his colleagues by email to ask them about this fascinating ethical frontier. What follows is a condensed version of our exchange.
Read the rest here.
"Saddest map in America."
From Psychology Today:
Missed Connections
Seen but not spoken to: An atlas of where we’re (almost) finding love.
Turns out Cupid has no boundaries—and he visits WalMart more frequently than you thought. So reveals Dorothy Gambrell's "Missed Connections" map, which appears in the February issue of Psychology Today.
The map, which breaks down, state-by-state, the most common hotspots for Missed Connections posted on Craigslist, has been making a stir on the web over the past couple of days. Denizens of states across country came away with their own interpretations, questions and repudiations. Some of the most common reactions:
Oklahomans crushing on Oklahomans at the state fair? Adorable!
WalMart, a leading love incubator in 15 states? How sad!
Indianans missing connections at home? Hm...
New Yorkers, Atlantans and Northwesterners commiserated about nearly meeting someone in transit.
Californians patted themselves on the backs for working out all the time.
And Andrew Sullivan summarized a common sentiment, calling it the "saddest map in America."
The map (click to make larger):
Oversharing on Facebook.
From the Huffington Post (and all over the web):
Facebook Valentines: Study Finds Oversharing On Personal Life Hurts Romantic Relationships You may want to think twice before declaring to the world your love for your "valentine" this Valentine's Day.
Through three separate studies, psychology researchers from the University of Kansas found that people in romantic relationships don't like their partner broadcasting their feelings to the Facebook world.
One of the problems with your significant other opening up on Facebook is that "you feel less special and unique," Kansas doctoral student in psychology Juwon Lee concluded. Many times you feel they're trusting you with intimate information, but then you see them sharing their feelings with everyone, Lee said.
The Kansas University researchers created mock Facebook walls as part of the studies, with various levels of opening up, and asked participants how they'd feel about the postings if each was a romantic partner.
When there was a high disclosure rate on feelings, particularly deeply personal feelings, there was a feeling of less intimacy with that person, the researchers found.
"There's an assumption that as a partner you're entitled to some kind of privileged information," Lee said.
Oversharing on sites like Facebook has been the subject of research before. One survey of 1,000 online individuals found that 32% of respondents admit having posted something online that they regretted. Some of them said it specifically ruined their marriage or relationship with someone. More than half of users under 25 said they experienced second-doubts after posting something.
Read the rest here.
TED: Esterh Perel on desire.
Another excellent talk from TED: