Friday, February 13, 2015

The vitality of self-presentation in online dating



The vitality of self-presentation in online dating


Coulter Ebbert


 

Online dating has proved in many cases to be a lifesaver for some individuals who have been less fortunate in the face-to-face dating world. Personally, I hope that I won’t need to use dating sites in the future but hey who knows what will happen. Regardless we hear both success stories and horror stories about online dating. Such shows like “Catfish” have informed many people on how disappointing and unreliable online dating can be, but after watching the week 4 lab assignment “When Strangers Click” and reading such articles as THIS ONE I have come to realize that online dating isn’t as cut and dry, creepy, and (for the lack of better terms) hopeless as I previously perceived. Online dating seems to be a calculated effort in presenting one’s self. The act of self-presentation is the way in which you as an individual choose to present yourself to others, whether in face to face situations or online. In the CNN article, a woman named Amy leads us through her perilous online dating adventures until ultimately she finds a man on a dating site named Brian who eventually became Amy’s husband. In the article, Amy discusses two botched dates she was part of as result of her online dating. The two men of whom Amy went out with were both untruthful in there profiles and not what Amy had expected. This is an example of self-management on the part of the two men who used strategic lies and behavior to achieve a goal. – Self-management is the manipulation of self-identity through social means where you “manage yourself” in order to be thought of in a different light. The really cool thing about the article and Amy’s story is how she created an experiment in order to fully understand the “rules” of online dating. In order to conduct her experiment, Amy created a list of 72 “ideal husband” characteristics based off of her personal preferences. She then proceeded to apply a weighted score of each of the characteristics and determined that in order for her to go out with a possible suitor he couldn’t have a score lower than 700. After completing her list she then created 10 male profiles on various dating websites in order to learn everything about her “competition”. Through her experiment she learned that the most popular profiles often had short brief descriptions that often peaked the interest of suitors. She also found (with no great surprise) that the women who interacted with her 10 male profiles often were a tad bit untruthful with their weight and physical descriptions. At the end of it all, Amy developed her 10 rules for online dating which range from advice on how to choose the proper pictures to display to more obvious rules like “don’t act like a stalker”. Another thing that I picked up from this article is though I have never used one of these dating websites, the whole process and ideas behind them does not greatly differ from other sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Tinder were we use self-presentation in order to interact and meet with new people. If you’re interested in some solid online dating advice or just want to entertain yourself with a positive feel-good story I would highly suggest you check out the article.


 

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