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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