Annalee Newitz, whom I met at CodeCon in 2002 (see the entry They’re Not “Strippers”, They’re “Naked-Americans”), has written an article for Wired titled Cracking the Code to Romance.
The article profiles four hackers who are using technology to
“optimize” (in computer programming parlance, this means “make faster”
or “make more efficient”) dating.
I’m hardly what you’d call a Luddite nor could I honestly laugh at the
use of assistive technology to land a date. I do, after all, carry an
accordion to social events (even though these days, I’m spoken for — I
use its power to assist my only my friends now). To one degree or
another, we all use some kind of “dating optimization” to improve our
odds of finding a mate, or at least some with whom to mate
tonight:
- Getting into shape at the gym
- Dressing nicely (“nicely” varying with the sort of person you’re trying to attract)
- Wearing cologne/perfume/eau de toilette/patchouli (you dirty hippie)
- Going
to places where disproprotionately large numbers of single people
gather and drink fluids that are conducive to loosened
inhibitions/clouded judgement
- Asking
to be introduced to someone (by a friend/a dating service/speed
dating/online dating/asking the guy with the accordion to play a song
for that cute girl on your behalf)
That being said, this article is going to make geeks look twice as
creepy as the stereotype. Not just “dishevelled guy who’s staring at
you from the back of the bus” creepy and not even “costumed guy trying
to invite you back to ‘yiffapalooza’ back at his suite and ‘see what furries are really like'” creepy but
“if we put it to a vote, I’ll bet we could have these guys rounded up,
chemically castrated and drugged so much they could be used as
paperweights so women will feel safe” creepy.
The Googler:
(All theory and no practice. This guy is the dating world equivalent of an economist.)
Chau Vuong, a 33-year-old former equity analyst who specialized in
pharmaceutical companies at the investment bank Robertson Stephens,
admits he’s never kissed a girl. He hopes that one day he’ll get
married and lose his virginity. “I don’t actually date,” he explains.
“I just research it.” With a doctorate in pharmacy and a background in
computer science, the self-described “extreme type-A personality” works
full time on a desperately personal project: “to solve dating by
turning Google into a global dating service.”
The Blogger:
(This profile isn’t creepy as it is Beavis-and-Butthead-y.)
When I arrive at the Condomania offices to meet Filkins, he’s finishing
up some business on the phone. I wander around his workspace while he
talks, peering with mild trepidation into giant candy jars full of
tricolor condoms and shiny plastic packets of lube. In one room, I
discover a “condomenorah.” Condoms of various hues and sizes are
attached to nine PVC pipes arranged to resemble Hanukkah lights.
Filkins joins me and grins as his colleague flips a switch, sending air
through the pipes and allowing me to inspect the wares in their fully
operational state.
The Sniffer:
(Oh, dude. Dude. Dude. STOP IT!
To borrow a quote from Ray, the cat from the webcomic Achewood, “Maybe
I got to put spackle all over my monitor to keep you [people] out
of my face all the time. JESUS the internet was not supposed to be this
way”.
Perhaps you shouldn’t have used your real name, buddy.)
Between marathon Java-thrashing sessions, he often finds he wants to
introduce himself to “a cute girl with a laptop” but is too shy to make
an approach. That’s where the Sniffer comes in handy. If a hottie fires
up her AOL Instant Messenger client, Burton sees her login name and can
send her an IM. “I’ve gotten several first dates that way,” he says.
“Women think it’s cute when I can make a message pop on their machine
as if by magic. Now that so many women are online, it’s our chance as
geeks to start getting more dates.”
…
Burton says he’s written dozens of hacks, including a bot that combs
Craigslist personals and IMs him when it finds a candidate that meets
his specs. But his favorite is a browser plug-in for the dating site
Hot or Not. “The problem with Hot or Not is it keeps presenting the
same pictures over and over because it’s random,” he explains. “My
plug-in remembers which ones I’ve seen and will skip them. That way I
can get through the whole site. When I did that, I had about 50 hot
women spamming me the next day.”
The Stalker:
(These guys are doing security
research rather than trying to optimize dating. I wonder why Annalee
inlcuded them in the set of profiles and why she gave these guys — the
seeming best-adjusted of the bunch — the creepiest name.)
These guys churn out hacks that thin the membrane between dating and
stalking. They spend their afternoons chronicling and exploiting the
vulnerabilities in dating sites and social networks. But the strange
thing is, they’re not doing it to meet women. They don’t care about
getting lucky. Moore, in fact, is married and has a baby daughter.
