A full house

Continuing on the subject of online dating for now, this week we’ll be discussing profiles. Originally I entered the cyber supermarket to write an article about how the internet is changing our brains and our relationships, but I quickly found myself drawn into the suggestion that I might find true love. Or lust at the very least. Writers are simply voyeurs with big egos, and I was fascinated by the changes in the mating ritual that were made possible by the cyberwall. Suddenly shy people could get laid. It was like putting on a mask. So I designed a little experiment. I created three different profiles and changed them around over a period of three months.

I didn’t want to tell lies, part of me thought perhaps I really would meet someone special on my travels, so each ‘persona’ was honest, displaying and suppressing different elements of my personality. It was incredible to see the variety of men each ‘me’ attracted. Essentially it was a simple exercise in brand marketing – I was the product and I wanted to reach an ABC1 demographic.

“You’ll be dining on pheasant and quail’s eggs before you know it”

For our purposes I’ve named each profile after a different literary character that I feel reflects the characteristics I wanted to judge response to: Scarlett O’Hara, Becky Sharp and Cathy Earnshaw.

Scarlett was, of course, very high maintenance, knew exactly what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to use any means to get it. She was endearing because she made no secret about that, was charming and ultra feminine. Her photo was strong, professionally shot and monochrome.

Becky was adorable; witty, playful, approachable and affable with a natural, smiling picture and light conversational style. She was the girl next door and her profile even had a little game, which presented five apparent facts about her and the reader had to guess which one was untrue. This made an approach easy, even to the most diffident boy.

Cathy was dark and brooding, aloof, temperamental and lost to a world of poems, art and music. Her picture was hipsterish, unsmiling, intriguing and intense.

All three profiles made it to number one on the ‘most popular’ list, which I’m pretty sure is just a result of time spent online and amount of communication – I was diligent – but the kind of men my different personalities attracted were wildly diverse. Potentially worrying for me.

Becky was probably the most popular in terms of the amount of mail she received. At one point she was clocking up between 50 to 70 emails a day from different guys from all walks of life (the B-C demographic), none of them were especially stand-out though and while she went on several dates with a few of them and made some great friends, they didn’t knock her socks off in that way.

Cathy got the least attention, while still racking up a respectable collection of suitors. They were all tortured and artistically inclined, but that’s okay, ‘cos Cathy likes her artists tortured.

But it was Scarlett who interestingly, while being the most demanding, was actually the most ‘successful’ in terms of the caliber of men she attracted (I’m being mercenary now and talking about job, position, education and looks).

Her swag included a veritable feast of alpha masculinity including a brain surgeon, a barrister, a research scientist, a banker (rhymes with…), a movie star, a pro athlete, a pro dancer and a selection of hugely successful businessmen.
Oh, and the Tory from the other week’s column.

So, what all three of my personalities learnt was this: It’s all spin. Dress for the man/men you want. If you wake up one morning and think to yourself, ‘Oh, I could just fancy a country gent today with a pile in Hampshire’, go online with an outdoorsy picture, a few lines about Range Rovers, dogs and tweed, throw in a bit of subliminal language (super, chaps, brolly) and you’ll be dining on pheasant and quail’s eggs before you know it.

If you can be whoever you want, then you can have whoever you want. It was fun to build up a little stock of dates to match my shoes and my mood… it brought a whole new meaning to the term ‘full house’.