Nerds. As we all know, the Internet is a great place to pretend to be someone you're not. For instance, here's me in Second Life having a great time:

Anyhow, in many online situations, self-misrepresentation is totally harmless. Like, who cares if your Halo 3 avatar is taller than you are in real life? Or if flickr thinks you're single when you're really married? But in online dating, where the whole goal is to eventually meet other people in person, creating a false impression is a whole different deal.
People do everything they can in their OkCupid profiles to make themselves seem awesome, and surely many of our users genuinely are. But it's very hard for the casual browser to tell truth from fiction. With our behind-the-scenes perspective, we're able to shed some light on some typical claims and the likely realities behind them.

Let's get started.
"I'm 6 feet tall."
REALITY: People are two inches shorter in real life.
This whole post was inspired by an amusing graph we stumbled across while trying to answer the question Do taller guys have more sex? The answer, to a degree, is yes, and I'll expand on that in a little bit. But in this case what was more interesting than the sex was the (supposed) tallness of the guys.

The male heights on OkCupid very nearly follow the expected normal distribution—except the whole thing is shifted to the right of where it should be. You can see it better when we overlay the implied best fit below (pardon the technical language):

Almost universally guys like to add a couple inches. You can also see a more subtle vanity at work: starting at roughly 5' 8", the top of the dotted curve tilts even further rightward. This means that guys as they get closer to six feet round up a bit more than usual, stretching for that coveted psychological benchmark.
When we looked into the data for women, we were surprised to see height exaggeration was just as widespread, though without the lurch towards a benchmark height:

On a somewhat humbling personal note, I just went back and looked at my own profile, and apparently I list myself at 5' 11". Really, I'm a touch under 5' 10". Hmmm.
As for whether it even makes sense for people to make such an obvious and easily disproved exaggeration, the jury is out. We've found that taller people, up to a point, have more sex:

But as far as messages go, shorter women actually seem to get more attention:

These are the average weekly unsolicited message totals by height; you can think of these as the number of times a person is "hit on" out of the blue each week on OkCupid. a 5' 4" woman gets 60 more contacts each year than a six-footerThe genders are plotted on different scales because of the eternal fact that men almost always make the first move, so women get many more unsolicited messages.
It's plain from these two charts that women six feet or taller are either less attractive to men or are considered too intimidating to message. The data also raises the interesting possibility that these tall women are much more likely to sleep with a man who does approach them. Compare the 6' 0" woman to her 5' 4" counterpart: the taller woman gets hit on about two-thirds as much, yet has had slightly more sex partners.
"I make $100,000 a year."
REALITY: People are 20% poorer than they say they are.
Apparently, an online dater's imagination is the best performing mutual fund of the last 10 years. Here's what people are saying on OkCupid, versus what their incomes should be:
Use the slider to watch as people exaggerate more as they get older. As you can see, people advertise disproportionately high salaries for themselves. Just to pick a symbolic amount, there are consistently 4× the number of people making $100K a year than there should be.
Note that in formulating the "expected" lines for each age we were very careful to adjust for OkCupid's particular demographics: we compared every individual against the average not just by age but by zip code. Here a breakdown by gender of the exaggeration rates:

A woman may earn 76 cents on the dollar for the same work as a man, but she can fabricate, like, 85 cents no problem.
As a public service, we've decided to make our income calculations available. The following widget will calculate the statistically expected income of your potential matches; you give it a gender, an age, and a zip code, and it'll spit out a salary. Then you can confront your dates about exactly how much money they probably do or don't make. Fun!
The Patented OkCupid Income Revelator Machine
We did a little investigating as to whether a person's stated income had any real effect on his or her online dating experience. Unsurprisingly, we found that it matters a lot, particularly for men. This is a by-age messaging distribution:

These bold colors contain a subtle message: if you're a young guy and don't make much money, cool. If you're 23 or older and don't make much money, go die in a fire. It's not hard to see where the incentive to exaggerate comes from.
"Here's a recent pic."

REALITY: The more attractive the picture, the more likely it is to be out-of-date.
The above picture, for example, was over two years old when it was uploaded. How do we know? Most modern cameras append text tags to the jpgs they take. These tags, called EXIF metadata, specify things like the exposure and f-stop settings, gps information if your camera has it, and, of course, the time and date the photo was taken. This is how programs like iPhoto know when (and sometimes where) you've taken your pictures.
Analyzing this stuff, we found that most of the pictures on OkCupid were of recent vintage; site-wide the median photo age at upload was just 92 days. However, hotter photos were much more likely to be outdated than normal ones. Here's a comparison (the age of a picture below is how old it was when it was uploaded to our site):

As you can see, over a third of the hottest photos on the site are a year old or more. And more than twice as many hot photos are over three years old (12%) as average-looking ones (5%), which makes sense because people are more inclined to cling to the pics that make them look their best
Another useful (if somewhat unorthodox) way to take in this graph is to follow the horizontal gridlines. If you trace out from "20%", for example, you can see that 1 in 5 average-looking photos is at least a year old, meanwhile, among the hot photos, nearly 1 in 5 is at least two years old.
It also turns out that older people also upload older photos:

The upshot here is, if you see a good-looking picture of a man over 30, that photo is very likely to be out-of-date. Not to get personal again, but my own OkCupid photo shows a Burberry-dressed 27 year-old, strumming away on his guitar. Meanwhile, I turn 35 in a couple months and am writing this post in the same shorts and tee-shirt I've been wearing for a week. Time waits for no man, unless that man doesn't update his personal information.
"I'm bisexual."
REALITY: 80% of self-identified bisexuals are only interested in one gender.
OkCupid is a gay- and bi-friendly place and it's not our intention here to call into question anyone's sexual identity. But when we looked into messaging trends by sexuality, we were very surprised at what we found. People who describe themselves as bisexual overwhelmingly message either one sex or the other, not both as you might expect. Site-wide, here's how it breaks out:

This suggests that bisexuality is often either a hedge for gay people or a label adopted by straights to appear more sexually adventurous to their (straight) matches. You can actually see these trends in action in the chart below.
Again, this is just the data we've collected. We'd be very interested in our bisexual users' thoughts on this single-sex-messaging phenomenon, so if you'd like to weigh-in please use the comments section. Please note, everybody, that we don’t assume that bis should be “into both genders equally.” We only assume that they should be into both genders at all. The swaths of red and blue that you see in these sexuality charts represent people who message only one gender. The purple areas are people who send any messages, in whatever proportion, to both men and women.

In this chart, throughout the teens and twenties, the male bisexual population is mostly observably gay men. By the mid-thirties, it seems, most of these men are more comfortable self-identifying as gay and have left the bi population. By the end of our chart, 3 of every 4 bi males on OkCupid are observably straight. Meanwhile, the proportion of men who message both women and other men holds fairly steady.
The proportions for women are more consistent over time:

12% of women under 35 on OkCupid (and the internet in general, I'd wager) self-identify as bi. However, as you can see above, only about 1 in 4 of those women is actually into both guys and girls at the same time. I know this will come as a big letdown to the straight male browsing population: three-fourths of your fantasies are, in fact, fantasies of a fantasy. Like bi men, most bi women are, for whatever reason, not observably bi. The primacy of America's most popular threesome, two dudes and an Xbox, is safe.
In gathering data for this last section on sexuality, we found so much interesting stuff that we're making it the topic of our next post. We'll look at the messaging, searching, and stalking (!) patterns of gay, bi, and straight people and see what else we can learn about the sexual continuum. Until then, no lie: thanks for reading.
I just measured my height three times. 6′, then 5′ 11″, then 5′ 11.5″. It depends on how you stand, and when I tried to make myself taller, it actually made me shorter. Weird. Humans aren’t boxes.
Also, you should really have a “weight” field.
I don’t understand the inconsistency of bisexuals’ actual bisexuality, either. 7 out of 10 women I see on OkCupid who list themselves as bisexual have a disclaimer in the first few sentences about how they are bisexual but only looking to connect with women. 2 of the 10 are ‘bicurious’ at best, and predominantly connect with men while passively attempting to be sexually adventurous and open to the possibility of other women. 1 out of 10 is self-described as being actually pansexual, not bi, and… surprise, she’s looking for more additions to her already satisfied yet still open polyamorous lifestyle. I have literally never seen a single, monogamous, bisexual woman looking for either a man or a woman in the four years I’ve browsed OkCupid.
I always wondered about the bisexual thing, especially living in the midwest where you wouldn’t expect every other female to be bi. Honestly thought it was some sort of default option that girls were forgetting to uncheck.
I was surprised to see that the entire hight distribution was shifted to the right. I’m not surprised that those below average or below six feet inflate but I’m a little shocked that evidence that the obfuscation is across the board. In my case I stand an honest 6’4″ barefoot, he’ll I could claim 6’4.25″ if I wanted to get nit picky, now why on earth would I claim 6’6″ I hit my head on enough things allready.
I wonder if the height and wage inflation isn’t as bad as it seems I would assume that the average okc user is better educated and more technologically savvy than the population at large. This could definately explain some of the income inflation and maybe some of height duplicity.
Oh, and I’m waiting with baited breath to see if team okc does a break-down of fibbers by region, race, Religion, politics, sexual orientation, and employment field.
Quick comment regarding height: don’t OKC users skew to the younger side of the population? My understanding is that the younger generation is taller due to better nutrition and not having their bones / spinal disks compressed. So if OKC users are disproportionately young, it stands to reason that they would be disproportionately tall as well.
The data for women seems to corroborate this: women do not have the same incentive to lie about height that men do, so you would think the shift would not be as pronounced.
As a single, bi female, I have found I get messaged by way more men than women. I’ve had to revise my profile many times until I finally was clear enough that I am looking for a relationship, not a fling with one or more people.
I have messaged and actually met both men and women from OKC, though there aren’t as many single women interested in women as single men seeking women. I wish there were more lesbians and bi chicks here!
One thing I would like to see analyzed- what are the differences between people who prefer IM versus email? From my experience, I see a bit difference, but I wonder if that holds true for a broader sampling?
To people who object that this post assumed that bi people were into both genders equally: I suggest you re-read the post. The analysis looked at bi-identifying men and women who messaged both genders (even if they messaged only one gender once) vs bi-identifying men and women who messaged a gender EXCLUSIVELY. This was not analysis of who you generally message, but whether you only message one gender or the other.
Heh, I’ve been a member since 2004 and I’ve always answered truthfully. Of course, I am 6’6″ and I do make six-figures in my current job, and I’m 39, so I guess I am in the sweet spot according to the graphs.
The only time my info has been off is when I haven’t updated in a while and my life has changed – new job, etc. My photos were getting stale, since some of them were taken back when I joined, but I did finally update those.
I met my current partner through OKC – she messaged me July 13, 2009.
Dear OK Cupid:
Sorry to be a bit late to your party, but I just noticed your blog post that cleverly starts by showing a Second Life Avatar–where the real life man posting the blog entry has chosen a female avatar–and then claims that, “…in many online situations, self-misrepresentation is totally harmless”.
My husband and I both have collections of avatars, and while he actually had an avatar made to look like him I always enjoyed the freedom of new looks, many of which aren’t even human. Like being a tomato. With a frying pan. And since OK Cupid is obviously clueless about how people in virtual worlds meet, they’re picking on a process they completely don’t understand.
How embarrassing that they actually think the avatar is what attracts a person to another in a virtual world! That’s so completely missing the point it’s hard to fathom. Factually, my husband dresses up as a woman occasionally just for fun. He also changes into a fabulous Speedy Gonzales, a stick figure, a box of cigarettes with legs, a skeleton, and a black cat. All of these avatars are great for a laugh. That’s the beauty of play.
Our choices of avatar had absolutely no effect whatsoever on our ability to be honest, nor our ability to learn about each other slowly, initially through pictures, then on voice and later video calls on skype. Liars are liars. Role play is role play. Go ahead, be a woman, but it’s OK to be honest about that role play. It’s in fact, quite easy, and should be expected of you. Otherwise, you’re just being plain old deceitful, and need to consider your motivations more carefully before going after a mate. Nobody wants to be lied to, and being honest in a virtual world where you can role play whatever you want at the same time seems quite simple, really.
This is great timing for me because I *just* met up with a guy from here who not only lied about his height (said he was 5’8″, probably closer to 5’6″), he also posted – as his one photo – a picture that looked nothing like him in real life. Clearly a combination of 5+ years old photo/atypical quality. I was kind of baffled by his level of subterfuge (what, like I wasn’t going to notice?), but it’s nice to know he was just participating in a trend, ha.
I think posting older photos is generally fine for the reasons many people gave above… I have photos on here ranging from a few days to a few years old, but they’re all pretty representative of me in my current state. As long as you look like you, it doesn’t really matter how recent the picture is.
And for the record, it’s never occurred to me to lie about anything on here (unless I have shrunk in the past 10 years? It could happen, I guess). I mean, the people you meet are probably going to find out eventually.
I find the height shift funny. Because I’m an HONEST 6’0, people think that i’m 6’4 when they see me in real life, because everybody else is such a liar! They’re used to seeing guys that are 5’9 and being told that’s 6’0. ha!
Definitely agree that weight should be added! I estimate that women would group their weights around 115lbs, when it’s actually 160ish for a 5’4 girl in America (yech!).
I love it! It is like looking in the window on the most vain and self serving moments. It affirms some stereotypes and kills others. It was better than Cats, I would read it again and again!
The notion of “bisexuality” is not necessarily that you’re interested in both men and women AT THE SAME TIME. Your understanding of self-identified bisexuals is inherently wrong. There are people who self-identify as bisexual who are, at any given time, currently interested in having only a same-sex or opposite-sex partner. Perhaps a self-identified bisexual woman only contacts men on the site because she’s decided she wants to have biological children with a man, and is looking for a potential partner. That doesn’t mean she’s not still sexually or emotionally attracted to women; it just means they don’t fit what she’s looking for at the moment. The same goes for a self-identified bisexual man who responds only to women, or only to men. The gender/sex they aren’t messaging just doesn’t fill the need. Why do we only question non-heterosexual people in their partner choices? We wouldn’t question a self-identified hetero man if he only messaged thin, blonde, 23-26 year old white women.
@ Matt- The objection is towards the assessment that people who identified as bi are somehow “lying” because they’re not actively messaging both genders.
Anyway, when I had an OK Cupid account, I interacted with more men than women and if they seemed interesting enough, I messaged them back. I actually have a greater preference for women most of the time, but finding another single bi woman in search of a relationship or a lesbian that doesn’t mind dating a bi woman on OK Cupid is pretty difficult…I am pretty sure this is probably the case for other of bi-identified OK Cupid members as well.
Wow, I had no idea ladies looked so much at income! As a lady myself, I don’t even remember looking at income. Ever?
I suppose that if it is something so important to you, why not filter the search like that?
Meanwhile I will be slumming with some totally awesome dudes with values other than economic.
As someone who is queer and browses accordingly, I can say that many women identify on OKC as bi but open their profile with a statement that they’re only here to find women. Identifying as bi is a way to let lesbians, who sometimes mind dating bi’s, know that they’re bi. It’s not intended for the guys. It’s just that meeting someone from the same sex is much harder in real life than finding someone from the opposite sex, so dating sites are used by bi’s more for the former. In contrast, I identify as lesbian even though I’m not exactly so to avoid receiving messages from guys.
bisexual “women” often tend to be part of a couple looking for a 3rd, which may explain why they are only messaging women.
as far as the height thing I actually look taller than my height because I am plus sized and as far as the bi-sexual thing, I am picky so since I am I don’t see a lot of girls or guys on here who want a real deal there may be some who do but i don’t see them so i look at the guys they seem more sincere, just less receptive to plus sized people
I identify as bi. Though what I fantasize about skews more towards the male end of the spectrum, my sexual history reflects a fairly even number of male and female partners.
As an entirely unscientific example, looking at my past sexual history I’ve primarily messaged men online and met them later, and met girls entirely offline, in bars and at parties. I have no idea why this is–do I have a more specific idea of what I want in males, and so online works better for sorting? Am I shyer about approaching men at parties than women? Or, as snorkel_lover said, is it just easier to get approached by men than women online?
I’m also curious about statistics on people who underestimate their income and messages to people who decline to state theirs. I met my boyfriend on OKCupid, and while we’ve since both deleted our profiles, I recall that he didn’t state his income in his. He did mention being employed in his messages, and since I have a long history of dating under- and unemployed men (they’re epidemic in my city, at all age levels), I was just happy to meet someone I could maybe go Dutch with for once. After we started dating, I realized that he was (and is) actually doing very well for himself. I wonder, how many men use this strategy to keep potential golddiggers at bay? How many well-off women understate their income to avoid intimidating guys? How does the proportion of messages to people who flat-out don’t state income at all compare to those who do?
Wow, the message distribution based on age & income is depressing. I shouldn’t be surprised as it confirms my beliefs, but I didn’t think it would matter to that extent. However, I refuse to lie about my income or anything else on my profile.
I don’t get the people that lie about themselves on their profiles. Do they really expect to make it past the first date with anybody?
For people into statistics its somewhat surprising to read the conclusions of lies, lies and more lies in this article.
The “expected” salary is coming from averages by zipcode (and age). The average compensation in my zipcode is $79,000. There are administrative assistants at my firm that make over $100k. The discrepancies say more about the diverse population in Manhattan than lies.
The same can be said about height. Is there a self selection bias in the people that join this site? Did they, on average, have better diets as children? The flat peak of the OK Cupid height distribution might say something about stretching to make 6’0″ but the shift to the right is more suspect. I doubt everyone is lying. I didnt.
i’m curious about the ‘lying about income’ section and whether it takes into account people who make their money through criminal enterprises? obviously if someone is bringing in $100,000 a year of illegitimate gains, they’re not gonna be part of the demographic count of people that wealthy…
You compare US length with OKcupid length.
Have you considered the possibility that the average US person is slightly shorter than the worldwide average?
for example people from the netherlands are very tall.
First of all, this site is not really very queer friendly. It forces you to choose amoung two genders that DO NOT always apply. One of my current partners identifies as gender neutral and it is a problem that you don’t offer them an option for how they identify.
This site is not very trans friendly or intersexed friendly. It is also not necessarily very poly friendly as a lot of questions assume monogamous relationships and will describe “serious relationships” where they mean monogamous. (I understand that the questions are user generated, but that does make it much harder for poly people.) I would love for their to be poly categories. Or you could at least give out a poly badge for people who answer poly questions so that people looking for poly relationships could find each other. I mean, that is if you really want to be an alternative to the fucked up Christian pay sites that extort money out of people looking only for marriage (shudder).
Anyhow, as far as bisexual people go, there are people out there who might be curious about sex with somebody who they don’t have much experience with and would be happy to entertain somebody else if they were to be messaged, but still tend to message people that they know they have a good shot at a relationship with.
Personally, I am a cis-gendered hetero-male, but I considered putting bisexual just because I could see myself having a romantic relationship with somebody who has a penis, but I’m really just not attracted sexually to penii. But I still considered putting bisexual because I haven’t really tried having sex with somebody with a penis before and I might be willing to experiment.
I ended up not putting bisexual because I didn’t want male-bodied people to be misled into thinking that I am experienced in this sort of relationship or would have any idea of what I was doing.
In the end, I suppose that these are all just boundaries that happen to be sexual. I have one asexual friend who happens to be squeamish about all forms of sex and who sometimes like to snark about all of us “sexuals” being rather silly.
He has mentioned that he has trouble identifying as gay because of his lack of desire for sex. When I contemplate this, it gives me a perspective that perhaps I’m putting too much into sexuality. I can have a relationship with somebody with a penis (Regardless of gender) and I just have to figure out what boundaries work for me with any individual.
I still don’t see myself ever being as turned on by the sight of a penis compared to the sight of a vagina, though. And psychologically, the thought of a penis in my mouth doesn’t at all excite me, but the thought of a clitoris in my mouth excites me very much.
So it seems that I have a genital preference, but I still consider myself to have queer politics even as a cis-gendered hetero-male. (Though, I suppose that gender-non-conforming male would be more accurate than cis-gendered anyway).
Hello! As someone this website would list as “bisexual,” I find the results are pretty interesting. I’m the rare bisexual male who prefers females or at least female-like, but still is quite happy to flirt with males.
I find these trends mostly close to what plays out in real life, and am willing to bet there are more than a few women (versus men) who identify as bisexual for the fashion and not the act itself. The gay community isn’t as accepting of people who identify as pansexual or bisexual, and it’s a real shame (yes, I know there are some wonderful exceptions).
In short, this study seems about on the ball, but it’s always sad to see affirmed what you had hoped wasn’t true.
I’ll speak for the bi folks. I’m one of those people whose OKCupid status says bi but mostly went after men. For me personally, I go through phases. When I was dating women I pretty much only wanted to date women. Now I’m going through a men phase. I used to think that I was one or the other, queer or straight, and that I just hadn’t figured it out yet, but just when I was sure the other gender would come along and surprise me and I’d realize I was still “undecided”…hence the bi-label sticks.
Only recently I was at San Fran’s queer pride thinking, well, been dating men for a while, maybe I don’t belong here anymore? But then there were just too many hot butch dykes that made my jaw drop and brought out my saucy flirtatious femme and I was reassured I’m still as queer as ever.
I’m intrigued by the yellow blocks (low response rate) for the 100K+ slots for 23- and 24-year-old men. Could this indicate a bullshit detector on the part of women? You might say you’re making 100k one year out of college, but they don’t believe you.
I’m 6′ 6″ and, technically, a genius in that I have genius level IQ (176 if your interested, as measured by a proffesional, for medical reasons), making me in the “High Genius” category, not that IQ is really a very good measure, just the best we have. My photo’s are recent, between 3 months and 18 months and my profile well written, properly punctuated, gramatically correct and cogent. My income is a little hard to pin down as I don’t pay tax due to the way government grants work, but it’s not very high. Other than that I’ve got damn good career prospects as I’m a proffesional research scientist.
I always think that looks good on paper, but have also always been suspicious that people assume I’m lying as I have been contacted once in the year I’ve been on the site and had maybe 5 people reply to a contact from me (about 15%) not counting spam or nonsense, so I can’t help thinking that maybe just having the listed factors is not enough
.
quick rule of thumb:
When a guy tells you he’s bi, he’s gay.
When a girl tells you she’s bi, she’s straight.
the end.
I wonder what this means for those of us who are completely 100% honest in our dating profiles? Should we be lying to even the field with those who are already lying? Can our morality ever play fair with those who fabricate?
Please don’t ever add a weight category. Attractiveness is not a number, but I suspect that a lot of people would use weight-height ratios as some absolute measure of whether someone is worth meeting. (@Pete’s comment does nothing to discourage this idea. Yech, yourself.)
I think OKC needs an “interested in” field. That way a profile would read, “STRAIGHT MALE interested in WOMEN,” or “BISEXUAL FEMALE interested in MEN OR WOMEN,” or “BISEXUAL MALE interested in WOMEN.” That really would help.
I am a bi woman. I’m attracted to women. My sexual fantasies involve women.
I have been with many women but I tend to go out for long relationships with men.
Why does Bi-sexuality need justifying like this?
I haven’t even bothered putting it on OKcupid as I wouldnt want it to attract guys for the wrong reason, hoping to fufill a fantasy or something.
I want to reiterate what other bisexuals have said here about messaging. I’m a bi guy but only currently looking for women online, so I only message women. The majority of bisexuals I know offline are only looking for partners of a particular gender at one time. There are various reasons for this:
1) They have no problems finding partners of the other gender.
2) They already have one or more partners of the other gender.
3) Just preference reasons – like they recently dated someone of the other gender, and are looking for a change. Or they are looking for a particular trans/genderqueer gender combination.
However, it is still very important to list oneself as bisexual, because otherwise we would be lying about our sexuality.
To the OkCupid folks: please don’t confuse behavior and sexual identity. They are two different things. And when you write posts like this that claim that bisexuals really aren’t bisexual, you open the door for the sort of nasty hatred that we face on a regular basis – as evidenced by some of the comments here. Bi folks love your site because it is very bi-friendly. Don’t make us hate your blog by posting biphobic assertions.
As a bi woman (25) using OKC, I messaged both men and women, but I received a LOT more attention from the men. Since I also receive more attention from men IRL, I preferred contact from women and did consider switching to lesbian-only on my profile. And the complicated stratification between bi women and “real” lesbians is one that could fill a book, but I’ll do with seeing what you dig up for your next post.
Also, hmm! I rarely look at income, height, weight, etc, because I usually get a good enough sense from the questions and the pictures to know whether they merit a follow-up. I have occasionally screened out people for having too much income; it’s either a lie or I fear they’ll be too materialistic. But I’m young and idealistic. It may be that income matters more once I’ve got some to lose.
Thanks! Your blog is what got me to set up a profile. Keep them coming.
On the bisexual thing, all of my quiver matches (prior to deleting my OKCupid account) were guys, and I was never matched to a girl, despite selecting “bisexual” as my orientation. Perhaps your match selection criteria is more to blame than “OMG people lie about being BI to impress their heterosexual prospects or hide their homosexuality!”
As a previous commenter stated, there are a lot of lesbians who are not interested in dating bisexual women, and a lot of gay men who are not interested in dating bisexual men. It’s more of a warning label for those groups, than an invitation to others. Female bisexuality has this college, party girl reaction. It’s not so much seen as a legitimate sexuality as an invitation to a threesome. While people are able to clearly distinguish between pizza delivery in porn and reality, it seems they lack that ability regarding someone who is attracted to people, not their plumbing.
And please don’t even get me started on all the bi anglerfish on this site. Clever article, it was amusing. But again, I don’t think you can legitimately extrapolate all of your conclusions.
As far as the bi’ girls dating only women goes, under “looking for” most of them list “Girls who like bi girls”. More than one open up that they’re not even interested in dating guys anymore. While I can understand it, it doesn’t make it not vaguely frustrating. I think the match search filters need to take this into account.
Is the data on bi messaging habits for all messages sent, or just initial messages sent? For some reason I read it as the latter…
Given that men message women a lot, and may be especially into the idea of a bi girl, is it possible that a lot of bi women who only message women do so because they just don’t need to chase the men?
How about OKC profile listing FICO score, liquid debt and liquid assets next to the annual income, so that if the person has worked hard in the past, and now living below or beyond the means?
I think something that has to be remembered when looking at the data for bisexual folks is that many use online dating as a low-risk way to seek out same-sex relationships. Just like for homosexuals, it’s easier and safer to use the internet for same sex dating. Whereas looking for opposite-sex relationships in real life poses little threat other than possible rejection.
This is an instance (and I think the next post will probably be one, too) where it wouldn’t hurt to do some qualitative analysis alongside all the number crunching.
i read this blog and confirmed alot of the feelings i had myself, especially regarding gender trends. i always assumed that those proclaimed bi (males and females) predominantly went for one or the other gender, and the data proves it.
as for height, as a legitimate 6 ft 2 inch’er its sad to see us tally’s have been discredited by others claiming our fame.
I’ve noticed a lot of the Bi profiles are married women looking for a female partner.
I haven’t looked at many male profiles so i don’t know if the trend follows there as well.
But I wonder if the statistics would be as skewed if only single Bi individuals were considered.
Bisexual male user here. I definitely message far more women than men – by about a four to one margin – but that’s because more gay men message me (by about that same four to one margin). I have a marginally greater sexual interest in men, but women are the ones I tend to have long, stable relationships with. So this affects my tastes when browsing the site.
Another factor is that I have certain “types” that I like in men and women. My taste in men runs towards adventurous and outgoing guys, and I am fortunate to live in a gay-friendly location where it is easy to meet men like that in real life. By contrast, the women I look for tend to be bookish and introverted, and they’re the sort to stay at home reading or using the Internet rather than hang out in bars or go to the park. So OKC is ideal for meeting the sort of women I like, but the men I like are easier to encounter in person.
@DJ, you claim to be a genius with a great profile, but you have spelling and punctuation mistakes in your response. Maybe you need to check your profile again to make sure it really is grammatically correct. Grammar/spelling issues can turn a girl off quickly, but so can bragging about your level of intelligence which, if you talk about it in your profile, may explain the reason you’re not getting responses to your messages.
I do wonder what percentage of people on OKCupid decline to list their income at all. I know I mention in my profile that I am employed, but I don’t display my salary; I just don’t think it’s anyone’s business and certainly don’t mind being excluded from searches people may make for certain income categories (if that’s a possible search criteria). Though I wouldn’t be surprised if the real difference between stated income and real income is actually more than 20%.
Once again, great post. Nerd it up for us, so we can find the truth in online dating! It’s a shame that same data set isn’t available to the general public, but obviously, there’s a reason for that.
Also, I found it hilarious that “DJ” above mentions his super IQ, but then goes on to make some very obvious spelling and grammatical errors.
Well, it would seem logical to me that, since men are far more likely to hit on women than women are to hit on other women, a bisexual women would have much fewer messages from other bi/gay women than from guys. (There’s still a lot of faker girls out there, but I think the ratio’s a little less than people think).
I wish there was a way to check how many people are lying about their height! I’ve had my honest height on here from day one, but I wonder if that’s just because I’m very tall. Is height a problem for other guys?
Also, someone up there was asking for a weight entry…that would be a good idea. Despite my own weight tending to get me dropped off search results (6’4″ makes you weigh more, girls – if you’re looking for a guy over 6’3″ and under 150#, good luck with that!), the ‘body type’ thing is REALLY open to interpretation. And lying. Although it is a really good indicator of who’s massively insecure with themselves.
Brb, must add 2 inches to my profile if this is the norm ^^
Hrm, sounds like I need to increase my listed height and income and take down my recent picture with glasses. I mean, all the cool kids are doing it!
It would be interesting to see the height reported versus age. I know that as people grow older the often grow shorter. Despite this well known phenomenon, my grandfather still tells me he is 6ft tall. I know that I am 6ft (no exaggeration
), and since he is several inches shorter than me I’m quite certain he is not anymore. I do however believe that he was at one time. Could an explanation be that people are reporting their best height as opposed to their current height ?