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.
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.
Haven’t had a chance to read every comment, so don’t know if someone’s brought this up already, but regarding users who identify as “bi” but message only one gender…
As I mention in my profile, most accurately, I’m “bi” because I do sometimes date men. That said, I’m not interested in meeting them (and I say this on my profile as well, and as a result, men don’t contact me very often). I list myself as “bi” rather than “gay” because there could be “gay” women who, for whatever reason, are only interested in “gay” women–as in women who do not ever date men–and would potentially feel deceived to learn I’ve recently had relationships with men though I claim to be “gay” on the site.
In my case, labeling myself as “bi” is a way to be more rather than less honest with other folks on the site, my particular preferences are flushed out in the profile.
I am a bi women who almost always searched exclusively for women when I had an okcupid account. Here’s why (and it is also one of the main reasons I cancelled my account years ago): I have never had a problem finding men to date. I find them in person through social circles, and on other dating sites. This is because, as your blog points out, MEN MAKE THE FIRST MOVE. Even men on okcupid were constantly messaging me. Women, however, rarely approach me in person OR on okcupid – I had to go out looking for them. Very shortly after I started my account, I found a boyfriend, one I’ve been with for years. I never did find a girlfriend. The way the system on okcupid was setup PREVENTED me from being honest about what I was looking for. It would not let me say I was bisexual and only looking for women BECAUSE I ALREADY HAD A MAN! The choices were single or in a relationship, bi and looking for both, or gay/straight and looking for one. There was no way to insure that men would stop hassling me, AND that women would know I was open and interested.
So, I appreciate that you are taking the time to look at the data you have and think about it, but realize that the very nature of how you set up the sight skews the self-reporting of the bisexual community.
What I’ve found is that men tend to lie the most about income and height, while women tend to lie the most about weight and age, a reflection of what women and men tend to look for the most in mate selection. This is true even tho deception about height and weight are immediately apparent when meeting in person…goes to show you how much self-deception and wishful/hopeful thinking is really going on…
I can tell you that I might put that I’m bi for a week or two so I could check out the competition. You rarely get to see what you’re up against on dating sites. I wonder if I’m normal.
Height – I have learned that generally if a guy puts that he is over 6′, such as 6’1″ or above, he is at least 6′ which is a height I am comfortable with. If a guy puts that he’s right at 6′ then there’s a 50/50 chance. And yes, they’re usually off by about 2 inches.
For women, taller women aren’t unattractive, it just that (I think) only 14% of males in the U.S. are over 6′ tall. You can lie about an inch or two to a short girl, but a tall girl is going to be calling your bluff.
Income – you can generally tell if they’re lying based on their profession and the area.
Lastly, a question…can you do a post about weight, or have you? It seems every man wants a “slender” or “athletic/toned” woman (note even an average woman) and then put themselves as “average” when they are clearly overweight. What do the different body descriptions even mean to most people? What’s the difference between average, curvy, full figured, a few extra pounds, etc. I know what they mean to me, but I don’t think they mean the same thing to men.
The self-labeled bisexuals who mostly message the opposite sex might not be telling a lie. For instance, suppose a guy is equally attracted to both sexes and equally likely to message any particular individual. Because the population of females interested in males is about 20 times the size of males interested in males, this perfectly bisexual guy would still primarily message females. Unless there is an unusually large gay population available, a person would have to be substantially more likely to message the same sex to have balanced messages.
The fact that bisexuals message one gender or the other doesn’t say anything about their actual sexuality as this blog suggests. Bisexuals simply have preferences- I’m bisexual and I almost exclusively message women.. but that’s simply because i’m currently not really interested in men (though men make up the bulk of people I’ve dated). I think OKC needs to be careful about some of the assumptions it makes…
Now you’re gonna start a whole new revolution where people start taking pictures next to measuring tapes that they lift off the ground 2 inches to further their lie..
I really am 6’1″.. I should be 6’6″ like my brother.. or at least 6’4″ like the rest of my family.. but smoking cigarettes does affect your growth (I quit in 2007)
It’s very interesting to compare OKCupid’s data on bisexuality in men and women with the latest scholarly research on sexual arousal in men and women. They seem largely consistent: research shows that 75% of men who identify as bisexual are exclusively aroused by other men (and for men, arousal is orientation), while bisexual women are aroused by men and women both and no clear pattern emerges.
Here’s the New York Times’ take on the research on bisexuality in men:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/health/05sex.html?pagewanted=all
Here’s the research itself:
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/16/8/579
Here’s the research on arousal in men and women:
http://pss.sagepub.com.libproxy.wustl.edu/content/15/11/736.full
I’m an observably bisexual woman, but I find much of OK Cupid’s self-categorization systems to be too restrictive. Amongst the group of people that I live with/socialize with there are people who identify as straight, gay, bisexual, omnisexual/pansexual, polysexual, bi/pan-curious, hetero-flexible, gynosexual, androsexual, etc.
Obviously many of the above sexual orientations indicate a belief system that says that there are more than two sexes (check out “Genderqueer” on wikipedia) and I would very much appreciate having more gender/sex designations. Fetlife (the BDSM focused social networking site) has a decent model of this, containing many genders, many sexualities, and many different relationship types.
But bi-curious and hetero-flexible are two sexual orientations that work within a typical binary gender system that OKC does not have. A good friend of mine also told me that he was straight, except when he gets drunk, and then he says his “Kinsey scale slides a bit.”
What I’m saying is that the rigid thinking that presents only three orientation options may be what leads to this seemingly bizarre phenomenon.
Very interesting post.
For what it’s worth, I’m a 35 year old male who lists himself as bisexual on this site. For I while, I switched it to “straight,” because I’m only interested in dating women. But I have dated men in the past, and I can imagine doing so again, if, say, Jonathon Rhys Meyers or Taylor Lautner wants to practice Greco-Roman wrestling — although real-life guys I encounter are very rarely the least bit erotically interesting.
I changed my listed orientation to bisexual to weed out all those dates who would be especially threatened by meeting their boyfriend’s ex-boyfriends, or who might not want me to watch Twilight movies with the sound off. Unfortunately, that probably also weeds out a lot of women who imagine incorrectly that “bisexual” means I’ll need both men and women in my bed and am incapable of a monogamous relationship. I wish, instead of the choices OkCupid (and the larger culture) gives us — straight, gay, bi, bi-curious — that there was something to convey the message that I occasionally get a boner for a guy, but I’m only interested in sharing my life (and all my boners) with one woman.
Bi-venturous? Bi-historical? Monogamously bi-focal? Distractable? Equal opportunity observer? Work on this for me, please, citizens of the interwebs.
‘S’ is overreacting. This post is about observable information only, not about drawing definitive conclusions about it. It doesn’t say ‘bisexuals don’t exist’, is simply says ‘some people who self-identify as bisexual exhibit gay or straight behavior’ and tries to come up with some explanations for what is otherwise a puzzling discrepancy.
In other words, relax. It’s part of a discussion, not some kind of written-in-stone document.
seems like the first blog where women aren’t infallible. as usual, the psychology is all hypothetical. the data is more interesting in showing behavior, but i guess they can’t resist telling people their opinions(which they seem to think are fact. are these really statisticians, or are they just pop psychologists with access to lots of data?)
So I have to now go change my profile to add 2 inches and $20k just because everyone else does it?
I wonder if some of the discrepancy in reported income could be accounted for by other factors. For example, we know that OKC’s userbase tends to be better educated than most. It’s also likely that many older men who are still single are or were career-focused to a degree that affected their romantic life adversely. It makes me wonder of the username “rosebud” is in use…
You might wanna correlate the earning claims with levels of education / profession claimed. I put my age and zip into your calculator, and it came out with a number well below half of what I make. But then, I’ve a doctoral degree.
I imagine your data would be less skewed / have less “false” answers based on your local averages if you accounted for that sorta thing!
LOL Wow, that “2 inches taller” bit is ringing true for me. How odd… a guy I was seeing told me he was 5’8. My mom met him and said he was absolutely lying… he looked more like 5’6. My brother and father are 5’6 they both measure about the same. So, I assume she was right and he was in fact lying. Though of course a short guy like that is going to give himself as many inches as possible. “The more attractive the picture, the more likely it is to be out-of-date.” — Saw a 34 year old guy who posted pictures of himself when he looked to be about a 19 year old model. It’s like “hello dude, doesn’t matter if you used to model or not, it’s all about what you look like now”.
on the bi thing….whilst the girls are *sexually* attractive to me almost as much as the boys (i’d have to say my boy/girl attraction is 60/40), i tend to fit better personality-wise with and bet on better with the quirks of boys. doesn’t mean i won’t happily look at and lust after the ladies. just means i am aware of who’s more likely to last once we get done just rolling around
“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.”
Most men won’t message woman taller than them or same height because it’s a known fact that woman like their men to be taller. The best thing to do is to be clear about it if you don’t mind dating a shorter guy specify it in you profile, if your ride has a minimum height requirement specify it…. doing so get you more messages and saves everyone LOTS of time.
I would also say the same about ethnicity, if you have a requirement SAY IT. You can be politically correct everywhere.
Another factor to consider with the bisexuals messaging one sex only, what is the proportion of “Available” or “In a Relationship” bisexuals that only message those of a gender opposite their current partner?
Maybe we’re not trying to be deceptive… maybe less people take pictures of us as we get older, fatter, uglier, more desperate, etc… So we have very few pictures to choose from that don’t show the chin pouch or the pot belly. Just sayin’ …
well, first things first, what about that research that states that only about 15% of the population is genuinely only attracted to one gender? some would state that most people are bi, whether or not they know it…
also would be curious to see how much checking out of competition people do…you know, not actually messaging and flirting, but how often do people turn their account onto private stalker mode (or whatever we’re calling it now) to check out what the competition looks like?
I’m Bi. I message mostly guys on OK cupid. The reason is that I can pick up girls a plenty, but I have limited access to a population of gay guys that catch my interest. I think it’s the same way for most of the other bi people.
Well, that explains why women have been surprised that I’m actually 5’11” (okay, just shy of) when they meet me.
Oh well, as a single father, I already get caught up in a hundred stupid stereotypes that don’t fit, so lying sack of dog feces (on personal details) is certainly fair enough… I mean, why not one more? And my pictures are old because it’s been a long time since I updated them. Weird, that.
I also have to agree with the person above who commented that perhaps your economic and height demographics are ACTUALLY DISPLACED from the general public. There’s no controls on your data analysis. For instance, you haven’t actually compared many men or women against their profile info.
I suspect that, while there are probably people who identify as bisexual in order to increase their pickup rate, there are probably a lot of people who identify as bisexual and don’t message one or the other sex due to confidence/shyness issues or an unfamiliarity with that ‘territory’ as yet.
It’s great to see these statistics, I love reading the OKTrends posts- but please don’t imply things about bisexual people that you don’t know. I believe that you could have told us what these statistics *truly* say, rather than interpreting them so greatly.
What we know? Many bisexual people message only one sex or the other.
What we don’t know? Many bisexual people are not truly bisexual.
Is the information on who bisexual people message based on all messages, or on messages sent without “provocation”? Because I list myself as bisexual, but OKcupid overwhelmingly floods me with information about men. (Not that I’m blaming the site itself for this; I understand that the numbers of straight men out looking are far greater than the number of queer women out looking.) I initiate conversations with men and women in roughly equal numbers, but ultimately engage in more conversations with men, just because it’s men who send me messages in greater numbers. (Also, the Quick Match thing presented me with people in about a 20:1 male:female ratio.)
I’m bi, but listed as gay because I don’t need OkCupid’s help to find guys. Chicks are way harder.
All it takes to account for the height discrepancy is a different age and racial distribution than the general US population. Average height for white males 20-29 is 5’10.5″ For white women is 5’4.25″. Both distributions are actually taller than the OKCupid data. I find this a whole lot easier to believe than 6’4″ men advertising as 6’6″ and 5’10” women scaling up to 6 foot.
One reason tall women get fewer messages is that they self select for fewer messages. It has been my experience that the taller the woman, the more likely she is to specify a minimum height for interested males. Usually this minimum is at least her height, and quite often two to four inches taller. So when a 6 foot tall woman requires that men be at least 6 foot 2 inches tall to message her, she has eliminated about 95% of the single male population in the USA!
I have a feeling that your bi sample has people in it who have sent out messages to less than 5 different people. If this is true the person’s messaging sample size of messages is too small to make the conclusion that they only like one gender. Suppose I sent out 3 messages, and I liked women equally as much as men. Then statistically I could view each message as a Bernoulli random trial with p = 0.5. In this case the probability that I choose the same gender all 3 times is 25%. Thats huge, and thats not taking into account the devastating problem of sequential correlation between choosing men vs. choosing women. Bi people almost never date people in this type of sequence …MWMWMW…, they are much more likely to date people in this sequence …MMMMMMMWWWWW… That is to say bi people in general go through extended periods where they are interested in one gender and then go through periods where they are interested in the other. The way to test if this is really affecting your data is to throw out all data points that include bi people who have not been actively messaging people for at least 1 or 2 years. If someone joins the dating site messages only women for 6 months and then becomes inactive, do you include them in your data? To an LGBT person it is obvious that you shouldn’t but perhaps it isn’t obvious to a straight person. So exactly who do you throw out. Well you should obviously throw out all the people who haven’t been on OKcupid longer than a year. Then of the remaining people, look at their total number of messages to unique people. Throw out anyone who hasn’t sent at least 10 messages. Then of the remaining people require that they have actually sent out a message in at least 5 unique months with the last message sent at least a year away from the first message sent. This will give you a better idea if temporal autocorrelation is destroying your analysis.
Of your could also just directly calculate this correlation by looking at the messaging patten of the bi people in your sample. Basically if the guy or gal messaged a guy last, how does this affect the probability he will message a guy next. My guess is that it will be higher.
2) Also bi people use dating sites differently http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/07/07/the-biggest-lies-in-online-dating/#than straight or gay people. I know a bi guy who only used dating sites to pick up men. He had no problem picking up women in real life, but he had bad gay/bi-dar, so he used dating sites to exclusively look for guys he knew were gay or bi. This can also work the opposite way as another poster pointed out.
I don’t think this article is anywhere near being up to your usual standards, as you’ve overlooked many possible sources of variation in the data other than people lying.
Height: An individual’s height varies over time, and even over the course of a day. Add in posture & footwear, and you’re lucky to get within a consisten plus or minus an inch. Then consider that hardly anyone is going to measure their height especially for the OKC form. More likely they got measured sometime in school, or at a doctor’s office, that number got put on a driver’s license, and is used forevermore.
Income: How are you getting your baselines, from IRS figures? But you surely aren’t so naive as to think that everyone reports ALL their income, are you? Then there are self-employed people like me: this year’s income (though more than sufficient to my needs) is about half what it was a couple of years ago, and maybe a quarter of what I expect it to be a couple of years from now. So do I go change it every April 15th? And even then, it’d still be last year’s income.
Cameras: How many people bother to set the date on their camera every time they change batteries? I don’t, so a picture I take today will be tagged with a date sometime in 2004. Does that make me a liar?
The big problem with the “bi” status is that most of them are looking for JUST a male or JUST a female. Some are looking for both, but a lot even already have a boyfriend or girlfriend, and are just looking for a third person.
I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to a “bisexual” girl’s page, only to find they aren’t interested in guys.
There should be a “looking for only girls” or “looking for only guys” selection for those who are bi but only looking for one gender. Maybe there is one now but I still have those types of people pop up and it’s annoying.
I kinda saw the Bi-sexual part a mile off, but the section about height was interesting. Personally, when on dating sites, I always intentionally sell myself short (quite literally) by taking 2-3 inches off my heigh and adding on weight. Mainly because I’d rather meet a girl who isnt vein, It works, for the most part.
And I never lie about my yearly Income, I simply put “other” if theres an option for it, or leave it blank. As a freelance designer, my yearly income fluctuates depending. One year it could be huge, the next I could be budgeting to get by
1. You don’t have bi-curious option.
2. Bis might look for 3rd for a threesome, OkCupid isn’t very good at expressing that either,
About the bi ppl part:
I’m bi. I have a boyfriend though. So on OKC I will only message women because they’re who I’m looking for seeing as how I get no poon at home.
It’s doesn’t make me less bi. Or even less observably bi (when you lookat my entire life and not just my okc profile).
lots of people have already commented on the bi thing but here’s one extra thought re bi women. in my experience lots of women come out as bi later in life. having lived in hetsville most of their lives they don’t have access to meeting other bi/gay women, but are keen to try it out. the gay world generally isn’t welcoming to them, so where do they go to find hot chicks? the internet of course.
What about age? I have met many men who lie not only about their height, but also about their age. I’ve been told this is a given on dating sites. I suppose that would be an impossible study unless you emailed a sample of people privately and asked them if they did in fact lie about their age. And even then they might lie!
Just for the record:
-I’m a 55 year old female who did NOT lie about age on my profile.
-I had to fudge my height because you don’t have 1/2s and i am 5’5″ and 1/2, so i went down to 5.5.
-I wonder if older men don’t allow for shrinkage. It happens (although not to me yet which is why i am proud of that 1/2″…you’ve got to stretch, guys, as in physically…yoga perhaps…not as in stretch the truth)
-Biologically (i’ve done some research) women prefer taller men. It’s all that baby making gene pool business, apparently even when we aren’t making babies anymore.
-I rarely consider guys who are not at least 2 inches taller than my height because there is a very good chance that i will be taller than them when i meet them and i find a man who is taller (as in, than me) more physically attractive…usually.
When I first came out as bisexual, I caught a lot of flack from friends who had only known me to have been with men. To them, my lack of experience with women meant that I wasn’t really ‘legitimately’ bi. This was news to me–I didn’t know that sexual orientation was based on the number and type of notches on one’s bed post. Would you tell a person who identifies as straight that they aren’t really straight until they lose their virginity?
This is biphobia, pure and simple. If this is what OK Cupid means by ‘bi-friendly,’ I’m frightened to think of what the alternative is.
“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. ”
No, maybe it’s because both straight and gay people tend to dislike people who actively play the field and in order to maximize sexual attractiveness, you have to play just one side even if you want to play both. As a bi girl who messages both, I know for a fact that plenty of people are biphobic.
I wrote a column on bisexual women’s issues for 7 years and moderate a bisexual support group. I don’t agree with the “conclusions” the authors of this wrote.
1) Regarding the large numbers of bi-identified females who only sent messages to other women, as other people have pointed out a lot of those are from bi-identified women who already have a boyfriend or husband and turn to the internet to find queer women. A lot of these boyfriends or husbands have a double standard where they don’t find other women to be a threat, so they “allow” their bi girlfriends or wives to only contact other women. Since most men are publicly straight-identified, it’s much easier to meet men in the real world so we don’t need the internet for that, but have to use alternate sources like women-seeking women ads to find available women.
2) With bi men, I’m curious if it’s the same guys who under age 38 message men only, but switch to trying to find a woman when they get near 40. I’ve known a lot of bi buys over the years who skew towards men towards non-commital sex, but women for long-term relationships, so it would make sense that when they’re ready to settle down they change their gender focus. I also wonder if the bi men who contact women are more likely to contact bi-identified women. I also think the data of bi-identified men who only contact men is skewed because most bi men who prefer women are forced into the closet because most straight women won’t date a bi guy, so a bi guy looking for a woman is less likely to advertise that he’s bi in his ad.
@Justice4ll: Wow, I can’t imagine why you seem to have a hard time finding dates.
I judge grammar, and it’s not because I’m a snooty bitch, but because I find that it’s often the case that someone who doesn’t care enough to bother with checking their spelling is also someone who doesn’t care enough to bother to do all kinds of other things that require a minimum of effort. Get me?
As a man of psychology, i am not surprized about this post, but it was enlightening. I laughed reading through this because the only “rule” i broke was the picture one, everything else on my profile is spot on.
Why do people have to lie about shit? Your not the greatest person in the world and we understand that, be honest about yourself.
Our egotistical lies are what make online dating so fustrating, because you cant really tell ig who you are talking to is for real.
I don’t understand the contention of self-identified bi posters that this data suggests bi people don’t exist. It clearly shows 1 in 4 self-identified bisexuals are actively pursuing both men and women. Just because the data shows behavior doesn’t match identity should be no cause to complain.
This is going to be true across a wide range including the gay or straight populations at large which will contain a block of people who are not seeing partners at all and yet identify as one or the other. It does provoke the oft debated question: are you what you do or what you feel?
Many gays have said those who identify as bisexual but seeking only one gender (or none) are “living a lie” which I find reflective of prejudice and hubris in a community that one might imagine to be more sensitive to such issues.
Simple explanation for the bisexual disparity:
Perhaps many/most bisexual OkCupid participants already have a committed partner of one gender, but are using OkCupid to get their needs with the other gender met? I have personally met a small handful of people this way.
This hypothesis is easily tested, if OkCupid were willing to expand the options in its “current relationship status” descriptor.
So about the bisexual messaging… I only message people that are relatively close to me because I intend to actually meet them (hopefully). There are far more eligible men close by than gay/bisexual women in my area. Thus I don’t message many women. They all seem to be taken already. It could be because I live in Idaho and we have far less girl on girl and guy on guy action
It is interesting to see that OKC staff has gone through the effort of assembling these statistics. There are a few oddities about them, though..
First of all the length. It is assumed that the US is the average. Essential would be to see the distributions in several continents. How many percent are actually from the US? There are appear to be quite a few North Americans, but there are many Europeans as well that could life the average considerable, being taller on average.
The income/message quantity surprises me greatly. People who have a very high income likely work very much. 60+ hour work weeks. They would not be very good partners because of that. People with a lesser income are likely to be less ambitious in the career field, and having more time to spend with a significant other.
Still… a very interesting and entertaining read!
Very interesting report. Thank you very much for publishing it.
What I am curious about is how many people on the site have images that are good enough not to require me to do a forensic image analysis to extrapolate what a person really looks like.
Bad lighting, all-black clothing, too zoomed out, lack of a smile and, believe it or not, wrong hairstyle – those tend to sink someone’s chances quite rapidly. I am a gatekeeper on ModelMayhem, which makes me part of a team of people who see and approve lots of model profiles, and we see lots of terrible profile images even there from supposed models. Sounds like fun, right? Unfortunately it’s actually quite tedious. Out of my average 100 or so votes per day on new profiles submitted worldwide, only two or three models receive a personal introduction message from me. That would be similar to me writing a message here on OKC after browsing the site and bear in mind that I am looking at a worldwide sample rather than a more geographically limited subset of profiles as I would on a dating site. If it’s so bad on a site for models, there is no surprise that a general dating site is full of mediocre images. Girls really need to experiment with their hair when posting on an online dating site. It can take an image from a 5 to a 10 when a flattering look is achieved.
Note to guys – overcome the shyness and ask a friend who is a photographer for a good headshot. You will be a LOT more successful. As with public speaking, you don’t have to be great, you just need to be good because everyone else is quite terrible. Speaking of public speaking, spend a few months as a member of Toastmasters and you will become unbelievably smooth as a natural byproduct.
I am king_wiseleo on OKC and Wiseleo on MM
Hmm I haven’t really lied about anything on my profile but my photos are kind of old. I guess I listed myself as athletic when I was probably more average. I lost seven lbs in the last few weeks so now I might have to switch it back. Maybe I should list my income since the little widget told me people around me make about half as much.
One factor you didn’t seem to take into account with regards to bi people is their relationship status. It’s entirely possible that a bi person is only looking for one gender because they already have a partner of the other.
I know quite a few genuinely bisexuals who prefer to have one gender for a commented / long term relationship, but have casual sex with the other.
I find it fascinating how people jump to the defensive in these comments. In my personal experience, I’ve definitely found that most of the guys I’ve met DO lie about their height, their income, and many other things. As long as these things help them get matches, they are going to keep on lying.
It’s kind of like a job interview. Many people believe that regardless of their qualifications, if they could just get the interview, they could make their case in person and get the job. Same thing applies here. Men believe that getting that first date will give them an opportunity to demonstrate their positives, so they are willing to exaggerate to get to that first meeting. I can’t speak on women as I don’t date women.
The data on bisexuals is not surprising either, but it doesn’t mean these posters aren’t actually bisexual. Most of the bisexual men in the thirties range that I have met, are married. So they already have a woman in their life, and use OKCupid as a way to meet men exclusively. I’m a bit more puzzled by the “bisexual” men who message only women, but I can’t comment as I have no personal experience with them.
Professional Sociologist here… I love this blog. It’s the only one I read, really, and I desperately want to work for you people. 2 points.
(1) I’m concerned about your height data. Based on the statistics presented here, it doesn’t appear that you’ve adjusted the average U.S. height for age, but okcupid’s folks tend to be younger, and the average height has increased considerably in recent years. But maybe you did and I misread.
(2) When you further analyze your data on bisexuals, I strongly encourage you to separate bisexuals who are single versus bisexuals who are “available” or “seeing someone.” In our polyamorous house, where my husband has a decided preference for bi ladies like myself, it’s kind of a running joke how many bisexual woman start their profiles with, “I’ve already got a boyfriend, thanks, I’m just looking for girls.” Just a thought.