SIO419: Men Are From App and Women Are From Browser

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:17 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 419. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and it's Serious Lydia's Only. How's it going?

0:00:25 Lydia: Good. How are you?

0:00:27 Thomas: I'm enjoying this recurring segment.

0:00:30 Lydia: Yeah, me too. It's really fun. Of getting my, I know, feet back in, what was that idiom? You'll know. Feet back in the game is what I wanted to say, but head back in the game. Is that the body part?

0:00:38 Thomas: My god. Another instant classic, everybody. My feet wet. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not even sure what you're talking about.

0:00:45 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just getting into psych mode again. It's cool.

0:00:52 Thomas: Okay. Psych. Not an idiom expert. It's okay, everybody. Don't worry. That's not... Today's topic is not idioms.

0:00:52 Lydia: Yeah, not what we're covering. I I won't be getting that call when you're doing that episode.

0:01:00 Thomas: No, no. Yeah. I will call anyone else. No, what are we talking about today?

0:01:06 Lydia: We're going to talk about something that you might be a little bit of an expert into, online dating.

0:01:10 Thomas: Oh, that's me. Well, I mean, we're batting 100, I guess, right?

0:01:15 Lydia: Yeah, we are. We're doing pretty well, you know, for our online dating, yeah.

0:01:16 Thomas: Yeah we beat it we beat online dating, yeah.

0:01:22 Lydia: I will get over this story when we were telling, you know, one of our friends from theater who's younger than us how we met. And we said, oh, we met on OkCupid. And she was like, what's that? And we're like, oh it's a dating website. And she was, like, like an app? Like, what is that? I felt so old. So old in that moment.

0:01:42 Thomas: What we had to do is put in one of those AOL CD-ROMs and then log on and then yeah, talk to each other through that. It wasn't an app, so

0:01:45 Lydia: Pretty much. Yeah. No. No, it was not. And that's actually an interesting segue to what specifically we're going to talk about today. And this is a a study that came out early earlier last year, it's 2023, and it was in the Information and Management Journal, Do Women and Men Click Differently? Mobile Devices Mitigate Gender Differences in Online Dating.

0:02:13 Thomas: It's a play on words, we're I think that, yeah, it's so hard to get people to read your academic paper, so I think it's more the play on worlds, you can do the better times.

0:02:15 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, of I mean like that too, too, right, my thesis, but I used a colon. That's like a classic move. No colon here, you know, so times have changed. Exactly. What they're looking at here is how online dating presents in a mobile environment versus on a PC.

0:02:30 Thomas: Have changed. Oh, they actually were able to find some dinosaurs like us who had relevant information about that. We went to a cemetery and dug up some fossils to tell us how it was back when you had to click on a website to date someone. Oh, okay.

0:02:45 Lydia: Yeah. Well, no, because they no, they actually did an experiment instead of a survey. So, Yeah, it's pretty cool. Before we dive into what exactly they did here, what do we already know about some of these constructs, right? For gender, and this is borne out in research for decades, you and decades, and decade, men tend to place greater value on attractiveness for a mate, and women tend to place greater value on non -physical traits, notably things like earning prospects. That's seen across race, age, country, culture, pretty pervasive finding overall. Online dating, we know that a fundamental goal of people who engage in online dating is to be able to assess how attracted they are to a potential partner before investing a lot of time, resources, energy in meeting face -to -face and kind wasting time on someone who's not going to work out. We also know from the research that mobile applications induce greater social engagement from their users. They're easier to use, right? So you want to engage more with it.

0:02:59 Thomas: Yeah, Nowadays there's just, there's all the swiping that takes place, the swiping and the, you know, the the god knows what else that's going on. Back in our day, you had to click uphill both ways in the snow to meet a single person.

0:04:04 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. We don't really know much about that. It's a good joke.

0:04:14 Thomas: So how I got you on my profile.

0:04:15 Lydia: Yeah, it is. And then what do we know about how we process information on devices? We know that smartphones, you major advantage with smartphones is that they're ubiquitous. However, a major disadvantage here is their usability. They have smaller screens than a computer does, right? So to things, it costs you more in cognitive energy and, you know, scrolling and eye And so you're more likely to click on links towards the top to mitigate that mental load.

0:04:33 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. I'm pretty stingy with my eye movement. You know, I'm, I budget, I have a budget and like, I've not doing any, that's how I rate all the ladies I check out on the app. I am like, this is like a four millimeter eye movement. It's a scale out of 10. Yeah, it's like Lydia was a whoo. The millimeters I moved on my eyes on that one.

0:04:53 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. I'm Oh. We also know that smaller screens engaging on your smartphone negatively affects reading comprehension, again, because of that cognitive load. And greater cognitive load leads to negatively impacting accuracy of decisions, too. These are all, various you research that's been done previously.

0:05:14 Thomas: Jeez. No wonder I can't read.

0:05:27 Thomas: And this is independent of dating. This is just like mobile research.

0:05:29 Lydia: Independent. Yep, yep.

0:05:31 Thomas: Like, OK, huh?

0:05:32 Lydia: Then we also know that in terms of how we process verbal and visual information, there is a theory called the dual coding theory that essentially says there are different mental systems that process visual information and verbal information. Verbal Verbal is used for language, and then we have an imagery system, you know, in this mental capacity for our non -linguistic objects. Addition to that, there is a model that demonstrates how men and women process information differently. So not just that there are different centers in our brain potentially that process this different information, that men frequently do not engage in comprehensive processing processing of all available information in order to judge something. And instead, they do more of a heuristic mode of processing. And that is focused on like relying on cues that are, you know, salient based on what they're looking at within that context right there.

0:06:31 Thomas: Were we still within the general sense, or was this in dating? Okay.

0:06:35 Lydia: Is just general sense. Yep.

0:06:36 Thomas: So in general, and you said it was men? Okay.

0:06:38 Lydia: General in men are looking at what's what's salient what's in front of me and that's how I'm going to judge something. It's this they are more of a comprehensive information processor. They try to engage in like analysis of all available information to them. Yeah, yeah, this is found in, yeah.

0:06:38 Thomas: Hmm. So How do women do it then, huh? Really? Well Give them all the jobs then. Sounds like, sounds like they should be in charge. Yeah.

0:07:03 Lydia: And it requires more effort and stuff, and we can get into a whole conversation about how maybe this also impacts mental load for women. Yeah, so that is a difference that's seen in the research. With that existing knowledge, what the researchers wanted to look at here is, okay, well, how does this look then in online dating in that kind of context.

0:07:22 Thomas: In The highest stakes environment that there is.

0:07:24 Lydia: Hunger games, You know. Yeah. What they're looking at here is, you know, if we put all of the information that we know from previous research together, the thought is if verbal information receives less attention on mobile devices than on PCs, because it's more costly to process verbal information, and we know that mobile devices are also more costly by nature of their smaller screens, then we're going to see an impact to how women rely on verbal information in assessing attractiveness when they normally would be seeking out all the information. It might be reduced there. And maybe their behavior would then become more similar to men who don't rely so much on verbal information, even when it's not that mentally taxing to do so. Yeah. What did they hypothesize? We have a couple different things that they wanted to look at here.

First hypothesis was that including verbal Verbal information alongside visual information, so the profile photo, in online dating profiles, will affect attractiveness assessments by women to a greater extent than it affects those by men, kind of what we stated previously. Hypothesis two is interesting, though, because now they're saying, OK, but how does it all interact? And here is where they say that using a mobile device instead of a PC will mitigate that that gender difference in attractiveness because of cognitive load there on.

0:07:25 Thomas: Yeah, Okay, okay, sure.

0:08:58 Thomas: Well, it'll make everybody more like men, right? Yeah, which doesn't sound great, but.

0:09:00 Lydia: Right, right. Exactly. Oh, yeah. So, how did they do this? They did, as I mentioned, it was an experiment. A lot of other previous research looking at online dating behavior is often done through, you -reported surveys. And they really wanted to look at if you're presented with a profile in front of you, how do you interact with it? How do you rate that attractiveness as a result by what you're seeing, you know, in the moment?

0:09:29 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Sign me up for this experiment. Experiment

0:09:32 Lydia: Actually curated 12 profiles of men and 12 profiles of women by initially doing like a pre -test. So they didn't just create, you 12 and 12 based on what they were feeling like that day. They actually compiled 60 different photos of men and women and 40 different text blurbs that would be paired with it. And then they had they kind of like a sample size of of I think it was the professors at this school kind of looked at it.

And they they all rated attractiveness based on the photos and then like attractiveness based on the text. And then really wanted to look for something where it was like, you know, relatively homogenous that you're not going to have like a bombshell, you know, or someone who's like horribly attractive. They really didn't care about the stark differences in attractiveness. They really wantedto look how the behavior changed between men and women when the information was presented to them in a particular way.

Once they were able to kind of curate from group and avoid that ceiling effect, they presented to 172 participants. 102 of them were men, 69 as women, one as other. They ended up excluding that person from the data analysis because they were kind of like a lone wolf in terms of how they identified. And it was going to make, you know, obviously the statistical analysis a little more complicated. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 69 years old. It's-nine of the participants were married, 19 were in a relationship, and the the remainder were single. They had a variety of independent variables here that they were investigating, right? Our dependent variable is what's the attractiveness of the profile that you're viewing. But because they have so many different pairings that they're doing,

0:10:47 Thomas: Intentional yeah

0:11:28 Lydia: Makes it pretty interesting. We have four dichotomous independent variables. We We have the user's gender, male or female, the gender of the profile, male or female. Profile, if it had text or not, and the device that they're using, mobile or PC. They had a continuous scale of attractiveness and they included some pictures in the paper itself. And so what it looks like is it's in any way. There's on the very far left, it says not really. The very far right, it's very much. You know, how attractive is this person? And then it's coded in the background to correspond to a numerical value from 1 to 100, up to two decimal places. And they, it's very important. Accuracy.

0:12:11 Thomas: That's I mean that's how how I do it for sure I

0:12:14 Lydia: Yes, yes. There's an Excel worksheet involved.

0:12:18 Thomas: A big difference between a 90.01 and a 90.02, I Can I Can Sense The difference, yeah.

0:12:23 Lydia: Maybe not on the individual level,

0:12:25 Thomas: I Know, I'm Just kidding, okay.

0:12:25 Lydia: But. But and Then they presented all of this information, these 12 different profiles on a website platform that was built and developed for this particular experiment. So They were able to tell if the participant was trying to access the website Using The wrong device based on what's been assigned to them. And so it wouldn't let them continue with the experiment and would prompt them to access it appropriately. The was also fixed. So things weren't moved around depending on, you know, they were trying to control for all of those variables. Scale and the submit button were at the bottom of the page to try and, you know, not clutter up that cognitive load with looking at, you know, what you see on top is what's more salient and you're going to tap out for the rest of it.

They really wanted you to take in the picture and the text, have the the opportunity to take in both and then rate and submit at that point. Also gave participants the opportunity to indicate what they would like to look at for the profiles, which is also interesting and something that from saying, you know, doesn't really seem to have been done in previous research. A lot of times just kind of assumed that it's a heterosexual, you you're a man, rate this woman. But they gave participants opportunity to indicate if they wanted to rate men or women on attractiveness.

0:12:36 Thomas: Oh Okay Right Oh Okay Why

0:13:49 Lydia: OK, so that's it. Pretty straightforward in terms of what they did. You want to know what they found out? Okay. So received higher attractiveness ratings than men. And overall, women gave lower attractiveness. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. That tracks for me, too. Um, hypothesis one was if the verbal information included with the profile picture would affect attractiveness assessments by women, um, to a greater extent than it would affect men. Men, and they did find a version of this where women rated profiles as more attractive with text, but men rated profiles as less attractive with text.

0:13:56 Thomas: Yeah Oh Wow, no, that All outfits. Yeah.

0:14:41 Thomas: Wait,

0:14:42 Lydia: That make sense?

0:14:43 Thomas: It doesn't matter what the text is.

0:14:45 Lydia: No, because they had different versions. It was all, you know, randomized.

0:14:49 Thomas: Yeah. So just, oh, gotcha. They've, they've, they've isolated just the variable of text.

0:14:51 Lydia: Yeah, just in general. Yeah. That was surprising to me, that if you included text in your profile.

0:14:54 Thomas: Okay. Not to me. I'd like to remind you of a very apropos quote. How can you read this? There are no pictures. Yeah, see?

0:15:02 Lydia: I Okay, that's fair. Wanted to look at that three -way interaction. The PC, if there was text, women actually increased their attractiveness assessment and men decreased attractiveness assignment. Yeah.

0:15:30 Thomas: They're just like, this is the homework. Boring.

0:15:33 Lydia: Yeah, but on mobile, it had no effect on either men or women. So on PC, it did.

0:15:37 Thomas: Oh, wait, what? I thought it did. Hmm.

0:15:40 Lydia: First one was just overall, not looking at device use.

0:15:43 Thomas: OK. Oh. But we don't know whether that. OK, so we can subdivide that effect.

0:15:46 Lydia: But we don't know what. Yep. Yep,

0:15:49 Thomas: OK. So they're looking at like why the difference and it seems to be almost entirely when it's on PC and not when it is on mobile?

0:15:49 Lydia: Yep. On mobile, text makes no difference up or down for either men or women. It also didn't matter if was a same-sex user profile combination, combination, um, and it wholly just matters on PC, and again, yeah, that if there is text, if you are a man wanting to engage a woman, then you, you are on a kind of a typical normal dating website that's accessed on a computer, it probably would benefit you to include text, but if you're on on Tinder, Hinge, you know, that are mobile options, you don't even need to bother, which I thought was interesting and a little depressing to me. And maybe it's just one of those things where because you're swiping, you're so focused on just, you Know, whether or not you're kind of attracted to the person and then you'll get to the, you and potatoes later kind kind of thing about who they are. I don't know.

0:16:37 Thomas: Really? Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:54 Thomas: Well, I also would say, so just trying to think through this, I'm not sure this necessarily means it would translate into these apps because this was a custom thing, right? So, So, like, if you had an app that, I think it would depend on how a given app presented text versus photos. So I can imagine that if you had an app configured a certain way, the absence of text might be kind of notable in a way that maybe would make more of a difference than how... I don't know how they presented it in this because it's a custom solution. It's a custom app, right?

0:17:05 Lydia: Yes, this was a custom platform. Yeah.

0:17:27 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:17:28 Thomas: Yeah. So it could be that that... I mean, the general effect makes sense, but maybe depending on how the app, like a real app is structured, that I wonder if that that could change how this goes. Yeah.

0:17:39 Lydia: Yeah, did cite some research about looking at functions on online dating apps and exploring user behavior based off of kind of manipulating those things. Let...

0:17:52 Thomas: Interesting.

0:17:52 Lydia: Some of the things that previous research has found is that if you are able to browse profiles of other users anonymously, then you're going to view more profiles, including those of same -sex and interracial mates, I guess, would increase. But then you are potentially risking fewer matches than non -anonymous users because there's no way to indicate your interest if You're anonymous. And they, research has looked at things and seeing like how that impacts the behavior for online apps. And it's kind of an indicator of your financial status, because that costs money. And...

0:18:08 Thomas: Oh. Okay, oh. Right, yeah.

0:18:39 Lydia: So... It's a way to kind of indicate, you know, subconsciously or consciously, I guess, to a potential partner that you have means to expend in...

0:18:47 Thomas: Those. App developer.

0:18:48 Lydia: That way.

0:18:48 Thomas: Bastards. They know what they're doing, yeah.

0:18:48 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, but then women tend to not bother if they are like more attractive, if you look at kind of like the attractiveness. Scale of those women, yeah.

0:18:59 Thomas: Well. Also, if, if men don't looking at that, making, making, what... As much, it wouldn't really matter anyway. It's more. About the. Dudes doing. It, I guess, yeah.

0:19:02 Lydia: Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Um, from the results that they had here, given that most of the research previously is focused on, you know, manipulating the app itself and the impact that it's having, they really tried to clue in on, okay, what are the practical implications of what we... Because there are practical implications, as you mentioned, to the developers of, you, and what they can do to, you, potentially engage their users in a more text-friendly way, if that's preferable.

0:19:38 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:38 Lydia: And I don't know if it is.

0:19:39 Thomas: I'm... Actually trying to think of what, what the app developers are really. Cause I guess, I guess on one hand you'd want to be able to boast some sort of success rate. Also maybe they just, do they just want like and attention on their app? Does that matter? Do they sell ads? I guess you'd also want, I don't know if they do. Are there ads or, or you could want more incentive for signing up for the premium or something. So like, that's another consideration.

0:19:43 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, they could sell ads. Yeah. Yeah. Listeners, let us know. Are there ads on these things?

0:20:05 Thomas: Yeah. So, yeah, don't know. I guess you'd want like I was trying to think earlier on, I was going to say, oh, you'd want everyone to find everyone attractive, maybe. But also, like, is there some reverse incentive where what you want is for people to think they're going to find someone perpetually, but not so they're always using the app or something?

0:20:19 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so that's why I was stuck, too, where because I my interpretation of this is like, you don't bother with adding any text to your profile. People are most likely engaging on a mobile device. Men, it's it makes no difference. And women, it can only like hurt you if they're going to go on their Computer. Computer, so like, just don't bother at all. But one of the things that they had mentioned here is that, you know, there is a benefit to that verbal information, you know, that text.

And normally when app developers are trying to make that information more salient, they'll mess with things like font size and color contrast and things of that nature. And it was saying that that might be beyond readability and, like, need just to. And maybe it's something where you how you present the information between verbal and visual and kind of looking at, you know, maybe you present, like, a blurb about the person first, and then you see their photo. But I don't know if that really does, if that would work in a swiping sort of environment. Maybe it's like a "tell me more" kind of, or "show me, I'm into

0:20:39 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:21:31 Lydia: It." Yeah.

0:21:31 Thomas: Well, I feel like you could. Yeah, you could be a dating app that I've got to imagine there's a lot of them, although Although I only hear about like the couple or whatever, but I'm sure you could be a dating app that tries to market by emphasizing different things. You know, like this is more about a genuine connection. So you're going to read a paragraph first before you see them or something. But I also imagine that's could be hard sell. So maybe that's maybe that'S not successful. I don't.

0:21:51 Lydia: Well, yeah, if, like, men aren't into it at all, then yeah, then

0:21:55 Thomas: Yeah, it's just all women on there looking for like an actual partner that doesn't suck. And they're like, oh, there's nobody on here.

0:21:56 Lydia: Yeah, but maybe okay, so maybe that's like, maybe a Bumble in an environment like that it would be more successful, because that isn't that the one where women and initiate contact? So if, if it's in a space like that, then men are incentivized, yeah, to do text. But again, on a mobile it wouldn't matter, I don't know. On, would it, would need to be paired with changing the way that Bumble presents on your smaller screen. You think that could work and that could lead to more viable matchmaking from a woman's perspective?

0:22:09 Thomas: I think so. You do want text, right? Yeah.

0:22:38 Lydia: Um, the way that it's set up right now is, you know, geared towards men in the patriarchy, just kidding, but it is just geared towards you the, um, out in. In terms of cognitive delay.

0:22:38 Thomas: Yeah, just geared toward like faster decision.

0:22:50 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Per minute. SPM.

0:22:51 Thomas: Yeah yeah like guess it's it's sad that the advice is like don't just pictures just picture didn't happen.

0:23:02 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, I know. I, it's so interesting. Yeah, because their takeaway, like I said, you know, like my takeaway is probably like pretty cynical here, but their takeaway was that if, if you pay attention to the text, it might actually help you rate the person more accurately.

0:23:20 Thomas: Interesting.

0:23:21 Lydia: Because If you're just taking in the picture, we know that information processing, the men, you know, that heuristic sort, they're, you know, not seeking out additional information. They're just kind of going with what they generally see. But women, they might be rating someone less attractive if, if they took in also, like, the text about them, which would make them more attractive, maybe it's something about like their job is really interesting, or, or, know, money, I guess is part of it, or they have a good sense of humor, right, that might impact your, your actual decision making in terms of attractiveness scale, um, then men, similarly, maybe they're, they're of overly, uh, indicating their attractiveness of the woman

0:23:21 Thomas: Mm. -hmm. Yeah yeah well that's that's what's Interesting. I can, can never, like, any of my assumptions about anyone based on me, I just feel like I don't do things the same way, but like I can totally understand, like, your first pass is going to be like, okay, do they look hot, you know, like, I get it, you're gonna, there's a lot of people out there

0:24:10 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah that would be in the world, too, you know

0:24:27 Thomas: Yeah exactly there's a lot of people out there, you're going to do a first pass. Oh, that person seems attractive. But for me, it's like I cannot imagine not then also seeing, like, OK, what does their bio say? What do they, you know? And like there could have been I remember exactly how the information was ordered when I saw you on. OK, Cupid, 13 you years ago or whatever. But like there's a lot of things that could have Been in your profile that would have made it a pass. You know, you're like, oh, this person's good looking. And then I read something just really terrible. And I'm like, never mind. See you later. You know, like I, I would definitely check. I don't know.

0:24:28 Lydia: Yeah Yeah.

0:25:03 Lydia: And It is kind of crazy because I, I am, you know, like, have been reflecting on, on my OKCupid profile, and I was like, wow, I remember, like, they had questions that you answered. Like, there was a lot of text.

0:25:16 Thomas: Oh yeah. But it was on the computer. Right. Yeah. I guess that's, yeah.

0:25:17 Lydia: It was on the computer. Yeah. And so there's no way to translate that over into an app environment. I get that. But I do feel like you are losing out on getting to Know the person. And from what I understand, like there's a lot online dating now via the apps where like people just kind of like message for a bit and then ghost or you know, like match and then don't ever message and actually ever meet up, you know, like it's, it's one of those things where it's like, it, it's easier, it might be more engaging for the user, but what is it actually leading to in terms of outcomes of a relationship? And I think that potentially is getting hurt because of this.

0:25:27 Thomas: Yeah, that makes sense to me.

0:26:02 Lydia: Would much rather read about a person in more detail on my own time than have to pry it out of them via messages before I decide if I want to meet up with them in person or not. I also, I'm a woman, so that's my experience with it. But

0:26:10 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

0:26:19 Thomas: You have a sense of like the strength of these effects? You know, it's, it's always, I know I always ask that, but it's like, when you say, you know, men are from Mars and women are from Venus, how, how many of them, what percentage of men are actually from Mars? And no, like, we yeah. Know how strong the effect of like, they only at the pictures is exactly.

0:26:39 Lydia: So, I like, I can let out some of the graphs that they put together based off of the interactions that we talked about. Attractiveness that women assessed for a user's profile on mobile, with and without text, is pretty much 60.0, almost identical. When you're looking at the PC environment, assessment by a woman, you have the profiles without text drop down to, that's like 58. And, yes, yeah.

0:27:15 Thomas: Is this out of a hundred? So the average attractiveness is 60 and 58. Okay, right.

0:27:19 Lydia: And then profiles with text went up to, you know, 63 .5 -ish. And, yeah,

0:27:27 Thomas: So we're talking pretty marginal differences. I mean, it's not, I think that's important. Like it's probably not turning. Well, I guess, do we know that for sure? Like it's probably like if you're just a hundred out of a hundred, like if you're max attractive, it's well, a, it probably doesn't even fucking matter. But like, I'm trying to think of how can we use that? Can we use dat to say, like, if you are, I don't know, a 70 or something, how does much of a difference could it even make or

0:27:52 Lydia: Well, remember that. They and this is a limitation that they talk about, too, that they curated their profiles to make sure they didn't have anyone who was like far and away gorgeous or, you know, Shrek.

0:28:03 Thomas: The opposite? Yeah. So you can't really get like the Cyrano de Bergerac thing going. Like they can't get, okay, that's interesting. Maybe that is a limitation, because yeah, actually that's a good point because I think that will prevent you from getting extreme swings, like- Also would depend on what text they put in, though, because that I didn't get a firm answer on, I get that it kind of doesn't- Well- What?

0:28:04 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Right. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:28:24 Lydia: I can read you a couple of them. Right.

0:28:26 Thomas: I was gonna say is did they do, if they were doing that with pictures, so like with pictures they were doing, you know, just kind of everybody mainstream-ish, average, not not anybody crazy good-looking or crazy ugly, but did they do the same thing with text? 'Cause obviously you can imagine the text being like MAGA, you know, women should be in the kitchen, blah, blah, and then that goes, that's like going to be a negative 100 in terms of attractiveness for the most part.

0:28:49 Lydia: Right. No, no, they did curate the text. So they constructed their textual descriptions based on text that they found on websites and blogs that gave tips on creating like successful profiles. Profiles and they were, you know, roughly the same in length to try and, you know, mitigate any difference there. And then they had done the presentation in their pre -test to try and curate the, you profiles for this experiment. An example of that is this this right here. Hi, if you need a recommendation for the best taco in town, I'm your girl. Looking for the margarita recommendation to match my own expertise. Text me where I can find the best margarita in town and maybe we'll meet there.

0:29:09 Thomas: Right.

0:29:29 Thomas: Did they list a number or, I mean, yeah, yeah.

0:29:39 Lydia: Five, five, five.

0:29:43 Thomas: It's telling me that's it's not a real number. You've, you tricked me. Damn it. I just want a really good taco.

0:29:45 Lydia: Yeah, I get it. As long as you can give the margherita information.

0:29:52 Thomas: Yeah, that's fine. I don't really, a margarita is kind of a margherita. I feel like just, just do the ingredients of a Margarita and it's fine, but all the same.

0:29:53 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. But I do think, you we said, that's an interesting limitation. Something that would need to be explored further. I do think it was interesting that this was kind of the first study where they gave participants the opportunity to indicate, you know, what profile they'd like to look at. I hope to see more research in the future looking at that. And then I think the other piece, too, is, you know, additional studies that take what's being learned here. And then what does that mean for the future of a dating app? What does that look like? What the dating app developers and companies and everything, what is their mission? What is their goal? And what kind of changes do they need to make in their environments in order to meet that? And I do think that this research is, you know, a piece of that puzzle. Yeah.

0:30:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:46 Thomas: Yeah, well, I imagine, I wonder if those companies have like just tons of proprietary research and stuff too that they already are using. I don't know. Yeah.

0:30:55 Lydia: Maybe. I mean, do you remember with OkCupid they would do like Data Mondays or something like that and they would. Yeah.

0:31:01 Thomas: Interesting.

0:31:01 Lydia: Yeah, I read those all the time. Yeah.

0:31:03 Thomas: Lydia. Spent serious time on OkCupid. I went on there.

0:31:08 Lydia: Reading their research.

0:31:09 Thomas: Yeah, I went out there and was like, is there anybody? Oh, I messaged literally two people and one never messaged Jack and one was Lydia. So there you go there You have haven't.

0:31:17 Lydia: Yeah. And here we are. Three kids later, maybe we need to tell these swiping apps perhaps. Yep.

0:31:23 Thomas: Yeah, they can interview us. Yeah. Ask us any questions you have. We're extremely not generalizable, you and I, I think, is the message.

0:31:29 Lydia: Yeah. Well, do you want to do something fun? Well, I

0:31:37 Thomas: I? I don't know. That's just going to be my answer to everything.

0:31:40 Lydia: Um, I was thinking, you know, uh, been talking a lot about the um, dating environment and how it can, you know, be successful between verbal and visual information. Um, but have you heard of something thing called wokefishing? It's the best. So, um, actually did send you a video. If fishing

0:31:58 Thomas: No, but I already love it. Well,

0:32:04 Clip: Newest online dating trend is reportedly something called woke fishing. This is where singles pretend to be progressive to score dates. Experts warn that this could doom relationships from the get -go, adding that it is never a good idea to tell everything about your social and political beliefs to someone you're just getting to know.

0:32:13 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:14 Thomas: What should that tell you, Fox News asshole? Yeah, for your Reviewers? Yeah. No, I agree. I agree

0:32:25 Clip: Well, Emily, I know you love your online dating, so of course I'm coming to you. Okay, everybody, Kaylee is kidding because I don't, because you guys know how I feel about dating. Like they are breeding grounds for serial killers.

0:32:35 Thomas: I don't know how you feel I don't

0:32:37 Clip: And so everything about this is frightening to me, especially the notion that somehow being a Democrat is more attractive.

0:32:37 Thomas: Care. What? Breeding ground for serial killers? Are they creating more serial killers Once

0:32:45 Clip: I'm sorry. I need my men intelligent. Yeah. Julie, when I read this topic, I just thought of you immediately. I don't know why. Because I seem like a single spinster to you. Yes. Well, there was a day where I was and I actually did use dating sites. I' ll tell you you a couple because they're really cheesy. I used a website called kiss.com. And at the end of a date, funny story, the guy's like, well, we have to kiss, right?

0:32:39 Lydia: I Don't know Yeah It's

0:32:50 Thomas: Again, you're on the wrong channel

0:33:06 Clip: Because we did meet on kiss.gov. And I'm like, and that's the last time that I was on a dating website. But I have to say, first of all, woke fishing, the reason why you are all single is because you're woke fishing. And that's why more people are getting married at a later time.

0:33:06 Thomas: NazisSeekingNazis .com

0:33:12 Lydia: The only one she's gonna tell us about yeah

0:33:18 Clip: Forget the fact that you're waiting on your career. You're single because you are talking politics. You do not talk politics on a first date. I have to say something, Emily, about online dating.

0:33:13 Thomas: Yeah No. What Well then that is the woke What's her

0:33:19 Lydia: I know

0:33:27 Clip: That's actually pretty awesome. Cause I don't know about you, but I cringe at the notion of like small talk or just like having to talk to anybody face to face in

0:33:26 Lydia: I think

0:33:27 Thomas: Stance on vis -a -vis presenting your wokeness or not Well, hold on, hold On So she's saying so the woke fishing is if you're a conservative piece of shit, pretend you're not because no one wants to date you. Right. OK. And then she's sayings she she was sounded like she was calling bullshit on that. And but then she'S like, don't talk politics, which is like, well, then wait, then you are kind of acknowledging that in order to be successful, you need to hide your politics, hide your kids, hide your wife. I

0:33:42 Lydia: Yeah.

0:33:55 Lydia: No. I, I think That's true, but yeah, they're trying to say that it's just politics when we all know that politics aligns with values, and that is pretty important, I would think.

0:34:05 Thomas: Just love, I love doing a show on a conservative network like Fox News and being like, "It's a new trend, it's called woke fishing." You know, how none of us can get anyone interested, you know, the minute any of you viewers open your mouth about politics, everyone, friends, family, strangers, dogs, just leaves the room, you know, they just like clear out. Yeah, well, some... Some people are pretending to not be a piece of shit in order to get a date.

0:34:14 Lydia: Yeah. Yep.

0:34:31 Thomas: It's like, boy, shouldn't that tell you something? Everyone on this show outnumbered.

0:34:30 Lydia: Well, Yeah, was that recent that too, about like how conservative men are, you not getting any dates. So, yeah, I don't know. Something's going on there.

0:34:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:45 Clip: Politics. You do not talk politics on a first date, I have say something Emily about, uh, online dating that's actually pretty

0:34:45 Lydia: Yeah,

0:34:48 Thomas: Why not? I would absolutely. Hold on. Yeah. We that part of here. You want some advice? You conservative fucking ghouls. Actual advice from a successfully married couple now for however. There's no need to put a number on it. Yeah. Yeah, so there's no need to quantify how many years you and I have been married or together. It's not an answerable question, actually.

0:35:02 Lydia: So many years. Yeah.

0:35:11 Thomas: It's like scientists don't know. It's somewhere in the year range. We've been together. Meeting was going on 13 years ago, right?

0:35:10 Lydia: What is time when you're in love?

0:35:23 Thomas: Or just over, yeah, just over 12.

0:35:23 Lydia: Yeah, just over 13 or no, just over 12.

0:35:26 Thomas: Yeah, so going on 12 years ago. Going on 13 year ago, but successful couple right here. We'll give you some advice Because everyone in that Fox News studio, first of all, the men are on their fifth wife. So, like, I don't think they're going to be good advice givers about this, you know. Like one important thing of us getting together was me. For one, the compatibility test was huge. Like the OkCupid, I guess these new apps, like I don't know if they do much of that, you know, they're not, the Okcupid

0:35:30 Lydia: Yep. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, yeah, we

0:35:53 Thomas: Sales point, I didn't even think about that part. It wasn't. Yeah, but it wasn't just, oh, I'm reading stuff you say. It was like they're actual matching.

0:36:00 Lydia: Answer. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We answered lots of questions and things like that ourselves. And then the algorithm behind the scenes, you know.

0:36:01 Thomas: Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah it actually gives you a percentage like it. So you browse kind the results and Lydia was was astronomically high because we're very compatible.

0:36:09 Lydia: Yeah. Not the highest.

0:36:16 Thomas: No, there was some there's like one person higher. And to this day, it turned out to be someone you knew. Right. Are we talking about that person? Yeah, I think so. But like based on everything we know about us, that doesn't make any sense.

0:36:18 Lydia: Oh, yeah. Yeah, she was higher than me. Yeah? Yeah.

0:36:30 Thomas: I feel like she cheated the test. You know, it's got to be. No, but you can't joke being you can. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, the point I was making is that was important to us. Matching is absolutely. There were political questions. There were kind of more philosophical questions. I mean, it's not asking you who you voted for, I don't think. But, you know, it's asking you religion. It may have asked you political leaning. Right. I don't remember.

0:36:51 Thomas: Like it because that's important. Like that's useful information. So if you're, you know, a Fox News viewer trying to use Fox News segments for dating advice, might I suggest don't, I guess.

0:36:34 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah I think it did. Mm hmm.

0:37:02 Lydia: Yeah Yeah. Kayla

0:37:03 Clip: Because I don't know about, you but I cringed at the notion of small talk, or just like having talk to anyone face to to face I like especially after the pandemic so it's actually kind of nice because you get to weed them out talk to them on the phone figure out if they're smart or not you know what they look like so you can screen them I will handle your social media account if you'd like I think at this stage in your career online dating would probably be bad that would blow up in your face so I don't I don't recommend that true well I mean I'm with you I met my husband on Twitter so I immediately no way okay that's kind of like online dating come on it kind of is I slipped into the DMs all right

0:37:08 Thomas: Sure. Oof. Oh, wait, I know that lady. Who is that? Oh, God. My

0:37:34 Lydia: McCannany. Wearing camo. Slid into

0:37:39 Clip: Jimmy oh well okay on a personal note uh this story does hit home for me because a lot of people don't know this but Jenny and I matched on Tinder and well the weird part is it happened nine years after we got married which was really awkward I'm like you're on here too what are the odds but I just want to talk to the men watching at home right now this is very important and it needs to be said woke fishing to land a progressive woman sounds like a good idea until you're on a date with a progressive, woke woman. And now you've got to listen to her ramble on about the patriarchy and yell at you for eating meat and killing cows. By the end of the night, you want to grab the wheel of her Prius and drive it off a bridge. Stop

0:37:39 Lydia: Her DMs wearing camo? Yeah.

0:37:40 Thomas: God. I'm an asshole. Oh

0:37:52 Lydia: Yeah.

0:37:56 Thomas: My God, it's so funny. Don't quit your day job, dude.

0:38:17 Thomas: Oh,

0:38:17 Clip: It. Okay, no reason to do it. And people should stop with this whole idea that they're Not going to date across the political aisle? Because, to go adult for a second, the best time is the hate sex. Come on, everybody. Cross-pollinate. I'm telling you, because I care. It sounds like you just described a date with AOC, but anyway, dig in.

0:38:18 Thomas: Casual jokes about killing women. I am

0:38:18 Lydia: It's like, yeah. Yeah. Hilarious. I

0:38:31 Thomas: Getting, again, mixed messages. Is fucking doofus? No,

0:38:36 Clip: Well, if you're a dude and you go on a date with a very progressive woman, she's picking up the check, so drink as much as you can. And then leave it to her to pile your drunk backside into a car and get you home safely.

0:38:43 Thomas: She's not that's not Is this What is on TV all day, every

0:38:52 Clip: That's actually a good point.

0:38:53 Thomas: Time? We have to watch one

0:38:54 Clip: Assuming the car is charged. If the car doesn't have a charge, you're stuck. Off. Oh, that's true. Yeah, very true. All right,

0:38:45 Lydia: Don't know, know, Yeah, That's

0:38:54 Thomas: Of these things, so just want to point out, the segment was called "Woke Fishing." Was there a meaningful thought? Like, there was that guy expressed something of a thought about it, but like the entire thing was just like, online dating, huh, huh? Like, wait, wasn't the segment about pretending to be, cause you talk about like, where did that come from? What's the story? Who's doing it? Does it work? Does it not work? No. Awful television.

0:39:07 Lydia: Yeah, No, we have, like, someone who actually, you know, a relationship expert you an actual fish, yes. Yeah, I couldn't help it, I had to bring a little bit of "Where There's Woke" a Bit here, um, just because I was, you know, watching that. And And maybe I'll send a link to patrons on a terrible video I watch.

0:39:23 Thomas: Woke fished. Yeah. An actual fish. Yeah, yeah.

0:39:42 Thomas: Another one. Yeah any, any stuff, Fox News stuff on dating is always hilarious, but that's woke fishing, everyone. Well, speaking of a catch, Thanks, hon, for coming. 10 out of 10. I would date you anytime.

0:39:43 Lydia: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Oh, man. We have a hangout coming up. We do. Yeah. Next Thursday, January 25th, 3 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Eastern. Stern. We're going to be hanging with the top two tiers of patrons for SIO and also WTW. So if you're not already on patreon.com/seriouspod or patreon.com/wherethereswoke, you're going to want to go sign up and join us because we have a feud going for codenames. And it is important to me to to try and win back my rightful title because it was stolen from me this last month.

0:40:01 Thomas: Ooh, yeah. Come date us. No, not really.

0:40:38 Thomas: Stop the steal, everybody.

0:40:39 Lydia: Stop the steal.

0:40:39 Thomas: Hashtag stop the steal.

0:40:40 Lydia: That's what I believe.

0:40:41 Thomas: You know how I stole it? We counted the fucking votes. That's what happened.

0:40:41 Lydia: Yes. Yeah. Horse paste. Cyber ninjas. Yeah.

0:40:49 Thomas: Yeah, I can't wait. But, I mean, so is that the only benefit to being a patron on patreon.com?

0:40:54 Lydia: Certainly not. But wait, there's more. You'll also get ad free episodes, which is amazing because, you know, we're not going to charge you to have that verification badge like the apps would for online dating. You get to do it in secret, I don't know, anonymous, and uh, and avoid all those pesky little ads that are really really annoying, um, know, because we also get subjected to them for other shows that we listen to and

0:41:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:21 Thomas: And You're right, fuck it, I'm announcing a new perk. If you want, if you're a patron, we'll, we'll, uh, we'll adjudicate your dating profile. Send us a link. We'll do it.

0:41:28 Lydia: Yeah, no, I Actually do want To

0:41:29 Thomas: We'll

0:41:29 Lydia: Do that if you're interested. Did.

0:41:32 Thomas: Tell You why you're not getting any? I mean, no, not our listeners, they're definitely, they're like, we're already, first of all, we have too many hits, Which I can't, no, not time for all the dates, yeah,

0:41:39 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Their calendar is full except for the 25th when they'll be joining us.

0:41:45 Thomas: Out. Can't wait.

0:41:48 Lydia: And we also have some really fun bonus stuff planned for this month. But we have some previous stuff. We have some seriously awful movies that we've done. We did an episode of house a couple months ago, which was crazy.

0:41:52 Thomas: Yeah, that was the best. I can't wait to do that again.

0:42:02 Lydia: Yeah, so fun. Then we also do a lot of like, I don't know, just kind of chatting on the Patreon sometimes. Sometimes we do like little sneak peeks of what we're going to be covering coming up. You know, give the inside scoop to the folks that are with us in the trenches.

0:42:20 Thomas: So thanks so much, Trench Folk. We love you. And yeah, patreon.com/seriouspod. awesome.

0:42:26 Lydia: Swipe right.

0:42:30 Thomas: Well, thanks so much, hot expert on dating Lydia Smith. And looking to next time.

0:42:34 Lydia: Why, thank you. Yeah, me too.

0:42:53 Thomas: More meat might be a good idea it's what's in my dating app too my dating profile yeah I

0:43:01 Lydia: What hooked me and now we're vegetarian it's