New Dating Website Does Not Quite Deliver On Promise to Let You 'Create Your Own Christian Grey" [Online Dating]

"When you close your eyes, can you easily picture your dream person down to the smallest details, including the exact shape and shade of their eyes or the style and color of their hair?" That is what new dating/paper doll website iDreamofU wants to know.

Here's how it works: you answer a lot of incredibly nitpicky questions (Have you ever thought about your ideal facial structure? No? You have so much to learn!) and then the site tries to match you with someone in their database that fits your curated dreams. "Christian Grey is an iDreamofU Away!" the site promises. Obviously, I was intrigued.

I spent way too long tinkering with iDreamofU's buggy system. The site asked about my ethnicity and then gave me an error message when I tried to create a dude who wasn't Caucasian — which I am going to assume was a bug and not an anti-interracial dating PSA — and it took me a long time for a bunch of other boring reasons to create my own personal dating Frankenstein. You can check him out below. He looks like a bro/the fourth Jonas brother. (My research shows that it is as impossible to create a non-white guy as it is to construct a non-bro.) I shall call him Josh.

To create this AMAZING MAN, I had to pick my ideal facial structure, hairstyle, eye, nose and mouth shapes and sizes and then rank all of those attributes in order of importance. Then, I had to answer a bunch of stock questions about things that are important to me and the kind of woman I am/man I'm looking for. (Look at all of my choices! I picked "Soul of a Woman," obv.)

And what did I get in exchange for all of my hard work, besides my "casually dressed" bro beau? A bunch of matches that looked nothing like him and had nothing to do with the options I selected. I said I wanted someone between 24-30 who lived near me, and iDreamofU gave me a 19-year-old kid who promised "I am not one of those Justin Bieber skateboard dudes." (What does Justin have to do with skateboards? I don't know what the teens are talking about!), some blondes (I SAID BROWN CURLY HAIR, OBVIOUSLY) and a 52-year-old with a koala avatar. My matches were spread all over the country.

Guys: I'm sorry to break it to you, but you might not find the love of your life via iDreamOfU. ::Sob::

[Via YourTango]

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Sick of Being Alone? Try Playing More Boggle [Dating]

A new study out of Penn State shows that "playfulness" might be a key factor in attracting a human mate (kangaroos don't give a shit). It's the old "I just want a guy with a good sense of humor" line, only this time it's made of science! Exciting! Or, I don't know if it technically counts as science, but there was a survey (published in the American Journal of Play, which exists). So what we know is that people believe and self-report that "playfulness" is what they want in a partner, even if what they actually go out and bang is another story:

"Humans and other animals exhibit a variety of signals as to their value as mates," said Garry Chick, professor and head of the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management. "Just as birds display bright plumage or coloration, men may attract women by showing off expensive cars or clothing. In the same vein, playfulness in a male may signal to females that he is nonaggressive and less likely to harm them or their offspring. A woman's playfulness, on the other hand, may signal her youth and fertility."

..."The fact that the subjects tended to rank 'sense of humor,' 'fun loving' and 'playful' at or near the top of the list of 16 characteristics does not mean that the mates they have selected or will select will actually exhibit these traits," said Chick. "In addition, the results may be skewed by the fact that most of the study subjects were college students from a western culture. Despite these caveats, it seems to us that signaling one's virtues as a potential long-term mate through playfulness is not far-fetched. Our results suggest that adult playfulness may result from sexual selection and signal positive qualities to potential long-term mates."

So...thank you Dr. Noshit from the Sherlock Institute of Duh Science! People like hanging out with people who are fun to hang out with. Still, snark aside, any documentation of humans being attracted to personalities rather than just bodies/wealth/security/social signaling is a triumph for personality-having folks everywhere. So who's up for some Kerplunk later? (Or as I like to call it, SECOND BASE.)

Photo credit: yuri_arcurs / Stockfresh.

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World's Worst Dating Website Asks Who You'd Want By Your Side During a 'Dark Night'-esque Tragedy [Omg Wtf]

All hope for humanity is officially lost: Death and Taxes' Ned Hepburn received a press release from a dating website asking readers who they'd want by their side on a first date "IN THE EVENT OF A TRAGEDY LIKE THE DARK NIGHT MASSACRE." (Emphasis ours, out of emotional necessity.)

We don't expect all that much in terms of class from WhatsYourPrice.com, which is basically like Ebay for women. (No, that doesn't mean it's Pinterest-y, it means you actually get to bid on female humans.) But this goes above and beyond all our seedy advertising expectations. An excerpt:

Hi [redacted],

In the event of a tragedy like the Dark Knight Massacre, who would you want by your side on a first date? One online dating website asked their members what they would do on a first date if they found themselves in danger, and the answer may surprise you. If you are holding out for a hero, dating someone who is generous, but not necessarily wealthy, may be the difference between life and death.

During the Dark Knight Massacre, three men lost their lives to save the lives of their girlfriends. But what if you were on a first date, and you had only just met? How do you differentiate the courageous from the cowardly? According to the results of the survey of over 20,000 generous male members, it's by generosity, but a man's generosity is not defined by the size of his wallet. In fact, men who make between $80,000 to $150,000 per year are more likely to take a bullet for you on a first date.Those who fall outside of that income bracket, are significantly less likely to put their well being over that of their date's, on a first date.

Read the rest here.

Online dating website trying to capitalize on Aurora shooting tragedy [Death and Taxes]

(Image via WhatsYourPrice.com)

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Basically Not One Single Shit is Given About Teen Dating Violence Except In Boston [Teens]

Most high school health classes (particularly in public schools, where programs are often underfunded and rushed) barely scrape the surface of dating violence when there are other hot-button health dangers to deal with: high-risk sex practices and HIV, for instance.

A recent study from Ball State University printed in the August issue of Pediatrics indicates just how low of a priority it is: 81.3% of high schools do not have a standard protocol or procedure in place for responding to reports of dating violence. Almost half of the respondents cite a lack of faculty members who have been formally trained on how to respond to such an issue, and 28% admit that compared with these other health issues, the threat of dating violence is "minor."

Recent studies by the CDC reported that around 10% of teens across the country had been physically hurt by a significant other within the last year. As the various cruelties of high school dating have become increasingly blunt—and public—thanks to Facebook and texting, the ongoing lack of attention to the issue can lead to radical tragedies. In 2009, Emily Silverstein, a 19 year-old Gettysburg student (with whom I attended high school) was strangled and stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend Kevin Schaeffer. However, unlike STIs or drunk driving, it's sometimes not as easy to pin down and teach the causation and avoidance of dating violence; friends and family continued to insist that, before the murder, Schaeffer hadn't even hit Silverstein, but after their relationship ended, he sunk into volatile, erratic depression.

Jagdish Khubchandani, a head researcher on the Ball State study, said:

[This is] the first research project to identify the need of formal training on adolescent dating violence for school personnel. Hopefully, this study will be a pioneer in helping establish school policies, protocols and procedures for adolescent dating violence prevention.

But there's already been a small push in the right direction. For the last three years, Boston's Public Health Commission has partnered with local social service agencies to put on an annual "Break-up Summit" seminar for area teenagers, which aims to teach constructive ways to resolve conflict in a relationship as well as end it—in person—in a way that doesn't encourage any destructive escalation. ( The nationwide equivalent, Start Strong, has spread to high schoolers in 11 cities.)

The head of Boston's start strong chapter, Nicole Daley, cites that breakups can cause "depression, low self-esteem, falling academic grades, and even unwanted pregnancies in cases where one partner tries to manipulate the other." Cheating, Daley points out, is seen in popular media as an excuse for violence, and must be discouraged.

The seminar encouraged teens to define with their partner whether they were "casual," "serious," "friends with benefits," or any other specific term that could limit future ambiguities or misunderstandings. Which, frankly, is something us fully-formed human beings could probably benefit from doing more often. In the wake of the Ball State study's findings, hopefully Start Strong will soon be boasting more than its scant $18 million national budget. Fingers crossed.

Teen Dating Violence: U.S. High Schools Unequipped To Handle The Issue, Study Shows
'Boston health officials teach teens how to break-up' [CBS News]

Photo via Malyugin/Shutterstock

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