Aaron recently turned me on to the on-line dating/social-networking site, OkCupid.com, and I'm beginning to like it. Unlike my very negative experiences with Chemistry.com/eHarmony, and Facebook/MySpace, so far it seems to bridge the gap between the two types of sites quite well.
Gone are the ridiculous layouts and over-stylized visual explosions that the social networks forced upon me. My Internet-driven career made me think that I should at least try them out, if only to see what they were about. I was hoping to meet people, and I ended up hating their tastes instead.
The fact that eHarmony only matched me with one person in the Omaha/Lincoln area showed me that I'm not what their site seems interested in. And while Chemistry.com matched me with one really good match (she seemed attractive to me) and five so-so ones (they were interesting, but I was not jumping at the chance to meet), it only caused me to cough up $50 (for one month!) and then didn't find another match for me until my membership expired. Needless to say, I feel taken.
OkCupid is free! And instead of bombarding me with variations of the Myers-Briggs test I have already seen 100 times, it asked a few short-answer questions about who I am and what I like to do. The tests are there, but the few I have taken are more playful and entertaining than anything. The site encourages you to take them because which tests you take reveals to others more about your personality than the tests themselves.
I'm also suspicious that they use these tests and a variety of other tools to group you with others of similar interest. I can use a simple markup in my personal descriptions for words like "Sudoku" or "Techno Music". I'm not sure exactly what that does yet, but I intend to find out.
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