Online Dating – A Social Experiment

It was the Christmas Break of 2012, and I had just come out of a long term relationship. In order to combat the boredom of a month in the middle of nowhere after spending my first semester at uni, I decided to do what others have done before me, and make an OkCupid account. At that point in time, screenshots of terrible ‘nice guy’ profiles and creepy messages were making the rounds on the internet and quite frankly I wanted to get in on the action. I decided to turn this venture into my own little social experiment, creating a profile with some of the most ridiculous answers to the ‘about me’ questions possible.

Once I was suitable satisfied with the monster I had created, I sat back and let the magic happen. It was truly incredible how quickly the matches started rolling in. By no means were they all idiots, many lovely people participate in online dating and it is pleasant for everyone involved, however the vast majority of the first people I encountered were, to put it politely, completely flipping bonkers.

What’s worse is a sizable chunk of them didn’t seem to have even read my profile. Despite the fact that most of my profile was at best passive aggressive and at worst completely crazy, I would receive dozens of messages a day telling me that I ‘seemed nice’. I felt judged on a superficial level, and it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. Wasn’t there more to online dating than the aesthetics of the candidates?

After days of wading through a sea of misogyny, I came across the best message that I think I ever received on that website; a masochist begging me to set him humiliating tasks.

It was like I had hit the jackpot. The sadist in me was definitely tempted to comply, even if it was just to get some good blogging material. However, he became more and more needy, sending me at least one message a day, asking if I wanted to set him any challenges. Through a combination of not wanting to lead him on, and not actually being able to come up with any fun challenges, I let him go.

However, he didn’t truly exemplify what I came to OkCupid for. He was just a guy, who was very open and forward about his kink and knew what he wanted. No, the man I had been waiting for was just around the corner. This profile lived in the magical realm of either fiction, or a genuine actual real life prat.

This guy listed what he required from his fellow OkCupid users: “What im looking for in a girl: you should be someone who isnt gunna cheat on me (come on you wont score a guy like me again lol). you cant be fat no offence but really im not into that at all. So yeah if you are looking for a nice guy to keep you warm on cold nights im your man”. He also told me that I would be a 9/10 if I lost some weight and he also appeared to be a racist; it was like the Holy Trinity of OkCupid. Funnily enough, when asked if his life was a movie, which genre would it be, he replied with horror. A date with him certainly would be my worst nightmare. He even had the audacity to refer to himself as a ‘nice guy’. You couldn’t make it up.

Unfortunately, after a couple of months, the hilarious messages started to drop off and instead I was getting messages from people who were genuinely interested in me, despite the  things I had written on my profile. Even now as I look through the hundreds of unread messages on my now dormant account, I feel a pang of guilt. Yet despite the fact that I have happily been in a relationship for the past few months, I still keep my account open, hoping upon hope that I will get messages as fantastic as I used to back in my halcyon days of OkCupid.

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How Smartphone Gaming Could Make The World A Better Place

     In the last couple of weeks, smartphone gaming has come to the forefront in spectacular fashion with the sudden and skyrocketing popularity of the frustrating retro-feel cluster headache that is Flappy Bird, as well as its catastrophic downfall. There were times at the height of the mania, when you could literally see people walking down the street with Super Mario-esque noises coming from their iPhones. Hell, the creator Dong Nguyen made the claim that Flappy Bird had ‘ruined [his] simple life’. While it has come under a huge amount of scrutiny and criticism, I still maintain an incredibly soft spot for the yellow avian demon, and smartphone gaming as a whole. Even though at times it can almost feel impossible to maintain a friendship with someone who plays Candy Crush obsessively (the notifications alone just make me want to delete all of Facebook), mobile gaming has a way of pervading modern society in a way that just hasn’t been afforded to gaming in the past.

     While the first incarnation of Pong was released by Atari over 40 years ago, until very recently gaming seemed to live very much in the domain of geekdom and was considered a waste of time by the vast majority of the mainstream. However, as smartphones have become more commonplace, and almost expected, in the last few years, gaming has begun to reach a larger audience than ever before. By presenting a pastime (which has the reputation of being somewhat ‘under the radar’) on a platform available to a much larger proportion of the populace, we are taking the whole culture of gaming out of the hands of the people who have illegitimately claimed it as their own.

     While it is true that for the last 30 or so years, gaming has remained a bastion of nerd culture, this may not be the healthiest place for it to reside. Nerd culture has some fantastic assets, such as the creation of communities where people who are normally outsiders can feel comfortable, and arguably nerd culture has helped the internet develop into what it is today. However, despite the seemingly accepting appearance, there is still a shockingly large misogynistic proportion of the nerd and gaming community which treats their valued media and the discussion surrounding it as an old boy’s club. In order to be ‘allowed’ to be a ‘true’ fan of any of these jealously guarded manifestations of creativity, you must first fulfil a highly specific list of criteria that has been created by the other ‘true fans’. It can surely be argued that anything which takes the ‘ownership’ away from these sorts of people can only be a good thing.

     Despite the fact that women account for 45% of the game playing population, and 31% of the game playing population are women over 18, gaming is still portrayed in the mainstream media as being dominated largely by men. Not only does the media perpetuate this stereotype, but gamers themselves do too. In an environment where an extremely popular source of entertainment is dominated by a tiny minority of young, often self-entitled, white males berating others not meeting their criteria as ‘fake’ gamers, the popularity in smartphone gaming almost seems to be giving them the proverbial finger. While the aforementioned gamers are engaged in flame wars as to which next gen console is the best, the silent majority slip by and actually have fun!

     But it’s not just women who will see the benefits from gaming becoming a more accepted part of the mainstream, it will open up opportunities for older generations to join in on the action. As I’m sure any of you with older relatives with Facebook accounts will know, social games such as the dreaded Candy Crush Saga are a positive hit with the Baby Boomers. It is understandable why puzzlers such as these with a simple premise and colourful, friendly-looking graphics would be popular with the inexperienced gamer. Smartphone games don’t seem anywhere near as daunting or intimidating as first-person shooters such as Call of Duty, and appear to be a safe and familiar path into the world of gaming. An added bonus is the relative cheapness of smartphone video games, rarely more than a few quid and often cost nothing; they seem relatively risk free when compared with the investment in a gaming console which may well not agree with you. Coupled with the added simplicity of using a platform you are already familiar with, not having to learn how to use any of those fiddly controllers, the accessibility of smartphone games to the older generation is spelling a success for the gaming world as a whole.

     For me, smartphone gaming is almost a gateway drug into the world of gaming. It is quick, affordable, and accessible for the uninitiated, and a pleasant and more superficial way to pass time for the hardcore gamer. It has opened up a whole universe to an unprecedented amount of people from all walks of life. While the platform is far from perfect, I’d argue that the addictive and slightly obnoxious nature of smartphone games will help to bring gaming to the masses even more, and will be a nail in the coffin of elitist gaming snobbery.

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The top five New Year stereotypes

We are now well into the second month of 2014 and, statistically, the vast majority of people will have already terribly failed their new year’s resolutions. However there are still some brave souls desperate to achieve their objective, battling through each and every day.

The Calorie Counter

You will often see these poor souls skulking around the food establishments in the Union, with haunted, pleading eyes. Determined to drop these last few pounds, and unwilling to accept the long-term downfalls of dieting, they actively shun all fun and pleasurable foods. On the rare occasion that you do see them eating, they are easy to distinguish from other people, mostly due to the light draining from their eyes while mournfully looking at their single toasted cornflake with low fat spread. An additional distinctive feature of the Calorie Counter is their repetitive and slightly panicked mantras. These are most often heard as the Calorie Counter is walking past a particularly delicious-smelling branch of Subway. Some notable weight loss mantras include ‘A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’, ‘Keep tracking, stop slacking’ and numerous other gems. However, inevitably, there will come a day when they stop counting calories so rigorously and life will slowly return to them once again.

The Dry January

These brave souls may be torturing themselves in the name of charity, or they may have come to the realisation that their liver just can’t take another night at Halo; either way, these intrepid folk must be praised for their outstanding willpower. For the first 31 days of the New Year (or for however long they decide to do it), they will be the officially designated ‘sensible adult’ at all social engagements. The Dry Januarys are easy to spot, as they are the ones soberly sipping their fifth diet coke of the evening, looking very bored while their inebriated chums slowly descend into incoherence. As well as not being able to join in on the drunken fun, they may well be the ones tasked with getting their paralytic friends home without choking on their own vomit or getting stabbed. No matter which way you look at it, it certainly looks like they have a fun few months ahead of them.

The Penny Pincher

This person was hundreds of pounds into their overdraft within weeks of the first semester and they have decided to give themselves an intervention. The Bank of Mum and Dad has officially been closed, so until the next lot of student loan comes in, discount chicken ramen noodles are their new best friend. While their peers are having takeaways and paying £5 entry to clubs, they are forcibly smiling at their meagre dinners and are opting for a night in front of 4od. It can somewhat be a nuisance to live under the same roof as a Penny Pincher, as the heating is almost never on and every invitation to do something other than miserably watching Jeremy Kyle is met with a sullen ‘I can’t afford it’. However, this will all soon be over once third semester comes around, when their last lot of loan is safely in the bank. They will frivolously spend, forgetting all that they learned in those tough months, only to leave themselves desperately out of pocket. And so the cycle continues.

The Gym Bunny

Whether they’re aiming to climb the Parkinson Steps without breaking out a sweat, or wanting to further chisel their Adonis-like form, people all over campus are renewing their Edge membership in an attempt to battle the post-Yuletide lethargy. It is normally very difficult to be friends with a gym bunny at this time of year, as every single question about their day or invitation is answered with crazed mutterings about cardio and lifting weights. There is something about the Gym Bunny that almost seems mechanical. The relentless pursuit of a sweet bod calls to mind Arnie’s persistent hunt for Sarah Connor. While the Calorie Counter can almost become atrophied in their quest for health, the struggle seems to make the Gym Bunny more powerful, until they practically become an unstoppable juggernaut. The Gym Bunny may keep up this routine for months on end, but will gradually become more and more human as time goes on, once they learn the correct balance between the treadmill and being a functioning human being.

The Baby Vegetarian

The Baby Vegetarian’s New Year’s resolution is to never eat meat ever again. They will often be found in Waterstones, piles of vegetarian cookbooks in hand as they realise that all cooking experience they’ve ever had has been centred around the preparation of animal flesh. The realisation may also have suddenly dawned on them that all the places that were once their favourite eating establishments now have two, slightly anaemic, dishes to offer them. Another notable feature of the Baby Vegetarian is the inability to not talk about the fact that they have just become vegetarian. Seemingly oblivious about whether their friends care about it or not, they will regale them with stories about how they’re feeling so much healthier now in enviable, moralistic vitriol. Despite their newfound holier-than-thou attitude, you may find Baby Vegetarians eating foods that the Veteran Vegetarians wouldn’t touch with a barge pole, such as Nutella and Tangfastics.

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