Math Into Chemistry

The central conceit of online dating is narcissism. Fill out this profile in which you talk about you. Now upload some pictures of you. Answer these questions about what you would do in some hypotheticals so we can pass them through our Totally Scientific Dating Alogrithm Producer (a Speak N Spell, an olive press, eight feet of pig intenstines and a Magic 8-Ball) so you can have a printer-friendly analysis of you as you are, probably with some clip-art graphics for both presentation and for those of us for whom maybe reading isn't in our top 10 list of strong points.

And now that we know all there is to know about YOU, what we're going to do is take YOU and press YOU up against our other users of appropriate gender and see if we can find someone as close to YOU as possible!

I can't be the only one who sees the inherent problem.

There are only two options: 1) You have a modicum of awareness that rightly inspires you to levels of self-loathing that are crippling, nihilistic and entirely appropriate. Dating someone as JUST LIKE YOU! as possible may at first seem like an easy relief, but turns out to be the kind of socio-personal mirror into which no human outside of Guantanamo Bay should be impelled to look. You may think you want someone who completes your sentences, but you have to be prepared for how retarded it sounds when someone else says it. Also, seriously? I'd like to complete a sentence, thanks. Let's save codependence for the second date.

2) You lack any and all self-awareness, which obviates the problem of self-loathing, but also automatically makes you a douchebag. Now imagine sitting across from this same level of boomerang douchery over bruschetta, a nice box wine and peanut butter cheesecake. And as you walk out of that chain restaurant trying to floss your teeth with a folded up corner of a credit card receipt, you will think of your date, without a trace of irony, "Man, what a douchebag." You will have dodged that bullet, but you'll get home, log on and the cycle of awful will begin again.

As these online sites are also service-providers, they have to do a certain amount of coddling of their client base, which precludes them from collecting or reflecting information about the things that make you unsuitable for human coupling. That would make you feel bad about yourself and thus unlikely to return. Of course the free-form profile section we can call the "Just Enough Rope" section if you like, so there's a certain amount of self-culling going on in this herd. But the site-builders want you to come back and view their banner ads or pay their fees (depending on their profit model), so already there's something of a conflict of interest.

And look, I get that there is a difference between service-providing and humanity-contributing and not all endeavors are required to fit into the latter category, at the expense of or even independent of the former. But I don't think I would have to sell too many people too hard on categories like "Really Prominent Adam's Apple" or "Dad Never Said 'I Love You'".

In the absence of these things, all I can do is take what I have and what they give me, mash them together and hope for the best. That means willfully trying to pair up with people the Totally Scientific Dating Alogrithm Producer tells me I have no business even speaking to. At least then if they try to complete my sentence, I stand a chance of being surprised at what they come up with. Especially if it has something to do with math.