For those of you who don’t have the good fortune to be as familiar with online dating as we are, allow me to enlighten you. One of the things these sites try to do, is to determine how good of a match you would be with other users, so you don’t have to sift through every single profile making this determination all by yourself. OKCupid is particularly famous for this, and uses a series of questions (I think there are over 2000) to determine how compatible you are with other users. Once you sign up for OKC, you are given the option to answer  a number of multiple choice questions about all sorts of topics: dating, sex, lifestyle, politics, etc. You also mark which answers you’d find acceptable from other users, and how important the question is to you. The “scientists?” at OKC swear these questions can be great predictors of long term potential. And I kinda believe them. While the questions can be a little excessive, there are plenty of them that S, D, and I use to make decisions about if we’ll go out with someone or not. We use the questions to screen out rapists, and to avoid men, who, in general, scare us. We’ll be doing a series of posts on the questions, starting by each sharing some questions that are particularly important to us. And I’m up first…

1) The Leonardo DiCaprio question:

If you haven’t noticed already, the ladies of StuCu are a little bit snobby about our grammar and spelling. I mean, after all, we are  authors of a venerated literary blog. We cover serious topics like sexting, men who like to wear women’s clothing, and how to live every day like Liz Lemon. I don’t expect every guy I go out with to be an expert on James Joyce’s Ulysses, but I do expect them to know how to identify the meaning of unknown words in a sentence. Or to have seen this amazing Baz Luhrmann flick:

Apparently, Leo and Clare got those lines from a guy called William Shakespeare. 

I’m amazed by how many guys answer “where?”  At the very least, you should be able to google a phrase and figure out what it means before you confidently interpret the question for prospective dates, many of them who will have taken at least a college level English class.

It’s not just the wrong answer to the question that bugs me. If you don’t know it, don’t answer. Or say, who cares? It’s that these guys care enough to answer the question, and then they still answer it incorrectly. I can already smell their bullshit.

2. The Animals vs. People Question

Now before you go all PETA on me, I want to state for the record that I don’t LIKE abused animals. In fact, I think abusing any living thing is a pretty shitty thing to do and a symptom of being a sociopath, (OMG guys, that Wikipedia link is truly terrifying. Do not read at night like I just did or you’ll “have to” watch 3 consecutive episodes of Parks and Rec to calm yourself.)  So clearly, I want to avoid men altogether who are completely OK with humans and animals in pain. (And you should too!! Did you read the above Wiki article about sociopaths???)  But, I have a clear hierarchy of what matters to me in life, and people rank above animals.  

In case you were wondering, nothing ranks above cheese.

Now, you’ll notice I also said it was acceptable for someone to say both are bad. I made this answer “acceptable,” just so I didn’t miss out on any super compassionate, empathetic guys. But, truth be told, I’d still MUCH prefer somebody who knows where he stands on dairy products, people, and animals. In that order, of course.

3) The Make Love, Not War Question

My parents went to Oberlin, and I am pretty sure I could sing you a mean acapella version of Buffalo Springfield’s, For What it’s Worth. So I have a pretty healthy skepticism of war in general. I can say with confidence that I would not enjoy nuclear war in any way, shape, or form. It would not be exciting, cause we would all be dead. Fans of nuclear war include:

So I tend to avoid men who want to join the good company of the above gentleman. I assume they are a dictator in the making, or, and perhaps WORSE, they don’t what nuclear war is.

Let me tell you, eliminating on these three questions alone weeds out a lot of men. Which is why I am heading into this weekend dateless. (WHOMP WHOMP). But I’d rather be dateless than going out with the next Kim Jong-il.