Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity--What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves

by Christian Rudder

man’s age and his sexual aims are independent variables: the former changes while the latter never does. I call this Wooderson’s law,

“Beauty is looks you can never forget. A face should jolt, not soothe.

the individuals who get the most affection will be the polarizing ones.

He took 387 keystrokes to get to “Hey.”

good-looking people are seen as more intelligent, more competent, and more trustworthy than the rest of us. More attractive people get better jobs. They are also acquitted more often in court, and, failing that, they get lighter sentences.

white-male-est thing a person can write about himself: my blue eyes.

At OkCupid, rivers are an endless irritant to the distance-matching algorithms. Queens is both a half mile and a world away from Manhattan.

That’s the Manhattanite’s version, at least. Portlandia most often makes eyes on the bus. California flirts by the elliptical machines. But for much of the rest of the country, the venue of longing is Walmart.