A picture pulls 1,000 mates

Kate Holmquistsamples online dating, purely in the interests of research, but finds suitors' pictures do most of the talking

A PICTURE SAYS 10,000 words – 9,999 of which you don’t want to hear, judging by the pictures that some of the online suitors who post on dating websites. No wonder that the relatively small OkCupid.com, which has many Irish members, gave its 1.1 million users the rather obvious advice last week that pictures are important.

OkCupid’s statistical analysis of 7,000 online dating pictures shows that if you’re a man, you shouldn’t smile or look at the camera, and if you’re a woman, you should understate your physical assets and portray yourself strumming a guitar on a beach somewhere, ideally Brazil.

OkCupid, a free dating site with an entertaining blog run by four Harvard-educated mathematicians and based in New York, prides itself on its nerdy intellectuals and has a “geek test”.

OkCupid's "math guys" used statistics rather than psychology to analyse the success of its members and discovered that conversation was more important than looks in online pulling. But it seems to have left out some other important advice. Potential mates shouldn't talk about their wind problems (we're not talking about the weather) and a common and rather disturbing love of Star Warswould be better left unshared.

How do I know this? Just for the fun of it, I signed on as a separated 40-something woman (it was only a tiny white lie) just to see how adorable the men of OkCupid are. The website prides itself on the unique randomness of its user-generated questionnaires, and having dutifully filled in mine I was “matched” with – wait for it – dozens of men aged 27 to 67 who all had one thing in common: facial hair. Also spectacles. And, rather too often for my taste, the warning that they had run my profile by their mothers and sisters before dating me. If I had actually been seeking a hirsute online beau, this would have made me very, very scared, and that was before I clocked how many male lonely-hearts without facial hair compensated by being photographed cuddling kittens.

OkCupid doesn’t seem too worried, because its number-crunchers have found that the words in an online pitch for love are more important than the pictures. Messages with words like “fascinating” and “cool” yielded more interest from the opposite sex than “beautiful” and “cutie”.

"If you want worthwhile messages in your inbox, the value of being conversation-worthy, as opposed to merely sexy, cannot be overstated," OkCupid told the New York Times. The Irish guys on the site are the type that enjoy Vonnegut, Joyce and critical theory – great turn-ons for some.

OkCupid members, male and female, are seeking amusing intercourse of the conversational variety when searching for the future mothers and fathers of their children. In contrast to earnest sites such as Anotherfriend.com, which is Ireland’s most popular, OkCupid is boldly satirical. Some of the guys don’t even include their faces in their pictures, allowing their torsos to speak for them. “Madforsex” showed off his black boxers (washed and ironed by his mother?), while a bass-player’s shot was a close-up of his tongue sticking out.

OkCupid offered me quite a number of charming Irish men who matched my requirements 88 per cent. They tended to be 6’3” tall, hedonistic, honest, music-obsessed jumper-wearers who were into quality of life more than money. In other words, they were all younger versions of my husband of 25 years. Now that was scary.

In the interest of balance, I also logged on as a man looking for a woman, a man looking for a man and a woman looking for a woman and discovered that the women took themselves far more seriously than the men did, alerting one’s desperation radar – though some of the women had beards; a niche market, no doubt. Most pictures were modest, though occasionally there were female torso shots which, if I were a guy, would have prompted me to say, “nice evening gown, pity there’s no face”.

In the US, where 10 per cent of newly married couples have met online, there are web services that will doctor your picture for you, erasing your blemishes and worry lines.

My advice to the men of OkCupid would be, you guys are so much fun, please stay exactly as you are.