(no subject)

[wispfox]

Note to myself:

STOP READING OKCUPID PROFILES!

You don't have time to get to know the various people you think are nifty, but don't know very well, right _now_. You don't need any more distractions. Really!

If they message you? Fine, go read the profile. But unless their profile is absolutely amazing, you _don't_ _have_ _time_. (you don't have time if it _is_, either, but...)

(although, it _is_ useful for finding people's online names, when you already know them in real life)

Ehem.

Distraction, thy name is wispfox. *amused with self*

Comments

[majes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you kinda have to wean yourself off it slowly, or you'll get the shakes.

I do the same thing with live journals; sometimes I'll make the critical error in judgment to click through on something like my interests or "Somerville", the town I live it, which then produces a big list of folks that share an interest with me, or live in the same town. It starts as innocent browsing, and soon its an hour later, and I'm in some strange, dark journal, far far from home, with no idea how I got there, or what the language is.

The OKCupid thing is even worse for me though, because it presses all kinds of buttons for me - I'm curious about people who share interests with me; I like personality profiles and questions that identify behavioral trends; the questions it asks often times prompt complex thought processing in me, where I reflect on not only on what my answer is, but also why that is my answer. I like reading the backgrounds of the folks it lists as my top ten matches and trying to ferret out if it really knows something, or if it, as it claims, "just a website".

One example of my OKCupid obsession - I asked my last three Xes go in, do the test, and answer at least 100 questions, so that I could see how it rated me with them. Interestingly, they all came out at around 70% matches (it was 68%, 70%, and 72%). While they all had very different questions on their Very Important or Mandatory lists, I thought it was notable that they all came out at around the same compatibility with me - especially in light of the fact that it didn't work out with them (they are all, fortunately for me, still good friends - obviously, I guess, since they did this for me).

Urg... further example of my obsession - as part of replying to your post, I went over to OkCupid to look at it for reference, and there were some new questions listed, so I answered them... all of them... again. Its a good thing that it only doles these things out at a fixed rate. Otherwise, I might OD.