Online dating sites often advertise themselves as scientific. They ask you to answer hundreds of questions, and encourage you to take endless tests, all in the hopes of finding someone to love. In my experience, the results are about as accurate as a horoscope, and another example of how science is evoked to justify flimflam and phony services. Still, I have to admit that some of the questions do tell you a thing or two about the people who answer them – just not always what the question intended.
The best example of such questions are those that ask you how sexually confident you are, or how strong your sex drive is. I realize that social media has long ago conditioned most of us to answer any question put to us in a web browser, but these questions are an open invitation to lie.
Think about it: statistically, the only truthful answer for the majority is the choice that identifies them as average. If nothing else, very few of us have the experience to have a statistically meaningful idea about how we compare to others of our gender and age. However, nobody wants to admit they are average. Average is boring, and nobody on a dating site wants to appear boring, which may explain why I have never seen such an answer to those questions.
Still less is anyone going to identify themselves as below average in confidence or sex drive – unless, perhaps, they are under twenty and unusually repressed or inexperienced. I mean, who wants to nurse someone along in order to have a relationship? Not even the unusually repressed or inexperienced, really.
That usually leaves labeling yourself as above average or far above average. Even if you secretly consider yourself a sexual athlete of world cup standards, you’d have to have the intelligence of a bed of kelp to admit that in public. Not only does it sound like boasting, but it sets an impossibly high standard for your eventual performance.
In the end, the only answer – and the one most people usually give – is that they are above average. However, since the other answers aren’t useful, nobody knows whether the answer is truthful. More likely, identifying yourself as above average only says that you are modest and have given the question of how to game the system some thought.
In other words, the supposedly scientific system cannot be trusted. In fact, for some questions, it encourages users to lie – and we all know how important lies are for building a lasting and mature relationship.
Off the Wall 
Bruce. I suggest online dating sites are just like any other media product in that we need to read them intelligently and with a critical eye. Any product that promotes itself will be tainted by varying levels of embroidery to “get you in.” The critical user of dating sites will know that any claim made that the system used is “scientific” is bollocks. Similarly, inviting the user to describe their sexual confidence is taking them a long way away from any neutral place, any calm place, where folks can start the process of potentialy meeting a partner. The critical user of dating sites would do well to stay away from these particular products. My experience of on line dating was to teach me how little I knew about which qualities my ideal partner would actually possess. We are molded and shaped by our experience and petty fears and enormous prejudices to the point where we work on assumption, not knowledge. I met my husband through an older site – one that simply invited the user to put a description of themself, maybe a photo and perhaps list their favourite film. After a pretty lacklustre experience and several ghastly dates I met a man who in no way embodied any of the qualities and lifestyle that I assumed would be compatible with mine. Compatability has a whole lot to do with “je ne sais qoir” than compliance with a shopping lists of qualities. You made an observation in an earlier piece along the lines that dating sites basically maximise your chances of meeting someone by placing as many people as possible who are looking for company in the one place. Approached this way, avoiding tacky claims about science or following a system that limits the way individuals describe themself and the kind of person they hope to meet won’t guarantee success but it will lessen the likelihood of a distasteful, fraudulent experience.