Matchmakingver Anonymous Version

Matchmaking

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Matchmaking: An Age-old Search in a Modern Medium Maura Walsh Emporia State University

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Abstract Online dating has become a rapidly increasing social phenomenon in recent years. One woman’s experiences and feelings are examined in relation to her methods of searching for information to try to fill a void in her life using some of these online venues. Her emotions and experiences are appraised before, during and after coming into contact with this parallel culture. A brief assessment of what is being offered in this online culture is also included in reference to its role as a type of information provider.

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In Search of a Boyfriend Jane Doe is the director of an important division of a state department . She is a 58 yearold, single woman who moved to the state about four years ago. She has an MBA and travels extensively for her work, especially to Pacific Rim countries, to promote the products of the State. At work she has a no-nonsense, demanding and very controlled manner. Her personal communication style is extremely difficult to capture, fluctuating between a startling and unexpected frankness and a distant, hard-to-read demeanor. She rarely laughs. Away from work she doesn’t exhibit much warmth either, nor body language that is open and friendly. According to Gardener’s Multiple Intelligence Theories she would seem to be Intrapersonal and LogicalMathematical (Thomas, p. 76-78). Jane has never been married and she longs to find someone and settle down. When she relocated to the present state for work after a few years in a different state she found the transition more difficult socially than some of her earlier experiences. First she determined that the kind of people that she would want to meet did not congregate in bars in an informal and friendly manner as they had in other places. She felt that people in the this geographical area seemed to join groups and then socialize in groups. However, she wasn’t successful in meeting anyone suitable through either these groups or through more traditional methods like professional connections or friends making introductions. She did feel that people in the area were quite knowledgeable about and open to internet technology, so she decided to investigate the possibility of online dating. First she decided to weigh the pros and cons by talking to people who were using an online service. She also recalled reading a book about the subject five or six years previously. She discovered that one of her friends, who she considered to be much less attractive that herself, had been very successful using Match.com. This woman had received over 4,700 hits and actually went on to date many of the men she met. She had also lied about her age by more that ten years, but none of the men she met challenged this. Jane was enormously encouraged by her friend’s experience and decided to join Match.com, hoping to encounter a wide selection of possible candidates. In order to join she was required to fill out a questionnaire, write a profile and specify some search parameters about the people that she would like to meet. One of her friends guided her through the writing in order to craft a profile that would be appealing to the right kind of man. She lied about her age and took special photographs to post with her profile. She decided to use another zip code in order to cast a wider net. Her search parameters included age, education and income requirements. She decided to sign up for a six month membership because it was the most economical option. It was the beginning of an 18 month period that did not meet her expectations and in fact became quite frustrating. To begin with there were too many men and no way to distinguish the serious candidates from the wolves. Jane’s professional life didn’t leave her enough time to sift through all the men’s profiles and she found them to be annoyingly similar. It seemed that somewhere in each man’s profile was the term “serious relationship”. Later, when she had tired of the phrase, she realized that a “serious relationship” should have been a given but that in fact it was a catchphrase that men used to attract women. Quality was hard to find. After sorting through a number of the profiles she exchanged

emails and then a phone call with an engineer in Seattle. But she found him nearly impossible to understand on the phone due to a very strong accent. Jane decided not to meet him in person. After exchanging email and a phone call with a second man she decided to meet him for coffee. While having coffee he told her that he left his second wife because she had to travel a lot for work. He didn’t seem to make a connection between that experience and Jane’s occupation. Her third date, who she also decided to meet after initial contact through both email and telephone, never found a time when he was available to meet her for coffee. Later a girlfriend dated him and found out that he had been married five times, seemed more decrepit than fit and was only interested in a “serious” sexual relationship. At the end of six months she came to the conclusion that Match.com was not fulfilling her expectations. It took too much time to weed through all the possible candidates, write to them and try to second guess their real agendas. A lot of men seemed to be interested in disproportionately younger women. Many men showed a great deal of discrepancy between their online profile and their real life persona. They were also capable of fine tuning their profiles: she noticed overnight changes in income, age and interests. Jane decided that Match.com was not for her. However, getting off was no easy prospect. She could find no option on the webpage that allowed her to cancel her subscription even though she had fulfilled her original six month commitment. She stopped using the service but didn’t manage to cancel her subscription for another year. In the meantime she heard really good reports from friends about another online dating service called eHarmony.com. She decided to try it. eHarmony requires a much more extensive questionnaire with questions that cover twenty-nine components that they consider essential in order to find someone with whom a good relationship is possible(Warren, 2005, p. 33). The people who avail themselves of this service complete the survey and then wait to be notified about who they are potentially compatible with. Jane’s first possibility was a man from South Dakota. After many emails and phone calls they decided to meet in person and Jane invited him to visit. But when she made arrangements for him to stay in a hotel instead of at her house as originally planned, he abruptly cancelled the trip and she never heard from him nor contacted him again. Ironically, her first analysis of how to meet a man in the area proved to be accurate. Before she was able to strike up a correspondence with the next candidate from her eHarmony list of potential partners, she was introduced to a man at her wine tasting group. They started to date and she now refers to him as her boyfriend. He has already been married and says he isn’t interested in marriage again although she still is. They have decided to date for a year and then re-evaluate their relationship. Matching the Models Several different process models of information seeking can be applied to Jane’s case. These models seem rather like so many recipes for pizza dough: the ingredients are similar, the steps are similar, and certainly the results are similar. What is better is primarily a subjective matter of taste, although each cook may have proponents that advocate the superiority of a given formula. Let’s try some taste testing. Jane’s research does seem to fit Kuhlthau’s model of the stages of the information search process rather well. During the Task Initiation phase she had feelings of uncertainty about how to proceed. Her ideas of her long term goal of getting a boyfriend and marriage were clear from the

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outset, but her thoughts about how it could be accomplished were vague. Although she began to gather information on how to accomplish her specific and timely goal, it is probably fair to presume that she has spent many years on the general process. She certainly consulted with others during this stage. In the next phase, Selection, she experienced optimism as she explored the options that appeared to materialize. Interestingly enough, she went through this twice. First with Match.com she experienced a terrific bolt of confidence when she first began to search for men online and to receive emails from them. There seemed to be so many wonderful possibilities. Later with eHarmony when she was first given the results of her carefully screened and matched potential suitors she was again quite confident and hopeful. She was able to begin weighing the possible selections against her own criteria and anticipating a prospective success. The Exploration phase followed and with it came the confusion and doubt. There was too much information. It was not all trustworthy. She was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of work that she had to do to sort through all of this and try to put it in a workable order. She had not anticipated it being quite so onerous. Not only did she have to deal with inconsistencies in the material available, but the sheer volume of it was daunting. The next Kuhlthau phases don’t seem to match up quite so clearly. Condensing the Formulation and Collection phases into one seems to work better for a model here. This would be reflected in either her selection and contacting someone (match.com) or communicating with the selected person (eHarmony). She certainly went through a process that gave greater clarity to her search and she experienced a sense of direction that helped her focus. Unfortunately, most of these experiences seem to have been rather short lived and so more negative that positive. What might be equated with the Presentation Stage was in Jane’s case a series of rather frustrating disappointments. She may have experienced an increased self awareness in the assessment part of this stage but it was probably a cold comfort. Another model that seems pertinent in the case of the Match.com portion of Jane’s experience is Bate’s Browsing and Berrypicking techniques (Bates, 1989, p.15). The database was not static but constantly evolving. The parameters of the search could be changed at will by altering any one of the various options given. Even the interpretation of the data seemed to be subject to change depending on the whim of the searcher at any given moment. This subjectivity on the part of the searcher may be underlined by Jane’s admission that after a while she relied more and more on her impressions from the photographs. A third model that could be employed is Dervin’s Sense-Making Model. In fact, this is the model that Jane herself might pick. Her information needs arose directly in relation to a problem or a gaping hole that she wished to fill: the absence of a suitable boyfriend who would potentially become a husband. She felt this was impeding her progress to happiness or what she wanted to accomplish on a personal level. She attempted to gather the necessary information to bridge this gap. However, when she sought specialized help in gathering this information, she was unsuccessful in her quest. The Match Trick Unfortunately, the role of the information professional (i.e. Match.com, eHarmony et al) for the case in point seems to be the weak link. A primarily commercial interest in making money may be the cause. Although there are different formulas working in Match.com and eHarmony, and the PR people may swear otherwise, the overriding interest does not seem to be creating happy couples. According to the US Census Bureau there are about ninety million single adults

in the U.S. and Match.com thinks that 63% of them would like to try online dating (Grish, 2006, p. 8). Nevertheless, the user has to face some difficult dilemmas throughout the process. The first challenge may be to get over the daring or dumb hurdle. Many users seemed to have mixed feelings as to whether or not posting a profile on an online dating forum would turn out well. They expressed feelings of incompetence, embarrassment and guilt about their need to participate and the potential risks involved (Kravetz, 2005; Ellison, Heino, & Gibbs, 2006). The next big step is constructing the description of oneself. Here there is a difficult balance to be maintained between giving accurate enough information without becoming totally vulnerable. The careful couching of information to be alluring and interesting while not excluding too much is the trick. There seems to be a need to preserve some information while representing enough truth and thus to reveal exactly the right amount. There may well be a dichotomy at work here as well because men and women sometimes seem to be looking for very different things when they search for available partners. Women seem to want to locate their one, true soul mate and men seem more hesitant to settle on just one. There is an almost endless supply of women writing to them and expressing an interest in getting to know them. That can be rather difficult to give up (Online Dating Magazine, 2007). There really does seem to be an over-supply of potential partners and the user can change the search parameters and profile as often as wanted. A quick change of a zip code produces a whole new crop of people anxious for contact. What started as a purely verbal / linguistic set up can soon deteriorate into quick checks of screen names and photos. In fact, the user names begin to sound eerily similar to the type of names adapted by strippers or porn stars: Parisgal, EZguy, Lookin4Yew. Yet it all starts in the safety of the user’s own home, by way of a double-blind email system, so it is presumably safe. The temptation to continue tweaking a personal profile and thus attract more contacts may be partly delusion and partly a certain savvy that develops over time. Changing a profile can put it on top of searches and therefore may garner more attention. The need for attention from new people may be satisfying enough in and of itself. A “serious relationship” may have different meanings to different people. To the people at the Match.com executive level it means a steadily growing business and income. Last year it was estimated that the online dating market would be worth $642 million by 2008 (Ellison, 2006, p.2). Match.com alone has fifteen million members in 240 countries who pay upwards of twenty dollars a month each. (Grish, 2006, p.14). There are many other services, including eHarmony, that differ more or less in their methods, but they are all selling the same product: sincere human contact in an increasingly isolated society. There are certainly testimonials of their success for all to see and hear on carefully crafted television advertisements or through the grapevine of urban legends. But if Jane’s experience has a moral it might be: Buyer, beware.

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References Anderson, Traci L., & Emmers-Sommer, Tara M. (June 2006)Predictors of relationship satisfaction in online romantic relationships. In Communication Studies, 57, p153(20). Retrieved July 17, 2007, from Academic OneFile via Thomson Gale: http://0find.galegroup.com.www.whitelib.emporia.edu:80/itx/infomark.do?&conten tSet=IACDocuments&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=AONE&docId=A147666079 &source=gale&userGroupName=empsu_web&version=1.0 Bates, Marcia J. (1989). The design of browsing and berrypicking techniques for the online search interface. Retrieved 07/16/07, from http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/berrypicking.html Chaddock, K., & Egan, E. (2005). Flings, frolics and forever afters: A single woman's guide to romance after fifty. Berkley, CA: Ten Speed Press. Culberth, Judsen (2006). The boomer's guide to online dating. New York: Holtzbrink. Ellison, N., Heino, R., & Gibbs, J. Managing impressions online: Self-presentation processes in the online dating environment. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , 2006 11:2, Retrieved 07/17/07, from http://www.blackwellsynergy.com/action/showFullText? submitFullText=Full+Text+HTML&doi=10.1111%2Fj.10836101.2006.00020.x&cookieSet=1 Grish, Kristina (2006). The joy of text. New York: Simon and Shuster. Kennedy, Lynn, Cole, Charles, & Carter, Susan. (Spring 1999)The False Focus in Online Searching. In Reference & User Services Quarterly, 38, p267. Retrieved July 16, 2007, from Academic OneFile via Thomson Gale: http://0-find.galegroup.com.www.whitelib .emporia.edu:80/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC- Documents&type=retrieve&tabID= T002&prodId=AONE&docId=A55587778&source=gale&userGroupName=empsu _web&version=1.0 Kravetz, Stacy (2005). The dating race: An undercover report from the front lines of modern-day romance. New York: Penguin. Match.com. Retrieved July 10, 2007, Web site: http://www.match.com/howitworks/index.aspx Morris, Monica (2005). Falling in love again: The mature woman's guide to finding romantic fulfillment. Garden City Park, NY: Square One Publishers. Online dating magazine. Retrieved July 12, 2007, Web site: http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/ Tall, dark and dishonest.(Technology)(Brief article). (Jan 20, 2007) In New Scientist, 193, p21(1). Retrieved July 10, 2007, from Academic OneFile via Thomson Gale: http://0- find.galegroup.com.www.whitelib.emporia.edu :80/itx/ infomark.do? &contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId =AONE&docId =A158156244&source=gale&userGroupName=empsu_web&version=1.0 Warren, Neil Clark (2005). Falling in love for all the right reasons: How to find your soul mate. New York: Time Warner.

Appendix : The Interview Questions I’m interested in the process and steps that are involved in information seeking. Think back over the decision to try Match.com and see if you can lead me through your decision to use this service. (Throughout the interview I’ll ask what happened at each step, what you said and did, what you felt and thought, any questions or confusion that you had, what ideas you had, what worked and what didn’t. If it gets too repetitive, just let me know and we can move on. I don’t want the process to be arduous for you, but I want to examine the details.) 1. To start out, can you briefly describe why you decided to go to match.com? 2. Was your decision made quickly? 3. What steps did you need to go through to set up an account with Match.com? 4. Did you have any questions about how it would work? 5. What did you try to find out? 6. What were the difficulties involved in the process? 7. Were there options that you chose not to use? 8. How did you go about constructing your profile? 9. Did you use Match.com self discovery tools? 10. Did you come across any barriers using this technology? 11. What parts of the process did you find helpful? 12. Did you ask for help? 13. Did you research about Match.com and how it works? 14. How did you pick your keywords for searches? 15. Can you describe the response you got? 17. Were you more active as a seeker, or did you prefer sorting through answers? 18. How much of the information did you feel was trustworthy? 19. How did you choose to respond to people initially? (winks?) 20. Did you decide to meet anyone after reading his profile? 21. Did Match.com also give you suggested people to meet (ala Amazon)? 22. How do you rate the service overall? 23. What would you like to change? 24. Have you tried or would you try a similar service? 25. Was it hard to stop searching?