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Thursday, December 9, 2010

Foreign women posting phony dating profiles

In just a few days I've gotten pretty good at detecting women in less developed or former communist countries who post phony profiles on dating sites like Match. I even had one who claimed in an email that she lived in Texas but emailed me from Kuala Lumpur because she had traveled there to shop for antiques.

Yeah, right.

I've derived a certain pleasure from reporting these fraudulent profiles to Match, given that my history of often negative experiences with women has conditioned me to treat them with suspicion, sometimes escalating to hostility if I get bad vibes off of them. If I've accidentally reported a legitimate but generic-sounding one - well, that serves the American woman right for not showing much of a personality, or perhaps for not displaying good writing skills, when she advertises for men.

I've noticed a few profiles like those on Adult Friend Finder as well, but more often the women post photos of their girl parts, or describe the sexual itches they want someone to scratch. The features on those profiles support their American provenience. Their exhibitionism still causes me some discomfort, given my sheltered life; but at least I respect their honesty.

As for Match, which doesn't allow explicitly sexual profiles, I want to read ones which show something about the women's personality, instead of crap like "I'm a caring person." In other words, in my quest for female companionship, I'd prefer to read the stories women tell about their lives, like how they outgrew their enthusiasm for Twilight when they realized the stupidity of the novels and films, or the first time they kissed a boy and how that made them feel, or why they got the kinds of tattoos they have. But I see relatively few profiles like those on Match, compared to the ones which sound like the prattle of beauty pageant contestants.* By contrast, outside of mate-seeking situations, women can post quite opinionated things on their blogs.

I wonder why they do this when they search for men. Perhaps because, according to evolutionary psychology, sexual selection favors the genes for "personality," and therefore for narrative focus, more in men than in women? Men tell stories and jokes, sing, dance, make music, draw pictures, confabulate myths to explain the world, argue about abstractions and do other things which lack obvious utilitarian value; and they often do those things better than women. Evolutionary psychologists speculate that in fact these behaviors arose through sexual selection; women's brains interpret expressive behaviors as signals of the men's reproductive fitness, which translate into sexual desirability and the perpetuation of the enabling genes into future generations. Do women display weaker personalities in their quest for male companions because they don't want their personality signals to compete with the men's? Perhaps they tone down their own personalities as a signal of submission.

* A few years ago, L.A. radio talkshow host John Kobylt noted the vacuousness of alleged messages from the Virgin Mary, as transmitted by Marian contactees. Kobylt said that they make the Virgin Mary sound like a beauty pageant contestant, instead of an exalted supernatural entity which got to talk with God for a long time and might have learned some divine wisdom currently inaccessible to us mortals. Wouldn't you expect the Virgin Mary to tell the world something astounding and thought-provoking, given those assumptions?

The sexist in me says: Not necessarily. Consider that the alleged communications come from a chick.

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