Tech

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Online Dating Profiles for Dummies

Hello!  You must be new here.  I bet you’ve never tried online dating before.  Of course you haven’t—who is really that desperate?  Well, not you.  Except now, maybe you’re feeling a little lonely and, after all, everyone uses online dating these days!  No shame in it, my friend.  So let’s get started.

Perhaps you should mention this right away.  Nothing says, “I’m not desperate” like starting off your profile with something meant to emphasize how very Not Desperate you are.  There are a few ways to accomplish this:

1)    “I’m not really sure how to write one of these profile thingies, so here goes!”

2)    “I am new to town and just looking to meet some new people to hang out with!  It’s not like I’m here because I can’t get a date because I totally can!  People definitely do not think I am weird and socially awkward in person.  That is not why I am using an online dating site.  What is wrong with you that you think this way?  Do you want to meet for drinks later?  You have a pretty smile.  Just as friends?  Oh, okay.”

Next, you are going to want to tell your prospective partners how totally laid-back and down-to-earth you are.  No one wants someone who is high-strung!  Have you ever heard the bachelor tell the camera how much he adores that girl because she is so high-maintenance and a total space cadet?  Obviously not.  So please, tell the audience that you are laid back.  You enjoy “chilling.”  Chillaxing, maybe even, if you are looking for a partner who is down with The Slang!  Got the 411 all up in herr!  This is perhaps a good place to insert an “LOL” or an emoticon, preferably 🙂 or 😉 but definitely not 😛 because we want to save that wily tongue for at least the fifth date.  We are classy like that.  I mean, if you were looking for casual sex, you’d use Craigslist, amirite?!  No matter that you did try Craigslist and failed to get any responses that did not come from prostitutes or spambots, but it’s not like you’re going to put that in your dating profile.  You should probably leave that out.

Next, you need to inform your prospective partner that you love to travel.  This makes you sound exotic and exciting, even if you’ve only ever been to Davenport.  They have a different kind of grocery store there that is not the Piggly Wiggly so that makes it something of a foreign land.  This brings us to eating, which is also an approved topic.  You will imply that you will eat pretty much anything, even though in reality you subsist on Diet Coke, fudgesicles and bourbon.  You do not want to scare people away by telling them anything that might be remotely close to the truth, after all.  This is also a good time to bring up your love of cooking.  Well, of course you love cooking!  You watch Paula Deen pretty much every day while partaking in a light snack of Apple Jacks interspersed with bong rips.  Thus, you have a love of cooking.  Note that you have not actually said, “I love to cook and am good at it.”  You are therefore not lying.  Legalese is your friend.

Now is also not a good time to mention that you live in your parents’ basement and spend your days playing World of Warcraft between shifts at Chick-Fil-A.  You should make a vague mention of your job in sales, which you love because you just adore working with people.  Again, you’re not exactly lying, and everyone loves a people-lover.  There are no antisocial people on dating websites, that’s for sure.  And if there are, you definitely want to weed them out.

You should probably take a minute now to go put some more Easy Mac in the microwave and take a little break.  We’re getting down to the nitty-gritty and you’re going to need sustenance.  Also, your little brother will be home soon and he will probably eat that last packet if you don’t get to it first, and Mom isn’t going grocery shopping for like another four days or something.

I almost forgot; please include that you love sarcasm.  Everyone loves a sarcastic bitch/sonofabitch.  A dry, mocking voice just has that je ne sais quoi that makes the panties drop.  So make sure you throw that one in there.  And you have a good sense of humor.  Not like all of those other super unfunny people out in Online Dating Land.  They are definitely not writing, “I have a sarcastic sense of humor” on their profiles.  This is truly virgin ground.  Oh, and about that virginity.  You should probably write something like, “I’m looking for someone to just hang out with” rather than “please at least give me a hand job—after all, I plan to buy you at least two Miller Lites and that shit ain’t cheap!”  Women and men like a little mystery.  In this vein, send messages that are one-word only, such as, “Sup.”  This is a subtle and effective way to demonstrate your interest, and, generally speaking, bitches be loving the “sup.”  It conveys everything and yet, nothing at all.  Mystery.

If you want good responses, you have to have a good profile!  After all, people primarily read the text that accompanies profiles.  They most definitely do not just flip through photos looking for the one girl with tons of eyeliner and pouty duck-lips and conspicuous tattoos and bangs that pretty much cover her face but maybe she kind of looks like Zooey Deschanel from that angle?  No, people use online dating because they like to read the text. Which is why you’re here with me, marinating in my sage advice like a chicken cutlet in some ginger and soy sauce.  You’ll thank me later.

Crasstalk Reaches One Thousand Posts

Congratulations Crasstalkers, yesterday we reached the one thousand post mark. Thanks to your hard work we are now even closer to winning the Internet.

This is what victory looks like!

Also, the 13th of this month will be the 6 month anniversary of the founding of Crasstalk so I thought it would be a good time to look back on a few of the really great articles that have appeared here. Here is the first post ever posted on Crasstalk by our Beloved Leader. It actually just contained this prophetic video.

Here are a few articles that I think have been especially memorable. This list isn’t even close to exhaustive, so please feel free to add your own choices in the comments.

As I said before, there are many, many more. A huge thank you to all of you have put in your time and effort to get this place up and running. Hopefully, this will be the first of many thousands of great articles.

Image From Dogs of War's first post.

 

Image from The Grand Inquisitor's first post.

#Crasstalk COW: Every Day is April Fool’s

Last week, we got a good laugh at a dating related story from a commenter, and the theme of relationships, in their various forms, carried over into the new week.

As we’ve built and shaped this site over the last few months, we’ve gotten to know each other better, and seen friendships and relationships grow and change.   It’s good stuff, really.  All part of the human experience.   If we didn’t have feelings, well, we’d be just like any other animal, like a cow, or something.

Of course, the downside is that sometimes feelings get hurt:

And, while that can actually be amusing, it’s more fun for even the coldest of us to watch people get along:

Even so, we’re a cynical bunch.  We know that not everyone is who they say there are online.  We’ve had enough online dating stories around here to know this.  It’s to the point that even when someone says we’re exactly what they are looking for, we’re still not inclined to believe them:

 

Of course, if there weren’t services marketing fake girlfriends for the purpose of impressing your friends on social networks, we wouldn’t have all this skepticism.   Though, people like Chris might be skeptical no matter what, and that’s how we get a Comment of the Week:

But really, LCL and Madfall, good for you guys.

And again, thank you to everyone for your submissions for the week.  One request your kind witch makes:  If you send a nom from an open thread, please tell me which thread it is, those things are hard to comb through, and we have a lot of open threads.  Further, if you have the ability to send a screen shot, even better.  The email address, as always: [email protected].  Cheers!

 

A $50,000 Steering Wheel Is Just the Beginning

Look at your steering wheel.  Now look down.  Look back up.  Your steering wheel is now this thing.

I’m using an old-ass clichéd joke.

This is an Formula 1 steering wheel.  It’s used to speak to the pits, adjust break bias, activate turbo boost (I am not kidding), move parts of the car around, even get you a drink.  Like almost everything else on an F1 car, it is made of carbon fiber, and is ridiculously expensive.  Why carbon fiber?  Because it’s light, and absorbs impacts extremely well.  The steering wheel has to be able to be removed in five seconds in case of a crash, since the seating area on this thing is so tight, you can’t get in and out with the steering wheel in place.

Here’s an Italian guy explaining how the steering wheel for last year’s Ferrari worked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6HFvF-QfTo

Now: all that stuff he said about how KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) isn’t in place anymore, and that makes the wheel easier to deal with?  That’s no longer true.  KERS is back in this year, in an effort to have more overtaking on the track.  Just like in your wimpy Prius, it takes energy released under breaking, and charges a battery with it.  That battery can then be accessed to provide 80 more horsepower.  You can use it all at once, or gradually over a lap, but once the battery is drained,  you have to wait until the next lap to use it again.  It was tried in 2009 to extremely mixed results.  Ferrari won the Belgian Grand Prix with it, but it also caused a fire in Red Bull’s factory, and shocked a mechanic for BMW Sauber.  Bernie Ecclestone, the commercial rights holder for F1 believes that F1 isn’t more massively popular worldwide because there’s not enough passing.  That’s a little like saying that soccer (or football, for those of you who actually watch it) isn’t more popular because the total score isn’t higher.  As a result, KERS is back in, as is the button that enables it, and the display that shows how much charge you have left.

Also added this year is a moveable rear wing.  The button for this opens a flap on the rear wing that stalls it out, reducing downforce, and increasing your straight line speed.  This can only be used if you are within one second of the car in front of you, and if you deploy it, the car in front of you cannot.  In the first race of the season, no one successfully employed this option to pass anyone, but a few people used it to spin out on turns.  So, mission accomplished!

Last year, McLaren employed a genius system to gain more speed on straights.  They installed an air intake port in the cockpit that the driver could block with their knee.  When blocked, air traveled over the car normally.  When opened, air bypassed the rear wing, reducing downforce.  Like every genius interpretation of the rules of car construction, this was kept secret until the first race, and then every other manufacturer simultaneously complained it was a breach of the rules, and came up with their own.  Ferrari’s required the driver to activate it with his hand, which became a safety issue.  While barreling down the track at almost 200 miles per hour, the driver had to take one hand off the steering wheel.  This year, drivers are making the same complaint about the steering wheel itself.

There’s so much going on with this year’s wheel, drivers feel they are close to becoming too difficult to operate.  Nick Heidfeld feels that the wheels have reached a saturation point, and the fuck up levels are extremely high, while Fernando Alonso thinks that he needs to stop being a pussy.

The argument could be made that if everyone has the same access to KERS, then the average speed of all cars would increase, leveling the field and defeating the purpose.  Also, the argument could be made that Sebastian Vettel smoked everyone in Australia without even having KERS installed on his car (this is actually true).

Here’s a link to a detailed explanation on what each button did on BMW’s 2009 wheel.  There was no KERS button, because after they shocked a guy, BMW decided not to run it.

Also, here’s another video, this one in English and from Lotus, explaining how their wheel works.

Masterpiece Twitter: Michael Ian Black and Jessica Simpson

By Danzig and Dancing Queen

During its nearly five-year storied history, Twitter has remained steadfast in its commitment to bringing the best…or just bringing 140 character expressions from individuals around the world. The Twitterverse is filled with eclectic characters and contemporary celebrities who have filled the ether with their random thoughts on life, love and luxury.

In this weekly series, Danzing and Dancing Queen will risk brain cells and credibility scouring the Twitterscape to bring you the best of Twitter. We will then perform dramatic recitations of these tweets for your listening pleasure. Please, enjoy.

This week, we bring the the intentionally funny, Michael Ian Black and the not so intentional, Jessica Simpson.

Michael Ian Black as read by Danzig:

Jessica Simpson as read by Dancing Queen:

*Danzing and Dancing Queen are not professional actors, but do play actors on Crasstalk.

NY Times Paywall Goes Up, 4 Lines of Code Make it Go Down

1 comment

The NYTimes implemented their long-discussed “paywall” today, in an attempt to make some money on online viewers. Unlike proposed paywalls designed by the folks at Fox News and The Guardian, this paywall is “loose by design.” What that means is that you’re still able to view up to 20 stories online per day, and they purposely did not make it hard to circumvent their system.

So why would a newspaper not make their paywall ultra-secure? Quite simply, they’re smart. In independent studies done by organizations not affiliated with content producers (basically any University study and nothing by the MPAA, RIAA, etc) researchers have found that people only pirate things they can’t afford. When products are priced too high, piracy increases, and oftentimes it deters people from purchasing legit versions. Microsoft released Windows Vista in China and priced it at about $180 USD. The Chinese version of XP was priced at about $20. A month after Vista’s release, Microsoft had only sold a total of seven copies of Vista in all of China. Windows XP, being a much more affordable product, sold in the tens of thousands of copies. When Microsoft dropped the price of XP to $20, the number of pirated copies dropped significantly, to the point that it was easier in the long term to purchase a legit version of XP than buy a pirated version (for a tenth of the cost.) The same thing happens with music and movies. Studios have realized that in Asian markets they can’t market legit DVD’s at American prices. They now sell “Region 5 DVD’s” for about $3USD. As a result, Chinese pirates aren’t bootlegging any DVD’s released as a “Region 5.”

The New York times is also pretty much THE place for news online. If they locked down their paywall, sites would stop linking to their stories, and they’d lose readers. Its in their interest to maintain their userbase at the expense of a couple of paywall subscriptions.

The last factor comes down to development cost. The NYTimes would basically have to re-vamp their website to program in serious DRM. By applying a “loose” paywall, they didn’t have to spend millions on re-doing their website.

Even though its pretty cheap, and even though you get 20 free stories, people have released hacks for the NYTimes site. Pay for your digital subscriptions, or better yet pay for home delivery. For those of you who are eating stewed tomatoes every night and stealing wi-fi from your neighbors, you can drag and drop the NYCLEAN bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar and read all of the articles for free.

(on programmer’s note, 4 lines of code!)

Crasstalk COW: Keep Your Pants On

Generally, I get a real kick out of reading everyone’s dating stories in the various threads around Crasstalk.  Whether your just kicking around stories in the open threads or Betty’s giving advice about trolling Craigslist, I know I’m going to get a laugh.

Why? Well, at it’s core, dating is funny. We all have horror stories, and we can all look back and laugh at something ridiculous that’s happened to us on a date. At the end of the day, dating proves that there are people out there who are much weirder than us.

Before I get to the actual winner, though, let’s highlight a couple of outstanding nominations that landed in my box (ew, gross you guys) this week.

Over on Left Coast Lady’s music thread, a discussion centered around how far back we should reach for bands that coulda/shoulda/woulda been bigger. Arken made a pretty solid point, I think:

Sometimes, in the open threads, we get interesting discussions on politics, or rather, interesting discussions on other’s discussions of politics:

 

But, in reality, none of them are as fun as listening to you all discuss the pitfalls of dating.  And, this week, it seems nobody captured the frustrations of modern dating better than MonkeyBiz:

 

Ain’t that the truth.

By Naming a Thing, You Define That Thing

There’s been some discussion on the open threads of the site where we all met and fell in love, currently known as The Place That Shall Not Be Named (TPTSNBN).

(TPTSNBN) really isn’t a sexy acronym, is it? It needs some Don Draper spin, something easy to type, easy to remember, and of course it must reflect seventh-level black belt snarkitude, for which this site’s commenters are renowned far and wide.

Now that the gauntlet has been thrown down, let’s get to the serious business of renaming the old place. Some ideas to get us started:

  • Uncle Nick’s Trailer Park (UNTP)
  • Tea Bagger Trash Talk World (TBTTW)
  • Can’t Read For Comprehension (CRFC)
  • Not Up On World Affairs (NUOWA)
  • Content-Free Zone (CFZ)
  • Denton (see this video for the reference)

And my current favorite:

  • Peasantville (now with less Reese Witherspoon)

Now that the ball is rolling, let’s see what other names we can come up with.

Facebook Steps Up Efforts to Discourage Underage Users

Facebook policy advisor Mozelle Thompson revealed that the website removes 20,000 user accounts per day that are  created by users who are under 13 years of age.  The number was revealed at a hearing of  the Australian Parliament’s Cyber-Safety Committee. Facebook has faced growing scrutiny of its privacy policies and how they affect teenagers both in Australia and the US.

While the company contends it is making a vigorous effort to weed out preteens, it is a difficult task given that the site has 600 million users worldwide. Last April several Senators, led by Al Franken (D-Mn.) sent a letter expressing concern about Facebook’s privacy controls. Franken stepped up pressure last week over the company’s plans to allow access to user names and addresses. Underage users are a special challenge for Facebook because of concerns over exploitation and exposure to online predators.

 

This guy really shouldn't have a Facebook profile.

 

 

Firefox 4 Now Available

The most popular browser on Crasstalk is Firefox 3.  Today brings good news for those who have been suffering along with a browser that first came out in 2008.  Firefox 4 is now available and is one day ahead of schedule.  It’s not quite up on the Mozilla website but their FTP servers are offering up the latest bits.  You can download them here.  Just select your operating system and grab the language of your choice. Below are easier links for popular combinations:

If you’ve been running a Firefox 4 beta then you can get the new version by going to Help then About.  The download will start and install automatically.

Firefox 4 brings better speed, stability, a few new usability features, hardware acceleration and a redesigned user interface.  So, what are you waiting for, go download.

Minimum requirements are Windows 2000 or Mac OS 10.5.  If you are on 10.4 Apple wants you to know that they haven’t published any security updates since April 2009 and that you should upgrade to 10.5 or preferably 10.6.