Too many Christmases all at once: the design flaw in online dating sites

So, today I am going to talk about why I think that online dating sites are fundamentally flawed.

The answer lies in the fact that it provides unlimited choice. I believe this is a greater problem than the fact that it only searches "attributes" according to the views of Prof Dan Ariely, one of my favorite behavioral economists. See his talk on http://bigthink.com/ideas/20749 about why online dating is an unsatisfactory experience.

I have harboured my own views for at least 7 years now. Whilst I'm not a professionally trained social scientist but more of an intuitive pattern-recognizer and trend-spotter, I feel vindicated when I suddenly start breakthrough studies that allow social scientists to analyse large quantities of data, such as online dating populations.

But, I am not going to bore you with data. Instead, I will share a beautiful metaphor that I read in a Cosmo at the hairdresser's this morning whilst trapped for 3 hours without intellectual stimulation (ipad battery was flat!).

In my entire life I bought maybe 3 Cosmos - probably in my late teens early twenties. It's not my kind of hard-core fact-based magazine, but I relish catching up with how the mainstream lives when I visit the hair or nail parlour.  These brief Cosmo-moments provide much-needed perspective and a balance to my usual reading list of MIT Technology Review or WIRED. I aslo explains why I am pretty unsuccessful at dating. (I am self-aware of my eccentricities and geeky interests that scare the bejesus out of many blokes who are totally out of their depth the moment the conversation turns to augmented reality orgene modification)

Back to Cosmo. I love it's honesty. Like it's male counterpart, "Men's Health", it's unabashedly obsessed with sex, dating and relationships. Every article, fashion shoot or column eventually circles back to the central theme: how to get laid.

So, in the Nov '10 edition that landed in my lap at the salon this morning, there's this about why guys fail to commit, by Tonight Show host, Michael Jann.

Michael invokes a story about men being visual,and how at age 10, he went to his Dad's office Christmas Party with the largest pile of shiny, wrapped, delicious-looking presents he had ever seen. All shapes and sizes. A thousand mysteries. All that held the promise of wish fulfillment, the potential of a mind- blowing surprise that far exceeded your own expectations. And the terrible realization that out of that enormous pile, you had to choose. Just one.

Michael recounts being seized with terror. What to pick? How to choose? The tiny, understated one that hints luxury and expensiveness or the brightly wrapped one? The one with the seductively curved silver bow or the one with the cute reindeer print reminding him of his stuffed toy Bambi?

"Why can't I open them all first, and THEN decide?" is all that's going through Michael's mind at that moment. But Michael could just as well have been Melanie, or Margaret, or me.

And there ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of the problem with online dating sites. It offers infinite choice. It makes locking in a choice a compromise, and then it provides an escape valve!

With so much choice, and a continuous stream of new additions, i.e.fresh profiles of new "single and seeking" candidates being piled under the proverbial Christmas tree every hour of every day, there is NO SCARCITY!

Why commit and overinvest time in one present to love and treasure when there's the whole of Santa's workshop to choose from, and the elves keep adding more options every day?

Evolutionary psychologist, Santoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics, says that the greater the population density, the harder it is to find a life partner, because of this lack of scarcity vs time. In remote and rural communities, people make do with what is available and seek to make the best of what is available and in range. Somehow, they find lifelong satisfactory relationships!

Now, place yourself in an environment with infinite choice, and abundance drives inability to choose and commit.

Add into this mix that in Australia, there is a demographic skew with a ratio of hetero women outnumbering hetero men in certain age brackets, and a third complication which I will label: The "Fallout" effect (with credit to Michael Jann for inspiration), and you have a disaster when it comes to mid- life dating experiences. The fallout effect has to do with how badly men deal with relationship break-up, but, more on the "Fallout" effect in my next post.

For now, I am interested in hearing from you if this analogy of multiple Christmas pressies all at once resonates personally with your own online behavior ( as in click, delete, next!) or your own experiences ( click, deleted, confused/ disillusioned).

What do you make of my theory?