5 better ways to express your intimacy
A recent survey by Pew Internet and the American Life Project found that one in three teens had shared a password (email, Facebook, etc.) with a friend or boyfriend or girlfriend. Apparently sharing your password is the new way to express intimacy, to prove to your partner that you have nothing to hide. Um, hello Facebook hacking! (Aside: Did you know that if you work at Facebook HQ and accidentally leave your FB account logged in when you leave your desk, some jokester colleague will update your status to say that you are pooping? Apparently it’s a company tradition.) Anyway. Maybe teens don’t have any credit card digits to lose just yet, but identify theft (or even just unauthorized identity borrowing) can suck in junior high too. We hope we don’t need to explain what a terrible idea this is.
Read More »The obvious player vs. the faux-sensitive guy
Sexuality educator Charlie Glickman, who runs the education programs at Good Vibrations (in other words, he’s got serious Sensitive Guy chops), recently published an article on his blog called “Confessions of a Former Sensitive New Age Guy.” He consciously chose to become a S.N.A.G. back in college, and his motives were initially quite pure: he was a waif of a guy who couldn’t figure out how to be a manly dude and so he went for the opposite extreme. Also, after a female friend of his made him follow ten feet behind her while she walked down a sidewalk (to witness the catcalling, etc.), he “decided that if men were causing so much pain to so many people, the ethical response would be for me to become the opposite of that.” But a funny thing happened once he became a fully-fledged S.N.A.G.: he started getting laid more. A lot more. And once that happened, he began to lose sight of why he was being such a decent dude in the first place.
Read More »“The first dating site for humans”
It seems like just yesterday the two of us were out on the fire escape of the Nerve.com office, smoking (smoking!) and coming up with the profile questions for the original Nerve Personals (you may remember “______ is sexy; ______ is sexier”). The Nerve Personals had a meteoric rise, signing up affiliate partners like Salon and The Onion left and right. It was so successful, it spun itself off into a purely personals company called Spring Street Networks. But what goes up must come down: the personals network was eventually sold to Friend Finder long after we’d gone and the whole thing just seemed to fizzle out, at least on Nerve’s end.
Read More »And you thought your last date was bad
Sometimes you have to date someone for months before the crazy comes out. And then other times, you receive a 1,600 word email after a disastrous first date that accuses you of leading the person on because you played with your hair, you made a lot of eye contact, and you said “Nice to meet you” at the end of the evening. We’re going to have to rethink our first-date advice now, because we’ve always told people that if you’re not planning on calling someone, then don’t say “I’ll call you” and never call — instead just say, at the end of the date, “It was nice to meet you,” and leave it at that. We figured that was the international standard for, “Have a nice life.” Apparently one investment banker didn’t get the memo.
Of course, this 1,600 word email could be a fake. (Backstory: “Lauren” went to the Philharmonic alone, met “Mike” there, and they went on one date, after which she didn’t return his calls, so he Googled her email address and sent her the below letter.) But we’ve received thousand of emails over the years from people who are sad/mad/heartbroken/crazy about love — and this one reads like real-life crazy to us. Here’s the letter in full — we’ll let you decide:
Read More »Confessions of a serial restaurant dater
“Do you need help?” My date asked.
I shook my head. “No, I’m good – I do it all the time,” I answered brightly. I leaned in closer, examining my target carefully as I adjusted the white balance on my camera. Holding my cell phone light in one hand and my camera in the other, I zoomed in on the shrimp-topped squid ink pasta noodles and carefully snapped my first shot. And then a second. And then another from a different angle. Finally, after several more shots, I set my camera down next to my wine glass and looked up with a smile.
Read More »A new dating site for people who can’t have intercourse
In contrast to the above post title, the title of the Time article we just read is “A New Dating Site for People Who Can’t Have Sex.” These are two very different things: you can have sex without having intercourse (hello, oral, manual, frottage, etc.), but if you can’t have sex then that implies you can’t do anything sexual. We thought this new dating site, 2date4love, was for people who can’t or don’t want to have any (or much) sex, be it because of illness, faulty equipment, low libido, asexuality, age, past trauma, religious reasons or whatever. But it turns out the site is targeted at people who can’t have intercourse (says so right on the homepage).
Read More »Scientifically proven first-date questions
Regular readers of this blog will know that we are mildly obsessed with the dating research blog OKTrends (it’s attached to the dating site OKCupid) — check out our past coverage of OKTrends on the myth of gay evangelism, the (consistent, predictable) way we lie online, misconceptions about online profile photos, and the real stuff white people like. We’re not stats geeks, but we love it when someone else geeks out to show us what we think about when we think about sex, love, and dating. The latest installment to catch our eye is a post about the best questions to ask someone on a first date. Because, admit it, what you really want to know on a first date is: Are we going to have sex tonight? Is this person liberal? How did they vote on the last election? Are we soul-mates? But it’s not necessarily considered polite to come right out and ask those questions point-blank — and even if you were brave enough to ask those questions, there’s no guarantee that (a) your date would answer honestly or (b) they actually know the answer. But the stats — the stats don’t lie!
Read More »An art installation using America’s online dating trends
If you’ve ever used online personals, you’ll love this: Through February 19th, Bit Gallery in New York City is showing R. Luke DuBois’s latest project, “A More Perfect Union,” which looks at American self-identity through the medium of online dating services: “Culling data from over twenty online dating sites, the work is organized according to the same heuristics as the U.S. Census, sorting dating profiles by Congressional District and subjecting the imagery and text to statistical analysis.” There are three elements to the work:
- City’s dating identities: “Revealing a ‘dating lexicon’ of each state, DuBois built maps using the words provided by 16.7 million people describing themselves and those they desire. Comprised as a romantic atlas of the United States, each regional geography uses keywords from dating profiles in lieu of the city and town names.”
Social networking leads to Oscar nominations, casual sex
The movie THE SOCIAL NETWORK scored eight Oscar nominations last week, but that’s not the only way in which social networking, lower case, is scoring. According to a poll conducted by Men’s Fitness and Shape magazines (not exactly the ivory towers, we know, but the sex and dating research coming out of there is often just [...]
Read More »Insecurity may improve your chances in the dating world
We have long repeated the adage that confidence — whether real or faked — leads to success on the pick-up scene and in the dating world. But a new study by a psychology professor at Queens College in New York suggests the exact opposite: insecure people try harder in the dating world, which can lead to success at least as often as it can lead to your appearing desperate and needy.
Read More »Dubious iPhone app of the week
Fake Calls is an iPhone app that lets you receive a fake call on your phone — you can either tap the icon on your home screen (discreetly labeled FC) and your phone will ring in ten seconds, or else you can schedule a call in advance. Your phone will look and sound exactly like you’re receiving an incoming call — you can select in advance who the caller is, from your mom to your boss to the president — except that nobody’s really there. You can then “answer” the call — or decline it if you’re using the app just to prove you have manners.
Read More »Researchers argue over whether cougar dating exists
When we read that a researcher at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff had released a study claiming that the cougar dating trend is a myth and a media construct, we were ready to buy his argument. After all, we’ve witnessed first-hand — and have occasionally, shame on us, been responsible for — how a so-called trend can get blown out of all proportion for the sake of a sexy headline. So we tend to be more than ready to believe that a much-hyped, now-sitcom-ed trend is actually just hype.
Read More »Virgin dating site leaves us speechless… almost
Browsing the dating site YouandMeArePure.com left us temporarily speechless, and then clutching for the right words to express our… awe? The top five things that boggled our minds:
- For grammar nerds who are bothered by the site’s name, the very first sentence at the top of the entire site helpfully explains, “YouAndMeArePure is NOT a sentence just in case you are checking for grammar. It is rather the name of our website. The name was carefully crafted from the beginning to express that we value both, people entering in relationships and virginity.” Okay then, that totally clears things up for us. Thanks!
When we lie online, at least we do it consistently
It’s not exactly breaking news that people lie like rugs in their online dating profiles. “Recent” photos are a couple years (at least) out of date; the weight someone lists is kind of like that pair of jeans they keep around, hoping they’ll fit again; and the height listed would probably be accurate if the person was standing on a box, like Tom Cruise in his wedding photos.
Read More »Books: Every Rose Has Its Thorn
We really should have some kind of back-stabbing, cat-fighting (or at least pillow-fighting) relationship with Erin Bradley — author of the new book Every Rose Has Its Thorn: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Field Guide to Guys – seeing as she picked up where we left off at Nerve.com. She’s been their advice lady now for five years. But we’re bigger people than that. Okay, we’re not, but she’s really sweet and very funny and gives solid advice — what’s not to like?
The book examines ten different types of guys, based on rock stars you know and love-slash-hate, as a means of giving straight women advice about their dating and sex lives. In other words, there’s a lot to be learned from trying to figure out if Morrissey would make a better boyfriend or booty call. If we were to judge a book by its cover, we’d never have picked this one up. But fortunately we’re not that superficial (and fortunately it’s much cooler-looking inside). Here are some of our favorite quotes about the ten different types covered in the book:
Read More »Back from Passover with Joan and Melissa Rivers
Melissa, Sue (in a Charlize Theron inspired homemade outfit), Joan Rivers and me at Seder
So I had to make (yet another) trip back to Cali last week. But the good news is: it was totally disgusting in NYC and LA was sunny and fab! So there, take that, jet lag! And Karl was cool with it because he got to go. He only farted like twice on the plane, but at least he didn’t release the goods — you know, till he got outside. But hey — who am I to judge High Altitude Flatulence?
This time I was out there to shoot a pilot… vaguely along the lines of “speaking truth” — see last week’s blog — although not to Foxxy Brown — pretty much everyone else though. But I still can’t get over Foxxy. Heh. So while I was out there I chilled with my lil’ sis Emily and my big sister Sophie for a night — before heading to (YES THAT’S RIGHT!) Joan Rivers’ house for Passover! O hell yes!!!
Read More »The wisdom of Twitter: You ain’t for me
We love to browse the “trending topics” at Twitter to see what people are tweeting about across the world. Where else can you get relationship wisdom from millions of people simultaneously? Our most recent favorite topic is the hash tag #YouAintForMe. Here are twenty recent ones for your edification — though we guarantee that by the time this post goes live, a few more thousand will have been tweeted. (By the way, you can follow us here on Twitter.)
- MiszMaddy: if you tried to get at my bestie, #youAinTForMe
- BenedicteCakes: skinny jeans? #YouAintForMe
- jt_makemoves: #youaintforme if you cant play the faithful part…no time for infidelity
Dating tips for single ladies
Enjoy these scanned images of an anachronistic dating guide from 1938 instructing women on how to behave in order to get a man to put a ring on it. It includes gems such as: Don’t drink too much, as a man expects you to keep your dignity all evening. Drinking may make some girls seem [...]
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