OKCupid Profile Analysis: To the people who have eaten my vittles
User basics: Female, 30, looking for males aged 18-99 for new friends, Aquarius, has cats, graduated from space camp (how droll!), and subscribes to both religions and diets that she describes as “other”
First impression: Our subject, whom I’ll refer to as “Vittles” (slang for “victuals,” meaning food, which she says she’s good at cooking), presents with some immediately agonizing visual choices. Her self-summary receives 27 separate lines (one for each letter of the alphabet, and an introductory remark), and her profile is littered, at times confusingly, with “blue rectangles of interest” (i.e. when you throw double brackets around a word and it highlights the word in blue). This practice is acceptable for identifiable interests, but bracketing whole phrases, such as the cryptic “I’m sorry. Please Forgive me. I love you. Thank you.” (see “My self-summary” below) does nothing but scream “being different for the sake of being different,” which always betrays some deep-seeded insecurities.
(Also, if you have a bachelors degree (or anything more advanced), you are hereby banned from listing your education as “space camp,” unless you actually went to space camp, in which case you’re required to include a scan of your space camp certificate of completion. Otherwise, leave “space camp” for people who wish to disguise the fact that they dropped out of a two-year college — it’s the least we can do for them.)
We would have also accepted “tell me what you think of me”: (My self-summary) “Here go the ABC’s… Artichokes are awesome, Bees knees, Cleaning, Divine, Essential Oils, Freedom, Grass fed, Healing, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you. [!?], Just Be, Keeper of the keys, Love, Musician, Night Nurse, 0verstand, Present, Quan, Rhinoceros Success, Self Love, Tribe, Understand, Valor, Wheat Free waffles, X Floridian, Yeshua, Zero”
Analysis: So instead of giving us a few simple details about herself, Vittles decided to free-associate a list of rejected Apples to Apples cards. Great.
What does this tell us about Vittles? For starters, she believes the rules don’t apply to her — always a prime indicator of higher-than-average maintenance requirements — and she wants to eliminate any man who is not willing to jump through hoops just to get to know her most basic qualities. And the hoops aren’t your normal, circular hoops. They’re crooked, flaming dodecahedron hoops with cloaking devices and explosive mines. That’s what you’re in for if you take a trip down Vittles lane.
