This video is NOT sponsored by any of the big companies
which we're about to mention today
Unfortunately!
You might prefer to jump directly to 00:34
For Valentine's day, my plans were to make a video
about some of the weird sexual behaviours of some animals
which would have been stole-...I mean inspired by
Seeker's "Wild Sex" series
but someone has already done this
a few days ago
They're stealing my thoughts now
even before I express them!!
thanks.. :/
However, I'm gonna talk about a different sort of animals
which is........YOU......be you female or male
with no discrimination
In general I use YOU in it's masculine form (in Arabic)
except today "YOU" includes the feminine and the masculine
Of course with no offense to anyone, we humans are distinguished from other animals
by our relatively big brains in proportion to our bodies
and our diverse capabilities which brought in languages, cultures..etc
..neverthless..sexually we're still animals
When your 3rd grade teacher told you
"Mammals reproduce by birth"
I doubt that any of your classmates was surprised
and asked "Teacher, are we mammals?"
but as the Relationships Expert Esther Perel says
Animals have sex,
while we have eroticism
which is sex transformed by human fantasy and imagination
so, sex for humans is not only physical necessarily
rather brain, creativity, and imagination have a role to play in it
Anyway, some other primates also express sorts of "sexual imagination"
As Robert Sapolsky said in one of his lectures
once there was an Alpha Baboon
a masculine one with a high social position in his group's hierarchy
following one of the "prettiest females" of the group
on their way to have sex
at the same time, another male Baboon from the same group
a teenager with low social status
saw this exciting scene, and had an erection
so he used his imagination and his hand
to do some "handwork"
Poor guy, he has no technology
that helps him find a suitable date
unlike his cousin mammal, the king of technology
where "hearts" are 1 Tinder swipe away from meeting each other
In case you have no idea what Tinder is
this is the most popular dating application now
which has been around for a while,
achieving widespread popularity around the globe
let me give you a hint about Tinder
Suppose you're a heterosexual male
you chose that you're interested in dating females
within certain age range and distance
for example, within 10 Km from your current location
then you browse the profiles/pictures of girls
who belong to your chosen distance and age range
according to the criteria you've chosen
so, If you like a girl, you give her a "like", or a swipe to the right
and girls will be doing the same,
so when two people mutually like each other
"It's a Match"
and matching enables you both to chat with each other
and if your chat goes well, you'd meet in non-virtual life
we could see this is a "Blessed" app
according to the traditional proverb in Arabic:
"God bless whoever joins two heads on one pillow"
although.. two pillows are always more comfortable than only one..
Apparently, wherever Tinder starts to become popular
it gains a reputation of being only a "Casual Sex App"
and has nothing to do with serious relationships
but within a short time this bad reputation /"stigma"
begins to decrease when people try it for themselves
and see that it's just another new way for meeting people
or maybe especially when people become bored of their social circles
who'd think "In my daily life I rarely meet new faces,
while this cool app opens a window to meet tens of new people"
but isn't this so superficial that people decide to meet and date each other
just based on their appearances?
Let's forget Tinder, what's the first thing
to attract you in a Guy/Girl in general?
before getting to know eachother?
university grades?
what If I can't take good pics, or I'm not really photogenique
what about photoshopping?
what if the pics are old?
indeed, all these are possible problems you'd face
Are there more official accurate data about the purposes of Tinder users?
are they seeking merely sex? or a serious relationship? or what exactly?
A moderate statistic study was conducted in Holland
aiming to discover the motivations behind using Tinder
and it found out the following:
There are 6 motivations to use Tinder
1- Love
2- Casual/Quick Sex
3- The ease of communication
4- Self-Worth Validation
5- Thrill of Excitement: having something new happening in life
6- Trendiness: it's popular and cool to use Tinder, why shouldn't I use it also
these are the 6 motivations
The same study also found out that
unlike the commonly held view about Tinder
the Love motivation was a stronger
motivation to use it than the Casual Sex motivation
and men were more likely to report a Casual Sex motivation for using Tinder than women.
:O :O :O NO WAY!!
also, men more frequently reported Ease of Communication & Thrill of Excitement
motives
It was also found out, that the older the user is
the more their motivations are love, casual sex, and ease of use
if we're to generalize this, it might mean
when people grow older, they have less patience
and they need something easy to use
in order to fulfill two main needs
which are love and sex
it's worthy to note, that not all dating apps use the Tinder method
the one of swiping the pictures right
for example, OkCupid, a website and an app
currently owned by the same company as Tinder
depends on a very different style
which is, in their words:
"using mathematics to support love"
on OKC, you have to fill your profile with lots of details
thus creating a profile takes some time
and it asks many open questions to talk about yourself
as briefly or as detailed as you may like
but it's not here where math plays its ace
rather in the multiple-choice questions
which include questions about faith/religion
your opinions about lifestyle, dating, sex
some questions seem very silly
while others seem very nosy and annoying
it might ask you something like this
(on screen)
you have three options to chose from
but it doesn't end here
then it's gonna ask you
about the importance of this question for you
and what kinds of answers you might accept from the other side
once you answer a sufficient amount of these questions
it's gonna eventually "understand" what you're looking for
and "understand" your personality and preferences
while understanding what others want
and then matches these data together
so upon browsing potential profiles
each profile will display a percentage
reflecting how compatible you both are with each other
unlike Tinder, which doesn't allow correspondence without matching
on OkCupid, anyone can send anyone an opening message (only)
and if the other side replies,
then both would be able to chat with each other
an interview with one of the site's founders (conducted a few years ago)
includes some interesting statistics
for example, the odds that males would initiate sending messages to females
are about 3.5 higher than the case being vice versa
also "WOW" :P
accordingly, the odds of females answering messages
is much less than males doing so
and the odds of females sending messages has nothing to do
with how many messages they receive
or how "attractive" they are considered
because girls seldom take the initiative of sending messages anyway
although most of both males and females on this site
share very "liberal" social opinions, and are not conservative
but when a girl initiates the conversation,
the probability of her getting an answer
is 2.5 higher than that when a guy initiates
Another point
on average, the receiving person, regardless a male or a female
enjoys usually a higher "attractiveness" rate than the sender
meaning, everyone is tryig to "reach up" with their messages
but this also means, if a girl is insisting on not sending any messages
most likely her dates would be with "less attractive" guys
note: attractiveness level on OkCupid
depends on users' evaluations for the pictures
of people who voluntarily agreed on being evaluated
this evaluation is known only for algorithms
and it's NOT expressed anywhere publicly (neither on pics, nor any other elements)
Data also showed that females' interest in physical appearance
is half of the attention males pay to appearance
of course all of this is AVERAGELY speaking
so, it's not strange if me or you know many cases opposing this average stat
as is the case in any other stat
In the same interview, where the founder says that OKC is about relationships
more than casual sex
he also says that the nature of the first message
plays a role somewhat in the probability
of receiving an answer
but still, it's a very small factor
the major factor is the first impression
which is mostly derived from your pics
However, there is little direct correlation
between the attractiveness of someone (male or female)
and the popularity of this person and the amount of his/her messages received
rather there were other interesting factors
for example, if we ask 100 guys to rate the "beauty" of two girls
and both girls got almost the same score
but one of them got 4/5 from almost everyone
while the other got 5/5 and was perceived as "amazingly beautiful" by most
but got 1/5 from a few who considered her "not beautiful"
The latter would get much more messages than the former
and as per our "narrator", which is OkCupid data in our case:
it is useful to be perceived by some of the opposite sex as "unattractive"
and the ones having controversy over their "attractiveness"
would be luckier than the ones
upon whom there is a huge consensus that they're "very beautiful"
and btw, here is the picture of the girl
who received the largest amount of messages in the history of OkCupid
what do you think?
for many, she's very attractive
but she's not a "beauty queen" according to the common media criteria/standards
so some people think that the secret lies here
that when a girl seems "super beautiful and perfect"
potential senders might think that messaging her is a waste of time
because she gets loads of messages
and it's very unlikely that she'd answer
our girl here, provided in a Blog post some other possible reasons
about why she received so many messages
some are related to her personality, others related to her attention to grammar
or her self-confidence, the color of her eyes
her tattoos ....etc
having seen more pictures and videos of her, and watching an interview with her
I could add another possible reason
that she's really good in taking pictures
and has a really good grasp of the online dating game from this point of view
The charismatic philosopher, beloved by many
including those who don't agree with him on many of his thoughts
Slavoj Zizek
said in one of his interviews
something similar to the first idea to some extent
and goes on to add that the the problem with such applications
is that lots of people who use them
tend to take pictures in ways that hide
what they consider their "imperfections"
so Zizek thinks this is a pity
because he thinks that tiny imperfections
such as a mole, or a tilted tooth, or such "perfection breakers"
are the things that make someone attractive and likable
umm, Personally, I don't know..
I feel people love to hear such things
but I don't know to which extent we can generalize
anyway, Zizek also thinks that LOVE should be a "fall"
An Event, that is necessarily unplanned
and by accident, like in the movies
he sees that this phenomenon is decreasing today
and he doesn't seem to be happy with this
But who said that "falling" in love is the important thing?
in fact, what are the odds of that not a cognitive bias?
most likely, using the verb "to fall" in the old times
is the equivalent of "cognitive bias" in our time today
when we're in the midst of this feeling
which we agree that it's one of the most beautiful human feelings
it comes necessarily with a package of promises and assumptions
which we attribute to the other person
and which are enough, upon examining their quantity and quality
to reveal the cognitive bias we're experiencing
I'm talking here about the "falling in love" event
that Zizek talked about
which is different from the feelings we call Love
when one already is in a (romantic) relationship.
which comes with a different package of cognitive biases of course
seriously speaking, chemically and neurotically
the brain in the beginning of relationships
manifests a different type of activity regarding the beloved person
than that scientifically observed with people in long-term relations or marriages
The script I've written about love and relations
turned out to be extremely long
literally double what I've spoken in this video so far
so I'm gonna stop at this point
having said what I wanted to say about online dating
if you'd like to see part 2 next week
click LIKE on  this video,
and if you're interested in the topic of relationships
there's a Ripples podcast discussing the philosophy of the movie "Her"
many of you told me that they liked it a lot
so I've put the link to it in the description, along with the sources used in this video
Today's question is
when will Facebook enter the dating game?
Facebook has way much more data than any other site
and most likey it knows all your crushes
based on your behaviour, and how long you spend looking at some pictures compared to others
so by using its AI, Facebook is able to know exactly everyone's taste and preferences
and if Facebook decides, it could quickly match millions of pairs of
heads on millions of pillows..?
a contract with IKEA is a must, perhaps!
Also, Is this new Facebook feature
of answering suggested questions
related to a plan to launch such a thing in the future?
or maybe it doesn't need more troubles?
let's discuss in the comments
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Thanks for your time
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see you in the next video
Peace out :)
