Monday, January 17, 2011

okcupid and the single, childfree Catholic

I do not understand how okcupid matches people.

For those unfamiliar with okcupid, it has a feature called “Quiver,” where they send 3 recommended “matches” daily. For the past week, all my quiver matches have been Atheist or Agnostic. I don't know how this happened. Are there only non-religious people on okcupid? Did I not get that memo?

On okcupid, you can answer thousands of multiple choice questions, which supposedly help improve your matches. When I first started, okcupid was matching me with conservative (politically and religiously) Christians who wanted a crapload of kids. You can choose the “importance” of questions, so I started making any question related to liberal politics “mandatory,” to weed out the conservatives. I was successful in that…too successful apparently. I went from conservative Christians to liberal Atheists. I cannot win!

I know I can be a very logical, scientific person, which maybe came through in how I answered questions. Perhaps my “no kids” answers were matching with Atheists and Agnostics who did not want kids (a lot of people who do not want kids are non-religious).

I do not care what religion a match follows as long as he practices something! Despite not having the same religion, I have a lot in common with my non-Christian, religious friends. We take spiritual growth seriously and are active in enhancing our relationship with our Creator. We also see the world and morality similarly. We “get” each other's holy seasons. They get why Lent is important and I get why Ramadan is important, and we truly respect each other. It's not, “Oh, look at those blind, brainwashed sheep, depriving themselves to keep some power-hungry Skydaddy happy, submitting to an imaginary being's will. Why do they try to 'improve themselves' if nothing is ever good enough for their lightning bolt-wielding Zeus, if they are still going to some 'Hell' anyway?”

I have Atheist and Agnostic friends with whom I agree politically and with whom I share a respect of the scientific method. We just don't talk about religion. If my man and I, though, cannot pray together, if he bows his head to please me but doesn't believe ANY of the words I'm praying, that is a serious mismatch.

I guess the algorithms misinterpreted my openness to other religions to mean “non-religious.”

I do try the Match Searches too where I can type in the criteria (religion, distance, no kids, etc), but scrolling through dozens of matches, reading all those profiles, gets tiresome. I thought Quiver was supposed to pick the “cream of the crop,” as it were, so I do not have to spend forever reading dozens of profiles, looking for compatibility. I have messaged guys whom I found this way...but none of them wrote back.

I plan on going back through the “religious” questions to see how I answered. There are thousands of men out there, but okcupid keeps sending me all the mismatches. Some technology.

2 comments:

  1. I guess I never really thought about how tough it would be to find a guy who was both religious and childfree...wow. And I had no idea that okcupid sent you three matches/day, that sounds kind of exhausting (especially if they're all mismatches, LOL).

    I find it really interesting that you don't care what religion your perfect match follows as long as it's something. What a fascinating pair you'll turn out to be!

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  2. Maybe Okcupid is sending them your way based on other aspects of their personality?
    i.e. you like generosity and he likes it too, you both have similar views on politics? I don't know.
    P.S. Be careful of the term agnostic- many people use it classify themselves in the "middle ground" between atheism and religion. A lot of them don't fully understand the meaning of the term- I have a few pretty spiritual agnostic friends :p

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