They are the anti-app, in that they embrace the vastness of the open web and shirk the ideals, dodgy algorithms, and templates of containerized dating apps. Also, I’ve never done a Date Me doc, because it sounds mortifying, but I did once publish a 5,000-word feature that practically shouted my singleness, so same difference.ĭate Me docs do seem to be a natural next step in the evolution of online dating, not because the outcomes are necessarily better, but because the docs themselves feel at least like an effective form of self-expression. Like a lot of people, I’ve used dating apps on and off, and my most profound realization, which is not very profound, is that the people I find myself completely drawn to in real-life conversations are often people I might have passed on in an app. And that suggests that many of us are dating all wrong.” Desired romantic partners are easy to predict with data. Or, as WIRED previously explained, “Good romantic partners are difficult to predict with data. We think we know what we want, but we’re actually quite crappy at assessing what will make us happy. It’s a ‘by nerds, for nerds’ format!”īut of course, dating, and love, aren’t always optimizable. Olsson said she doesn’t think the dating doc is a widely adopted format outside of these circles: “This was always(?) meant as something to pass around within our subcultural communities. Almost all the people cited in this story identify as rationalists or, as Olah put it, hold values associated with effective altruism. You might also say practical, except the distinction between practical and rational is an important one to make in Silicon Valley these days, because rationalism is now its own influential subculture. “If spontaneity hasn’t worked yet, why not help it along?” she wrote to me.Īll of this is deeply rational. Mostly, though, Olsson just wanted to filter out people who aren’t into this style of dating, and stop relying on happenstance to find the right match. Proponents of the Date Me doc spurn Bumble, Hinge, and Tinder and lay themselves bare in Dropbox Paper, Google Docs, or personal websites built on WordPress and SquareSpace. He’s not alone, though, in his decision to ditch dating apps and publish a public-facing document about his search for love instead. Olah declined to give an interview, saying he’s been caught off-guard by the amount of attention his Date Me doc has received. And he emphasizes that he really wants biological kids, with the vigor of someone whose peer group is still full of strong swimmers and fresh eggs. He’s into being vegan, but not into kink. He says he’s “dedicated to doing what he believes is morally right.” He’s politically moderate and geographically agnostic. The title of his Google Doc gets right to the point: “Male, Straight, 5'7", Monogamous, Wants Kids.” His photos draw the eye, but it’s the sidebar that’s remarkable: Olah’s Date Me doc has four “chapters,” and 15 subcategories. Olah is 29, with the grin and just-finished-hiking complexion of someone even younger. Recently, I’ve seen several people experiment with public ‘date me’ docs-I think this is a really interesting experiment in alternatives, enabling long-form, earnest dating profiles.” Olah linked to his own Date Me doc in his tweet. Chris Olah, a neural network engineer for a company called AnthropicAI and a former Thiel Foundation fellow, observed out loud on Wednesday, “Normal online dating seems pretty suboptimal. The tweet landed like a burp on a first date: a little awkward, potentially endearing, maybe a good story to tell later.
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