OkCupid – The Deep End

OkCupid analyzes its users’ data and publishes insights in The Deep End.

Their recent article takes a look at the changes from 2005 to 2015, with some surprising results, starting with this question:

First Date

It’s a dramatic drop, but my first reaction was that this could be a reflection of online dating becoming more common, rather than a major shift in sexual behavior.

Maybe in 2005, online dating wasn’t as mainstream and OkCupid users tended to be more ‘adventurous’. Now that online dating is more common, the 2015 OkCupid users might include more conservative daters than it did before. 

I thought my theory was pretty plausible, until I reached the following question:

Too Many Partners

Any guesses as to why the two questions are trending in the opposite direction?

You can find the whole article here.

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For more on OkCupid, see also: Hall of OkStupid #3 at The Lonely Tribalist

10 thoughts on “OkCupid – The Deep End”

  1. Huh, that is really interesting that they seem to contradict each other. Hm, maybe it isn’t so contradictory. Maybe the onslaught of potential suitors and partners from online dating makes us more picky – maybe making us less likely to sleep with someone just on the first date. If a person sets up a bunch of dates with people they met on OKC, they probably aren’t expecting to sleep with all of them. And they’re probably counting on not doing so. But once we do sift through our matches and decide, we’re a lot more willing to try things out (on the second, third, or fourth date).

    (And thanks for the feature 😀 )

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  2. Pinky says:

    Very interesting indeed (the blog post and the OKC website)!
    I thought about something…. Not entirely sure where I am going with this but let me try:

    I agree with you, back in 2005, internet dating was new and exciting and so people were more “adventurous” and less conservative. So if you ask them “would YOU CONSIDER (…)” that is tapping into their fantasy world. In the new internet dating world the idea of sex was exciting. But then ask the same group of people a social perception question (“is there such a thing as too many sex partners?” ), most of them (70%) think that yes there can be too many sex partners. Most people like to be “the one” hence the results for that question.

    So while the thought or consideration (future/fantasy) to sleep with someone on the first date is/was exciting, the perception (present) that there can be too many sex partners is reality.

    Also, on average, there is a 20% change in the yes and no options for each question. Maybe those 20% were mainly the”new internet dating excited people” which can be treated as outliers?

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  3. Amanda K. says:

    That’s an interesting observation. I feel as if the disparity may lay in the fact that the mindset of female–and male sexuality has evolved since 2015. I feel like back then people, especially men were overly concerned with whether the woman they were with was a “slut”. Nowadays the amount of partners a woman has is not really a predominant factor in her sluthhoood…. There is still hope for us after all!

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