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Alli Reed decided to run an experiment. Being an aficionado
of online dating sites she set up a profile on OK Cupid for a fictional
character called Aaron Carter fan. (For the record, I have no idea who Aaron
Carter is. I have no interest in finding out.)
Reed was trying to create a persona that was so unattractive, containing such a repulsive
personality that no man would be so deranged and degenerate to respond.
She explained:
In
making this profile, I made sure my creation touched on every major facet of
being truly horrible: mean, spoiled, lazy, racist, manipulative, and willfully
ignorant, and I threw in a little gold digging just for funzies. I maintain
that there is not a human on this planet who would read this profile and think,
"Yes, I'd like to spend any amount of the fleeting time I'm given on my
journey around the sun getting to know this person." This profile is my
magnum opus; it will be engraved on my tombstone.
One likes to hope that she does not take herself seriously.
She explained herself to the Washington Post:
I
created AaronCarterFan to see if there was a lower limit to how awful a human
had to be before men would stop messaging her. As it turns out: nope.
One admires Reed’s courage. She ought to have known that she
is really revealing more than she should about the way she sees men.
Since she had been spurred to run her experiment because of
her own bad track record at online dating, she is, at least, coming to terms
with her own contempt for the male of the species.
Obviously, Reed is not a social scientist. Effectively, her
experiment tells us nothing about the men who respond. It only offers us Reed's vision of a repulsive young woman looks like. Presumably, this woman is the polar opposite of Reed herself.
So, Reed created the worst dating profile and was shocked,
just shocked to discover that hundreds of men responded to it. Should she have
been?
The woman pictured in the profile is (visibly) a fashion model. The
woman says that she is a goddess who does herself. I suspect that most young
men will not find this to be repugnant. After all, she is saying that she is in
close touch with her feelings. The woman adds that she will accept casual sex.
Why would any sentient young women believe that this detail would turn away
potential suitors? And she suggests that she has been more-or-less paid to have
sex. She says that she is looking for a man a rich man between 19 and 60, meaning that a
Sugar Daddy arrangement with an older man would be acceptable.
Is this the worst dating profile ever? Of course, it isn’t.
The profile shows a beautiful party girl who, according to the rest of the
profile, doesn’t seem to have a brain in her head.
It would appear that men respond to physical beauty and to an
offer of casual sex. They are even willing to overlook manifest mental
deficiencies to attain it. Did Alli Reed need to run her faux experiment to discover this.
Apparently, Reed was trying to find out whether men are
turned off by women who do not appear to
be very intelligent. Or else, she was trying to find out whether men would be
attracted to a woman for her mind alone.
She seems to have discovered that men do not overlook
physical beauty and that they respond to offers of casual sex with fashion
models. Who would have thought it?
For all that, Alli Reed holds these men in contempt. If you were
wondering why she has been having a problem with men, she is showing us. If stupid is not very attractive, surely contempt is positively unattractive.
What makes Aaron Carter fan an ignoramus? She constantly
makes grammatical mistakes and admits to some egregiously bad behavior. She says
that she throws drinks in the faces of people she meets and knocks the cups out
of the hands of homeless people. And she explains that she has lied to her
ex-boyfriend that she was pregnant in order to extort money from them.
Reed seems to believe that no one, not even a man, could be
stupid enough to want to meet Aaron Carter girl. But why does she believe that
no man was smart enough to see through the hoax.
In a strange way, it makes sense that the world’s worst
dating profile would be put up by the world’s best date. It reminds me of an
incident that happened when I was in college—admittedly a long time ago. One
day we were all required to take an aptitude test. A guy from my dorm succeeded
in getting all the answers wrong. His score was so low it broke the curve.
Now, obviously, you have to know all the right answers in
order to mark down all the wrong answers. You cannot get a zero by answering at
random.
Otherwise, a reasonably intelligent man might see the
profile as a test. Can he love this woman at her worst? After all, the profile begins
with a line to the effect that a man would have to put up with her worst to
have her best. Why would a man not see that as a challenge?
Besides, announcing that you are extorting money from your
ex— by telling him that you have a child is very hard to believe. Do you
imagine that her ex-boyfriend never saw her pregnant and never asked to see this child? Even if he did
not, why would she confess to criminal behavior in a dating profile? Unless it
was all just a joke.
Unfortunately, the joke seems to have been on Alli Reed.
12 comments:
Aaron Carter was a teen heartthrob from the 90s. I suspect that was an attempt to make the profile even more unpalatable.
I know, I know, you didn't want to know, but it does add additional information.
This is TOO EASY.
A glib way to feel morally superior and piss on humanity.
This girl is a moral narcissist.
That's just what a value-parading progressive would come up with -- and then tell her story to the Washington Post.
She ought to have stopped by the Washington Times. They would have told her the most unattractive online profile would be that of a full-time feminist with a PhD, working at a university. Just tell the prospective suitor he will have a wonderful opportunity to check his privilege he learns about hidden societal dynamics of gender and race. "Are you man enough to engage with me when I'm in your face, calling you out about how you perpetuate the patriarchy? Then there's sexy good times ahead"... with a professional parasite who considers him an enemy who must be defeated.
The accompanying pic would show the many ways in which she rejects oppressive norms of beauty, body weight, and appropriate dress. She could snitch one from the "this is what a feminist looks like" meme.
That would be a much better way for Alli Reed to test whether men are interested in the New Woman, instead of seeing if men flee from the opposite.
There might be, not just a few men, who see right throughout this charade and are quite willing to "hoist" her on her own "petard" so to speak. This seems like the perfect challenge. If people were only as smart as they think they are.
I had a friend, when I was stationed in a southern clime, that used to walk down the beach asking women for sex and generally not in a nice way. In 7 out of 10 he would get the equivalent of NO, but he did well with the other 3. I suspect for him it started out as an experiment based on his opinion of women. Would one use that 30 percent as representative of all women?
In today's life lesson, we learn that there's no such thing as bad publicity.
You are helping her climb the Google search ranks, Stuart.
Winning!
I like to think I have that much Klout, but that's probably wishful thinking.
You guys are kidding yourselves. Aaroncarterfan is hot. Especially when she doesn't talk or write. And we might also consider her racism as skillful demographic targeting. She never said she went to Princeton.
Now, do you think we could show Alli Reed a thing or two and run a profile of a multi-millionaire Augustus Gloop back from the Wonka chocolate river drowning (yet unchanged as a gluttonous, oversized adult) and make a dating site profile where all he talks about is money (in a German accent), his Porsche concept vehicle and Deutsch sausage? I wonder how many women THAT would attract? Hmmmm? The blade cuts both ways, as Gloria Estefan so famously said.
But we wouldn't, because the answer is obvious. But I'm not sure it's overly contemptuous., as much as it is unchallenging. There are outliers everywhere. Jerry Springer proved that on a daily basis (men who are into fat chicks, women who salivate over convicted murderers, etc.). And someone who thinks they're clever by targeting an outlier slice of the world will always get their fallen quarry (a la Dennis' example). It's not difficult, and they'll go on believing... whatever it is they want to believe.
Strikes me that ol' Alli's shown herself to be a world-class buffoon who specializes in self-fulfilling prophesies. How do you think HER dating profile page is doing? Oh, that's right, she's a comedienne. And very funny, no doubt. She'll be here all week.
Tip
Could sado-masochism be involved here? People often end up in relationships with partners who externalize some internal part of themselves, and enacts some kind of internal drama or conflict. If we have low self-worth, we might have an unconscious attraction to some dominatrix who will boss us around and reduce us to her servant. One of the illusions of dating, created by popular TV shows like "The Millionaire Matchmaker", is that attraction is a highly rational decision-making process. They portray the idea, that we should create lists of desirable qualities we want in a partner as if we were going grocery shopping for love. But reality tells a different story... The world is full of semi-abusive relationships and marriages that have very little to do with rational choice, and a lot to do with inexplicable attraction. One of the conundrums to our rational minds, is that we often seem to fall in love with people who are "bad" for us, or who would not at all have made it onto our grocery lists of love. The fake dating profile of Aaron Carter Fan perhaps speaks to the fact that attraction ultimately is an "enigma" and not an exercise in good judgment. For interested parties, please check out my dissertation on attraction/ flirting. Thanks Stuart, for another interesting and well-written post!
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