Tonight’s train mission was to read the back-catalog of OKCupid blog posts. I think I saw an old one posted on Hacker News today, and once I started reading I couldn’t put it down.
In The Case For An Older Woman, the author argues that there is a “sweet spot,” if you will, of women that men should be looking for, but due to human nature, they aren’t. It’s really much better than that makes it sound, I highly encourage that you read it all.
Throughout the article, we see a series of charts and graphs discussing what the average users of OKCupid are doing. Maybe it was my eye for patterns, but one graphic instantly grabbed my attention.
This chart shows what male users list as their maximum and minimum match ages are, broken down by age. Can you see what’s, well, creepy about this chart?
Standard Creepiness Rule
As defined on XKCD and Urban Dictionary (so it must be true) among others, the Standard Creepiness Rule — or more simply, the Creepy Rule — is the equation half of your age plus 7. As long as the person you are dating is equal to or higher than that age, it isn’t creepy.
If you look closely at the minimum age line of the chart above, you’ll note that the Creepy Rule fits this line almost perfectly.
The Chicken & the Egg
This discovery begs the question: is this semi-scientific proof of the natural existence of the Creepy Rule, or is it simply a result of men knowing of and abiding by the rule?
Beyond that, has anyone else noticed this? It wasn’t mentioned in the OKCupid post (which, again, highly worth reading).
A Couple of Links
Some much more related than others.
