The Real 'Stuff White People Like'

Here's an interesting and funny look at 526,000 OkCupid users, divided into groups by race and gender and all the the things each groups says it likes or is interested in. While it is far from being definitive, the groupings give a glimpse of what makes each culture unique. According to the results, white men like nothing better than Tom Clancy, Van Halen, and golfing.

The female responses . . .

[SlappyBastard]

I've had a long-standing belief that the heavy preference for outdoorsy crap in women's profiles is their way of engineering the males they receive responses from. The basic idea is to frame yourself in an athletic manner, thereby driving off the lazy, the fat and the unambitious. In practice, I'd expect this to torpedo a lot video gamers, guys who live at home, geeks and low wage earners. In essence, it's a type of razor wire that kills off all the guys no woman wants to talk to.

Re:The female responses . . .

[Nursie]

Well, it's probably also aspirational.

Who wouldn't like to get out side more and do outdoorsy things all the time?

But when it comes down to it, most of us can't be bothered. The women probably want someone to help them achieve that.

Re:The female responses . . .

[rubies]

More that our external representations of ourselves rarely match the actual. Look at the crazy pictures people put on Facebook for their profiles - 40 year olds with some photo from their mid-twenties before they got fat. Listing a bunch of interests you rarely participate in (unless bumping into your dusty huffy n the garage counts as cycling).

Assumed homogeneity

[devleopard]

Stereotyping is never good, but it has a higher degree of confidence based on the divergence of individual characteristics, as well as population. (For example, you say "all 17 year old black males like rap music", but you're actually looking at more than one characteristic - there typically is less divergence among economic status, geographic distance from peers, etc.. to put it bluntly, they tend to be poor and live close together)

Among white males, this tends to be less true wider array of economic functioning (higher % of upper middle class), geographic distribution (with few exceptions, white males can *socially* live wherever they want, if they can afford it), etc. So there's no *typical* white male.

Re:The female responses . . .

[Steauengeglase]

I'll have to agree with that one. Some of my outdoorsey friends have had problems with women using that as a filter and then treating them like fixer-uppers. Granted they were also to blame. If she says that she enjoys fishing and camping, don't say yes when she asks you about fine dining and shopping. Just be honest.

Re:The female responses . . .

[uvajed_ekil]

Hmm, I think the outdoorsy shtick relates more to young women in rural/outlying areas. They may not really like riding ATVs, camping, fishing, and hiking, but they like guys who listen to songs about tractors and like ATVs and fishing. It could be more about who they are trying to attract than who they wish to exclude. I live on the edge of civilization, where all macho guys to the South and East wear cowboy hats (when they go to the country music dancing bar), claim to hunt and fish (though most of them have done it very few times), and espouse the virtues of pickup trucks (while they drive Chevy Cavaliers and old-ass Mercury Sables). In rural and semi-rural populations, this is somewhat the norm. If you adjusted your data to examine trends only in urban and inner-ring suburban areas, you'd see a lot less outdoorsy crap in women's profiles, with more mentions of wine, reading, baseball games, and walking in parks.

Re:Race?

[guyminuslife]

As someone who took a semester of Sociology 101 years ago, I am here to snobbishly inform you that race is a social construction and that you can divvy it up however you wish.

(Actually, as I vaguely recall reading---I took more than just the 101 course---there's a wealth of fascinating legal history about the construction of race in this country other than the typical White/Black/Native American issues, mainly due to naturalization law. I think I remember something about Indians arguing that they were white once science caught on to the genesis, but were ruled nonwhite because they had darker skin. And a Japanese guy who argued that he was white because he had light skin, but was ruled nonwhite because...I forget. Slanty eyes, maybe.)

Re:Like many nerds, you are over analysing

[mcvos]

Actually, when you're on a dating site, it's very much worth it to repel the people you're not interested in. If you seem attractive to everybody, you'll be approached by everybody, and you're in for a lot of work trying to figure out who might possibly like the real you. Instead, be honest about your bad side, and you might find someone who doesn't mind that bad side.

Of course it's also good to be aware of your bad aspects and work on them. Nothing wrong with liking comic books (to take just one example), as long as it doesn't completely dominate your profile.