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OkCupid experiment proves men don't mind dating sociopaths

Here's a fascinating experiment: A woman's profile -- full of obvious red flags -- is put up on dating site OkCupid. Within hours "she" is inundated with romantic messages. Men just look at the pictures? Really?

Chris Matyszczyk
3 min read
Here's how Tara was presented. Mandatory.com screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

If you've ever dated someone who isn't quite what he or she initially seemed, please take comfort.

You are not alone.

You are not alone in meeting lovers who drink themselves unconscious before your very eyes. You are not alone in meeting lovers who will suddenly start uttering insane gibberish, just when you thought this might be "the one."

It's just that sometimes it's hard for others to believe that your lovely, sweet paramour is several seams short of a trouser leg.

Please feel relieved, then, that someone took it upon themselves to prove that if you are a man and you are dating a woman who isn't all there, it's entirely your fault.

You see, in their hearts men just don't care if their lady friend is erratic -- even beyond the bounds of the law -- as long as she's good-looking.

I am droolingly grateful to Mandatory.com for revealing the results of an experiment that every human being should examine.

Two friends decided to put together a dating profile on OkCupid. It was a profile to which anyone in their right minds would have given an askance look.

For here was a woman who had several severe instabilities and expressed them with charming openness.

Tara_IceAge4 offered such eclecticisms (all spelling is accurate here) as:

i love dancing (krumping and interpretetive are my passions) but i feel that it was ruined by blaks and now asiens. Not racist at all just dont like what dancing has become.

A warning sign, perhaps? Well, read on. Under the section "What I'm doing with my life," she wrote:

I make prety epic willy wonka pictures for facebook and writ funny things on them. like "oh your sad about 9/11? wel animals are killed evevey day and no one cares! I am very very vegan by the way.

You might have already been put off by the spelling and the general idiocy. But, remember, Tara_IceAge4 is supposed to be only 23 and living in Beverly Hills. There still might be tinges, therefore, of authenticity.

A detail from Tara's correspondence. Mandatory.com screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

But then she goes on to laugh about running a man down in her car, not stopping, and losing her driver's license, and she claims that the first thing people notice about her is "my mom" and adds that she loves "bon jorvi."

The whole thing is riven without even a shell of sanity.

Just to add a little whipped cream on the crazy cake, she mentions that she doesn't have or want kids. So in the section "I spend a lot of time thinking about" she writes: "Kids."

Everyone saw through this, of course. Her profile lay barren for days on OkCupid.

Not quite.

Within 6 hours, she received 39 messages from interested men and her profile was viewed more than 400 times.

As one of the authors of this experiment, Rob Fee, put it: "Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they didn't really read the bio. They just saw a cute girl and went for it."

But when they went for it, Tara's responses to questions were patently insane. In answer to the mere "How are you doing?" she mentioned her "horribel diarreh." On being told that her suitor was a "tutor," she replied: "Wbu? I don understand what that means? Is that a tipo?"

In replies to other potential lovers, she mentions having endured a c-section, being only 16, and even suggests being paid $45 for sex.

Still these men seemed relatively oblivious. Reminder: Tara was blessed with having a very nice picture on her profile.

You might conclude, as Rob Fee did, that men didn't even bother reading her profile. You might also wonder whether they simply didn't care.

The true sadness of online dating, of course, is that everyone is less beautiful in real life than the photos they choose to display.

If you meet these people in the cold light of night, they won't immediately tell you that they "love life" and "live it to the fullest" and "love walking hand-in-hand along the beach," as many of their profiles seem to shriek.

Instead, they'll tell you they had a crappy day and order a large cocktail.

The even greater sadness for many, though, will be that Tara's profile is no longer on OkCupid. Perhaps she's moved to Match.com.