by Maia Adar, [email protected]

Date-me docs are long-form dating profiles that are recently popular among rationalists, EA, and tech people. You basically write whatever you want about you and your dating preferences, usually including some photos, basic stats, and relevant personal reflections.

I surveyed ~150 people whose emails were available in this date-me doc directory and a third of them responded (n=51). The respondents are 67% male, which is about the same proportion as the population of date-me doc writers. Their average age is 32. Many respondents haven’t had their doc up for very long – more than half for less than 6 months.

Why do people do this?

50% selected the reason “might as well”.

39% selected that they “believe it has great potential to help me find a mate”.

Those who believe it has great potential spent more than twice as long writing their doc compared to those who did not select it (3.1 hours vs 6.4 hours, on average).

Some people elaborated other reasons:

• “more freedom/nuance to demonstrate who you are outside the context of scripted prompts and text limits”
• easy way to explain yourself/dating preferences to people
• saw others doing it and thought it seemed cool
• “why not try some adventure?”

Does it work?

The success metrics are:

• Individual’s overall rating (1-5) of how glad they are to have a date-me doc