Online dating website OKCupid has posted an entry on its blog that takes a close look at its users’ email response patterns according to race. The results might not be surprising, but they’re nevertheless significant—a sender’s race plays a large role in whether he/she will get a response. By comparing the write-back rate of Asian, black, white, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, Indian, and Native American men and women, the website finds that correspondence is noticeably less or more than what the write-back rate “should” be. In a nutshell, OKCupid breaks down the research, which analyzed about a million users. White men get the most responses. Black women respond the most yet receive far fewer replies. White, Asian, and Hispanic women largely prefer white men. OKCupid calls this racism:

“[We] are about to basically prove that, despite what you might’ve heard from the Obama campaign and organic cereal commercials, racism is alive and well.

Do you think it’s racist to have race preferences in the man or woman you date? Are you a racist if you’re not attracted to a certain race? [Blog.OkCupid.com]

Are you a dude on an online dating site? Are you having trouble getting women to actually go out with you? Not sure why? The problem may be you! From corny pickup lines to photo no-nos to profile mistakes, The Frisky gives you the lowdown on the top five mistakes men make when dating online—from the female perspective. Get it right and we might let you take us out on a date!

When a friend of mine who’s dipping her toe back into the world of online dating recently asked for three quick rules to remember when emailing potential matches, it occurred to me that if she needed a bit of a refresher course, some of you probably do too. After all, as convenient as it is, email is rife with opportunities to shoot yourself in the foot and hurt your shot at making a real connection. So after the jump, eight dos and don’ts to remember when emailing a potential online dating match.

Anyone who lives in a big city can tell you that finding a mate is difficult. Sure, there are a lot of fish swimming about, but they’re not willing to settle with one particular mate yet so they keep their options open. Crazy Blind Date has set out to change the big city dating dilemma by making it quick and easy for women to meet men in their area and go out on extremely short notice. So there’s no reading and rereading of profiles and messaging back and forth to see if you and the guy are compatible. You simply give a few specs, the site matches with a guy that fits your requirements, and you go on a date to see if you like each other. You might not find your soul mate in the first few dates or ever, but at least you won’t be sitting at home watching “What Not to Wear” on a Friday night. [Crazy Blind Date]

Any lass who’s dipped her toes into the online dating waters knows after two days all the messages (and the dudes who wrote them) blur together. Newsflash: saying “Hey, I love ‘The Office’ too!’ doesn’t woo the ladies, guys.

But do you know what really peaks the interest and prompts a woman to respond? For OKCupid, it’s messages that contain the words “zombie,” “tattoo,” and “piercing.”

Most of you probably Google a date’s name before you go out with him — some of you probably Google his name before you AGREE to go out with him (I know I would)—but how many of you Google a date’s email address? If you think that’s a crazy idea, too stalker-ish or whatever, have I got a cautionary tale for you! Recently, a friend of mine we’ll call “Angie” met a guy she thought might hit it off with her roommate — we’ll call her “Sheila” — and set about putting them in touch. “But I’m actually attracted to you,” the guy said to Angie, to which she replied honestly that she was already seeing someone and, besides, he wasn’t really her type anyway (he’s heavily tattooed and pierced — something she’s not into, but her roomie is). “Fine,” he said, “But will your roommate put me in my place like you will?” Angie assured him that Sheila was no doormat and would put him in his place if need be. “And you told her what I look like?” He asked. Angie assured him that she told Sheila about his tattoos and piercings and that she was totally fine with it.

Though one or two exes might dispute this, I’ve never been one of those crazy girls. Under normal circumstances I don’t snoop, don’t obsess (too much), and am generally fairly sane(ish) in my dealings with the opposite sex. However, while I met my current, long-term boyfriend on Nerve.com, at no time in my life did I ever feel as nutso as when I was online dating on a regular basis.

Now that my profile has been deleted and I have the wisdom that, unfortunately, comes far too late to be helpful to me, I might be able to save you some heartache…

Yesterday, I did an interview with CNN Live about Leonora Epstein’s article, “Automatic Online Dating Dealbreakers.” (You can watch it after the jump, if you’re so inclined, but please know the style department will be doing more about my hideous under-eye circles and lighting the next time around.) That same day, Julia Allison, blogging “sexpert,” was on MTV’s “It’s On With Alexa Chung” discussing the similar, but broader topic of dating in the realm of new media – texting, Facebook, online dating, etc. You can watch the segment above. She had five tips prepared for Alexa and then provided two others prompted by viewer questions. Some of her tips I could get behind, while the others kind of blew my mind. I’ll give it to you straight, after the jump…

I got an email asking a very simple question:

“If a guy says he’s seeing someone, why is he adding pictures to his dating profile?”

Well, it’s not a simple question. It’s just one that requires you to think a bit like Dr. House. Everyone lies.

If you sent a guy an email via your online dating site and he replied, “No thanks, I’m seeing someone” and then started adding new photos to his profile a few days later, one of two things is happening…Continue reading

I’ve been doing the online dating thing for a while. Match, Nerve, JDate, OkCupid, you name it. Generally, I’m a fan. (It feels sort of like shopping for boys, no?) That said, there’s also a lot about it that never fails to appall me. Namely, what guys seem to think is attractive, funny, or sexy in their profiles. For some of these men, the dealbreaker can be small—that moment when you’re checking him out, and all is going well until you scroll down to see that one off-putting thing and it’s click, on to the next. Then of course, there are the all-around disaster cases where everything from the picture to the description is horrifically wrong.

Here, some examples (both hilarious and bizarre) of online dating dealbreakers. For the ladies out there, let us know if you agree. For the guys, take notes. Please.

Would you like to date Jon Gosselin? Well, who wouldn’t? I know there’s nothing that lights a fire in my loins like a man who walks out on his wife, twins, and sextuplets. That is hot! Thankfully, it turns out that Gosselin is on Match.com. Yes, the ink may not yet be dry on the “Jon & Kate Plus 8” star’s divorce papers, but that doesn’t mean he’s not out there trolling the interwebs for young women looking to raise eight stepchildren and deal with a probably not very happy presumed to be soon-to-be ex-wife! So, what’s he looking for? Do you meet the demands of his dating profile needs? If you’ve got a non-asymmetrical haircut, you just might have a chance with the Goss. [Funny or Die]

A guy friend told me last month that despite his ability to meet women when he’s out, he has several online dating profiles. He, like some of my other friends, suggested I set up an account on Match.com or its equivalent now that I’ve reentered the dating scene after several years. 

When I gave him the same line I’d given other people—“I don’t think I need to”—he said, quite matter-of-factly, “Everybody needs to. It’s just how things are going to be now.”

Groucho Marx once famously quipped “I don’t care to belong to a club that would have me as a member.” I sort of feel the same way about online dating sites. There has got to be a better way to meet people, people. Sadly, mental telepathy does not work. Unless you know what I was just thinking, in which case, e-mail me.

I’ve recently begun… researching popular dating sites. Not because I need a date. Ho, no, no, no. I don’t need a date. I’m up to my man boobs in hot lady action. There’s an 85% chance of boobs forecast in my love life. I am the Mayor of Vagtown. No, this research is for you, for all of you. It’s a testament to my generosity of spirit I waded through these interweb love sewers in order to impart some sort of wisdom. Here’s the wisdom: dating sites blow.

Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, might have a reputation of a womanizer. But according to a new study by the site MySingleFriend.com, he may be one of the few guys named “Andrew” out there doing well with the ladies. The site says that even though a full tenth of their members are Andrews, these guys don’t get nearly the same number of clicks as guys named James, Nick, Mark, and Ben, even when the specific guy is “gorgeous, clever, and available.” [Metro UK]

So how do you feel about Andrews? And do you feel like you’re more or less attracted to men of a certain name? I know I once turned down a date with a boy named Eugene because of his name, though I swear he had other issues, too.

Before you get excited about having met your future hubby on Match.com, watch out—he might not exist. Sean McGinn, “witty and scruffy” Match.com user, had to find this one out the hard way. He had been sending carefully tailored e-mails out to hundreds of seemingly perfect women, only to find out that they were no more than vacant internet space. So, now he’s suing the website for “humiliation and disappointment.” He insists that Match.com “cease and desist its deceptive practices,” because they are “willfully causing emotional harm to the consumer and social harm to society at large.” I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing—the fact that McGinn was sending messages to nobody, or that he is suing Match.com for $5 million because of it. But even if he doesn’t win the lawsuit, the Brooklynite has something to smile about; he’s finally met someone special on the website he claims he was “defrauded” by. How ironic. [NYMag, NYPost]

The internet has proven to be a great way to get rid of a lot of junk. I’m not talking about eBay. So many forums have popped up for the lovelorn to confess the tangled sex webs they have woven. The net is a perfectly anonymous way to publicize the party in your pants, and we love to read every juicy detail. After the jump, some of our favorite sites for sex and relationship confessions.

Basisnote and Scientific Match are developing technology that will hook people up based on their immune systems and odor. Studies have shown how a person smells is based in their immune system, and people are attracted to the odor of those who have different histocompatibility genes, the genetic components of the human immune system, than their own. Dating someone with a different immune system than yours is beneficial in the long run if the two of you decide to procreate. But in the short term this seems like another dating site gimmick. Both of these sites purport to let nature take its course by letting people’s noses make the decision for them, but they have a rather unnatural hand in getting the couple together because they match men and women to people who have opposite immune systems.  [Discovery News]

We don’t plan on joining either of these sites because they take the fun out of dating, but we might try the following sites (some real, some imagined) instead.

While there are plenty of Twitter haters, we’re fans of the site. Our lives are busy, and it’s easier to communicate with others on our own terms than keep in touch them all via email, or, heaven forbid, in real life. Plus, Twitter brings out the pithy in people; they have to show they’re smart and clever—even with a 140-character constraint.

Over the past few months, we’ve been online dating but have found that reading guy’s profiles can be a bit of a time-suck—a lot of them are long-winded. Yes, we’d like to know whether we might be a match, but we’d also like to catch up on “The Real Housewives of New York” episodes we missed. So, we’re all for Radaroo, a free online dating system that uses Twitter to pair up people. While there aren’t many users yet, we hope Radaroo takes off. It could be like speed dating for witty writer-types! [Radaroo via Inventor Spot]