OKCupid "My Best Face"

[kelric]

Has anyone else tried the OKCupid "My Best Face" feature? I uploaded a few new photos of myself there the other day and was asked if I wanted to participate in a survey so that I could get some feedback on which one of my photos was "my best".

Now, photos of myself are hardly my strong point when it comes to online first impressions, and I'm hardly in the target demographic for OKCupid, but I figured that there's no real harm, and that I'd just expect to be rated fairly poorly and indulge my curiosity. So I went ahead and participated.

Today I got my "results" -- which were really pretty comprehensive.

My results were about in the range I expected -- when compared with a random photo, mine was selected as "I liked this one more" significantly less than half the time (as an older guy on a younger-skewing site I find this neither surprising or bothersome). But the interesting thing was that of the six photos I posted and included, other than one where you can barely see me (the one of me lying down on a train), the one that I thought was the best (me with the Shanghai Expo mascot), was rated significantly worse than all of the others, which all bunched up pretty close together.

Did anyone else try this and get results opposite of what you expected? Don't feel obligated to look at mine or judge the photos, etc. (although you can if you feel like it). I'm curious if others have self-impressions that are distinctly opposite from other folks'.

And yeah, I know... internet polls, etc. are far from the height of statistically controlled relevance. But I was curious .

 

[Tallulah]

I don't really have any comments on the process, but I liked your photos! You looked relaxed and friendly.

 

[ragashree]

Being a guy with a boring ol' preference for the feminine sex, I can't really comment on the attractiveness or otherwise of the photos except to say that you gave the impression of being a friendly kind of "average guy", maybe with a personality a bit younger than your physical age?

I can suggest several very good reasons, however, why people, particularly the ladies who tend to notice such things more, didn't take to that specific picture:

1) Was it you who was advertising on OkCupid, or the ginormous mascot, looking for a little plastic pink friend? It takes up an alarming proportion of the picture compared to yourself...

2) And is goofy, and annoying, and generally not very pleasant to look at unless someone has a fetish for that sort of thing (in which case the mascot is more likely to be in luck than you, mesmerising potential conquests with those huge hypnotic eyes - you can't even SEE your eyes! ).

3) You're roughly the same colour as the blue monster, and the picture in general looks like some kind of weird intentional attempt at colour coordination with it. And why on earth would anyone want to do that...? Well, maybe that's not what was intended, but it's how it may be coming across!

This feature makes me curious though, maybe I'll have to resurrect my old page just to try it out...

 

[swordpath]

Interesting. I just submitted for the survey