As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to pay a lot more attention to every damn pore on my face. What retinol product should I use? Who is the best dermatologist in the city? Do those drinks that say they have collagen in them really help reduce wrinkles if you pay $60 for a week’s supply and drink them daily?
All this in an effort to maintain a youthful appearance. But what if my desirability wasn’t about how I looked at all? What if it was all in someone’s perception of age? Perhaps beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps it’s in the number on your driver’s license. We decided to find out.
But, let’s face it: We must entertain the notion that some are perhaps not as enlightened on the subject as others. Are they fixated on the notion of age? Specifically, 29 versus 31? The Lindsay-Bot was deployed to find out. Cheng and Paul Mestemaker pushed the exact same profile of a woman – of me – out to thousands of men in New York and San Francisco to see who would bite. The only difference? In one profile she was listed as 29; in the other, 31.
Here are the photos they chose for our finished Lindsay-Bot. They reflect a variety of activites to make our bot well-rounded and more like a real human: Silly, musical, refined, adventurous, professional.
In general, the bot faired well – 83.5% swiped right on the 31-year-old version, and 83.2% chose the 29- year-old version. Granted, the data is skewed by the fact that people have the ability to self-select; meaning, men that didn’t want a 29-year-old could simply have set their age preferences to filter out any women 29 and younger. Conversely, a man who thinks 30 is too old for him can set his filter to a lower age. Continue reading “How does turning 30 affect you on Tinder?”