Thoughts on the 2016 Election

You probably don't need another Facebook post about politics at this point in the week, but I wanted to point out something that very few people are bringing up in the aftermath of the election. Everyone is talking about how Trump appealed to non-college educated white people and nationalists, but the single biggest predictor of whether someone would vote for Trump was simply whether or not they voted for Romney.

Sure, there were plenty of NeverTrump people who voted for Romney, and Trump certainly encouraged some people to vote this year that didn't vote in 2012, but he mainly just got Republicans to vote for him. The current vote count has Trump at 60,072,551. Romney got 60,933,504. Romney lost the popular vote by 4% and Trump will probably end up with about the same number of votes after they're all counted. Obviously, Trump won anyway because Clinton wasn't even close to Obama's vote total (currently 60,467,601 vs. 65,915,795). (Let's save the Electoral College discussion for another day, because it isn't likely to change. If you spread another million votes for Clinton across Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida she wins the election, so the point about her total vote count vs. Obama's still stands.)

By and large, people vote for their own party, and the winner is largely determined by which party motivates more people to vote. Most people who vote in general elections will cast a vote regardless of who the candidate is, so both parties have a base of votes they're guaranteed to get. It didn't matter that Trump may have been the worst presidential candidate of all time; he was still the Republican candidate, and that was enough for most (not all, but most) Republicans. Clinton was also not a great candidate, and it was shown by how few people voted for her. Her biggest appeal was that she was Not Donald Trump, and that simply wasn't enough for many people.

Now, you can argue that those people who stayed home should have voted even if they weren't "excited" about Clinton, and the people who voted for Trump shouldn't have done so for a plethora of reasons. Those are valid arguments, and I wholeheartedly agree with you simply because I think Trump is completely unqualified for the office he was just elected to. However, the reality is that people are motivated to vote by things other than logic. I weighted factors like "probability of starting a nuclear war" pretty strongly when I cast my vote, along with "probability of worsening the national debt and income inequality via tax plan" and "probability of worsening climate change" and "a general understanding of how science works" and "ability to conduct oneself like a reasonable human being," but not everyone thinks like me. The more important factors for many people were: 1) Does the candidate have a 'D' or an 'R' next to their name? and 2) Do I like them?

Trump had the R by his name, so that gave him well over 50 million votes by default (likewise for Clinton). Then there were some people who actually like Trump's message (particularly those who are less-educated), so they either flipped from Obama or came out to vote for the first time in a while to get him his 60 million votes. Clinton got a large-but-not-large-enough portion of Obama voters, plus some people who were repelled by Trump, and here we are.

My main takeaway from all of this: both parties did a terrible job in the primaries. Hillary had all the qualifications in the world, but she also had a ton of skeletons in the closet and people generally don't like her. This allowed for a false equivalency in the minds of many where they just thought that both candidates sucked regardless of who sucked more. Trump was the most disliked candidate of all time, but Hillary is second on that list--people do not like her. If you want your candidate to win a general election, you should try nominating someone that people like.

On the Republican side, Trump only got 30-40% of the vote in the primaries, depending on the state. Most Republicans didn't want to nominate him, but the assclowns in charge of the party did a terrible job of organizing things and let 17 candidates into the process. Reince Priebus probably deserves more blame than any other single person for Trump's election since he's in charge of the Republican National Committee. He's largely responsible for the most disliked candidate of all time becoming President, although he was helped greatly by the Democrats who couldn't get out of their own way. Preibus' candidate won in spite of the fact that he is objectively terrible at his job. Man does that guy suck.

The lesson for all of us: vote in the primaries. Only 57.6 million people did so this year, less than half of the number that voted in the general election. If someone like Trump ever runs again, make damn sure you vote. If you're a Republican, vote for someone else and make sure you're all voting for the same someone else. If the Rubio/Cruz/Kasich camps could have solidified around a single person, we wouldn't be in this spot. If you're a Democrat, vote for someone who can win a general election. They have to be likeable; "better than the other guy" isn't good enough, even though it should be.

Also, vote in the midterms. If you've been depressed about how little Congress has gotten done in the last few years, vote for people who don't block every single bill that gets proposed. We all agree on some things, like background checks for gun buyers, but that hasn't become a law yet because there are people in Congress who refuse to do their jobs because they're afraid they won't get reelected if they work with people across the aisle. This will continue if only the die-hards show up to midterms and primaries, because the people who vote in those elections are the only ones that matter to Congress. Voting once every four years isn't enough. There are too many unreasonable people in this country for the rest of us to afford staying home on election days.

The Ease of Irrationality

It’s really easy to be irrational. We’re all prone to thinking and believing things that don’t aren’t true or logical, and we usually have reasons for it. Even yours truly, a Spock-like dude (RIP, Leonard) who values logic over pretty much everything, has had bouts of irrationality. For example, I met a girl named Liz at a bar a few years ago. There was obviously some mutual attraction--she actually approached me (albeit with a friend), and even though we only talked for maybe 10 minutes she invited me to go bowling with her friends that night. Enter Irrational Kyle.

First of all, I gave her my number instead of getting hers. This was a terrible idea. Despite the changing times, many women still expect men to take initiative (this makes things tricky for some girls who like girls, but works out pretty well for guys who like guys). Shockingly, I never heard from her.

Secondly, I didn’t go bowling with her. While alcohol is great as a social lubricant that reduces inhibitions and enables people to talk to each other, it tends to have a negative effect on decision-making. I somehow got the idea that she wouldn’t want me to come because she was a shy person and would feel weird about a pseudo-date while among her more boisterous friends. Did you know that shy people are more comfortable when they’re around their friends? Drunk Kyle didn’t.

Lastly, I spent an untold number of hours attempting to stalk her on the internet over the following week. Turns out it can be hard to find people when all you know about them is their first name and they don’t have a public Facebook profile. Or LinkedIn. Or MySpace (yeah, I checked). I even looked at rosters of bowling leagues and went to bowling alleys a few times in the hopes of running into her without it appearing insanely creepy. Does any of this seem reasonable? No, not at all. But, hey, that girl smiled at me, so clearly we were meant to be.

Society as a whole can get pretty irrational, too. I don’t mean that popular consensus is sometimes wrong--it’s easy to believe that the sun goes around the Earth when there’s no information suggesting otherwise. I’m talking about when we all have information and choose to ignore it. In the past couple decades, for example, there have been huge spates of cheating in sports that we simply pretended weren’t happening. Lance Armstrong won SEVEN straight Tour de France’s with ONE TESTICLE. You know how they have separate sports leagues for men and women? That’s because men are (in the aggregate) genetically better athletes, largely owing to higher levels of testosterone. You know where testosterone comes from? Balls. Also, you know what tends to have a negative effect on health and general physical ability? Cancer. Turns out Lance was involved in the biggest doping scandal of all time and lied about it. But, hey, it’s fun for America to be the best, and a cancer survivor turning into one of the greatest athletes ever made for an amazing story.

There’s also the crazy spike in home runs around the turn of the century. The McGwire-Sosa battle was the last time I gave a shit about baseball (although I’ll pretend to care whenever the Indians make the playoffs), and I’m probably not alone. No one had ever hit more than 61 homers in a year, but then McGwire and Sosa both smashed that record with Big Mac hitting 70. A few years later, Barry Bonds hit 73. Nothing suspicious about that. Nope, nothing at all. Especially not the drastic changes in proportions they all went through. But, hey, it’s fun to witness history.

The main thing that all these examples have in common is wishful thinking. Humans have a tendency to believe things more easily when they’re good for us. It’s easier to accept a good job review than a bad one. It’s common to think that we’re special in some way as most people think they’re smarter than average. It’s enticing to think that relationships will last forever rather than recognizing the flaws. Speaking of which...

<time travel>

(The following was written on 5/18/14 while in the full throes of irrationality) A couple years after Liz, there was Melissa. I’m actually writing this between my first and second date with her, assuming that I am at the height of my irrationality as it concerns this relationship. I’m really fucking romantic--I write about how irrational relationships are before they even happen.

So I met this broad, and she is, to put it succinctly, fucking delightful. At this point in time, I have talked to her for a grand total of four (4) hours, plus a few emails. We do not know the following information about each other:

• Names of siblings, friends, parents, or coworkers
• Type of high school experience
• Type of childhood experience
• Vacation destinations
• Professional goals
• Sex preferences
• Music preferences beyond one band (Frightened Rabbit, for the record, a band that is easily in my top five)
• Favorite books
• Favorite TV shows
• Experiences in previous relationships
• Favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
• Favorite color
• Exercise habits
• Political preferences
• Cleanliness habits
• Presumably other things

In addition to all these things I don’t know about her, I do know that she hates peanut butter but likes cucumbers (which is indicative of some serious mental issues), she’s taller than me, and she has a work schedule that is incongruous with mine (she basically works 10-12 hour days every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, plus 3 out of every 4 Saturdays, whereas I just work 9ish hour days Monday-Friday), all of which are less than ideal if I were to create the perfect girlfriend.

Despite all of the above, I am unequivocally crazy about her. The logical side of my brain very much would like me to calm the hell down because, again, I’ve only spent 4 hours in her company and there’s a ton of stuff that I don’t know about her. And there’s some stuff that I know about her that falls into the “cons” side of the ledger. And I’ve been single for almost exactly 4 years now, so history is not on my side. And I’ve only ended up going on more than 2 dates with 5 people since college, and only 3 in the past 4 years, so even if I like the chick there’s no guarantee that we’ll get anywhere near a relationship (if you are now thinking to yourself “Damn, Kyle, no girlfriends between the ages of 25-29? Have you considered the possibility that you might have Asperger's or something? Why am I bothering to read your blog if you’re so socially inept?” I don’t blame you. In defense of my blog, it tends to deal with matters of logic and reason, which tend to be mutually exclusive from relationships. Also I might have Asperger’s. Not really. But maybe. But I don’t think so.). Plus, in 2009 717 people died from getting tangled in their bedsheets, and if the trend of cheese consumption is any indication, there’s a chance she’ll die in her sleep and thwart this whole thing tomorrow. (Editor’s note: that may be the weirdest sentence I’ve ever written.)

The other side of my brain doesn’t give a shit about any of that. It’s the honey badger. This side of my brain simply knows that I just went on the best first date I’ve ever had, I enjoyed the hell out of those 4 hours, and so did she. This side of my brain wants to defend irrationality because, you know what? I might be right. We might be as good of a match as I think we are. We might spend the foreseeable future together happily ever after. I really, really, really like this broad and she is, at the very least, feeling better than lukewarm toward me. We clicked, immediately. We have a very similar sense of humor and made each other laugh easily. We both appreciate the genius of movies like Billy Madison and Super Troopers. We’re both intelligent (she’s a vet, and I’m almost as smart as I think I am). We like drinking. She’s crazy-cute and I’m not entirely abhorrent. We’re both dog people. We converse swimmingly. To be honest, my goal in life at this moment is to prevent myself from getting too creepy/clingy too fast because I have such high hopes for the two of us.

I’m not really sure how to adequately convey how crazy I am about this girl. If she asked me to marry her tomorrow I would probably take my chances and say yes. If her house burned down on Tuesday I’d make room for her to move into mine on Wednesday. If she told me that her favorite band was Hanson or Creed or Nickelback or Justin Bieber I would still date her and work on not hating that band. These are all true statements.

I want to point out here that I am the most logical person that I know (obviously I’m biased, but still) and, again, everything that I’ve written about this girl is 100% true. After one date. How incredibly, ridiculously crazy is that?! The ridiculosity is off the charts! And yet, I can’t deny how strongly I feel this way despite knowing that it’s incredibly crazy to feel this way. I, the annoyingly super-logical dude, am admitting that I’m perfectly vulnerable to incredibly strongly held yet incredibly irrational beliefs. If you want to talk about cognitive dissonance and wishful thinking, I’ve got them both in spades.

</time travel>

Things have worked out incredibly well with Melissa, so in retrospect I don’t look as crazy as I thought I was at the time. Further evidence has proved that we are, in fact, a great match, so there’s no longer any wishful thinking involved...but there certainly was at the time.

So what’s my point here? I’ve gone through a few different phases regarding my views on religion. I was brought up Christian, so I spent the first two decades of my life believing in God. Then I started seriously thinking about the merits of Christianity and drifted toward agnosticism over the course of a few years. After more thinking and exposure to arguments against religion that I hadn’t previously heard, and particularly after learning more about how evolution works (a big sticking point for me when I was younger), I became an atheist. There was some anger involved when I became an atheist--religion just seemed so obviously wrong and I was mad that so many people still bought into it and made decisions based on it.

Shockingly, it turned out that the non-atheist people in my life weren’t big fans of the angry atheist phase, and some relationships were probably damaged as a result. Consequently I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why so many of these people, who I know to be intelligent, still cling to religion. There are a multitude of reasons, obviously, and I think the main one for many people is simply wishful thinking. After all, if I’m susceptible to bouts of insane irrationality about a girl and I’m normally an incredibly logical guy, how easy is it for people to become irrational when the topic comes to their relationship with a supposedly loving God? When the reward for that  irrationality is eternal bliss instead of eternal torture? When you’ve been brought up by your elders to think that these beliefs about God are not irrational, but a perfectly good explanation for life? When most of your peers share the same beliefs? When “God works in mysterious ways” is a convenient catch-all for everything that we can’t definitively explain? When your religion is built entirely upon faith and the idea that “blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe?” When the things that you pray for occasionally come to pass? It’s pretty damn easy.

I’m not saying that Christians are entirely irrational, or that the only reason they believe in God is wishful thinking, but it definitely plays a part. I’ve spent a ton of words on this blog pointing out how illogical religion is, but the intellectually honest Christians admit that religion is illogical. They know it doesn’t make sense objectively, but they believe anyway. This still frustrates me since I don’t think faith is a virtue, but at least there are some semi-rational explanations for these irrational beliefs.

The Basis of Religion

(Author’s note: I started writing this post a loooong time ago. Sometime in the middle of 2012. I originally planned to have this follow my posts on crazy Bible verses since it’s largely related to the validity of the Bible. However, as I’ve discussed here recently, I felt a bit bad about all the blatant blasphemy in this blog and the fact that it bugged some buddies who believe in the Bible, so I became a bit bashful about blogging about this. This is a rather important facet of my reasoning for atheism, though, so here goes.)

As I’ve written previously, the Bible is not exactly a perfect document. It’s full of contradictions, has not held up well over time, and is clearly inconsistent in its moral teachings. Most Christians want to believe that their god is a loving god, but there are a multitude of examples where this god is indisputably cruel. Deuteronomy and Leviticus are undeniably overflowing with pure ridiculousness. You know--all that jazz about how eating bacon and menstruating are sins that need to be atoned for by killing goats and stuff. I covered it in this post, which was so much fun to write that I wrote another post about other crazy shit in the Old Testament. Then, to be fair, I wrote another post detailing the pearls of wisdom that can be gleaned from the New Testament.

Three posts may seem like a lot, given that the general theme of all three was “lookit how batshit insane the Bible can be!” In reality, I could write another three posts on the subject since it’s a pretty big book and there’s more than enough crazy in it, but I hope I’ve made my point: the book that Christianity is based on has a ton of passages that most people disregard outright because they’re so crazy, and it also has a ton of passages that require a silo full of salt to rationalize.

This means that the Bible as a whole cannot be completely trusted because we know that, as a whole, it is fallible. Having established that...how reasonable is it to believe in any of it? What sense does it make to try to derive a code for morality from the same book that condones slavery? How can one point to this book that is clearly full of errors and use it as a rationalization for believing in any form of Christianity? If you gave the Bible to a college graduate who had never heard of Christianity before, let them read it, and then asked them whether they believed in the Holy Trinity, how could they possibly say “yes” by using the Bible as justification?

Other than the Bible, what evidence is there for Christianity? Most people hold on to Christianity because of personal experiences and stories from other Christians--times when a prayer has been answered, or comfort was found in times of sorrow, or deep reserves of motivation were accessed. Even if you’re convinced that the only explanation for these experiences is a “higher power,” how do you know it’s the Christian god? Without the Bible, there would be no reason to attribute anything to the Christian god because Christianity would not exist. Religions require a common thread to tie people together, and it’s usually some selection of writing that the members agree is “holy” in some fashion.

Everything that we as a society “know” about Christianity is derived from the Bible: God created everything, got really mad and killed almost everyone, allowed His “chosen people” to be slaves for a while, and eventually mellowed out and knocked up a broad named Mary who gave birth to Jesus who had some sweet magic powers and then died so that all of us lowly sinners could go to heaven even though we’re terrible people and should stop sinning even though we’re already forgiven for our sins that we haven’t yet committed. Also there’s something called the Holy Ghost. Got it? Good. Christians generally agree on some version of that stuff.

However, there’s a bunch of stuff they don’t agree on. Catholics prohibit the use of birth control, but Protestants don’t. Why? Because it’s not in the Bible (and because many Protestants are reasonable enough to admit that birth control, in its myriad forms, is right up there with vaccines among the most convenient medical advances in the world). Then again, Baptists disagree with many moderate Christians on the topic of homosexuality even though that is in the Bible because they “interpret” the Bible differently. The Bible is ultimately what ties all Christians together, but it’s so messed up and controversial that they had to split into a bunch of denominations based on how they interpret it. Still, the Bible is the common source for their religious beliefs and practically all Christian worship services directly reference the Bible.

Here’s the next question: what differentiates the Bible from the Koran (or any other holy book) in terms of validity? Not a thing, if we’re being honest. The Bible is less extreme, but that doesn’t make it more correct. Muslims believe just as strongly in the Koran as Christians do in the Bible (and in many cases, they believe much more strongly--you may be familiar with a little thing called jihad that some of them support). Muslims have “religious experiences” that are just as vivid and “real” as the experiences of Christians, yet they have an entirely different religion. There are a billion Muslims and a billion Hindus in the world, and there is not a single thing that makes their religions any less valid than Christianity. These religions have a holy book (or set of books) that they claim contains the words of the only real god(s). They cannot all be right...but they can all be wrong, which is way more likely than any of them being correct.

The question of why Christianity was correct while Islam or Judaism or Hinduism was not was one of the toughest questions for me to answer when I was still struggling with the idea of religion, and it's one of the things that makes it practically impossible for me to ever believe in Christianity again. I never had a better reason for believing in Christianity over Islam other than "that's what I was brought up with." I can't honestly say that Christianity has been definitively proven incorrect as a whole, but it's also true that there's nothing to prove that it is correct. The most recent books of the Bible were written ~1900 years ago, so the validity of the book as a whole is in question simply by virtue of its age. There's a bunch of stuff in there that is outright wrong, and there's also a bunch of stuff that modern Christians tend to ignore completely. One would think that an all-knowing and all-powerful god would put a little more effort into making sure that his book was more robust and credible. Even if He didn't want to write the book Himself, He could have made some simple decrees like "Don't rape anyone. Ever." and "No one deserves to be born into slavery. Stop that nonsense." But He didn’t. He thought it was more important to stress that making idols of other gods is a big no-no.

(And don’t give me the bullshit about how He was making rules that “fit the time,” as if humanity was so depraved 2000 or 3000 or even 6000 years ago that they were incapable of stopping themselves from banging everything that moves. You know what would convince them to stop raping people? The creator of the universe threatening them with eternal damnation if they did it and smiting some assholes who ignored Him. Problem solved.)

When people like me point out all the ridiculous nonsense in the Bible, apologists often retort “Yeah, but you can make the Bible say anything you want,” with the insinuation being that the Bible is so big and so old and so open to interpretation that one can find a passage to justify any standpoint they want. If that’s the case...what good is the Bible? Saying that you can make the Bible mean anything you want is the single most damning thing you can say about it. If you can use it to argue for both sides of an argument and it’s nothing more than a matter of opinion as to which side is interpreting the Bible “correctly...” then it can’t be used to justify anything.

I just don’t get what’s even remotely redeeming about the Bible. Jesus was a good dude, but so was Buddha. The Golden Rule is delightful, but that’s why it’s also in hundreds of other religions and easily predated Christianity. The story of Jonah is kinda fun, but not nearly as fun as the story of Spider-Man. We’ve got laws that we came up with independently of religion since this is not a theocracy, so we don’t need the Bible to tell us what to do (which it does a terrible job of anyway). Most importantly: there’s no good reason to believe that it’s actually divine in any way. It hasn’t been updated in ages and didn’t predict anything other than some crazy shit in Revelation about dragons that (spoiler alert) hasn’t come true. If it’s not reasonable to believe in the Bible, how is it reasonable to believe in Christianity?

I’d like to think that, as a society, we should be smart enough to move past the idea that the old religions are valid. I know there are a ton of stupid people in the world, but it’s not just stupid people who are religious. There are millions of people in this country who are of above-average intelligence yet still believe that Christianity is valid...even though it’s based on a book that unquestionably contains a bunch of bunk. I avoided finishing this post for so long because I don’t particularly like calling my friends and family crazy, but I honestly don’t know how I can take an objective look at a religion based on something as spurious as the Bible and come to a different conclusion. Maybe “crazy” is not the right word as I know they all have their reasons, but objectively religion just doesn’t make sense. They’re great people, and I still love ‘em...but they’re lending credence to the jackass fundamentalists by treating any form of Christianity as valid, and I don’t love that. Most Christians are good people, but they’re enabling the ones that aren’t for illogical reasons. By extension, they enable all kinds of objectively bad stuff done in the name of religion throughout the world. We could be much better off without it.

Online Dating

As you may or may not know, I embraced the 21st century (as computer nerds are wont to do) and decided to use online dating as my primary means of finding a lady sometime in 2008 after ending a relationship with a girl I met at a wedding. One of my good friends from college met his wife online, so that was good enough for me to try it out. You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve accumulated some thoughts about the whole thing over the course of 5+ years.

For the uninitiated, online dating essentially works as follows:

• Pick a website and create a profile. This profile should contain some pictures where you attempt to look attractive and some writing where you attempt to seem witty.
• Answer a bunch of general questions that are used (both by you and prospective mates) to find people who you would get along with “on paper.” Examples include your height, political stance, religious views, age, occupation, etc. Most people are mostly honest about these.
• Look at other profiles to find someone you’d like to date, then send them an email to see if they’re also interested. Of course, they’re not interested, but that’s OK because there are literally hundreds of other people to choose from, and one of those people might be interested. Plus rejection is a character-building experience!
• When you actually do generate some mutual interest, go on a date and see how it goes from there. Potentially go on multiple dates. Like a boss.

As for my thoughts, let’s start with the data--it’s not pretty. Things started off smashingly well as I ended up dating the second girl I went on a date with for a year and a half, and the third girl I went on a date with has been one of my best friends for the past four years. However, I was also single for those four years so...uh...yeah, it didn’t go so well on the whole.

My original inspiration for this post was a question: what is my actual success rate with online dating? I decided to define “success” as going on more than 2 dates with someone and estimated my success rate as follows: my odds of actually getting a response from someone I contact is about 15%. Of those, I'll go on a date with about 80%. Of those, I'll like them well enough to want to go on another date with about 50%. Of those, about 50% will feel the same about me. Of those, about half will have some kind of reason for not pursuing things further, even if the date went well (more on that later). That leads to this calculation:

.15 * .8 * .5 * .5 * .5 = 1.5%. That is my success rate with a girl that catches my fancy online. Or: one in every 66.6 girls. That’s right--according to my calculations, online dating is literally the devil.

I then went through all the history available to me from the dating sites I’ve used (match, OkCupid, eHarmony, and HowAboutWe) to crunch the actual numbers. Unfortunately, I had to delete about a year’s worth of sent messages with no response from OkCupid, and match automatically deletes old messages so I only have data for girls that responded to me there (since I still have the emails). I didn’t include the “response only” data in my calculations for response rate, but even so the response rate is inflated since I can’t account for the many, many unreturned messages that have disappeared into the ether. For the data I had, here are the actual rates:

23% response rate

47% date rate from responses

76% good dates for me

71% good dates for her

29% of dates last more than 2 dates

.23 * .47 * .76 * .71 * .29 = 1.69%. That is how often I’ll go on more than 2 dates with a woman I send a message to, or one in every 59 women I contact. My original estimates were way off, but they balanced out (although actually hitting 66.6 would have been really entertaining).

Now for some general thoughts:

--After reading through some of the messages I’ve sent, it's kind of amazing that anyone has ever responded to me. At least 75% of the stuff I’ve written has been really fucking awkward (which would explain the 15-23% success rate quite nicely). I didn’t rush through these emails, either--I actually took the time to try and make them engaging. I wish I had some great insight into why it’s so hard to write like a reasonable human being when attempting to woo a nice young broad, but I don’t. Other than the fact that I like to call them “broads.” It also probably doesn’t help that I’m nearly incapable of writing without using sarcasm. Did you know that people don’t always pick up on inflection online? I STILL HAVEN’T FIGURED THIS OUT.

--It can be just as convenient as it seems like it should be. Theoretically, online dating is a phenomenal idea. It’s easy to meet people in school, but it’s much harder after leaving college. Blind dates are unreliable, dating coworkers is risky and typically doesn’t provide a large pool to choose from, and dating random people in bars is a crapshoot. Dating online, on the other hand, has tons of benefits. You get easy answers to important questions before you even talk to the person: how old are they? What are their religious views? Do they smoke? Do they drink? Do they want kids? Do they already have kids? Are they employed? Are they attractive? What city do they live in? Do they have a sense of humor/are they a robot? Are they interested in your gender?

On OkCupid, you might also get the answers to more varied and interesting questions: how many kids do they want? How do they feel about drugs? Gay people? Beards? Nerds? Video games? Cats? Dogs? Furries? Star Wars or Star Trek? Mornings or evenings? Normal or weird? Are they sexually attracted to inanimate objects? (To which I answered “Yes - I love lamp.” Because I'm so damn funny.)

Even with the answers to all these questions, there’s no telling whether you’ll get along well enough to have a meaningful relationship, but you should be able to tell whether you’ll get along at all. I have friends who have been on terrible dates with people they met online, but I haven’t had a single bad date. I went on a couple that weren’t too good, but I didn’t expect them to be; even if the person is generally boring, it’s still interesting to meet and talk to new people. The key is really getting to that first date, and online dating makes that easy. Well, it’s only relatively easy because...

--There are many dudes. Many, many, many dudes. Even when limited to dudes in their 20’s and 30’s with a decent sense of humor who are reasonably intelligent and have their shit together...there are still many dudes. Sooooo many dudes. I’ve heard that the demographics are more balanced in some other cities, but in Cleveland guys like me far outnumber women I’d like to date. I’ve talked to a bunch of women about their online dating experience, and they almost all talk about the insane number of guys they have to deal with. Granted, many of those guys do nothing but send a message that says “how r u?” because many of those guys are bad at online dating (and quite possibly life in general), but there still seem to be a ton of reasonable guys.

There are a few reasons for this. There’s still a stigma (although it’s lessening) that online dating is creepy or just for nerds or ineffective or full of losers (which I suppose it is, although there are plenty of good people, too). Men are much less affected by this stigma as I don’t think we’re embarrassed as easily. Even the women who like online dating often want to pretend that they met their guy in a bar, so many of them are reluctant to even sign up. Those that do can easily be turned off by all the dicks they have to deal with (hopefully only figuratively).

However, it seemed to me that there were more women joining when I got out of the game, so I think it’s getting better and more socially acceptable.

--Turns out not dating religious people severely limits the available pool of women, particularly in Ohio. Even though I included “spiritual but not religious” and “Jewish” I still cut out a decent chunk of the population. If you’ve read this blog you probably understand my reluctance; I’m totally fine with having religious friends, but not so fine with dating religious people. I don’t think they’d be too interested in me, either, as I’m still kind of an ass regardless of how much I work on tolerance. I think religion is silly, and that's not likely to change.

--OkCupid is far and away the best online dating site. It’s free, they employ good web developers, the dating pool is relatively large, and I think their matching algorithm is the best since you can weight which questions are more important to you. Also, anyone in the entire user community can submit a question, and you can add explanations to your answers. It just wins on all fronts. Don’t bother paying for other sites.

--The list of extenuating circumstances (names changed to protect the innocent):

Agnes: parents got divorced the weekend after our first date

Esther: was dating another guy before our first date and stuck with him

Lucinda: recently got out of an engagement and I was too big of a pansy to push for a relationship before another guy did

Kay: worked nights and weekends so we never went on a date despite great online chemistry

Cornelia: some people can’t handle sarcasm. Also, I’m kind of an asshole to stupid people sometimes, and she was kind of stupid.

Mildred: thinks Jesse Ventura is just speaking the truth, man

Samsonite: date was immediately followed by a hospitalization for the second time in a few months

And finally, sometimes it just doesn’t work out. Not everyone clicks. I’m glad I didn’t click with any of the people above, but it was always frustrating at the time.

--Lessons learned from sending hundreds of messages:

Be casual.

Ask at least one question.

Make sure they know you read their profile.

Don’t be creepy.

Be funny.

Don’t be unattractive.

--When you go on a date, don’t talk too much; if you like the person you’re on a date with, the goal should be to get them to talk more than you do. It has to be a back and forth conversation to work, but whoever talks more usually has a better impression of the date afterwards. If you legitimately like them, you won’t mind listening to them talk anyway.

--I have spectacularly fucked up most of the real life opportunities (i.e. meeting someone through means besides online dating) bestowed on me by giving girls my number instead of getting theirs. Or not even bothering to see if they’re interested. Always get a number.

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With all that being said, I still view online dating in a positive light, despite all of its frustrations. This is, of course, primarily due to the fact that I finally found a broad that I’m completely crazy about. Inexplicably, she also really likes me. Yeah, I’m surprised too, but I’m not going to complain. I guess sometimes people just work really well together, but the key is actually meeting them to begin with. Luckily for me, I was prudent enough to praise Billy Madison in my profile and I caught m’lady’s fancy. We never would have met if it weren’t for the wonders of OkCupid, even though we were at the same college for a couple years. Hell, we both almost took jobs in other cities before we met. Meeting the right person can be a bitch.

Anywho, I’d give the online dating experience a A-. It’s not without faults, but it still beats the hell out of the other options for meeting a potential mate after college. I think it has a tendency to make people overly picky when they’re presented with the whole of humanity as options to date, but it’s still really useful for those who are open-minded. It also has a ton of success stories now. It really can work. It’s not as good as the Keurig, but it’s still one of the better things we’ve come up with so far in this millenium.

Discussing Things People Don’t Like Discussing

One of the benefits of writing this blog is that it’s sparked conversations with a variety of people that I otherwise would not have had. To me, the most interesting conversations are respectful debates: conversations where people disagree, but they actually talk about why they disagree rather than getting mad and yelling at each other. I love the fact that Bill Maher has conservatives on his show to provide an opposing viewpoint...but I hate the fact that it often just ends up in lots of “No, you’re wrong, asshole!” and “That’s ridiculous and you’re a stupid doodyhead.” To be fair, that’s a natural reaction when you vehemently disagree with a person you don’t know (although “doodyhead” seems like a strange word choice), but it’s also practically pointless.

When talking to people that you actually know, the level of vitriol goes down substantially, and people are forced to resort to, like, actual arguments and stuff. “You’re wrong, asshole” is replaced by things like “but the problem with that is...” and “here’s some anecdotal evidence for why I believe you are incorrect, my good friend.” Just kidding, real people don’t talk like that--no one wants to admit that their anecdotal evidence is merely anecdotal.

The point is, these are the types of conversations that actually lead to greater understanding on both sides because people are forced to put a real, human face on the opposing side of the argument. They're also less likely to simply dismiss a point they don't agree with when it comes from someone they know. Personally, I wish that these types of conversations took place more frequently. Then again, I’m a competitive jackass who enjoys debating. I also like to bill myself as “the most logical person I know,” so I tend to debate reasonably well. As a disclaimer, I don’t think I’m the most logical person in the world--just the most logical person I know...although I’m probably shortchanging some computer nerds I know. Also, I’m biased.

There’s a bunch of people who believe that the best way to lose friends is by discussing religion and politics. There’s some merit to that: talking about these issues from opposite sides is likely to put some strain on the relationship. If it’s not a very strong relationship then yes, it could be fatal. This is why I don’t advocate talking about this stuff at work--you may not know your coworkers that well or like them that much, but you will be forced to continue to interact with them, so you don’t want to strain those relationships as they might not be able to handle it. When you’re friends outside of work and you agree on these topics then it’s fine; otherwise just talk about sports or, you know, whatever it is that women talk about. I assume they have some kind of go-to non-controversial topic they discuss all the time. Like shoes, or abortion.

On the other hand, some relationships can handle some strain. If you’ve known the other person for a while, there should be a reasonable amount of goodwill built up. Presumably you have respectful conversations. You should be able to disagree on some stuff and still remain friends because your friendship was built upon other stuff to begin with. You can take some time off before seeing them again, allowing everyone to cool down if necessary. You also don’t need to discuss this stuff every time you see them; chances are you can each make the case for your side the first time you talk, and then simply agree to disagree going forward (you’ll just have a better understanding of why you disagree).

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Having spent my whole life in Ohio where I was raised as a Methodist, the majority of the people in my life are Christian. That proportion decreases as time goes on and I befriend more heathens, but before I graduated college there were very few people in my life who were not religious. I’ve come to find out that some people I assumed were Christian aren’t, and I also know some people who have, like me, quit religion. I’m still left with a bunch of Christian friends and family members (and we’ll pretend like all my family members qualify as friends going forward), so I’ve had a number of these conversations in the past few years.

Honestly, I think they’ve all been beneficial. I won’t pretend that they haven’t been occasionally uncomfortable, but I’m glad I’ve had them nonetheless. The main reason is because of the increased understanding between both sides, which in turn increases tolerance and empathy (and hopefully there’s enlightenment on both sides as well).

On the religious side, my friends get to hear my reasons for leaving Christianity behind so they understand why I became an atheist. Hopefully, it softens their impressions of atheists in general since, if they’re friends with me, they presumably like me, which should allow them to be more tolerant of atheists (which would be nice since atheists may be the least trustworthy demographic in this country). It improves their worldview by adding more information to it--even if they don’t agree with me, they still come away with a better understanding of the world by knowing how a group of “others” views it. It will also give them food for thought. Again, even if they don’t agree, they will have had to rationalize why they disagree, and critical thinking is almost always a good thing. Maybe they’ll even be like me and, after a great deal of thinking, come to the conclusion that they were wrong about some stuff that they had always held as true.

On my side, I get pretty much all the same benefits. We’re all adults (I don’t have these conversations with my nephew--somehow I don’t think that would go over well with his ordained parents since he mistakenly looks up to me as a cool uncle (since kids are stupid enough to believe that I’m cool)), so we’ve all had time to think about the big questions and come to our own conclusions. Having come down on the opposite side of religion, I had a tendency for a while to assume that religious people were kinda stupid in some fashion. To be honest, I can’t say I’ve moved past that opinion when it comes to fundamentally religious people who impossibly try to take millennia-old books literally, but most of my friends are of the moderate/liberal Christian variety. Most of them aren’t actually stupid; some are smarter than me. They’ve just had different experiences than I have and they’ve processed the evidence and arguments differently than I have. Do I think they’re wrong about religion? Yes. Do they think I’m wrong? Yes. But now we both know why the other person is wrong, and hopefully we don’t automatically disdain someone just for coming down on the opposite side.

I also understand the world better since I now have a better understanding of the billions of people who remain religious even into adulthood. I’ve also had to refute their arguments or adjust my stance or come up with new ideas, all of which are good things if they bring me closer to reality. Again, critical thinking is a good thing. Even when people don’t fundamentally change their stance on a topic, they should at least end up closer to the truth.

One of the other benefits, of course, is that I come away with a better understanding of my friends’ specific points of view. Even within the same denomination, religious people can have vastly different views so it’s rarely safe to make assumptions. Just because someone identifies as Catholic doesn’t mean they’re as crazy or as unreasonable as a stereotypical Catholic. Most of them don’t even condone child molestation, and most of them have the good sense to ignore that bullshit about birth control being sinful. Plus the new pope seems like a pretty good dude, especially as far as popes go. Catholicism still sucks, of course...but there are plenty of Catholics who don't.

Some of the conversations I’ve had in the past couple years have been in writing, which has the advantage of allowing time to clearly communicate arguments. On the other hand, in-person conversations have the advantage of forced cordiality as most people try to avoid disrespecting their friends to their face. Sometimes I can be a bit offensive when writing this blog to the world at large. It’s not my explicit intention to be a dick about this stuff, but I’m not one to let political correctness stop me from clearly expressing how ridiculous I think religion is. In person, though, I’m a delightful fellow who is, for the most part, quite polite. I’ll probably still make more logical arguments than whoever I’m talking to (which is easy to do since my arguments aren’t faith-based), but they won’t be quite as aggressive or offensive. Since I’m not as offensive, I’m more likely to have a receptive audience and they’re more likely to actually consider the points that I’m making rather than simply thinking, “Man, Kyle can be a real dickface sometimes” and refusing to read any more of the stuff I’ve written (I assume that people who don’t like my blog think of me as a dickface. Also, it turns out that Google thinks “dickface” is a real word, so feel free to use it in your own high-minded writings).

My final reason for advocating discussion on religion and politics: these topics are really, really important. As in, so important that they practically demand debate in order to come to the best possible resolution. If there is an afterlife, I’d say figuring out the rules that determine how you spend it is a pretty damn important endeavor. If the major religions have it right and I’m going to spend eternity in either perpetual bliss or perpetual torment then I really want to know which set of rules to follow in order to get through the pearly gates.

On the other hand, if they’ve all got it wrong then we should collectively stop all this silliness we’re engaged in. We should stop wasting so much time and energy and emotion and hatred on baseless beliefs. We should stop acting like books that are thousands of years old provide a reasonable guide for modern morality. We should stop promoting ridiculous views of sexuality that are sourced from (supposedly) celibate old men. We should stop fighting wars over land that is no more holy than my yard. We should stop fighting wars in general since pretty much all of them are fought over religious and/or political ideologies. Perhaps most importantly, we should stop making laws based on our interpretations of what a non-existent god wants (not just in the United States, either).

All of these “we should stop” statements only apply if there are no gods, but if that’s the case then we really need to stop fucking up life on Earth if it’s the only one we’ve got. Any religiously-influenced laws are made with the afterlife in mind, which means that they are completely, totally, absolutely irrational if there is no afterlife. Sure, there’s an intersection of laws that work on both religious and secular levels--most of us can agree that murder is bad...although even that is not always the case when it comes to Islamic fatwas. So we can’t even all agree on that. Thanks, religion. You’re doing a bang-up job of keeping swaths of the world trapped in the Middle Ages. Maybe it’s time we talked about that.