In the year 1983, Pat Benatar sung about love being a battlefield.
Can you imagine, for just a moment, how deeply shooketh she’d be if she found herself looking for a manfriend today?!
In 2017, it’s less of a battlefield than it is a minefield.
One wrong step and you could find your inbox blown up by men posing, topless, with tigers in Thailand. Arm yourself with the wrong dating app and you might find your profile turning up in Google searches. Dick pics are like deft snippers; you never know from which direction they will appear.
The only benefit of this toxic, unforgiving landscape? The furious leftward swiping improves the dexterity in your index fingers exponentially.
Of course, there are measures you can take to ensure you’re not ensnared by a serial shithead while looking for love. One of those measures is having a bang on profile.
the success rate of animated welcome banners is yet to be analysed, sadly
As it turns out, mentioning food in your profile and correspondence with prospective partners can have a genuine impact on dating outcums.
Online dating site Zoosk analysed a whopping 3,733,185 dating profiles and 364,609,566 first messages to find out how mentioning different foods and food-related phrases changes online daters’ romantic interactions.
They also surveyed over 7,000 singles to get some insight into how food and dating intersect. Which is important, because let’s be honest: eating food and getting your pants wet are the highlights of modern life.
Apparently, any mention of food in an online dating profile increases in inbound messages.
Some foods, such as guacamole, potatoes, and chocolate are particularly successful at increasing the amount of messages (users with these foods in their profile have over 100% more incoming messages than the average).
guacafukme
Interestingly, mentioning fried chicken in a dating profile results in 15% fewer messages. Probably because of this movie scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnmX3Hb1cf8
It goes beyond just dropping random foods into conversation. Supposedly, calling yourself a ‘foodie’ doesn’t make you an insufferable git; it actually improves your chances of getting a date.
Profiles that contain the word foodie receive 82% more incoming messages, while those who mention the word cook receive 26% more incoming messages.
Don’t get too excited about talking food too fast, though. Mentioning food in the very first interaction doesn’t result in many more replies than leading with something else. There’s one exception to this rule, of course. If you mention ‘eggplant’ straight off the bat, you’ll get 10% more replies. Because we are horny children and this is why we can’t have nice things, basically.
But wait, there’s more. Apparently being a lover of vegetables can help you score a d8, too.
Back in 2015, messages that mentioned being a vegetarian were a big no-no and resulted in 100% fewer replies than the average. Fast forward just two measly years and saying you’re a vegetarian will get you 3% more replies than the average.
The dating site even analysed Aziz Anzari‘s famous dating trick from Master of None.
In the show, Anzari had a fair bit of luck using the line “Going to Whole Foods, want me to pick up anything?”.
Since the show aired in May, men have sent 3,646 messages using the line. Firstly; get your own material. Secondly, it didn’t really work. The reply rate was the same as the average.
When women used the line (there were 49 of them who did this) though, their reply rate was 31% above the usual.
Finally, when queried on what foods to avoid on dates, 23% of online daters said buffalo wings or ribs shouldn’t be on the menu. Other unpopular date-night foods are Indian food and anything that’s hard to pronounce.
And the sexiest food? Chocolate-dipped strawberries.
i’m horned up just looking at this
Moral of the story? Throw an avocado emoji in your bio and even though we know you love it, avoid Hog’s Breath Cafe on date night. The curly fries will still be there next week, we promise.
