By John Rieping | Published 25 Jan. 2014 in The Madera Tribune | All rights reserved | My New Year’s Day resolution to spend less time on Facebook is somewhat intact as January approaches its end. Meanwhile an uncharacteristically action-oriented drive for self-improvement twirls and leaps in my heart like a child who emptied a bag of Halloween candy. There is movement in the deep. One superficial wave provoked by such unseen churning has been, as mentioned in a previous column, an online class I’m taking in computer programming from Harvard University. Another is a renewed self-investment in websites built to help people connect in real life. Those who know me in person realize I am an introvert, that strange species of human whose thoughts leisurely walk a meandering path to every destination. There is a quiet efficiency born of a kind of laziness in the brain of every introvert, and a secret garden behind the sometimes nondescript walls that surround it. Nonetheless all introverts, whether cool or warm blooded, have a heart that feeds life to countless screaming “children” who have no one else — our desires and dreams, loves and loyalties. By these children, man differs from machine. They are — in a sense — born of a union between the natures of angels and beasts. The efforts of this introvert to meaningfully connect are hardly unique. In 2012, a 30-something mathematician, Chris McKinlay, found a fruitful distraction from writing his University of California, Los Angeles, dissertation for his Ph.D. in applied math. He wanted to find the optimal strategy for finding a true match on a popular dating site. So he set up 12 fake dating accounts and programmed his computer to gather information on the female members of the website who fit his general requirements for a mate. After collecting the answers of 20,000 California women on 6 million questions, he learned that they clumped into seven distinct clusters. Based on their traits, he nicknamed the clusters: Diverse, Dog, God, Green, Mindful, Samantha, and Tattoo. The Greens were new to online dating. The Gods were strongly religious or ethical. The Samanthas were often relatively older, professionally creative, and adventurous. The Tattoos had multiple tattoos and sometimes as many jobs. And so on. He then set up his real dating profile to honestly answer the questions that were relevant to the clusters of women that most interested him, and then had his computer visit more than 10,000 of their online pages on the site in two weeks. He soon received 400 views of his page daily. Online messaging and in-person dating followed until, on date 88, he found the woman with whom love bloomed — 28-year-old artist Christine Tien Wang. At the moment, they’re engaged to be married. Some may find his calculated efforts to find Miss Right cynical, offensive, or immoral. But Wang, as quoted in the February edition of Wired magazine, commented: “People are much more complicated than their profiles. So the way we met was kind of superficial, but everything that happened after is not superficial at all. It’s been cultivated through a lot of work.” One insight McKinlay uncovered in his labors is the importance of not presenting one’s opinions in a timid fashion. The dating website he used has members assign a weight (from “irrelevant” to “mandatory”) to one’s own answers to a question as well as those of others. Agreement on weightier questions is interpreted as a greater match. His tests revealed that, regardless of whether you wanted to appeal to many or to a select few, a wishy-washy presentation of one’s views was the worst possible strategy. Either wholeheartedly answer the most divisive topics or reply to the innocuous ones with equal gusto. But a lukewarm person fares badly. How often many of us allow a desire for the approval of others to dim the unique light we have to offer. Instead of beaming, we glow comfortably. The Jewish founder of Christianity allegedly had a low opinion of such behavior. If the visionary testimony of his “beloved disciple” is true, Yeshua (Jesus) compared it to an unappealingly tepid beverage. “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot: I wish you were cold or hot. So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:15-16) Come. Let us shine. * * *
A not-lukewarm drama about a troubled pregnant teen, “Gimme Shelter,” can be seen in the San Joaquin Valley at Edwards Fresno Stadium 22 theater on 250 Paseo del Centro and in many other theaters around the U.S. I recommend it.
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