Dataclysm: When We Think No One's Looking
Dataclysm: Who We Are; When We Think No One’s Looking, a novel by Christian Rudder, explains how our online lives tell more about a person than ever before. Rudder is a co-founder of the popular dating website OkCupid, and the leader of their analytics team. He uses the data from his website, along with several other sources, to describe our online lives. The book has three separate parts, each detailing separate points of Rudder’s idea; our online lives can be used to predict many things about a person’s psyche. Much of the book talks about Rudder’s website, and the data found inside. Today, as the data shows, many men would rather date a younger woman, and there is a severe decline in ratings for African Americans, regardless of looks.
The
book talks about Rudder’s findings from his website, and uses that to break down barriers of multiple thing, such as beauty and race. He describes that our online lives allow for documentation of everyone, not just the “big noises”(pg. 22). It also goes into detail about the stigmas of beauty and race, and how, in the long run, no one really cares about them. After launching his app, “Crazy Blind Date,” he discovered that beauty had no effect on how much fun two people had on a date. Rudder incorporates several comedic one-liners into his novel, which works well with the theme.
In his data, Rudder found that men of all ages would rather date a woman in her early twenties. This really gives way to the unrealistic standards of beauty set in this day and age. Rudder states “if “over the hill” means the beginning of a person’s decline, a straight woman is over the hill as soon as she's old enough to drink.” (pg. 36). It seems as though a man’s standards of beauty don't evolve as he grows older. Women, on the other hand, look for men around their own age to date. The data shows that women prefer men that will age with them, while men want women that will retain their beauty for as long as possible.
The
book talks about Rudder’s findings from his website, and uses that to break down barriers of multiple thing, such as beauty and race. He describes that our online lives allow for documentation of everyone, not just the “big noises”(pg. 22). It also goes into detail about the stigmas of beauty and race, and how, in the long run, no one really cares about them. After launching his app, “Crazy Blind Date,” he discovered that beauty had no effect on how much fun two people had on a date. Rudder incorporates several comedic one-liners into his novel, which works well with the theme.
In his data, Rudder found that men of all ages would rather date a woman in her early twenties. This really gives way to the unrealistic standards of beauty set in this day and age. Rudder states “if “over the hill” means the beginning of a person’s decline, a straight woman is over the hill as soon as she's old enough to drink.” (pg. 36). It seems as though a man’s standards of beauty don't evolve as he grows older. Women, on the other hand, look for men around their own age to date. The data shows that women prefer men that will age with them, while men want women that will retain their beauty for as long as possible.