[Note: This post is about men; however, see this comment about women. Equal opportunity lies :) Carry on.] AskMen.com recently completed a big fat survey of the modern man. Is he satisfied with his sex life? Would he cheat if he knew he wouldn’t get caught? Is he romantic? Among their findings … The majority of American men prefers C-cup breasts (52%), has never had a threesome but wants to (60%) and desires to get married (74%). What’s more? A full 48% said they would dump a girlfriend if she became fat, and 32% of guys have faked an orgasm.
When completing quantitative social statistics courses for my masters, one of my professors constantly reminded: There’s often a discrepancy between what individuals believe they do, what they say they do and what they actually do. Want real-life examples of this? Sign up for online dating. I’ve done Match, JDate, Nerve personals and a bunch of other sites. On on more than one occasion, I’ve had guys show up for the date and I didn’t even recognize them because they looked so incredibly different from the picture they posted. If you’d like to learn more about what men actually do when they’re looking for women online, free online dating site OK Cupid compiled observations and statistics from millions of user interactions. For what it’s worth, 64% of the men surveyed on AskMen.com said they’d never met a woman online. That could mean AskMen.com dudes aren’t the kind of folks you’d find listed on OK Cupid so the data below don’t apply. Or, it could mean AskMen.com guys have signed up for sites like OK Cupid, but they didn’t meet anyone. Or, it could indicate something else entirely. Anyway, here are a quick summary of a few items reported in OK Cupid’s The Big Lies People Tell In Online Dating.
MEN LIE ABOUT THEIR HEIGHT
The average American male height is 5 ft 9 1⁄2 in. (That’s 1.763 m for the international folks.) In the graph below, OK Cupid compared this against what dudes say in their online dating profiles and voila! Surprise, surprise. Men lie about their height. What’s more? The taller they are, the more likely they are to round up. A 5’10″ man might say he’s 6’0″. To be fair, I’ve lied about my height on online dating profiles too. I’m 5 ft 5 1⁄2. However, given I prefer guys my height or taller, I say I’m 5’7″ because I almost always wear heels on the first date; I want meet the guy eye to eye.
“Do taller guys have more sex?”
Interestingly, OK Cupid says the taller the guy, the more likely he is to have sex. Though, if a dude is lying about his height online, it’s possible he’s lying about his number of sex partners, too. That said, I can believe tall dudes score more action simply because it’s easier for them. When I meet REALLY tall guys, I immediately think: He must have a big dick. No matter how many times this has proved be untrue, it’s still the first thing that comes to mind when I see a 6’0″ or taller dude. Big. Dick.
MEN LIE ABOUT WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE
I once wrote a “You Should Look Like Your Fucking Photo” rant about guys who post old photos of themselves on Match and elsewhere. Here’s a tip … Want to know how old a guy’s online dating profile pictures are? Right click the image to download and save it. Open it in your favorite photo browser and click “properties” or “settings” or whatever to access the file’s digital information. If he’s got a decent camera, the EXIF metadata will tell you when the picture was taken. Although I don’t think my face or body has changed much in the past years, I’ve always made a point to post recent, non-professional snapshots when I was on Match and other dating sites. After all, the whole point is to show the dude what I look like now.
MEN LIE ABOUT THEIR AGE
On rare occasions, I’ve asked dudes to show me their ID on dates. You’d be surprised how often men lie about their age.
MEN LIE ABOUT THEIR SEXUALITY
“I didn’t know how to perform oral sex properly until one of my exes — a bisexual man with many many years of dick slurping experience — showed me how.”
A couple of my exes are bisexual. I’ve been interviewed for documentaries on bisexual men such as Arielle Loren’s The Bi-deology Project. If you’re interested in learning more, here on FUNKY BROWN CHICK®, I’ve written Straight Woman Dating Bisexual / Bi Curious Guys as well as A Few More Thoughts About Bisexual Guys. Generally speaking, I don’t care if a guy is bi. On the contrary, guy-on-guy action turns me on. Some bisexual guys aren’t completely comfortable with their status and, therefore, lie to their partners. In fact, OK Cupid said their user data on bisexual dudes is so fascinating that it warrants a full study if its own. Once it’s published, you can be sure I’ll write a post about it.
Okay, so I’ve told you about a few things I’ve experienced with men who lie on their online dating profiles. Men, women, if any you have funny stories about catching someone stretch the truth in their online dating profile, feel free to share the details in the comments section below.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I have it on very good authority that guys who are 6’1″ tall have absolutely *huge* penises.
Lemme guess, you’re really 5’11″ but you SAY you’re 6’1″ ;)
No, I say I’m 6’3′.
That’s EXACTLY why I adore you! :)
I love the OkTrends blog, and I’m happy to see it being talked about and generally spread around. But. In the original blog post, the writers were talking about the ways in which everyone lies, not just the ways that men lie. And I think that by phrasing your post this way, you’re reinforcing stereotypes that men are dishonest devilish types trying to trick women into bed. Which the OkTrends post definitely doesn’t say. It says, in fact, that we all lie about the same things, with a small amount of variation based mostly on age and a little on sex. Which paints a different picture than the usual “men lie” trope.
I generally like your blog, but this post made me sad.
I CERTAINLY don’t think men are “dishonest devilish types trying to trick women into bed.” For example, the height stuff? I’ve said that *I’VE* lied about it :) Women aren’t saints.
The point of the post was just to layer numbers against some of the stuff AskMen.com was talking about. AskMen.com only talked about men, so I only pulled the “guy stuff” from OK Cupid.
Let it be known that I am a lover of men!!!! :)
This post could’ve just as easily been written about women (who also lie about age, WEIGHT/body type, etc.)
I linked the survey in the post so that everyone can read the full thing if they’d like.