The brainiacs over at OKCupid — a dating site incubated by a bunch of Harvard math geeks in ’04; also where I met my music-nerd future-hub in ’09 after being a member for all of a 48 hours — recently crunched a few numbers to analyze the effectiveness of users’ profile pics. (Effectiveness = how many contacts were received monthly.)

What they found, which they’ve published in a lengthy, graph-dense screed, blew them away: “In looking closely at the astonishingly wide variety of ways our users have chosen to represent themselves, we discovered much of the collective wisdom about profile pictures was wrong.”

Specifically:

* It is not better to flash a pearly grin; instead, keep lips sealed and upturn your mouth corners coyly-yet-half-assedly. Females should do this while making “flirty eyes” at the lens; males should do this while gazing off-camera.

* By all means, do use a self-shot pic taken on a cell or webcam; what you forsake in high-pixel polish you’ll recoup with “an approachable, casual vibe that makes you feel already close to the subject.”

* Chicks especially can cash in big-time with the cell/webcam pic’s stylized subset: the  “MySpace shot,” which even OKC can only put into words as “taken by holding your camera above your head and being just so darn coy.” Like porn — which, c’mon, that’s what the MySpace shot is, right? First cousin to an American Apparel ad? — it’s hard to define a MySpace shot, but you know it when you see it. And when dudes see it, “the MySpace shot is the single most effective photo type for women,” annihilating the second most effective (in bed) by about 3-to-2. (And it’s not just because of the shot’s down-the-shirt angle, according to OKC’s stats.)

* Males fare better not wearing a shirt than wearing one… gah, hard to read much past this without short-circuiting my keyboard with the tears I weep for the future. The second half of the article talks about how old dogs (i.e., me, 35yo) should not learn these new tricks, as the backfire ratio swoops skyward the older you get.

AKA, OKCupid is not OK for “cougars.” Unless (and yes, I unfortunately do speak from experience here*) you do not mind being bombarded with IM requests from Fordham sophomores (and UPenn juniors and NJIT frosh…) to come see their dorm rooms tonight, because they’ve slept with tons of older women and they know just how to push your buttons and maybe they can show you how to use a webcam since when you were born phones actually had dial tones.

* Actually, it was pretty entertaining chatting with them.

MSN.com, Match.com, HappenMagazine.com: they’re in a healthy and satisfying 3-way relationship. Meaning that you can find MSN/Match.com’s “Ask Lynn” columns –penned by BG’s alter ego — over at Happen now as well.

This week Lynn advises a Confused Soul who is wondering if she can make things work with a guy she met online that is an admitted online flirt. In fact, they broke up over it, but now …

Now it seems he wants to revive things with me. He says he never cheated on me or really liked anyone. He says he talks to tons of girls during a typical week but that doesn’t mean anything.

Should she give him another shot? Read the letter at Happen along with Lynn’s advice, then come back here to comment!

Ask Lynn is the advice column at MSN.com (powered by Match.com), that Breakup Girl does in her mild-mannered secret identity. Same advice, less cape.

In this month’s letter All Confidence is Gone has been shaken by the discovery that her boyfriend has a profile up on an online dating site. Things were going really well, so what gives? But wait, what was she doing on an online dating site? Read the letter at MSN then comment below!

Via Broadsheet:

God! Would you just let me have a LIFE?! According to CNN — dateline: Opposite World — this is what some parents are, or need to be, saying to their kids. Specifically, parents (in the story, mothers) who are looking online for a new partner, and kids (mainly adults themselves) who are, true story, hacking into their mothers’ email and sending rejections to potential suitors. (Another reportedly drove back and forth yelling at her mom while on an outdoor date with an online beau. Check, please!)

Who knew that the “younger generation” — those perhaps most likely to be Tweeting/Facebooking/LiveJournaling about how gross it is that mom’s on eHarmony– would (along with CNN, just a bit) be the ones perpetuating the ancient-in-Internet-years canard that online dating is WhereYouMeetLyingWeirdos.com? Why is online so different from real life? Who says that guy/gal in a bar is telling the truth? How often does the person you meet in person come right out and say, “I enjoy snowboarding and film noir, and in about three months I’m going to start to pull away”? (or “Please enjoy my backyard compound?”) True, some parents, unseasoned daters and e-flirters, might be a tad fuzzy regarding red flags; fair enough. But at the same time, depending on the circumstances — and speaking of bars — their brick-and-mortar options for meeting people might be limited. Online seems ideal for second-timers (if not, like, everyone).

Of course, it’s pretty obvious that what’s really going on here is not “Yikes, mom’s dating online!” but rather, simply, “Yikes, mom’s dating!” — circa 2009. There’s no doubt that seeing a marriage end and a parent move on can be challenging, even devastating. But sometimes, I guess, we just have to let them grow up.

Nothing says friendship like starting a blog to find your buddy a girl. And so on Aug. 1, Date a Jason was born.

Josh, friend of Jason, told the Boston Globe he created the site because his friend is a good guy who deserves to find a good woman. He also believes bars are bad for meeting women, dating websites are too confusing and dating stinks in Boston. Apparently none of that is true of Blogger, however.

The site features pictures of Jason — including the obligatory shot with his shirt off — and the following description:

This site is dedicated to my single, disease free, friend Jason (Age 28). We’ve tried all the other bull shit. BBQs, bars, friends of friends, etc…So we are taking the search online. He’s a fun, interesting, smart, and gainfully employed guy who likes to travel and stay active. Just recently moved into downtown Boston. Looking to meet a nice young woman. If are interested please contact us at: Date.A.Jason@gmail.com

To tell the truth, Jason is sort of cute and I’m sure he’ll prove very popular with the Boston-area ladies. He’ll probably even get his own reality TV program.

“Trying to impress that hottie at the bar? Money talks. Hand out your number on the back of one of our fake ATM receipts. They’re a players [sic] dream come true.”

Where to begin (other than with a warning against the risks of fake-identity theft)?

Let me just say this, and not for the first time: You know how people hesitate to meet people online, for fear that they’ll, you know, lie? And how I always say hey, people lie in bars?

Well.

One more thing: if there’s not a romantic comedy about a guy who uses one of these on a girl who (inexplicably) turns out to like him and then he has to maintain the lie through all sorts of highjinks that make him look like he’s rich, which totally works until it doesn’t and then she hates him but then comes back, and he learns something about life, love, and himself, then I have $782,012 in my bank account. Hey, wait.

Via Boing Boing:

“A spectacularly campy ‘Scopitone‘ music number featuring Joi Lansing from 1965 which appears to be a cautionary tale about the perils of online dating, or spiders, or both.”

From Craigslist: “I except [sic] that your bad habits will influence me and shorten my life span and my good habits will influence yours and lengthen your life span. Nonetheless, you will die before me and then I’ll have to post on Craigslist again.”

Formerly arrow-straight eHarmony.com “has come out of the closet,” the L.A. Times reports. As BreakupGirl.net noted in November, the website, which has eHarmonized only male-female couples since its inception in 2000, is launching a gay matchmaking service. The catch, as the L.A. Times put it: “EHarmony’s new relationship with the gay community is more like a shotgun wedding.” How so? Because the company agreed to start the gay service only as part of a settlement with the New Jersey attorney general in the wake of a discrimination suit.

Which makes BG wonder even harder about the name of the new venture: CompatiblePartners.com. No, yeah. Really. What went on in that meeting? Did no one raise a hand and say, “But wait, aren’t the gays more … sparkly?”  Did that name edge out Meh.com?* Plus: though the L.A. Times reports the site’s up as of yesterday, well, go look. Urrr? As of this posting, anyway, it’s totally still just a placeholder.com.

I mean, does someone over there want this to fail?

* Anyone remember “Lowered Expectations“?

A sweet story-slam love story, with (a) a great what-you-gotta-do-when-crazy-love-happens message (see subject line) and (b) a shoutout to Park Slope, locus of the Studio Apartment of Justice!