Attention men, if you are planning to utilise the services of an online dating service there are a few things you need to brush up on, the movie/book Bridget Jones' Diary for a start.

Clinton East who is not one to shy away from the minefield of sexual politics that is online dating decided to do some analysis of word usage in online adverts from the desparate seeking the equally desparate. Utilising the online dating service rsvp.com.au he downloaded 100,000 ads. He then divided the ads into those seeking a male and those seeking a female, the particularly desparate who would except either gender didn't make the cut.

In his post he publishes the most commonly used words in both categories. There are two observations of a flippant nature that spring to mind

- the males seeking females think of themselves as "guys" where as the females are looking for a "man"

- martial arts and 4x4 are just not worth mentioning in your "desparately seek woman" ad.

Finally here is a Clinton East conclusion lifted from the post

There are a whole heap of people seeking ‘discreet’ relationships with females. There was almost no representation of these in the under-30 age group (only two in the whole set), with the bulk occuring in the 30-50 group. Combining this with the preference of ‘murder’ in the corresponding ’seeking male’ group (who are about the same age, 30-50), we conclude that there are probably a large number of men seeking a relationship with a female who herself would prefer a good mystery or paperback from Mills and Boon. I think there’s a marketing opportunity in there for the brave…

Click on the link to his post above, it makes fascinating, if completely inconsequential, reading.