There are sometimes thoughts I have that are too long for Facebook, or can't be made into concise statements for people's attention span on Facebook, or can't be memed easily. Or, more likely, can't be neutralized and made devoid of emotional content such that it can gather neutral likes while at the same time not revealing anything shocking about yourself.
For instance, this thought I had about SawYouAtSinai. After reading part of The Second Sex, I've been able to redefine a lot of what I encounter, in life and Judaism, in terms of the psychoanalytic perspective of Simone de Beauvoir. After seeing a gushing report from a matchmaker about a prospective match, and realizing that the "About Her" section could easily have been generated by a bot trained on dating profiles, I tried to find easy ways to generate dating profiles online. The examples from a five minute search were sparse, other than a hilarious fill-in-the-blank sample that generated a profile with an odd fixation on skinny feet. Thus, if I'm to generate a dating profile creator, it would take some serious work.
My thoughts then drifted to how SawYouAtSinai, a dating site initially developed sometime around 2005 if not earlier, forces anyone completing the profile into a certain paradigm. Most, if not all, modern dating sites have you fill out some broad categories based on religion and sex, upload some pictures, where you went to school, and a personal paragraph. Nothing gendered here. Whereas SawYouAtSinai requests a series of multiple choice questions in addition, with no "Other" options, e.g. for Kosher the options are "Always", "At Home", and "At Home & I Eat Dairy in non-kosher restaurants" (says it all). These differ depending on gender and thus force the person answering them to conform to pre-defined, unchanging ideas.
Here are the female-specific questions that are visible on a public profile (as distinct from questions visible only to the matchmaker):
Head covering when married: Fully, Partially, etc.
Dress: Skirts, Skirts+Pants, etc.
And the male-specific ones:
Head covering: Kippa
Do you want to meet someone who will cover her hair (Required)
Frequency of Torah study (Required)
My beef was with head covering originally, but then I realized that maybe because this is a matchmaking site, meant for more religious people, it makes assumptions that religious people might find relevant. However I have a problem with head coverings - shouldn't that be for both genders? Why do you have to make the head covering question mandatory? Why can't I have a head covering question for after marriage as well? Resolved: Yosef will change from a small kippa to a bukharian kippa after marriage so that the women won't swoon at the sight of his beautiful hair. When you flip the tables on the whole shaitel thing it seems a lot weirder. But this can easily turn into yet another one of my gripes about shaitels in general, so let's not do that.
P.S. They should add a question just for the month of Adar where guys can list whether they will wear Skirts in addition to Pants.
For instance, this thought I had about SawYouAtSinai. After reading part of The Second Sex, I've been able to redefine a lot of what I encounter, in life and Judaism, in terms of the psychoanalytic perspective of Simone de Beauvoir. After seeing a gushing report from a matchmaker about a prospective match, and realizing that the "About Her" section could easily have been generated by a bot trained on dating profiles, I tried to find easy ways to generate dating profiles online. The examples from a five minute search were sparse, other than a hilarious fill-in-the-blank sample that generated a profile with an odd fixation on skinny feet. Thus, if I'm to generate a dating profile creator, it would take some serious work.
My thoughts then drifted to how SawYouAtSinai, a dating site initially developed sometime around 2005 if not earlier, forces anyone completing the profile into a certain paradigm. Most, if not all, modern dating sites have you fill out some broad categories based on religion and sex, upload some pictures, where you went to school, and a personal paragraph. Nothing gendered here. Whereas SawYouAtSinai requests a series of multiple choice questions in addition, with no "Other" options, e.g. for Kosher the options are "Always", "At Home", and "At Home & I Eat Dairy in non-kosher restaurants" (says it all). These differ depending on gender and thus force the person answering them to conform to pre-defined, unchanging ideas.
Here are the female-specific questions that are visible on a public profile (as distinct from questions visible only to the matchmaker):
Head covering when married: Fully, Partially, etc.
Dress: Skirts, Skirts+Pants, etc.
And the male-specific ones:
Head covering: Kippa
Do you want to meet someone who will cover her hair (Required)
Frequency of Torah study (Required)
My beef was with head covering originally, but then I realized that maybe because this is a matchmaking site, meant for more religious people, it makes assumptions that religious people might find relevant. However I have a problem with head coverings - shouldn't that be for both genders? Why do you have to make the head covering question mandatory? Why can't I have a head covering question for after marriage as well? Resolved: Yosef will change from a small kippa to a bukharian kippa after marriage so that the women won't swoon at the sight of his beautiful hair. When you flip the tables on the whole shaitel thing it seems a lot weirder. But this can easily turn into yet another one of my gripes about shaitels in general, so let's not do that.
P.S. They should add a question just for the month of Adar where guys can list whether they will wear Skirts in addition to Pants.
