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1-Page Summary of Dataclysm

Overview

The internet gives people the ability to post comments anonymously, which can lead to some nasty and inappropriate comments. However, it’s easy for someone to say “you suck” in response.

While you might be able to hide your identity from the people who are harassing you on YouTube, it’s still very easy for them to find out who you are and monitor your online activity.

Companies can learn a lot about you from the data they collect.

In the following points, you will also learn: why white men love The Allman Brothers Band; how the word “pizza” is a uniting factor among all humans; and why being less attractive can help you in dating.

Big Idea #1: Raw data from online dating sites has a lot to tell us about our preferences in potential partners.

When researchers conduct interviews with people, they have to consider that some of them will be dishonest. Even when we participate in a study voluntarily, our answers can still embarrass us.

The Internet has enabled us to gather unfiltered information from the source.

For example, the data reveals that heterosexual men and women typically prefer the same types of partners. Men tend to give numbers closer to their own age when they’re asked about their preferences for women, but profiles on OkCupid show that most men actually prefer women in their early 20s.

OkCupid’s data shows that women like men who are older than them. However, the age gap between a man and woman can change based on the male’s age. Women tend to be interested in materialistic things such as status or wealth. Men are more interested in physical attributes when looking for a partner.

In addition, common wisdom is incorrect. A study showed that an average-looking woman with few profile views has a better chance of finding dates than a beautiful woman who has more profile views. The theory is that there are less men looking at the average-looking women, so their chances of success are greater if they express interest in her.

On the other hand, a woman with a low score may give people the impression that she is not very popular and so they see her as less desirable.

Big Idea #2: While technology has killed the pen and paper, we write more today than we ever have before.

Some people think that the internet has made us dumber. However, even they can’t deny that it’s improved our writing skills. Facebook and other social media sites have made us better writers because we write more than ever before. The internet is a writer’s world in many ways, especially when you consider how teenagers use it to communicate with each other through social media sites like Instagram and Snapchat.

Even though non-text media, such as photos and videos are posted on Twitter, words are still crucial to provide context. The amount of text that will be written on Twitter in the next two years is greater than all the books ever printed.

Online writing is very common, and social media platforms such as Twitter actually improve our writing skills. For example, even though the character limit forces us to be brief when we write on Twitter, it doesn’t make what we write any less sophisticated than other mediums. We use abbreviations like “u” instead of “you”, but that’s because people prefer it that way.

In addition, Twitter’s 140 character limit can actually be good. Linguists have measured the density of words on Twitter, finding that it is similar to Slate and other magazines in terms of word choice.

Although the way we write has changed, we’re still writing a lot. We do so in many ways, such as through status updates that aren’t always correct and captions on Instagram.