(b10) Assessing attractiveness in online dating profiles

The research study paper "Assessing attractiveness in online dating profiles" conducted by A.Fiore, L.Taylor, G.A.Mendelsohn and M. Hearst was a very interesting paper.
The group of researchers tried to unterdant how people tend to judge one's attractiveness when involved in an online environment. As the text stated, "40 million unique users visited online dating website"(Fiore, Taylor, Mendelsohn and Hearst). This truly shows that today people really believe in finding there soulmate through the wires. Thus the question, how are you so sure about someone's physical and personality features by checking and online page.
As discussed in the study, a certain degree of exageration was observed on weight, size and age of dating website users. Thus it is accepted that others commonly lie about themselve in order to give themselves a better chance to attract others.
If the relationship stays purely virtual then there is no issue but if users really want to go further and meet each other face to face this kind of deceiving information can give rise to problems.
On the other hand the people who share info on these websites all share the same goal, meeting a compatible person, thus they accept taking the risk to be deceived. The sudy also compared the importance of profile pictures and Textual self description. Apparently some users would rather concentrate on the textual info shared by the user rather than with his pictures.
This is a point that is explained in the study by the fact that people are looking for more than just physical attributes, and through text description they hope discovering the personnality traits of the person.
However too mouch textual elements can reduce attractiveness, because "it helps to better assess incompatibility" (Fiore, Taylor, Mendelsohn and Hearst). In some cases though, a lot of self description might help find the very compatible one!
In conclusion what i think atracts the most people online, is the control they have over there own image and the way they can sell themselves more easily than if they were involved in face to face meeting where many unintentional cues might be revealed. I have never had an online dating experience but I can see how it works with facebook. Everyone tries to convey the image of themselves, as they would like others to see them.
The online world is a tricky place where we realise how complex human self-image and identity are.