social turkers:

crowdsourced dating

Early in the day I announce to the internet I will be retiring from online dating with one last date. This sparks a stream of messages telling me ‘good luck’, ‘you must be nervous’. I don’t understand these at first, I’ve been doing this for a month, by now I’ve gotten over my worries about technical glitches or the whims of the workers. What I didn’t anticipate was how different I would feel when people I know might be tuning in. Before the date I am anxiously bouncing around double checking my code for bugs, searching out the perfect bar with adequate lighting, low noise levels, optimal seating arrangements. I locate one that yelp describes as ideal and confirm with my date. Shortly before the date I decide to visit to make sure there’s enough cell coverage for a good stream and discover that it’s a complete dead zone. I write my date asking to switch to another location, but don’t hear anything back immediately, and I start worrying I will get stood up. Is there anything more embarrassing than getting stood up in front of everyone online? Maybe having your art project totally bomb in front of everyone online? Trying to create a backup plan, I turn into that girl on okcupid writing random guys, heyy cutie what are you up to tonight? Putting me out of my misery, I hear back from my date, it’s on. I take a moment to laugh at myself and the absolutely absurd situation I let myself take a little too seriously for a bit there.

By the time I arrive, I feel much more relaxed and ready to just have fun with this end to this intense month. However, I quickly realize it’s one thing to be watched and directed by anonymous MTurk workers, but thinking my friends, family, and colleagues could be out there, I feel so much more exposed. The date goes along ok, but I feel my attention pulled in different directions in a much more intense way tonight. I’m split between checking my phone trying to make sure the stream is staying up, thinking about the people out there watching, and trying to be present with my date. Compounding this is a general feeling of being all over the place that has been steadily building over this month of experiments. He is sensing my energy and responding and it’s throwing both of us off balance. The worker directions are actually holding me together tonight. ‘DO be honest’ is the cue as my date asks me about artists I admire. Well, ok. I tell him about the work of a couple of my favorite artists. The date goes on uncertainly for some time longer, then we part amicably and I’m done! It feels too good.

I return home to find an email from one of the aforementioned artists, whom I don’t know too well, letting me know he was watching. I am so busted. I feel new weird levels of exposed. Thinking more about exposure, I also realize if I thought I was hopeless with love before this, if anyone I know was even thinking of dating me, they were able to tune in and see just how completely awkward on a date I really am. I spend a short while feeling some strange soup of ecstatic to be done, uncomfortable with how much I have shared, sheepish and worried remembering one of my professors telling me once ‘lauren, nobody wants to read your diary’, high on the rush of crazy energy I’ve felt this month…

Then all at once, a moment of calm. I remember writing one of my goals for this project last december before I had figured out anything about what I would do. I wrote: I want to use technology to change my understanding of myself and my relationship to others. Then I wrote: If I already feel ok with myself, am I all right with changing that, risking possibly changing it for the worse? Then I wrote: I can’t feel ok with myself if I don’t feel like I can change.

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MTurk options:

Avg MTurk interaction rating: 3.1

After a few days in LA with friends, I’m back in Portland, feeling more alone than ever. To do this project, I moved to a place where I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew already. I’ve been spending every night with a stranger. A friend of mine told me before I started that she doesn’t do online dating anymore because she often found herself on dates feeling more alone than if she were by herself. I now understand completely. I’ve met so many people desperately searching for the one. I feel bad when I don’t like them, I feel bad when I do — I feel like such a disappointment every time. I find myself relying on the workers to stave off the feelings of isolation on the worst of dates. Knowing they are watching somehow has kept me from feeling completely alone. They are my companions, my co-conspirators, my wingmen. They are the only other ones that really knew the truth of what I am doing.

For some reason, I always feel a need to push these projects past any point of feeling rational or in control. There is something about these moments that both excites and terrifies me — driving through the dark to meet a stranger to have a potentially awkward conversation, keeping track of all the technology components I have hacked together, making sure they’re all charged, running, bug-free, worrying about whether tonight’s experiment will prove interesting or insightful, daring to believe I might meet someone really wonderful, scared of disappointment, scared to disappoint, scared of boredom, wondering what I’m doing, wondering why I’m doing it. I have systematically disrupted all my systems for understanding myself and the context I operate in.

‘The two people seem to be meeting but missing each other over and over. The woman seems lost in her own thoughts and confused. At other times, she seems engaged and excited and smiling. The guy seems interested but unsure. The rhythm keeps shifting. Neither seem to know what to think.’

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MTurk payment: $0.20
Number responses: 63
Avg time/task: 4:45

Avg MTurk interaction rating: 3.0

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MTurk options:

Avg MTurk interaction rating: 3.0

I’ve been surprised how much the workers are able to notice from such low quality audio and video. They pick up on the times when I am nervous, uncomfortable, bored, interested, and engaged with stunning accuracy. Tonight, feelings of interest shifted into boredom, and the workers picked up on this. Sometimes the feedback tells me to relax or smile and I read the responses afterward and they workers mention I seemed really nervous. I watch the footage and realize they are right, I hadn’t even noticed during the date. It has really shifted my perspective seeing myself through the eyes of others. After a few dates, I feel like I am simultaneously seeing this third person view of myself while I am also on the date interacting with the guy.

‘Woman: Feeling sad and searching for something. Man: Looking more happy and enjoying life.’

‘The woman doesn’t seem to be very happy. I’m not sure if she’s bored or depressed. It’s like she’d rather be anywhere but there. She listens when the guy talks to her but it’s like she’s just putting on an act of paying attention but really wishing she could just leave.’

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MTurk options:

Avg MTurk interaction rating: 3.1

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