Atheism: Bringing the Sexy Back

It would be amusing to just have a contest asking people to guess what the vertical axis on this chart is supposed to represent.

god-chart

The answer is, “reply rate to first-contact messages on an online dating site, as a function of words appearing in the message.” In particular, the site OkCupid, which has a handy rundown of which words and phrases are most likely to garner a reply to an initial contact. (Via FlowingData.) The average response rate is 32%, so you can see how using some specific word increases or decreases your chances of success. Apparently mentioning “God” is a big turn-off, although calling Him by a proper name is slightly helpful. But nothing works at turning a stranger’s head quite like bringing up His complete lack of existence.

Other useful hints: real words good, fake internet words bad. Complimenting personality/intellect good, complimenting looks bad. Being specific is good, especially if it involves physics, heavy metal, vegetarianism, or zombies. Hey, I’m just the messenger here.

59 Comments

59 thoughts on “Atheism: Bringing the Sexy Back”

  1. So of course — it would be highly interesting if the same holds on the big sites like eHarmony or Match.com. This would tell us something significant about the direction of the culture in the coming years, methinks..

  2. The graph is sort of useless without some information about the frequency of the uses of these words. If a large fraction of the site’s users mentioned Jesus in their messages, then you would naturally expect that the response frequency would be very close to the mean, while a small number of people mentioning atheism would be more susceptible to statistical fluctuations.

    Some of the other comments suggest that they had some sort of frequency threshold in mind when they picked the words, but they didn’t say explicitly what it was (at least, not that I noticed in quickly skimming the post). The overall frequency with which the terms are used is important information, though.

  3. Interesting that atheism was the 2nd most used religious term, ahead of “jewish” or “muslim”. Maybe atheists don’t mind putting themselves out there for a date rather than rely on divine intervention?

  4. I agree with Sili, the post title is pure bait. I wish atheism=sexy was a meme, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

    Mandeep, eHarmony is explicitly Christian, so I wouldn’t think it would mimic OkCupid. In fact, I’m sure the sample size here is pretty small. If you could get data from Match.com, then that would say something.

  5. The article mentioned the sample and even with the small pool (300 or so posts) it probably represents an adequate sample. I think what can be read into it is that in these forums is simply that what works is:
    1. Candor/Specificiy in self-description. (Atheism may or may not be popular, but it’s something you might want to state up-front)
    2. Intriguing / unusual over generic/everyday. (Atheism qualifies as the former like “Tatoo” – strange that the positive influence of atheism is similar to that of heavy metal rock… We’ll need to think about that)

    Now if I were an apologetic, heavy metal, band playing, easy atheist – then I might be very successful.

    Howdy!

  6. Pingback: Want a date? Deny the existence of God – Targuman

  7. I think I agree with Targuman most. Certain groups have been trying to increase the marketability of Atheism. I always thought we had a really poor pitch:

    Customer: So what happens when you die?
    Atheist Evangelist: Well… You’re dead.

    Not very effective, but this new data could put a positive spin on this somewhere.

  8. The study only looks at response rate though. Perhaps the word “atheist” just gets a high response rate but not a high positive response rate…..

    but healthy skepticism is sexy as hell in my opinion.

  9. Sarah says, “Interesting that atheism was the 2nd most used religious term…” Please note Sarah and others that atheism is not a religion or a religious word. Atheism denotes the lack of religion. Real atheists use reason and provable knowledge to forge our way through understanding our murky universe. We do not meet regularly on given days to discuss our non-religion. We do however have insightful discussions with anyone who wants to come out of the dark ages and see our wonderful cosmos as it really is.

  10. Hey! I am an Atheist!! That’s Atheist with a capital A!

    Have I told you I am an Atheist?

    (waits to be jumped upon by a bevy of beauties).

  11. Atheism is not more sexy than religion, not getting preached at is more sexy than a die hard zealot or hypocrite (those in the Bible Belt who attribute everything to God but don’t bother going to any church, wtg folks!).

    I’m Catholic, but I’d take an Atheist over another Catholic any day.

  12. Pingback: Standard Deviations From the Beaten Path » Blog Archive » Online Dating Response Rates

  13. Maybe Atheists are simply more prevalent to the online dating community. Religious people have churches to meet people, plus religious people are most likely incompatible with Atheists, and vice versa. Therefore, they stick to their own kind in their own communities. Think about the kind of people that use those sites, they’re either desperate, failed in previous relationships (likely because of their own personalities), or just looking to hook up. In this case, maybe the correlation is that Atheists have relationship issues because of their own attitudes and personal views. Maybe all the religious folks get into and stay in relationships longer, therefore there’s less of them on the site. With a large number of Atheists on there, no wonder they get the most replies.

  14. This post is bigtime flamebait.

    As a ‘liberal’ Christian, atheism is not a turn on.

    As a ‘guy’, the belief that a non-believer is easier to get into the sack might be.

    But I don’t think that’s true.

  15. I would imagine that “Atheist” provokes as much responses as it does simply because not a lot of people know much about atheism and they’ve got a lot of questions. Atheists are interesting becuase not many people know about them. It may also be that Atheists find it hard to find other atheists to date and resort to online dating as a result. It may also be that atheists are less likely be as sexually repressed as the average christian.

    What would be really useful would be whether or not these comments were positive or negative.

  16. I think people telling other people that they are atheist, is just today’s form of posturing. Sort of like Oscar Wilde and his cigar.

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