Love: There's An App For That

Allison Loudermilk joins the show to talk about some of the tech and apps designed to connect people in the digital space and then in real space. Is it a good thing?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from dot
com either and welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
and today I have a special guest host, Alison louder Milk,
wu's editor extraordinary here in Hell Stuff Works dot Com.
Thank you very much, Donathan. I love that introp So

(00:26):
I'm glad now those of you who have been listening
to How Stuff Works podcast for a while will recognize
Allison's voice. She's an old hand at podcasting. Though you've
taken a nice long hiatus, I have that. It's a
pleasure to be here today. Yeah, fantastic, And so I
asked Allison what she would like to talk about. When
she agreed that, you know, she jump on and be

(00:48):
a guest. I give my guests the opportunity to pick
if they want to. And you jokingly suggested an app
called Cuddler, And while that was a joke, it led
to the actual choice of this episode, which goes beyond Cuddler.
But we will talk about that right, right, right, We
were talking about it in the break room and the
fascination that was Cuddler. Yeah, yeah, there's kind of a

(01:09):
horrid fascination for a lot of us here and how
stuff works. Who have very specific parameters, uh, within which
we welcome that kind of personal interaction, and when it's
outside those parameters, we get a little wigged out by it,
but we'll get there. So we decided we wanted to
talk about how the Internet has become an incredible tool

(01:32):
for people to first meet each other in the online
space or the digital space, and then event eventually transition
that into meeting in real life. And a lot of
what we're going to talk about today is focused on dating,
but that's not exclusively what we're going to talk about.
But it turns out that's a that's a big part

(01:52):
and has been a big part of the Internet since
the Internet became a thing that most of us got
access to. Yes, do you have any kind of early
memories of some emails you sent, maybe to a lady
you were interested in, or well, there's a there's a
lady that I was very much interested in, a lady
who I'm still very much interested in because she's my wife.

(02:13):
I met her in a chat room online, Yeah, a
tell net chat room, so not even a web based one.
In fact, when I met my wife, the web was
new to me, Like I had not even used a browser. Uh.
I had seen other people on a browser, and I thought, well,
that looks really interesting. But I was jumping into chat
rooms just chatting about anything really and she and I

(02:35):
hit it off, and we ended up, uh, corresponding quite
a bit, and then we met in person, and then
we started dating, and then she moved to Georgia, and
then we got engaged, and then we got married. And
seventeen years later, here we are so early story of
using the Internet to do exactly what we're talking about.
So I have personal experience here, but you know, we've

(02:58):
seen the people use the Internet for all sorts of
things along those lines. And here's an interesting statistic I found.
According to the American National Academy of Sciences, which did
a survey back in two thousand thirteen, more than thirty
three of all people who got married in the United
States between two thousand five and two thousand twelve met

(03:18):
their spouse online. Yeah. That's a large swath of people. Yeah,
more than a third of all of all married couples
first met online, well married couples from two thousand five
to two thousand and twelve. And that's incredible to me.
I mean, I remember when I started dating my wife,
that was considered unusual. Yeah, we all have friends who've

(03:41):
met online, and I was kind of a novelty back
in the day. I remember thinking, you know, one of
my very dear friends met her husband on match dot com,
and I was a little wary, like, but it's it's
pretty it's pretty normal now normal if I when when
more than a third, you know, it's quickly becoming as
normal as other method of meeting people and getting to

(04:01):
know someone and dating them. And uh, yeah, for me,
it was it was outside the norm both because one
the Internet was so new, and too that I was
getting a date, so it was multiple outside the norms.
But uh, I read a CNN article which was not
entirely helpful because they reported that a survey which was
unnamed in the article, so that by two thousand nine

(04:25):
of all same sex couples reported meeting online first, and
about half of all married couples who met online did
so through dating sites. So in order for us to
really talk about it, we're gonna be looking a lot
at dating sites early on in this episode and what
they do and how they do it. So across platforms,

(04:45):
about eleven percent of Internet users have said they've used
an online dating site, and across cell phone users, about
seven percent have used a dating app on their phones,
and it seems like it's going more in that direction,
although if you look at it from a stock market
type perspective, it's still the online dating sites that are kicking,
but in terms of market share and actually making revenue,

(05:06):
and that that comes from a two thousand thirteen report
from the Pew Research Internet Project. And what's also interesting
is that it just continues to get more segmented, right,
so you have you know, Jonathan, maybe you and I
were first interested in this, but now it's our parents,
and now it's more niche markets to oh sure, yeah,
So we're seeing lots of of services and sites pop

(05:28):
up that are catering to very specific demographics. Right, So
you might see one that's catering specifically to uh, to
the baby boomer boomer generation, or some that are obviously
based just on the experience, geared towards folks who are
more in the college age range or uh. You know,
there are a ton of different variations on this. So there,

(05:50):
of course some sites that try to be all things
to all people, and then we're seeing a lot more
of these that are kind of tailor made for specific demographics.
It was funny. I was talking to a coworker who
just signed up her mom last night for I think
it was called Our World or My World. Her sixty
three year old mom was like, Hey, can you help
me get on some of these dating sites? And she said, okay, Mom, Yeah.

(06:14):
I mean again, that might sound unusual to us, in
particular not to put a number to our ages, but
Alison and I both can remember a time when the
Internet wasn't really a thing that we access um, So
it's certainly something that's still there's still elements of it
that are kind of unusual to us, but it's becoming

(06:35):
increasingly normal to the younger generations because they grew up
with this, And you know, why not have this be
a tool to to meet people and to try and
match yourself up with people who are sharing the same
sort of interest that you do and thus potentially find
someone with whom you're going to be really compatible with.
You mentioned before that this is a big industry. You know,

(07:00):
you talked about a lot of how how many people
on the Internet had used a site, and you mentioned
that you know, there's there's real money to be made here.
But let's get to some real figures, right, So there
is some serious money to be made here. I was
reading a report from IBIS World looks like some sort
of industry research type of report at two thousand fourteen,

(07:22):
and the authors were estimating that it's about a two
billion dollar market dating services in the US. So that's
the broader context. And within that, of course, online is
going to be you know, a slice of that, and
that slice is about so one point four billion is
what we're talking about now, and I can only see
that growing. Yeah, yeah, I agree, And we're seeing it
grow in interesting ways too. Whereas the desktop online dating

(07:46):
sites are still very much a thing, we're seeing an
explosion of this kind of stuff in the mobile space,
both mobile apps that are tied into an existing online
dating site and those that are its own experience ends.
And we'll talk about some of those two. And uh,
it's not it's not just that's big business, but for

(08:08):
the consumer, as in the person who's looking for a date,
it turns out to make sense financially too, right, So
this is pretty interesting. Um I. And another report um
from the Topeka Capital Markets that was again like two thousand,
fourteen or so. Um, they found that it was cheaper. Right,
So you're paying for your subscription to your online site,

(08:30):
but what you're looking at, according to this report, is
about a twenty three dollar tab before you finally wind
up making a match of your dreams. Yeah, so these
guys are saying that if you pay your subscription of
you know, maybe two d or some dollars, you're gonna
wind up with cost savings, like in a thousands of dollars.

(08:50):
So so online dating makes sense to your wallet, Yeah,
because it means that what what it means is that
while you're in pursuit of finding this person who's going
to compatible with you, you can do a lot of
that early work online as opposed to meeting people in places,
going out to take people out to to, you know, whatever,

(09:12):
a dinner or a movie or whatever, even if everyone's
paying for their own thing. Obviously, all of that stuff
starts to mount up, and not every date turns out
to be a success. Sometimes you realize, oh, you know,
this person is really nice, but we're not really clicking things. Yeah,
there's no spark there, and so yeah, I could I
could definitely see this. I am personally very thankful for
the money that the Internet has saved me in that sense.

(09:36):
So looking more closely at what's going on with these
dating sites, like how they work, you actually have to
go all the way back to nineteen sixty five. Now,
clearly I'm not talking about an Internet dating service that
far back, because that's pre Internet. We're talking arpennet days
back then. But ninety five was before the era of

(09:57):
the personal computer. We didn't even have PCs yet. But
a Harvard undergraduate named Jeff Tar was working on this idea.
He had come up with a notion. He noticed that
a lot of other Harvard undergraduate graduates were talking about
finding it difficult to find a date, like it's just
hard to go out and meet people that were compatible.

(10:17):
And he thought, hmm, there are these computer things that
crunched numbers really well. And he was he was a
math major, uh, and he he got to work with computers,
but he didn't really understand programming. At this point, they said,
you know, there are these computers that are really good
at number crunching. If we were to reduce the personality,
uh preferences of people to numbers, then a computer could

(10:41):
theoretically start matching people who have the most similar responses
to a survey. So that's why he did. He developed
a survey, gave it to tons of his classmates, and
he essentially relied on the second person to create a
computer program that would match up these were ponses, and
he rented time on one of the enormous computers at Harvard.

(11:05):
I think it was like a hundred dollars a day
or something in order for him to rent the time
on this machine. It might have even been higher than that,
but it was a wild success. People loved the idea
of being able to use a machine to take out
the guesswork of trying to find that perfect person. In fact,
there was one report of a young lady who was

(11:27):
matched up with her ex boyfriend and got back with
him because the computer told her to. So that we
started to act like the computer was like the oracle
and that we must obey the machine. Uh. But you
know again, it kind of showed a couple of different
things that showed how people really wanted to find someone
who was compatible. And it also showed that there was

(11:50):
this reverence for computers because they were objects a myth
and legend to most people back in the sixties, they
didn't have the experience with computers that we do today.
Once you've gone through a few blue screens of death,
you realize they're not infallible machines. But at any rate,
if you flash forward to the nineteen nineties, by then
you had had some computer dating services uh competing in

(12:13):
the United States. But now we see the rise of
the Internet, especially with the World Wide Web. The Internet
had been around, but the World Wide Web was what
made it accessible, and uh so you've got those earliest
days of regular folks getting access to it, and the
connectivity opened up the opportunity for meeting new people that
you might never have ever encountered in your life otherwise.

(12:35):
So we've got an article actually on how Stuffworks dot
Com about how online dating works. So it'll cover all
the basics. But if anyone has ever done any browsing
on an online dating site, you know typically what they're about.
It's usually you you create a profile, probably include a picture. Absolutely,
you probably include the best pictures you possibly can to

(12:57):
present yourself in the best light possible professional head shot.
Then you are going to fill out a profile that
includes a lot of your preferences, things that you enjoy
things that you're you're not into. It might be things,
yeah I'm a non smoker, that kind of stuff. Political affiliation,
it could be is, and it really depends upon the site.
Like some sites, that's true. Also, are you are you

(13:21):
into pets? Do you like pets? Do you like kids,
you're not like kids? Do you want to have kids?
Do you already have kids? These are all the sorts
of questions that you would put it there, and then
when you go for a search, then you can say
which parameters you consider to be the most important, like say, uh,
they need their age needs to fall within this range,

(13:42):
or I'm not going to have anything in common with
this person, or height is a big one. Height is
a big one. I read that b m I in
regards to men looking for women was a big factor. Yeah, yeah,
I think it was around like eighteen point five percent.
Was one figure sided like they like women with that
sort of b m I, which is ridiculous. Well, now
there's a whole other discussion we could have about expectations

(14:04):
and realism. But at any rate, one of the interesting
things I found was that we don't necessarily know what
it is we're looking for when we're looking for it
nor or we may we may have a suspicion, but
we may not be honest about it when we're doing
our search. For example, let's say that I put in

(14:26):
there that I really want to meet someone who's really
interested in reading, but it turns out that there are
other factors that I think are way more important. But
I'm trying to present myself as someone who is an
intellectual and therefore value this. Some online dating sites can
figure out when you're fibbing, because it's your behavior that
tells the site what you're really into. Because if I

(14:49):
start going through profiles and I'm spending less than a
couple of seconds on them, and I'm zooming through them
really quickly, the the online dating stars can log all
that and say, all right, well, we gave him the
matches based upon what he said he wanted, but he
totally breathed through them all so except this one. He
spent a couple of months looking at this one. So

(15:10):
really he's looking more for what this person represents rather
than what he says he represents. And as more and
more data gets accumulated, the more people who use the site,
the dating site algorithms adjust themselves and start showing you
what you really want, even if you're not aware that
that's what you want to you. Yeah, which is kind

(15:30):
of weird. I mean, we've talked on tech stuff many
times about how it only takes a little data to
give a system a great idea of who you are
as a person, but it even is true in the
dating world. There's also approach called collaborative filter filtering. This
is where a system will organize people into large groups

(15:52):
just based on preferences which might not even be obvious
from the outside. So, all right, so let's say we've
we've at a population of like ten thousand people and
they've all created profiles. The algorithm will start to find
commonalities between those people that again, if you were just
to look at the profiles as a human being, you
might not even be able to pick out which things

(16:14):
they have in common. But because we're talking about sites
that have access to such huge amounts of data and
can run all these different types of comparisons against one another,
it makes perfect sense to the algorithm, which is kind
of creepy in a way when you think about it,
because it ultimately starts to divide people into large groups

(16:36):
and it suggests that there are a limited number of
groups that people fall into. In other words, it's kind
of like thinking about horoscopes. I don't like the idea
of a horoscope because it suggests that there are only
twelve types of people in the world, right, I mean,
if you if you leap to that, if you say,
my horoscope for today is, etcetera, that means that roughly

(16:57):
one twelfth of the world's population is going to have
the same sort of day I'm going to have, which
doesn't make sense. But these systems actually show that that's
not that far off from the truth in the sense
that there a limited number of categories that you can
actually shove people into, and from at least a mathematic perspective,
it makes sense. It works. Yeah, so little creepy um,

(17:20):
But it turns out like that's not it's not always
just about the data, the personal data about yourself, right right.
So one really interesting thing that I found, um was
I happened to stumble upon a gentleman by the name
of Dan Arielli. I believe that's how you say his
last name. And he's over a duke, and he's a
professor of psychology and behavioral economics. By the way, behavioral

(17:42):
economics is so fascinating. So um Dan gave an interview
to the big thing, and what he was saying was right,
it's not all about the personal data. It's not about
the boxes you check or you know, your particular preferences.
And what he was postulating after he kind of browsed
online dating sites and found them significantly lacking, was that

(18:05):
it's more about your interaction with the person. That you
can tell a lot more about an interaction with a
person than by simply like knowing that you're eyes are
blue and you like cats and whatever it is about you. Right,
It's kind of like the difference between a resume and
a job interview. Absolutely, And so his idea is, let's
get away from the check boxes and let's set up

(18:26):
ways for people to interact. And so he set up
this website and it was basically you can pick an
avatar and just really simple. It wasn't like one of
these crazy avatars. It was maybe a triangle and a square,
there's some color in there. And then he basically put
like movies and images and words, and you kind of
move around and navigate and you talk to other avatars

(18:48):
as you encounter them, and so how all these encounters went,
which is set up like a better interaction for people
to meet each other and get to know each other
and have a successful date ultimately. Well, that's really cool
that the channel of that is that it kind of
requires a synchronous approach, meaning that both parties need to
be active at the same time, whereas we're seeing a

(19:08):
lot of communication online is asynchronous, right, the idea that
I can send you a message, Allison, and then you
respond to it when you have the availability when you
may not even notice that you have a message until
an hour later, and you respond and I might not
notice till three hours later. But we can continue to
have this communication, which is effective in many ways, but

(19:31):
it because, yeah, it's disjointed. It's it's you don't have
a continuous experience. It takes away a lot of that
spontaneity that you would have in a conversation with an
actual person in real time. So it's not that there's
no value in that type of communication. There certainly is.
And uh, and I love using all the tools that
have this asynchronous communication aspect to them, but uh, you know,

(19:56):
this approach, while it might be more effective than say,
just a a collection of profiles. It demands that you
have this you know, real time interaction with somebody, which
limits the number of people that you can presumably encounter
because it all depends on when both parties are available
to interact, right, So if you're available to interact at

(20:17):
the same time, I'm thinking that a synchronous interaction, I mean,
it just seems like it would be more effective, right
because you're talking to somebody who's in the same frame
of minded view. Sure, yeah, I mean, and there are
a lot of dating sites that have a message system
where you know, either it's like an instant message type
thing or something along those lines, where you can set

(20:38):
that sort of thing up if both parties are online,
but they don't, they don't depend upon that, right. That's
that's an added benefit to those sites. You could totally
have and asynchronous conversation with someone in a series of messages,
you know, back and forth between each other. But I
do think that ari elli is onto something. I think

(20:59):
Arie Ellie is right and that these kind of interactions
tend to have more value to them than the asynchronous type.
So he had a funny stat and what he was
suggesting with that online dating right is ineffective and inefficient.
And so one of the things that he said was
that about six hours of chat for one lousy coffee date.

(21:20):
I mean that's a lot of time invested. There's a
lot of time invested. Yeah, I mean it's And that's
the thing is that you can't expect every single interaction
to go well. In fact, we'll be talking about expectations
a lot in this episode. Uh, you know, the people
are people, and you may think going into something that
you're going to have this incredible interaction, which might just

(21:41):
be unrealistic expectations. Um, And that's just a human problem
that's been around forever. I mean that has nothing to
do necessarily with the Internet. It's or or these dating
apps and sites. The dating sites often create kind of
a problem with this because they're built upon the promise
that their service will help you find someone special. So

(22:05):
it behooves them to kind of foster this image that
you are going to meet Mr or Mrs Wright just
by following, you know, us, creating a profile and seeking
them out this way. But human interaction is far more
complicated than that. That, however, is not the right way
to sell memberships to your dating site. Hey, it's complicated

(22:28):
and you may or may not like this person. Come
join our site for twenty bucks a month, but at
any rate. Um. You know, we also have the interesting
research that goes into, uh, how the dating sites create
these algorithms that match people up. Um. There have been
some folks who have looked into it from a personal perspective,

(22:50):
people who happened to work in statistics and mathematics and
computer science, who who were looking for a date and wondering, well,
what's the most effective way for me to use this tool?
Engineers tend to think in that way, like you gave
me a tool, and I can use it this way,
but is there a better way to use it? So,
people like Chris McKinley and Amy Webb have experimented with

(23:14):
various online dating sites to find out what was working
behind the scenes, How were these matches made the most
successful profiles, What what was it about those profiles that
made them successful? And so they really looked deeply into
these things to figure out how they work, so that
not that they could game the system, but so that

(23:35):
they could make the most effective profile to find the
people they're interested in meeting. Okay, so when we're talking
about an effective profile, do we mean like somebody who's
been successful at finding one relationship that the person is
stuck with or just having a lot of dates. I
think it was more about the number of responses. They
wanted to find a profile that got the most responses

(23:55):
from the people that seemed to be the target audience,
the people that the folks that the the individuals themselves
were interested in dating. And so Amy Web actually has
a fantastic ted talk where she goes through this whole
process and talked about how she identified the language that
was being used in very successful profiles. She had created

(24:17):
several fake profiles and populated them with different approaches to
kind of see which ones were the most effective, you
know what, what sort of UH profiles would get the
most responses. And the the results were dramatic. And some
people might say, well, as that totally ethical, I mean,

(24:38):
you've got actual people who are looking for a date
and they're pursuing a date with a fake persona. But
at any rate, she said, well, I was doing research,
you know, I needed to find out how this worked.
And once I knew that, I could tweak my own profile,
and sure enough she met a guy they ended up dating,
and then they ended up getting married. So she was

(24:58):
doing it both because she is interested in the system
and also because she genuinely was trying to find someone
to to go out on dates with. So it to
me what was interesting is that there are now two
different types of algorithms out there. There's the algorithm that's
being used by the dating site to figure out how
to match people up, and then there are the algorithms
that people have come up with to figure out how

(25:20):
to make their profile the most attractive in order to
get the most potential dates, therefore having the most potential
chances of finding that someone special. I'd be curious to
hear what she found out was effective. I mean, I
think that we've all kind of had the experience of
maybe your friend is going to go on an online
dating service, and I certainly, as an editor and lover

(25:41):
of words in general, have helped friends craft profiles. And
it's comical. I mean it is comical. So whatever the
your flaw is, say you're a big old procrastinator, Well,
I'm laid back, you know, I'll like to take my
time and enjoy life, right right, So all the code
were it's in the little editing that you do to

(26:02):
just tweak it enough. Yeah, it's it's again. It's a
lot like building a resume, which is both a good
and a bad thing, right because a resume is all
about putting your best professional face forwards that you get
the best opportunity to get a job interview. This is
putting your best personal face forward to get that opportunity

(26:22):
for a date. Uh yeah, it's and it's serious business.
I mean, this is this is these are people's lives
and not to mention, an entire one point four billion
dollar industry. So it's a big deal. So how do
these websites actually make money? Right? So, we talked about
the subscription service model, right, so you pay some feed

(26:44):
monthly and or maybe you get I mean, okay, Cupid
for example, does not it's all free. But then match
I believe an e Harmony and some of those uh
you know, to get messages and things like that, you
have to pay a subscription and then their ads of course, sure, yeah,
adds support is one of the big ways that any
web presence makes money. Right. So, but it's not clear

(27:05):
how some of these apps are making money, and I
think that they aren't I mean, yeah, no, that's a
lot of apps don't make money because what the app
developers trying to do is create a tool that becomes
so popular that some other company buys out the person
who developed it, right, I mean, that's the approaches. Let's

(27:26):
let's make a tool that everyone loves so much that
a company is going to swoop in here, pay me
a huge amount of money because of the value that
the potential or the potential value of that app, because
of all the people who are using it. You know,
keep in mind, whenever we're talking about a service or
an app like this kind of thing, ultimately the product
is us, the people using that service or app. Where

(27:49):
the product where the We're the thing that is making
the money, making money for whatever company owns it. So
if you are like a tender and you have no jones,
actually there you go. So if you if you had
created that app and uh, you didn't have a way
of monetizing it directly, it may just be that you're

(28:10):
doing it because it's a really useful thing. People are
really into it. People are a lot of people are
are downloading it and active on it. Someone is going
to find that valuable and they're going to purchase you.
A lot of them also just exist on venture capitalist
investment for the short term, which is that's risky because

(28:31):
that's an investment. People expect to have a return on
that investment, So you have to eventually figure out a
way to make some money or you're just gonna you know,
you've slid your reputation. If you are known as someone
who makes tools that ultimately never pay out, then you're
not going to get any financial backing for your future work.
So uh, I think that's the main way that these

(28:53):
apps are making money is they're getting bought, which that's
a risky move. But if you can make a really
good app, then that's something that you know, it's it's
something you can count on at least as a potential
opportunity down the road. It was reading the guy who
just created Cuddler, Charlie. Yeah, that old Charlie had no idea.
He was just planning for a soft launch of Cuddler.

(29:15):
I forget Charlie's last name, sorry Charlie, Yeah, sorry Charlie. Anyway,
he was just he was unprepared for the sheer amount
of attention that Cudler received. Yeah. Yeah, it got covered
by a couple of different UH news outlets like Huffington
Post and Slate I think wrote about it and uh,
and that attention meant that there was an explosion in

(29:37):
downloads and suddenly this app that Charlie probably felt was
not totally ready yet was being adopted by tons of people.
And and normally if you're launching, yeah, yeah, it was
supposed to be a soft launch where he could do
some testing, get feedback, tweak stuff. But now it goes
when you get that large adoption, it goes from testing

(29:59):
phase to now it's a product, and that is a problem.
Now we should probably mention what Cuddler is. In fact,
this is a great way of transitioning into just mobile
apps in general. So Cuddler, which was of course the
app that that Allison brought to my attention. I did
not know about this app until you mentioned it to me.
I had not heard about it. Yeah, my head was

(30:20):
under a rock apparently when this came out. So Cuddler
is pretty much what sounds like. It's an app that
is designed to allow someone who wants to just cuddle
with somebody else, you know, just find somebody to to
cuddle with, you know. That's it. Just some personal contact um. Right,
So it's geolocation base. So you're finally you're finding people

(30:43):
who are in need of a cuddle nearby you. And
it's pretty simple set up actually, if in case you
guys haven't experimented with it, and I know a lot
of people have, um, but the basic premises, Yeah, you
say that you're up for a cuddle, you find people
in your area who are up for it. Once you
get a match, both of your locations are shown, and
then you meet. I think you're allowed to send one message, yeah,

(31:06):
indicating the cuttle time and place. Right. Yeah, this is
the location thing is definitely an issue, I think because
it's a The way I've read it described is that
it shows a map and it plots the location of
the two parties on the map. Right, So if we
were looking for a cuddle, I could see you heading

(31:26):
across the park towards me, and you could see me
heading for that park bench that we decided we were
going to cuttle on. Right. It's just it's using the
GPS on your phone to track where you are. Maybe
even it could could use a cellular tower location even
if you don't have GPS turned on, because that can
at least give you an estimation of where the person is.
It's a little less accurate than GPS, but still works.

(31:49):
And so you could actually watch as the two people
converge by looking at the map and uh to to
you know, cuttle point zero where you're going to cuddle um.
And so that also the curious thing about Cuddler was
that I think that the founder or Charlie, he really
didn't anticipate, you know, that people would be using it

(32:09):
as they do Tinder, which is you know, for sex. Yeah. Yeah,
there are people using it to kind of hook up.
And a lot of folks have described Cuddler as being
kind of a creeper app, especially with the the fact
that it shows the location on the map. Um that
it could be an app for someone to to creep
on some boy, stalk someone harassed somebody. Uh. But Charlie

(32:32):
really seems to have his heart in the right place
in the sense that he just wanted to build a
tool that would let people who have a lack of
social interaction and personal contact meet up with other people
who are having the same sort of issue. And you
know personal contact, I mean actual physical contact. Yeah, it's
it's an important part of human interaction and it and

(32:54):
it definitely can contribute to our sense of well being,
our sense of fulfillness. If we go without it for
a long time, it can lead to depression. I mean,
they're there are real reasons why people could crave and
need personal contact, but this particular implementation raises a lot
of troubling questions. Part of it is just again the

(33:17):
way that the information is displayed. But another part of
it is just that if you have if you're catering
to a population of people who are lacking that kind
of contact, you're probably going to have at least a
few cases of negative outcomes, right, I mean you're talking
about people who maybe in a very either they themselves

(33:38):
are in a very vulnerable place, which can lead to problems,
or it could lead to people who are praying upon
folks who are in a vulnerable place. Right. So there
is that one account that we both read. The writer
from gig Um Carmel Yeah, d M mess I believe. Yeah,
she wrote of her experience. She wrote up an entire
article which was an entertaining read and also a little

(34:00):
a little scary. Yeah, she met up with another young lady. Well,
I don't know, young lady. She met up with another lady,
and I think she was actually an older woman who
Carmel called Monica. In the article, she explained that she
had changed the name to protect Monica's privacy, which I
think was the right choice to go to go with,
and that she met at Monica's home and yeah, for

(34:22):
a cuddle. So the problem there clearly is her not
being in a public place and going to the person's home.
And it seems like it worked out okay for this
writer and good for her for trying and bravery and
all that stuff, but also a little alarming that she
went to somebody's house. And as she added that the
woman Monica showed her a gun at one point and
showed her how to use it. Yeah, to say that,

(34:43):
you know, she had worried about safety, and that's when
she had gone out and got a gun. And this
was all part of the casual conversation. But at the
same time, the reporter says it's a little worrisome, and
that she had contacted Charlie, the creator of Cutler, and
he said, yeah, that was probably not a good idea.
I did and intend for that. When I wrote this app,
I was thinking that people would first meet in a

(35:05):
safe location, like a public space. But then Carmel's point is, well,
if you're already having this this problem of a lack
of physical contact, does it add even more anxiety to
require it to take place in public where people can
see you? And that is a little weird. Yeah. I

(35:25):
I respect the idea behind it, I really do. I
understand that we all need human interaction and I could
totally use a hug on most days. But but I
think we've outlined the problematic aspects of it. Yeah. Now,
on a on a personal level, I am I'm big
into hugs. I'm a big I'm a big fan of hugs,
but only with certain circles of my friends. I have

(35:46):
never gotten hug just by the way from me, No,
because I don't hug coworkers. Yeah, thinks like a decent policy.
There's Yeah, there's there's certain like like worker, Well, I
have to because Candice. I mean, how can you How
can you not hug Candice? She's like probably the most
huggable person on the planet. But um, yeah, I don't.
I don't tend to hug co workers. I put them

(36:08):
in a circle where I think these are the types
of social interactions that are appropriate for people that I
work with. And if I meet them outside of that
and we socialize outside of that and they enter another
circle of friends, like, if that then diagram has overlap,
that's perfectly acceptable. But otherwise, yeah, I don't. I don't
think of it as acceptable for co workers in general.

(36:30):
I'm not against it, but on principle, it's just that's
kind of how I think. But uh, and strangers don't
tend to hug them. Uh, there are exceptions. There have
been some people who have been introduced to me and
upon introduction, they immediately hugged me. But they did so
with such uh genuine charm that I was all right
with it. But it's a really rare thing. In fact,

(36:52):
I interviewed one of them just the other day protect stuff.
So do you want to hear my idea for an app? Yes,
I think that they should be a backscratcher app. You know,
I can totally agree to that. So a similar thing,
but you have to be I think you have to
make the premise or the area of to put the
call at to you much smaller. You don't want to

(37:12):
cross town to find finally get that person toscribe because
by then the itch is gone, right, the itch is gone,
but sometimes you just can't reach it. It's just right
there between the shoulder blades. And you know, the more
we talk about, the more it's going to actually start
to creep into my mind. So I'm going to change
the subject. But that's a great idea. Yeah, it's much
better than a phone that has a backscratcher that swings
out from it, because that would just bulk. So you

(37:35):
mentioned Tender, which is a great app to to refer
to as well, because it's so popular that one debuted
back in two thousand twelve, and you mentioned that it's
owned by match dot com. Uh. Now, the founders like
to talk about it as being a social discovery tool
that you're you use it to find people to hang
out with. And the way tender works is it pulls

(37:58):
photos from Facebook profile. Else then you look at the
profile and you can swipe left, left to dismiss it
or right if you're interested and you want to make
contact with this person. Um. But while they talk about
it as a social discovery tool, that's not necessarily it's
all about hooking up. It's about you know, it's the
hot or not approach. It's you know, this person is

(38:20):
this person I find attractive this one I don't find attractive. No, no, no, yes, no,
no no. And um, you know the fact that it
has this kind of swipe to dismiss or swipe to accept,
really I think drives that home. It actually is, making
it a physical activity that you associate with either accepting
or rejecting. So I think there's something interesting psychologically there.

(38:44):
I'm not a psychologist, so I certainly can't draw any conclusions,
but I would love to hear a study about this
kind of behavior and what it sort of feeds into
because one of the things one of the criticisms I've
read about online dating in general is that it promotes
this kind of shopping behavior. Absolutely, so the idea of
of your You're like, it's like you're going through a catalog,

(39:06):
and it's not it's not really promoting an interaction so
much as this this very rapid except reject kind of approach,
and Tender sort of just exemplifies that because of the
way the app is built, right, Well, so I wonder
what the outcomes ultimately would be from that, Right, So
you hook up with somebody on Tender and then you know,

(39:27):
are you If you're just looking for a hook up,
that's fun. But if you're looking to date somebody, I mean,
what are the outcomes? You know, do you wind up
dating having successful like partnerships with people are not so much. Yeah,
I don't know. I don't know what basis is that
split second decision in which you're swiping left or swiping right? Like,
how true is that instinct? Well, and there are people

(39:48):
who have said that perhaps the activity of using Tinder
itself is more exciting than any actual interaction that follows,
that that the thrill of ender is just the use
of Tinder, not not not any kind of actual encounter
that might follow, but just the the feeling of rejecting

(40:10):
or saying this person is attractive to me itself is
social activity. It's one that you can do with your friends.
I was reading an article about in the Wall Street
Journal about some football players, professional football players I think
out of New York, maybe the Jets or the Giants,
and they were essentially using Tinder to um find people
without advertising that they were professional football players. And so

(40:32):
you know they're sitting around though swipe left, yeah, swipe right,
and they were you know, meeting up with some of
the people they found on Tinder, and they found it
useful for when they were they were away from home
at training camp I think, maybe an upstate New York
and also to kind of give them a little bit
of a layer of anonymity until they were ready to
say like, hey, you know, I do this for a living.

(40:53):
And so in that case, they were actually looking at
to strip away some of the identifying information that would
otherwise bias someone towards them, like, you know, I want
to see if this person would be interested in meeting
up with me and or at least carrying on a
conversation with me before they know what I do for
a living, because if they know what I do for

(41:15):
a living, I'll never be sure if that's the reason
why they pursued me. Yeah, I think that was the idea. Interesting.
And then for those uh you know, Tinder is not
itself a new idea. There was actually an app that
pre uh that predated Tinder, uh called Grinder that was
specifically for gay and bisexual and by curious men to

(41:35):
find one another for essentially the purpose of hooking up. Yeah,
it was the first one, I believe. Yeah, so that
was that was something that led to the development of
other apps, So you can kind of see that as
being the genesis of the same sort of idea that
we've seen with Tinder and to maybe some extent, Cuddler,
even though again Cudler is mostly it's it's intended for

(41:56):
non sexual cuddling, or at least that's you know, that
seems to be the intention. It's hard for me to
ever say that what was intended without speaking directly to
the person who created these acts, but just based upon
what I've read, Yeah, so I guess I'm wondering if
things like Tinder and Grinder and all these things that
are sort of more geared at hooking up, if that

(42:17):
makes people change your behavior on online dating sites, Right,
so you can kind of segment out your behavior. Okay,
this is what I'm gonna use for hooking up, and
this is what I'm going to use to find my
lifelong partner. So essentially, the difference between like a real
life situation where you might go to a specific club
or bar in order for you to find someone to

(42:38):
hook up with, versus you know, you're looking seriously for
that person who's going to be taking an important part
of your life like from that point forward. Absolutely, I
expect that that actually is the case. I mean, I
imagine that that is true. UM. I don't know which
online dating sites are the most popular for the people
who tend to use the apps like Tinder. There are

(43:00):
other apps that are more meant to try and bring
people together in a social setting without the pressure of
this one on one meeting. One of them is called Grouper.
Group sounds really fun. I have to say Grouper is
kind of a neat idea, and that you end up
creating a group of three and usually, at least the
way I've seen it portrayed, it's three people of the

(43:21):
same gender who are going after a chance to meet
three other people of whichever gender the three prefer. So
you know, it doesn't have to be opposite sex, it
could be same sex. But the idea being that you
have these three people who have paid into the service
to be matched up with three other people that the
service has decided appear to be uh compatible for an

(43:45):
enjoyable evening. Yet and and the app also includes uh
it pays for the first round of drinks for everybody,
so everyone gets one free drink. Yeah, so you get
a group of six people together to hang out, and
it takes pressure off of the one on one meeting,
although it could lead to other really socially awkward situations

(44:08):
where maybe two people have interest in one person or
let's get out of here man, yeah, which right? Or
yeah or you get it, where like, you know, one
person gets left out because two of the people are
interested in you know, and and in member number one,
one person's interested in member number two. Remember number three
is out. Meanwhile, remember number one is like, well great,

(44:28):
now I've got these two people after me. Um. So
there are a lot of different things that could come up,
and it doesn't necessarily have to lead to that. It
could just be oh, that was a fun evening out,
and now I've got a new group of friends and
I can hang out with them and do stuff. So,
you know, when you I could see for this is
uh so I am not available, but one of my
friends is available. And I would totally be a wing woman.

(44:50):
And I think that is a position you can take
up when you do these group of things. You can
be a wing woman or a wingman. Sure, I actually
like to think of myself as a rather good wing woman.
I'm terrible. Yeah, I'm a great talker, but I'm also oblivious,
so I'm I'm just not in that headspace right So
for me, I would be terrible. I would be trying

(45:12):
to think of the next funny thing to say just
to make everybody laugh. And I meanwhile, whoever I'm being
wingman for is just thinking, just shut up, Jonathan, just
just shut up for a minute. Um. What's cool and
maybe not cool about Grouper at the same time is
you know, how does it come up with how to
match you up with another group of people, and it
it minds your Facebook information. Now, keep in mind you

(45:36):
have to, uh, you have to authorize the app to
be able to mind that information. And you can always
keep stuff private. I mean a lot of this ends
up being information that's publicly available because you have put
it up on Facebook and you didn't set the privacy
setting so that it couldn't be seen by other entities.
But it does mean that it's going to be looking

(45:57):
at everything from your age. It's also gonna look at
your ends list because it doesn't want to match up
three people with folks that they already know. That's not
the perfect problem in a small town setting, I would think. Yeah,
I mean it's it's even a problem just for neighborhoods, right,
I mean, Atlanta is in most cities are collections of neighborhoods,
and you have people who tend to be very um

(46:20):
like like they'll they'll range outward from their neighborhood, but
it's it gets increasingly smaller, like the they'll they'll spend
less time the further out right, unless they happen to
live in a part of town that they just considered
to be dead and they need to go to a
different part of town for stuff that happens. But I
can definitely see that becoming a challenge, especially if you're
a really social person, particularly if you're really social online,

(46:44):
because I know people who accept friend requests online. Yeah,
they'll have hundreds of them, and most studies say that
we're only capable of supporting about a hundred fifty relationships.
Oh did you just see that great video we did
on that? I know that Ben did a video on
sure it's on brain stuff. I was good. I thought
it was super interesting. It's a really good video, right, yeah, yeah,

(47:05):
And I had heard about that before we before he
had done the video, but he did a great job
explaining it. So if you keep that in mind, you
might be someone who accepts lots of friend requests anyway.
And it may be that you know you've got hundreds
of friends on Facebook. That's gonna narrow down your options
when you use something like Grouper that's specifically looking to
try and match you up with people you don't know.

(47:27):
The one cool thing I will say about Grouper is um, actually,
I think it's pretty cool in general. But the one
thing I would say about Grouper though, is that I
think it's in line with a lot of with how
people go out these days, especially the young people. If
you got a big group and so it's got that
going on for it's right in line with that. Yeah.
And I think again it all depends upon the expectations

(47:47):
you bring, right, So if you bring the expectation of
I just want to go out and meet some folks,
get to know them, have some fun, and then maybe
we find out that some of us click and that's awesome.
And may be it doesn't happen, but as long as
we're having a good time and enjoying ourselves, that's cool too.
Like I think, if you go in with the right expectations.
Then you're you're much less likely to you know, pen

(48:09):
all your hopes on something that may or may not happen,
and thus avoid a crash if it doesn't turn out
the way you had hoped. But that's easier said than done.
That's said by a guy who's been married seventeen years.
So I don't you know, I don't. It's no, I'm not.
Then there's a how about we, which is an interesting
app It lets people propose a specific date experience. Now

(48:32):
this can actually be between existing couples, where it's really
just you could send a message to your your partner
and say, how about we, you know, go out for
sushi tonight. That could be your thing, Or it could
be a way of trying to look for a date
where you describe a date that you think would be fun.
You say, how about we go to karaoke, you know

(48:54):
and seeing John Cougar Mellencamp song really loudly, and and
so you say that, and then you wait to see
if anyone responds, and if they do, and it's and
it's truly a date experience that you think would be
fun and they also think it would be fun. The
idea there is that you would be very compatible to
have a good time. Maybe nothing romantic comes out of it,

(49:16):
but you would be able to have a fun interaction
with another human being doing something you both enjoy. So, uh,
from why I understand the people who use how about
we tend to be in an older age bracket than
the folks who use Tender, but they're using it for
you know, kind of similar purpose, not necessarily to hook up,
but to have these kind of interactions with people that

(49:37):
they haven't met before. So this was interesting. There's this
one called Siren then I came across when I was
researching this podcast, and this one is a two thousand
fourteen invitation only entrant in the app world, in the
dating app world, and the spin here is that the
women control their visibility. Right. So the founders is, um,
she's actually very interesting, Susie Lee. She's an artist and

(49:59):
she's also the sa EO, and she wanted to give
women the power back in these online dating sites and
dating apps, and so instead of profiles or swiping left
or right right. So we've kind of already gone through
like what maybe problematic with the profile and talked about
the swiping business what you do here is you respond
to these daily q and a's posted by a sponsor

(50:20):
and there I think the sponsors are cultural types like
museums or you know, music organizations stuff like that, so
not like fast food restaurants or something. Right, but one
of the sample questions, one of the sample q and
as they said, was that describe your favorite sandwich from
top to bottom. Right, so you see this one pop
up on your siren app and you describe it. I

(50:40):
think you can also post video and then you can
make it visible. And people, I mean, people are pretty witty,
people are funny, and for me as an editor, one
of the things that I find really attractive about people
is their their way with words. So I think reading something,
it's it just gets that more of somebody's personality, like
that they're able to show right there. Yeah, yeah, the

(51:01):
the way that someone answers a question can tell you
a lot about their general thinking process, whether or not
you find that to be an attractive feature or not.
And yeah, I could certainly see that as being a
really cool way of deciding whether or not to try
and take that further with an actual interaction. Right. So,

(51:22):
so you like the way that this person described their
favorite sandwich, and what do you know, The next question
is who's your favorite beatle? The next day and the
same person says, like, you know, makes you laugh because
it's John Lennon and your favorite beatle is Shohn Lennon.
You've got to meet this person. So what you do
then is you'd make your information visible to the man.
And so that's that's pretty interesting. Again, it's it's kind

(51:44):
of a feminist dating app in that, um, you the
woman is unlocking her data for the man at her choice.
That's the big premise here. And I know people, some
people are gonna be unhappy and why do you need that?
But she thought there was a need for it, and
I think it's pretty no. I I do too, I think,
you know, considering that we're talking about something that in

(52:06):
our culture, and in the United States in particular, uh,
it tends to be the cultural idea tends to be
that the man is in pursuit of the woman and
that women are things to be pursued. And that's the
problem there. It's viewing women as things as exactly exactly.
So this is an approach that to try and kind

(52:28):
of counteract that in a way and Uh, and you know,
it's it's a problematic thing because we're talking about a
cultural issue. It's deep seated, and it's something that changes
very gradually with time and only with effort. Right, It's
not something that's gonna spontaneously change. So I like seeing
this kind of creative approach because I do want to

(52:50):
see that model eventually change. I would like to see
there to be a little more equality here between the genders. Um. So,
once you just side you like somebody, and if maybe
you're feeling like you want to meet somebody, you can
put out what's called a siren call, and that's basically
like you're interacting with people to see if anybody's up
for something. I love that it's a siren call. Yeah,

(53:11):
it's kind of awesome, right, yeah, because that doesn't have
any kind of uh, you know, sinister overtones, do it
at all? For those of us who enjoy things like
the Odyssey? But no, it is pretty funny. Uh. We
can't have this discussion without bringing to light an app
that was truly problematic, one that came up in two

(53:32):
thousand and twelve called Girls Around Me. Now, this app
was one that that Allison, you had not heard about right,
I don't think so. I heard about it because I
was very much following all the tech news at the time,
and it was one that I immediately found to be troubling. Now,
it was troubling in a very kind of, hey, it's
not our fault kind of way, which makes it doubly

(53:55):
troubling to me. The app pulled information from four Square
and from Facebook. Now again, to use these things, you uh,
you know, you create your profiles and you are actively
sharing things, so that that seems to be the justification
of well, it's okay for us to make this app then,
because people are active, Yeah, they're they're the ones presenting

(54:17):
this information. We're just aggregating it and displaying it um.
But part of the problem is, I think not everyone
is aware of exactly the implications of sharing their data.
They're thinking, oh, I'm I'm checking into this restaurant because
I really like the restaurant and I just want my
friends to know, and I think it's kind of cool,
and you know, get and I get bonuses if I

(54:37):
check in enough times. So what this app was doing
was it was pulling the check in information from four
Square and pulling Facebook profiles that were connected to those
four square profiles and pulling in pictures and information about people.
So if I had the app and I wanted to
use it, I could pull it up. It would pull
up a map show the check ins surrounding my area.

(55:00):
If I click on any of them, it would show
me pictures from the Facebook profile of the person who
had checked in. I could even look at their profile
and get more information about them, like what they like,
what their name is, how old they are, And so
a lot of people pointed out that this could really
facilitate stalkers, right, I mean, if I look up a person,
I think, oh, she's cute. Oh, and she likes these

(55:22):
bands and this is her name. I could walk up
to her and say, hey, there Susie. Uh yeah, you
know this band is coming to town again and I
was just thinking maybe we could go check it out. Yeah. Especially,
you could present yourself as if this person already knew you,
and that is very problematic. So especially find that problematic

(55:43):
for for younger people. Yeah, yeah, especially for anyone again
who is not truly aware of the implications of sharing.
And we see this a lot where people just don't
really think of the consequences of sharing. A lot of information. Well,
it caused so much commotion, and that four Square pulled
the API, the part of their their programming that allows

(56:05):
people to develop apps to take advantage of four squares capabilities.
They pulled it, so it took away the functionality of
the app, and eventually the the Russian company that created
the app removed it from the iTunes store because it
was broken. You couldn't use it anymore because the four
Square functionality have been pulled from it. But it certainly
was one of those things that opened up a lot

(56:26):
of eyes about the potential dangers of using these kind
of apps. So it is important to have this human interaction,
and we don't want to discourage people from having human interaction,
but you have to do it with the right context.
You have to do it with the right mind for
your safety, into your security and just whatever it is
that you're hoping to get out of it, that you

(56:47):
have the right expectations for it, because otherwise bad things
could happen. It's just that's that's the Yeah. Yeah, as
we pointed out, a lot of solid relationships, it's true. Yeah,
there's been a lot of studies about online dating that
have suggested that there are lots of benefits. Gives you
a lot more chances to meet a potential partner, so

(57:09):
your your h pool of potential partners is increased, meaning
that you have a chance of finding that relationship that
gives you real meaning and in a sense of fulfillment. Um.
It helps cut down on potentially threatening context because you
can have those early interactions in an online space as
opposed to a physical space, and you can determine quickly

(57:32):
which ones are the ones that are most promising and
which ones you think are not going to lead anywhere
or are undesirable. So that's an advantage as well. Uh,
it gives you the chance to omit people from that
pool if you realize very early on, like no, this
is not what I want, this person is not and
I are not going to click. Um. Now, we talked

(57:52):
about the shopping downside with the objectification of people. You
treat them as objects. This person is hot, this person
not hot. That is an issue. Uh, it's really easy
to to just blast through people as if they are
just data and that isn't that's a problem. Objectifying people
is not not a great outcome psychologically speaking. Um. And

(58:16):
also that matching with personality types appears to have a
relatively minor role in romantic attraction or relationship success. So
even if you find that person who on paper is
a perfect match for you, it doesn't guarantee that you
will have a happy relationship with that person. It's more
to it than that. And uh, again, it doesn't help
that we can't necessarily know what we're actually looking for

(58:39):
when we go out looking for that potential someone. We
think we do, yeah, because we think we know exactly
the things that are going to appeal to us. But
that's not always the case, you know. They say like
the opposites attract. Part of that is to say that
if you go and find someone who's exactly like yourself,
you may not find that to be a rewarding experience.
I know that if my wife are exactly like I am,

(59:01):
one of us would have killed the other one. By now,
it would have happened. One of me is more than enough,
is what I'm saying. But the studies show that online
relationships can be just as stable as those that were
formed offline. So online is a great way to meet people,
it's and it can lead to a happy, stable relationship. Um,

(59:23):
it's just important that you know, you take that expectation
and you check it to make sure that you're not
going in with with with online stars in your eyes
and m so I think the end of the day,
we say use use online tools if that's what you're
You know, when you're looking for someone, whether you're looking
for someone to hang out with or you're looking for
someone to potentially be uh, you know that that special

(59:47):
someone in your life, but do so with critical thinking,
do so with safety in mind. Do so knowing that
that's another person at the end of that profile, you know,
not an object. That is another person, eman being with feelings.
They've got hopes, they've got dreams, they've got aspirations, they've
got fears, they've got doubts about themselves. And if you

(01:00:07):
keep that in mind, and you're more likely to have
a human interaction as opposed to something that crashes and
burns and is a terrible experience for everybody. UM, I
don't know why I'm giving dating advice. I'm not necessarily
an authority on the subject. I'm just a very empathetic
kind of person that I did have a blast researching
this podcast. Yeah, it's fascinating world of modern love. Yeah,

(01:00:29):
I'm really uh and that's a great song by David Bowie.
I'm really um hoping that we can find more studies
that show really what was the psychological impact of some
of these approaches. I'm very curious to see what the
tender approach is like. Uh. From that, From that a
psychological perspective, I often I also think that most of

(01:00:51):
the people who are using tender tend to be in
an age group where it's you know, they're not necessarily
looking for the person who's going to be with them
for the rest of their lives. And there's nothing necessarily
wrong with that. Again, assuming that everyone's going in with
equal expectations. Um, So I don't necessarily think it's harmful
in the long run. It may just be one of

(01:01:12):
those phases of maturity, right so um. But again I'm
not an expert on that either. This is a lot
of armchair psychology from Jonathan today. Alison, thank you so
much for joining me. I had a blast, Jonathan, thanks
for having me. Yeah, Alison is an incredibly busy woman.
She and it's a lot of the articles that you

(01:01:33):
see at how stuff works dot com and if you've
ever visited the site and thought, Wow, this site is awesome.
A huge part of that comes from Allison makes make
sure that the awesome gets through and they'm not awesome
doesn't get through. So uh, Alison, keep fighting the good fight.
You're doing great work. And guys, if you have any
suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, maybe there's some

(01:01:55):
other aspect of technology that you've always wondered more about,
like what's the cultural impact of something, or just how
something works? Right in ask me a question my email
addresses tex stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
dropped me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. The
handle at all three is tech Stuff H. S W
and I'll talk to you again. Really sick for more

(01:02:21):
on this and bathands of other topics because it has
to have works dot Com