I asked Alex and Adam a few questions to help me with this blog, and their response was so good I decided to just post it for you all here, verbatim. Why mess with a good thing? Besides, before this I never knew how to make a winking Abraham Lincoln emoticon.
Words by Alex and Adam:
It was summer 2011. Looking to the West for a fresh start, Alex immigrated to San Francisco with all her earthly possessions. She was quickly engulfed in a sea of transplanted peoples who were all clamoring for tech jobs, affordable apartments, and boyfriends.
But where to find them? If Nate Silver could number crunch his way to the winning presidential candidate, and Google could find a song title by transcribing someone’s humming, why not let big data pick someone for the big day?
At the other end of the Ethernet cable, Adam was thinking the same thing. Adam signed up on the OkCupid, an online dating service, where he filtered the thousands of female candidates by the number of times “biking” appeared in a profile. Alex was a statistical outlier, second only to fans of the hit San Francisco music sensation “the Bi Kings.” Perfect.
Adam messaged Alex, (Hello!) and what followed can only be described as the most charming conversation about traffic in the history of flirty traffic correspondence complete with flirty emoticons (e.g. winking Abraham Lincoln =|;^|>). Soon they met up for a drink. Adam, a risk taker, was quickly spinning in his swiveling bar stool to show Alex how at ease he was. And Alex was at ease too.
On their second date, Adam took Alex out to dinner and played it cool. By the time Adam offered to escort Alex home after dinner, she had gotten the impression he was no longer interested. Still, impressed after he spent all his grad school lunch money on oyster appetizers, Alex spent the entire walk home nervously non-stop talking. Adam listened intently, wondering how he would buy lunch the next day but also how he had fallen on such luck to be in front of Alex who he was trying to impress by playing it cool. She was still talking by the time they were standing at her front door, and without any signs of stopping, he pulled her closer on an impulse and said, “you talk too much.” She stared, speechless. And he kissed her.
Two weeks later, Adam surprised Alex by introducing her as his girlfriend. Six weeks later, Alex returned the favor, and they were on their way.