‘Stretching the Truth to Find Love Online’ – The New York Times

Earlier this month, The New York Times published an article documenting the unique love story of two American online daters.

The post, written by Michael Hoinski follows the story of Scott Birnbaum, a “data-mad web executive” who experimented with a number of personalities on popular dating sites, like Match.com, OkCupid and JDate. 

Following a number of failed attempts at increasing his page views and dates, Birnbaum – who is 5 feet 5 inches tall – began altering his height, and found that 5 feet 8 inches was the height largely preferred by females users.

After raising his height on an OkCupid profile, he met Tracy Podell – who after a few dates, called him out on his false statistic, but was understanding of his reasons for doing so.

The couple – who are both of Jewish heritage – have since moved in together, and celebrated their wedding on Valentine’s Day this year, proving that slightly bending the truth on dating profiles isn’t always harmful.

Read the full post here.