A picture is worth a thousand words. Really?

The new online dating site Jiffr.com says "to hell with words we have pictures." In my mind I am flipping through the ridiculously plentiful profile pictures of myself littering the web. What am I saying with them I wonder? I would never ever ever put a picture of myself anywhere that wasn't flattering. In fact flattering is an understatement the only pictures I post are exceptional (for me.) So exceptional in fact that they fail at being accurate representations of me. Even the pictures that I am not physically in tend to serve the purpose of constructing my idealized life. So, Jiffr.com, the new image based dating site made me raise an eyebrow. Can you meet someone in the idealized image world and fall in love with the non-idyllic real them?

Here is the basic idea: You select 9 mate wooing photos from your Flickr account to represent you on Jiffr. Then you browse the photo selections of others and decide who you want to date. Then, if anyone you selected as date worthy also selects you, you'll receive an email on Thursday that schedules a date on Saturday at a preselected location. The emailing is all automated, so if you change your mind or need to reschedule its over-- your chance with that person is gone.



I haven't tried it out yet but plan on bullying one of my single friends into giving it a go. I just wonder how well the matches will work. On one hand it sounds like fun. Sort of like a mystery- where you leave little image clues about yourself and try to decipher someone else's. But then again its superficial nature makes me cringe. When the tag line of the site is "get a date without words" I have to wonder what in the world will you talk about on the date.