Paradox Solved?

Man, I love the internet…

The Results Are In!!!

Yes, thanks to the mighty power of the internet we now have a conclusive answer to The Dinner Paradox. For those of you who aren’t too familiar with The Dinner Paradox I along with several of my colleagues navigating the dating scene are constantly trying to figure out the proper first date protocol. Now, I consider myself to be a cultured and forward thinking somewhat young man. Thus, I have no problem with splitting the check. I also have no problem with paying for dinner either. However, by paying for dinner I might give the impression that I am creating a quid pro quo or even indicating to the woman that I feel the need to pay her for her time. On the other hand, by splitting the check I might look like a cheapskate. Hence, the paradox. Pay for dinner and she’ll think I’m a chauvinist pig. Split the check and she’ll be expecting me to steal ketchup packets on my way out of the restaurant.

This is not a minor issue. It’s probably the tensest part of the night. I’ve had huge arguments over what it indicated when I paid for dinner one night at Between the Buns. Like the fact that I considered a place named “Between the Buns” a perfectly fine location for an evening out wasn’t enough of a red flag to begin with. Anyway, this is one of those questions where I really needed to know the answer.

Thanks to the good folks at ask500people.com I was able to survey 100 people around the world on the following question: “On a first date, who should pay for dinner?” with the four options being a) the guy, b) the girl, c) split evenly and d) whoever asked the other one out. Follow the link to see a graphical version of this (as well as the opinion in Bolivia) but the quick results:

The Guy: 48
Whoever Asked the Other Out: 39
Split Evenly: 9
The Girl: 4

First off, I have to give props to the Dublin resident who voted for the Girl to pay for dinner. Because isn’t my company worth an additional payment? You’re getting to be seen in public with a guy like me, I should be getting my drinks for free at a minimum. (Yeah, that often repeated claim of “EC is a selfish bastard” is probably making the rounds again.)

But I have to say that I am rather amazed by this. I really thought that Split Evenly would have a much better showing. I really had thought that it had become the norm and that the whole “I’ll pay for everything” was considered passé. Whoever Asked the Other Out is probably a nicer compromise as that is typically the guy though I don’t think I would ever in a million years let someone pay for my check on the first date. That’s not chauvinism, it just feels like the most awkward thing in the world. The real answer is “The Guy pays, unless she asks you out in which case you split the check.” Please file that information for future reference.

Oh, and the reason why 100 people were surveyed from a site named “Ask 500 people” is due to the site still being in beta. It’s not a strong scientific sample and I’m not happy with the margin of error or the participation bias but it is still a good indicator. As to the two comments people had on my question my replies are: A) Yes, I did not account for same sex dating. While that is a valid point it a) not relevant to my study and b) really difficult to account for when you’re only given 100 characters for your question. Hopefully further study will be performed in that instance. B) “It depends” is never a valid answer.



Wednesday Night Music Club: Cowboy Junkies. They’ve been showing up in the random CD list for a few weeks now. Thought that I’d share a song while I was thinking about it.

They turned all the great themes into theme parks

I find it very comforting to know that I can reference a somewhat obscure Christian Slater movie from 1990 and immediately have people replying with phrases from the film. It shows that I know my audience as we are all a bunch of non-conformist slackers who are essentially too lazy to conform.

I actually own Pump Up the Volume on DVD as I saw it for like five bucks at Best Buy one day. I watched the film incessantly as a teenager and watching it now my thought is mainly, “Wow, it really is just a Jack Nicholson impersonation.” That and I’m still trying to figure out why there are only six teachers in the entire school. Also, it was nice to know that at one point the government felt that the biggest threat to our country’s safety was pirate radio stations.

What does it say about Generation X that the actors and actresses of our youth have essentially disappeared? Well, that’s not entirely true. Johnny Depp has gone from being on 21 Jump Street to being a pirate, I guess that is a step in the right direction. But Christian Slater has been lost to the mists of time. Winona Ryder is struggling to find work and Molly Ringwald hasn’t had a meaningful gig since The Stand in 1995. That’s the strange thing about our generation, we were so small we will disappear from modern culture in a blink of an eye.

That disappearance is going to happen really soon as well. I often claim that I am at the heart of Gen X. Born in 1973 I was 18 when Smells Like Teen Spirit was released. I am as Gen X as they come and next year I will be 35 and no longer important to any marketer. As part of my job I was looking at trends for 18-34 year olds and I realized that in ten months this will no longer apply to me or anyone I went to school with. Imagine that, popular culture will no longer have to address the slacker culture. It’s a sad state of affairs.

I’m still not sure what our mark on the overall culture will end up being. We certainly created a great deal of good music as well as paved the wave for the mainstreaming of hip hop. Indie films took off, especially the introspective life studies that everyone with a Super 8 camera and a lot of free time discovered that they could make. There are some good writers but I don’t think that our cultural impact is going to be measured by what culture we left behind. I think it is going to be our attitude towards the world. We saw a world that was ruined before we got there and went, “Well, what’s the point?” I’m still asking that question today. People are now running around talking about climate change and I wrote papers about that twenty years ago. No one listened to me then and it’s too late to fix it now. Maybe that will be the epitaph for Generation X “We knew what was wrong, they just wouldn’t listen.” That or “Dude, have you seen my flannel?”

Completely changing subjects: I found out about the website www.ask500people.com where you can pose questions to the internet at large. I’ve of course signed up and posted the “Who should pay for dinner” question because I want the entire world to weigh in on this one. If you want you can hit the site, click through and vote for my question to be asked. Look, we all want to know the answer to this one so help me out.