Dataclysm: Who We Are*
Sarah Noll
HSB4U
April 14, 2015

The purpose of
Dataclysm
by Christian Rudder is to show us who we truly are.
Rudder links Facebook “likes” to popularity and how “hot” someone is and also their sexual orientation and how intelligent they are. The book is used to predict the future and to show how social media affects our lives. This book is a book of it’s own, it isn’t a series. It talks about current events that have happened within the past 15 years such as the creation of Facebook and Twitter. It talks about dating sites and how they’re used in comparison to meeting people in person. The main purpose of the book was about how people don’t realize how much social media sites affect their life. Rudder talks about many different social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and a dating site called OkCupid. When talking about Facebook, Rudder says that the amount of “likes” can predict, extremely accurately, a person’s sexual orientation and even intelligence. This shows that people are always determining things about you based on what’s happening on your online profile, which you can’t control. Another thing Rudder talks about is Twitter, and how the amount of followers you have can show your popularity and that you have to have haters to be hot. But does this really seem fair? Could you be the prettiest girl in the world, but if you get along with everyone you’re no longer considered hot? Social media does funny things to people and can make you extremely insecure.

OkCupid is a dating site, run by Rudder and a few others. He began to organize this site and turn it into a dating site when he wanted to see the connection between people. Rudder figures out, using many different studies, what age group women go for depending on their age and vice­versa for males. For example, he has posted graphs in the book to show different things. One of the graphs Rudder posted was to show “a man’s age vs. the age of the women who look best to him”. The graph showed that men will go for women no younger than the age of 24, even once they’ve hit 50, which really lowers women’s self­esteem. His studies have shown that if you are a women, and you haven’t found a partner by