I nearly cancelled a date because his profile and messages felt like two different people
His dating profile was extremely serious.
Every answer mentioned career goals, routines or personal development. His photos looked like professional headshots. I expected the date to feel like a job interview.
His messages were completely different. They were casual, funny and occasionally misspelled.
I became suspicious that someone else had written his profile.
Before cancelling, I entered the profile text and several anonymized messages into Accio Work. I asked it to compare tone, recurring vocabulary and the topics each version emphasized.
The analysis showed a clear difference in formality, but it also found several uncommon phrases that appeared in both. Accio Work suggested the most likely explanation was heavy editing rather than a completely different writer.
I asked him directly whether someone had helped with his profile.
He admitted that his sister rewrote nearly all of it because she thought his original answers sounded “unambitious.” He showed me the original version, which was much closer to his messages and much funnier.
We went on the date.
He was not pretending to be someone else. He had simply allowed a family member to turn his profile into a corporate biography.
The date went well, and he replaced two profile answers afterwards.
I’m glad I asked instead of assuming, although I still think outsourcing your dating profile to a sibling should require a small disclosure.