Dude. Srsly?

You know, I sometimes joke that I’m really an 11-year-old boy. I often find humor in things they would, I enjoy the ridiculous, I can be a real smartass, and I talk as if I’m still in college. Srsly. Maybe it’s because I work at a University and part of my job revolves around social media such as Facebook and Twitter, but I have to say, I have found my niche. Social media is what I do, and it to some extent defines who I am. Posting, reading, remixing, and commenting on the community around me is hugely important to me–it’s also how I have met a lot of very cool people I would never have known otherwise.

When I joined the dating site OkCupid I wasn’t sure what to expect–I’d been told it was “a dating site with social networking aspects.” And I’ve found that to be somewhat true, though I have to say, the addicting part of the site for me is the Match questions (like a mini-Cosmo quiz!) and the Quizzes themselves. I’m up to about 700 match questions answered and I have no idea how many quizzes I’ve taken, but all of them have been enormous fun.

I have to say, though, OkCupid included, that there’s something about the perception of the demographic involved in social media—Facebook is still largely seen as a college-age activity, though its largest growth market is users in middle-age. And while that Verizon commercial includes parents tweeting, the perception is that Twitter users are younger as well—folks who “aren’t busy working or parenting.” This, even though there are more Twitter users who are 35-44 than 18-24.

So what are the demographics of OkCupid? Well, the only stat I found is that as of March 2009, 52% of users here are males aged 18-34. Good for me, but only if these guys are looking for an older woman, yes? And yes, I’ve heard the term cougar; I’m just not too sure yet how I feel about it.

You see, my age and my interests don’t align with the perceptions. Age-wise, the perception states that I should be on Facebook sporadically, and on Twitter not at all. Let’s leave for the moment the whole Flickr/Posterous/Facebook/GoogleWave thing. I probably shouldn’t have even heard of most of those.

But that’s who I am. And that’s what I do. And I’m trying to figure out just where that plays out in the whole dating thing.  ‘Cause I gotta tell ya, there are folks out there my age who are interested in dating, but they’re not really sure what to do with my social media stuff. And others who align with my interests, but who don’t know what to do with my age. Me? I think I’m just going to let it unfold. At least until I figure out just where I fit in this brave new world. Any ideas?