Flirting is not like it used to be. In fact, how people flirt changes year after year. So we decided to take a look at how successful flirting evolved in 2016.

First, we looked through all of the messages* between OkCupid users in the U.S. from January 1, 2015 to November 15, 2016. Then we sorted out the “good” conversations, or conversations that included at least four messages and a contact exchange. Finally, we compared the good conversations of 2015 to those of 2016 to see how messaging changed — which terms became more popular, which fell out of favor, and which managed to sustain their high usage frequency year after year. Because the more you know about what makes for a good message, the better you can connect with other daters on a deeper level. This is what we found:

Biggest Winners

Just like last year, a particular set of emojis saw the most significant spike in usage — although this year the set was much different from last. While daters are over waiters (💁 was used about half as frequently in 2016 as it was in 2015), nerds saw their day (er, year) in the sun.

An affinity for nerds among OkCupid should come as no surprise considering that the term with the greatest peak from 2015 to 2016 was “Pokémon Go.”

Sure, it makes sense that phrases all but unheard of in 2015 — Stranger Things, Overwatch, Zootopia — saw the most significant usage increases, but even some terms that did come up often in last year’s good conversations (cough, “Trump,” cough) still made the top 10 list. It’s true: in this isolated case, Trump is associated with good…good messages, that is; usage of “Trump” in successful messages saw a serious uptick from 2015 to 2016. Seriously.