Online dating profiles can sometimes be so frustratingly thorough: annoying to fill out, annoying to read, annoying to attempt to achieve the ultimate combination of accessible and mysterious. But if you can’t be bothered to list your favorite books, movies, and the six things you can never live without, alternative sources will match you for dates using the things you do anyway—browsing reddit and watching funny Internet videos.

Reddit itself is a treasure trove of redditor-created dating sites (full disclosure: reddit is a cousin site of Ars). Take for instance LaughMatch by Haon, a site posted to r/dating a few weeks ago. When users register with the site, they watch a series of funny Internet videos, like an episode of My Drunk Kitchen, a parody review of a 2000 Toyota Corolla, or a bad lip read of Twilight. The site then matches the users with dates based on where they place the rating slider between a happy and sad face.

Another even more simplistic site, 4.everalone by firehazard99, purports to match users based on their favorite subreddits. Users must validate with a reddit login, provide an e-mail address, and a list of your five favorite subreddits. The site’s creator then e-mails users when he finds another redditor with the same subreddit priorities.

Other redditors are just looking to improve upon the regular dating site formula. One now-defunct site, TalkOverTea by bkanber, inverted the normal profile review/messaging process by engaging two users in a virtual conversation first and slowly revealing tidbits of their profiles over the course of the conversation. This theoretically prevents daters from pre-judging each other before speaking.

New-school dating is old-school again

Real, established dating sites have a few years of history now. They have a number of success stories and positive statistics to back them up, even if those data points are more marketing ploy than science. Their comprehensive nature changes the dating landscape for a number of reasons, not least of which is the ability to screen for nonnegotiables that might fail to otherwise surface in conversation until a few dates in: religion, position on marriage, whether or not someone thinks horoscopes are for real, and so on.

The smaller niche dating sites, though, are ironically quaint. They’re far more similar to meeting someone for the first time in person, the way it was in Ye Olden Days. You say hello, make small talk, and eventually discover some common ground. You have been to and enjoy the same disco; both of your mothers were suffragettes; you went to the same 4 Non-Blondes concert; etc. Having made that connection in the seething vortex of social interaction, you ask to see each other again. It was once that simple! In a world where you can spend some idle hours decoding the meaning of someone’s OKCupid username, never mind the rest of their profile, this has some appeal.

Sites like 4.everalone reduce dating again to straightforward commonality. Maybe it’s too simple. Simplicity can make it too hard to ascertain certain info before agreeing to meet someone—that they aren't a shut-in, latent racist, or have a bedroom that contains Darth Vader sheets and Beastmaster posters. And, we hate to say it, but the sites are possibly unsafe and possibly ineffective.

Then again, perhaps this is the current generation’s variety of tools for experimentation. Our parents had Studio 54, swinging parties, and cocaine. We have the Internet, cat videos, and reddit.