"It really has my wheels turning on things like "just what makes someone compatible, anyway?" There has to be something to the fact that we answered so much in common--but what is it, exactly?"

I'm not quite sure how OKCupid does the matching thing, but it does seem to be effective. The I guess is *why* did we answer so much in common, while other folks range across the spectrum? What in our background molded us to have similar viewpoints on things? Why do other folks from similar backgrounds have very different views?

No answers, just questions. People are fascinating.

"I'd love to talk to you further. I'd also be very interested in hearing what it is that compelled you to post. What were you thinking as you kept looking further and what pushed you to actually press the button to respond?"

I've had a couple of good experiences recently with emailing back and forth with high match percentage people. I actually had a quite enjoyable evening sitting around the campfire with someone who contacted me through the site. So I was predisposed to trust that you might be someone interesting.

Hmmm. This is the first time I've initiated contact, come to think of it. Lets see...I joined OKCupid basically to goof off with the tests and questions. When I ran through all the questions, I started looking at the matches just from curiosity/boredom. I'll occasionally spend a moment or so looking at profiles, and checking out Live Journals if they have one. But I've always just left things at that. That was the pattern I was following. Your interest list overlapped mine, and your self description was written by someone evidently quite insightful, so I had moved on to looking at your recent posts. Usually that would have been it. But, you had just recently posted about OKCupid--I got a sense that I wouldn't be intruding, and that I might have something interesting to add to the conversation. So I followed a whim. :) Glad you didn't mind.