the chocoholic
in the break a student asked if i could edit his dating profile. i told him he was asking the wrong person but i could take a look. he had only one picture. him in his normal clothes, standing on a jetty at the beach. thats fine i said, beach is fine. but maybe i need more? yeah, i said, maybe. you could get one with a dog. dogs are pretty standard. we found a picture he had taken of a dog at the park. that will do, i said. i scrolled down and saw he had only answered one prefill question: the quickest way to my heart is... chocoholic. wait what, i said, chocoholic? yes ha ha, he said. what does that even mean? joke joke, its a joke, he said, still laughing. i know, but it doesnt answer the question. i asked AI, he said. they said i should use this word. well. i agreed with him that chocoholic was a good word, but it should be moved to his job title instead. we chopped and changed things so that his profile now read, wu zhang, 19, chocaholic at supermarket, not political. the quickest way to my heart is... blank. what should i put there now, he said. i said he could find another joke, or he could just say what he really believed. i asked what his true answer was. beautiful beautiful! he said, very beautiful. hm. i told him that if he just wrote beautiful he would appear shallow and boring. instead he should think of something that women would like to read. like what? he asked. i didnt know. i tried to think but i couldnt, so we opened up chatgpt and typed the question, what do women like? the ai told us off at first, but then gave us the answers: thoughtfulness, reliability, genuine attention, emotional clarity, a sense of humour that isnt exhausting. hm. i told him that if he wrote any of these, it would look like he had serious issues. we rephrased the question. what do normal women like. the answers this time were normal. dogs, chocolate, the beach - we had these covered, but there were many things we had overlooked: wine, good food, friends, blankets, comfy clothes, drinks, tv, playlists. the suggestion that really got his attention was clean, nice smelling environments, but i said this wasnt a very good answer. it had to be either mildly romantic or severely lighthearted. then i started to think that really, he actually had it right the first time. we typed it again but tweaked the question to be ‘my friends would describe me as their friendly neighbourhood __ and for this, chocoholic was a model answer but the problem was that now he had it twice on his profile which made him look desperate and insecure and hinted that he might be lying about his chocoholism. perhaps it would make sense, i said, if you included a picture of you holding up some chocolate, you know, as evidence. we walked downstairs to the vending machine but then he told me he didnt actually want any chocolate, it was too sweet, so i bought a kinder bueno and picture of him holding it up with a smile. i gave him a piece and he said it was pretty good. the profile was done and it looked ok. he thanked me again and again for all my time and help. i dont know if i helped but i know i did my best