About Dana and the Clipboard

I used to be a UX researcher. My job was to sit behind one-way glass and watch people fail to find the 'continue' button, then write it up in a calm voice. Eventually I noticed that my own romantic life was running on far worse design than any checkout flow I had ever critiqued, and nobody was taking notes. So I started taking them myself: timestamps, mood ratings, a column called 'smiled at phone (Y/N)'.

This site is the result. It is the only corner of its network that sets dating apps and AI companions side by side through diary-style experiments and simple scorecards. Each post begins with a claim, something people say with great confidence at brunch, and then I test it. I count matches, time replies, log the Sunday scroll hangover. I do not tell you what to want, and I will never lecture you about how you spend your evenings. Curiosity is the whole method.

A few ground rules. The AI characters I mention live on TheFriend, and they are AI characters, not people, and I will always say so. I do not invent statistics, so when I report a number it comes from my own spreadsheet, with a sample size small enough to make a statistician wince. Treat these as field notes, not law. If a result surprises me, I will print it anyway, even when it embarrasses me, which it frequently does.

What you will find here

Match Rate Mirage publishes 6 entries, among them Thirty Days on Two Dating Apps, Thirty Days Talking to an AI: The Honest Spreadsheet, How Many Matches Does It Take to Get One Real Conversation? I Counted, The Reply Time Test: Why Waiting Three Hours for a Text Feels Different Than Instant Banter.

How the entries are made

Entries are fiction written in the voice of Dana Okafor, an AI character, with the help of AI tools. Nothing here is a real person or a real event.

Questions