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Ashleigh Kim
Professor Ogbara
English 1A
24 November 2015
Book Review
Introduction
In The Filtered Encounter: Online Dating and the Problem of Filtering Through
Excessive Information, Kirsty Best and Sharon Delmege explain why filtering through so many
potential partners in the online dating world can dilute the dating experience for participants and
how this dilution creates social impact. The end result of so much filtering, they argue, is that too
many potential mates to sort through, based on superficial online personas, directly increase the
number of disappointing mates. This review will identify the main arguments of the scholarly
article, and will evaluate the effectiveness of the article to convey its main arguments through the
evaluation of rhetoric appeals and faulty reasoning.
Authors Arguments
Best and Delmege open their article by explaining why their viewpoint would be counterintuitive
to the belief of most people about online dating. Technology, in its essence, is meant to liberate
its utilizers by providing them with all the potential options of their search. When applied to
online dating, it seems as though, based on just common sense that the more options one has
available to them, the most likely it is for that person to select the best potential mate out of their
options. The authors main arguments seek to oppose this viewpoint by

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explaining why an increase in options does not imply an increase of results. Their first main
argument is that dating websites assume that the users know what they want. They claim that
while users develop an instinct to what they want, but can be a dead end in that participants
often find a gap between what they think they desire and what they actually desire in a mate, and
so evading the random can become a useless search in all the wrong directions. (252) Their next
argument is that it creates a shopping culture of dating. Their last main point as why online
dating is perhaps not as effective as it would seem would the incompatibility between the
searching options dating sites offer and what daters really want to find out. They bolstered this
point by showing different questions that online sites would ask their users that in a real face-toface date, seem irrelevant, too personal or just elicit a who cares response.
Evaluation
An area in which I felt the authors could have been more effective in delivering their argument
was the pathos. When explaining their shopping cart analogy, one of their key points, although
i had an idea, I was not entirely sure what this meant. Did it mean that participants of online
dating would filter their searches the same way they would filter houses by price range when
seeking to buy a new house? Or did it mean that participants when shopping for a new mate
online, would add to cart more than the specific item they were looking as I do when I online
shop. As a reader I would have liked to see more imagery with their analogies to create a
relatability between writer and reader, especially because their topic is such a social topic.

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Another shortcoming of the writers was their choice of faulty reasoning. In their
conducted study where the authors interviewed a sample population they were considerate in
getting diverse representation in age, gender, and experience with online dating. However, the
demographic in which they did not establish was fairly represented in their study, was race. This
was a generalization on the authors part. It is also to be noted that they establish earlier in the
article that different demographics respond to online dating differently, where they mention race.
Therefore, if different races respond to online dating differently than it would be essential to the
research and analysis of this article to establish that different races were represented.
However there were many areas in which the authors were very effective. In their range
of interviews, there were many representations that elaborated on the success of online dating,
which is the complete opposite of their viewpoint. They also included various credible sources
frequently in their article, that appealed to the readers sense of ethos because it established the
credibility of the authors themselves. They even go so far as to give credit to online dating sites
to improve themselves. As well, these sites recognize the intrinsic value of heightened filtering
options, and many are investing in novel services to allow participants to refine their search for a
desirable mate, such as offering virtual dates, psychological profiles, or the findings of
neuroscience, friend referrals and criminal background checks listed above. (239). They appeal
to the readers sense of logos by stating statistics and displaying graphs by elaborating on those
findings of neuroscience, an area that seems would get minimal representation in an analysis
of online dating.

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Conclusion
This critical review has evaluated the article The Filtered Encounter: Online Dating and the
Problem of Filtering Through Excessive Information by Kirsty Best and Sharon Delmege.
Despite their lack of appeal to pathos, when explaining their analogies, they compensate by
rendering the interviews in a very relatable way to readers. They do a good job of organizing
their research and analysis, supporting their points, and establishing logos and ethos with their
readers.