Online dating is hard. Dating is hard, period. What could be weirder than two total strangers trying to become not-total strangers? Let's just say the potential for comedic (and not so) mishaps is high.

With all that weirdness waiting to be unleashed at any second, it's no surprise we're desperate for any tip, trick, or nugget of wisdom that might stave it off. We've studied some seriously strange things in the name of cracking the online dating code, and although some are as weird as the weirdness they're trying to prevent, they're always interesting.

Check out a few unusual online dating facts below. You're bound to be surprised by at least one.

1. Men aren't into receiving short messages. Forget all the stereotypes about men hating it when women talk too much. A message from a woman to a man is 40% more likely to get a response if it's longer than a tweet (140 characters).
2. Men are, however, into women who make the first move. Women are 73% more likely to get a response if they mention “dinner,” “drinks,” or “lunch.” Speaking of stereotypes, maybe the one about “the quickest way to a man's heart” is true.
3. Online dating has a seasonal peak. The busiest time for online dating is between Christmas and Valentine's Day. According to Zoosk, the single most popular day is January 5, when 54% more people sign up.
4. There's an art to using smileys. Put aside emojis for a second and go back to the good old days of the classic smiley. If you send one with a nose :-), you're 13% more likely to get a response. If your smiley is lacking that key facial feature :), it's 66% less likely to get a message back.
5. Being active is attractive. Ok, maybe this one isn't so surprising, but it's still interesting. Wired made an infographic showing 380 of the 1,000 most commonly used words in profiles. Active, outdoorsy words like “surfing,” “skiing,” and “yoga” topped the list.
6. People actually prefer selfies. Joke about selfies all you want, but they're shockingly effective if you're looking for a date. A Zoosk study found that 84% of people favor selfies over formal profile pictures.
7. Too much online chit-chat can ruin a good thing. Because safety is a consideration when meeting a stranger over the Internet, you may think it's best to prolong the convo for as long as possible before meeting up in person. However, a 2013 study in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication suggests that too much communication could be problematic. The more you talk before a first date, the more time you have to idealize the person and the greater the risk of a letdown when you finally meet face-to-face.

Real talk about Tinder: it can be a frustrating, maybe even scary, place to be a woman sometimes.

In fact, any online dating site fits that description. The entire Internet fits that description. Give people an anonymous username to hind behind, and suddenly all their worst behavior is on full display. I'm not saying it's everyone, but it's enough people to make it a serious problem.

Normally serious problems require serious solutions, but a California-based programmer decided to take a more humorous approach.

According to The Verge, the unnamed programmer tweaked Tinder's API, turning it into “a catfish machine that fools men into thinking they’re talking to women – when in fact they’re talking with each other.” He began by creating bait profiles, one using the image of a popular vlogger and the other using the image of a friend who gave her consent.

He then developed a program to identify men who indicate interest in one of the bait profiles. Once it finds two, the program matches them to each other and lets them begin the awkward, hilarious process of striking up a conversation. Within minutes of activation, the program was hard at work.

The programmer – who The Verge calls “Patrick” – estimates he witnessed 40 conversations within the first 12 hours. He developed a code to scramble phone numbers and stepped in if a real world meeting was in the cards, but says he feels torn about the ethics of his prank.

"They ignore all the signs, they ignore all the weird things," he told The Verge. "When someone is so quick to meet up without any detail or know anything about the person at all — maybe it’s deserved."

Patrick's prank was inspired by his female friends who often complained about their interactions on Tinder. His first plan was to build a Twitter bot that tweeted every first message received by a female friend, but after looking into Tinder's API, he discovered it had few protections and his vision grew.

"Tinder makes it surprisingly easy to bot their system,” he says. “As long as you have a Facebook authentication token, you can behave as a robot as if you were a person."

Patrick is far from the first to reveal the weakness of Tinder's API, but he's certainly the funniest and most socially relevant. Other hacks can be and have been used for morally ambiguous, or even dangerous, purposes. This one is good for a few laughs and makes a valid, important point about the way we treat each other online.

To read some of the priceless exchanges, check out the original post on The Verge. Check out our review of Tinder for more about the dating app.

Let's not sugar coat this: there few things worse than the end of a relationship. If you breakup with your SO, find out your goldfish died, and then realize you've run out of ice cream, then yes, you're having a truly terrible day and have my deepest sympathies.

But barring that unexpected car crash of unfortunate events, a breakup is about as bad as it gets. Being in a relationship takes a lot of effort, even if it isn't a very long one, and at the end it feels like your energy is totally tapped out. Then you think about the fact that you have to start the process all over again with someone new, and becomes twice as exhausting.

People don't just hop up and run marathons. They train, slowly, until they're in good enough shape – both mentally and physically – to take on the challenge.

Adopt the same strategy for your post-breakup plan. There's no rush, but you do need to put conscious effort into the process or you'll never cross the finish line. Here are 3 exercises to add to your breakup personal training program:

1. Spend time dating yourself. After the chaos of a breakup, you need peace, quiet, and time to regroup. It's easy to lose sight of who you are in a relationship that isn't working, so use this time to recover your sense of self. Treat yourself to the things you love, whether it's brunch, bike rides, cooking classes, or trips to museums. The goal is to remember how great your own company is and regain a solid idea of yourself as a single individual. Once you've got that down, you'll be ready to let another person in and feel more confident about doing it.
2. Find the fun in flirting. If you're just getting out of a relationship, your flirting muscles probably haven't been exercised in a while. They're bound to be a little stiff, and as the marathon runner from earlier knows, stiff muscles need to be carefully stretched. When you have the opportunity to put your flirty feelers out, do it. Don't expect anything in return – being overly attached to a specific outcome is a good way to set yourself up for failure – just enjoy the fun of working muscles that have been dormant.
3. Be social. Ben & Jerry are good dates for a limited amount of time, but pretty soon they'll be hurting instead of helping. Grab your friends and get out, whatever “out” means to you. It can be an afternoon of picnicking in a park or a wild night of partying – either one, or anything in between, is helpful as long as you're putting yourself in social situations. Bonus points if you start talking to strangers in addition to your friends.

Suddenly 26 miles doesn't seem so hard, does it?

Dating website Plenty of Fish (POF) has been making headlines recently for its longevity and user milestones, as well as its recent disclosure of financial information about the company. But thanks to the new anti-spam law in Canada, POF now has an unwanted headline that they have to deal with - the popular dating website has been ordered to pay $48,000 in fines for its email practices.

Canadians complained of Plenty of Fish’s marketing tactics, which launched an investigation by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and the Competition Bureau into the company’s practices. Specifically, the agencies examined how the company handles commercial emails to subscribers.

According to the disgruntled users, POF sent them commercial messages without a noticeable “opt out” or “unsubscribe” feature. One of the key requirements in the law is that each commercial email contain an unsubscribe mechanism to allow recipients to opt-out at any time. Also, according to the wording of the law, the unsubscribe feature has to be prominently displayed and “readily performed.”

Plenty of Fish agreed to paying a $48,000 penalty and developing a new compliance program to address its problematic email practices. The compliance program will include training and education for staff, as well as corporate policies and procedures regarding email marketing.

The new anti-spam law has been in effect since last year, but the Canadian agencies have had their challenges in enforcing it because of how vast and pervasive the problem of spamming seems to be. Millions of spam emails are sent every day by spammers from all over the world. Experts argued that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and the Competition Bureau were not equipped to handle such a pervasive issue.

The agencies however, are proving the critics wrong. The Competition Bureau recently alleged that rental car companies Budget and Avis engaged in false and misleading advertising when they failed to disclose numerous additional fees as part of their car rental promotions, including their email promotions. The Bureau is seeking $30 million in fines and reimbursement to customers. And the CRTC discovered that Compu-Finder, a Quebec-based corporate training company, sent commercial emails without consent and like POF, without proper unsubscribe mechanisms. The company was hit with a $1.1 million penalty.

CRTC notes in a press release that POF did not argue with the fine or the accusation, and hopes that by example, other companies will be inspired to change their own email spamming tactics. As for POF, the company continues to grow its subscriber base despite its setbacks, recently announcing its user base has grown to 100 million worldwide.

For most people, Tinder is, at best, a chance to find a date and, at worst, an amusing diversion when standing in line or when there's nothing good on Netflix. But for artist and hacker Matthew Rothenberg, Tinder is an opportunity for an art project.

The project is called Swipe Left, and in it he inserts imagery of drone strikes and drone strike victims into the dating app. “For most of my career I've explored how real people and communities interact with technology,” Rothenberg writes on his website, “and all the messy things that happen when they do.”

That's exactly what this project does, although “messy” is a strong understatement. Rothenberg drew a complex connection between Tinder use and drone strikes. “The interface of Tinder is consciously reductionist,” he writes on Medium. “You get a name, age, and (sometimes) a very brief bio. The decision tree is binary: yes or no (or in Tinder UI, swipe right or left). No winks, nudges, or ratings. No bookmarking to come back later for decision. You have to make a decision in order to move on.”

Every decision made on Tinder is final. Accidentally swipe left on the love of your life, and they're gone for good. But, Tinder reminds you, there's a new potential love waiting just on the other side of that swipe. They're available immediately. There's no time for regret, remorse, reflection – the cycle continues instantly, and users are left feeling fine about the fact that they just reduced an incredibly complex thing – love – to a painfully simple activity.

And then there's drone strikes. Part of the reason they are so controversial is “the sense of dehumanized technology,” Rothenberg says. The kill list looks remarkably similar to something else: a list of members who meet a series of criteria, a photo, their age, a brief bio. In the end it's a simple binary decision. Yes or no. Swipe right or swipe left.

In both cases, the computer mediated user interface provides a distancing barrier between the viewer and an action. The barrier creates a sense of separation and encourages quick action. So what happens when New Yorkers find “drone strikes images interspersed with their continuous yes-and-no swiping to Tinder matches of shirtless-ab-photos and Instagram-filtered-art-selfies taken in the MoMA rain room?”

Well, the “what” isn't actually important, according to Rothenberg. He is uninterested in which way people swipe, merely the fact that they have to swipe. “How viewers choose to react is far less interesting to me than the fact that they’ve been forced into this situation to begin with,” he says. Any reaction at all is a valid and interesting data point for the Swipe Left project.

Online dating services like eHarmony and Match have long touted the science behind their matching process, claiming that specially designed algorithms hold the secret to lasting love. But how accurate is this claim? That is, are people who join online dating sites finding long-term relationships easier to come by?

Not according to a recent study by a group of researchers from five different universities in the Midwest, South, East Cost, and West Coast. The authors found that online dating sites offer a different experience and more opportunities compared to conventional dating, but the success of these sites is not clear – namely, the matching algorithms haven’t proven their anticipated success.

“There is one fundamental problem with all of these algorithms,” Eli Finkel, a psychologist at Northwestern University who was one of the researchers for the study, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “They have set themselves up with an impossible task: They assume that they can take information from two people who are totally unaware of each other’s existence and determine whether they are compatible. That is completely false.”

According to the study, the algorithms are misleading, because research has found both similarity and “complementarity” – the basic tenants of online match-making – have little impact on relationship quality overall. Not to mention, people are confused about what they actually want. For instance, in some studies of speed dating, the participants’ ideas of the perfect match often don’t align with who they end up being attracted to in person.

This conflicts with a 2013 study from researchers at the University of Chicago, who found that online couples have happier, longer marriages - assumingly because of the matching process.

Online dating has been around for over two decades, but until recently (thanks to the soaring popularity of apps like Tinder) – was not something the majority of singles pursued. Now, the tables have turned. According to Match, 40 million Americans have used an online dating service. On top of that, a study in 2013 (funded by eHarmony) showed that almost a third of marriages were made through online dating. So why are researchers poking holes in the science now?

“He is debunking a problem no one believes exists,” OkCupid coFounder Christian Rudder told The San Francisco Chronicle. “We’re there to get you that first date. We do use math and we do get people dates.”

Real connection however, according to Finkel, happens with face-to-face interactions, or virtual ones, through Skype of Facetime – which aren’t part of the online matching process. Tinder for instance, doesn’t claim to make good matches, but it does the job of getting people more dates.

The study was conducted by Eli J. Finkel (Northwestern University), Paul W. Eastwick (Texas A & M University), Benjamin R. Karney (UCLA), Harry T. Reis (University of Rochester), and Susan Sprecher (Illinois State University).