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Did you look to the most popular kids in high school when you needed dating advice? After all, they must be doing something right!

More often, I tried to listen to the good friends I had that knew me so well, but OkCupid seems to go along with the theory that the most popular kids have the most to teach the rest of us, at least when it comes to dating. So, I wanted to take a look at what they were saying.

OkCupid picked four of the most popular daters on the site (male and female, gay and straight) to provide tips for singles on how to online date.

The most popular straight female is a 23 year-old woman named Lauren who gets a lot of attention from her striking pictures and tattoos that cover her arms and legs. According to a recent interview in New York Magazine, Lauren receives around three dozen emails a day; in the last seven months, she’s received five-star ratings, the highest possible rating, from nearly 8,000 men.

Lauren admits she has an advantage because she is a make-up artist and knows how to create a good photo. Plus, she knows how to work the camera to show off features because guys are most interested in visuals. “I believe in a head-to-toe shot to show what you look like,” she says. “But you don’t need to have your ass hanging out!”

She also notes her love of astronomy, explaining that she likes to show her intelligence as well as her looks, even though guys still will message women based only on pictures (as we saw with a recent OkCupid experiment with the worst profile ever created).

She got a surge of emails she got when she first joined the site by choosing “casual sex” as a relationship possibility, along with long and short term options. This opened a floodgate of lude emails from guys. “I’m not a prostitute,” she tells the magazine. “But they don’t get that.” So she removed this description from her profile.

Some of the most questionable advice came from 29 year-old James Hawver, who said that he could double for Ryan Gosling, which I’m sure if it was true he would be one of the most popular guys on the site. He likes to accept every woman as a potential match, which I admire. When he uses Tinder, he accepts all matches even before looking at them. Same with OkCupid. He wants to know that a woman is interested before he starts messaging, so he only responds to the ones who accept him back, in order to cut down on the rejection. Because this can be time-consuming, he sends out the same generic yet flirtatious email to each of them, and gets quite a few responses.

He also likes to “round out the truth,” especially when it comes to physical factors like height. He is an inch shorter than his 5’10” profile would proclaim.

What does he do with all these matches? He goes on a lot of dates, and he doesn’t seem ready to settle down anytime soon. “A lot of us want the best: the best job, the best apartment, the best significant other,” he says.

So I guess it makes sense to keep on dating. For more on this online dating service you can take a look at our Okcupid.com review

Users of online dating sites sometimes get frustrated and overwhelmed with all the lengthy profiles and messaging back and forth before they ever get to a date with a potential match. A simple solution: why not test the chemistry first by video chatting with each other before meeting for drinks or coffee?

Enter a new crop of online dating apps focused on video interaction. Among those making headlines in this growing field are Date.fm, Flikdate, Video Date and two new apps launched last fall -- View N Me and Instamour.

Developers of these apps saw an opportunity when they noticed how Skype and Facetime are fast becoming typical platforms for people to communicate. They figured singles would want to see if there's chemistry before spending the time and money and effort to meet a date in person. And why not do that from your laptop or mobile phone?

While it sounds great to meet a potential date through a video chat, some people aren't so convinced. Not everyone is a movie director or cinematographer who can figure out good lighting to highlight someone's most attractive features. All too often, poor lighting and strange camera angles can interfere with making a good first impression. View N Me offers tips for looking your best on video to address this problem.

Safety is another concern, and different app developers deal with it in different ways. For example, Video Date does not use phone numbers or e-mails for people to communicate through the service, and messages delete after 24 hours. View N Me offers a strict no tolerance policy for any type of inappropriate behavior on its site. Once someone is reported they conduct a review and terminate the subscription if the user's behavior is deemed inappropriate.

But the most important question for daters is: how easy is the service to use?

Date.fm works a bit like a video-enabled Tinder app. It is simple to use - the service provides general information like age and location along with photos of matches, and you can like or dislike them. If you both like each other, you are sent a notification and then can start video chatting from within the app. FlikDate touts itself as "the fastest date in the world." You simply connect with your Facebook account and play a type of video roulette, where you can chat with someone instantly, see if you click, and accept or reject your match on the spot.

It's no surprise that video dating is becoming more and more popular. People are looking for quick ways to get to know each other. But the real test for love still takes time and effort.

When writing an online dating profile, it can be easy to become anxious. Most of what we focus on is what we can control - how we’re coming across in this sentence or with this picture. Sure, there’s not a lot we can control when it comes to the chemistry between two people, but we focus on making the best first impression we can.

The problem is, though the approach is logical, we wind up placing a lot of emphasis on the judgement of others, rather than whether we’re really looking for a connection with another person. In fact, we can put so much weight on whether the reader is interested in our profile that we don’t always wonder whether we’re even interested in them!

Sometimes filling out a profile and going on a first date can feel similar to a job application and interview. It’s important to remember that it’s not the same thing. If any “interviewing” is taking place, it’s mutual (actually, that’s not a bad thought on a job interview, either). If you view a relationship as a power struggle, or inherently imbalanced, you’re likely getting off on the wrong foot.

Instead of focusing on whether our appearance is perfect, our profile is flawless, or whether we make the best “first date,” perhaps we ought to remember why we’re dating in the first place: to find someone with whom we feel comfortable, “ourselves,” and whose company we genuinely enjoy.

It doesn’t hurt to remember that while we’re checking out the profiles of others, either. When you’re actively aware that you’re searching for a “new best friend,” as it were, it seems a little sillier to quibble over an inch in height or a year in age. It’s easier to find a solid match when you’re viewing a list of profiles with that goal in mind, and not like a row of dolls in a toy store.

Sure, it can be exciting and intoxicating to consider the potential romance that may await you. And when it comes to our own behavior, it’s easy to slip into a competitive, perfectionist mode. But before you become distracted by such tangents, ask yourself: are any of those qualities useful when it comes to finding real compatibility?

A difficult aspect of online dating is the struggle to view everything with fresh eyes. For example, let’s say you want to step out of your own personal box politically, so you purposely don’t filter for your own political beliefs. But after three dates confirm all your stereotypes, it’s hard to view the next one with the same optimism. Yes, you know every person is an individual and you shouldn’t lump them all in one box... but it’s hard not to.

There are a few ways to cope with this issue. One is purely psychological: instead of viewing your profile - or even your mental list of wants and needs - as a fixed list, think of it as a work in progress, constantly evolving. So you want to be open-minded, but you really can’t bite your tongue when it comes to that political issue. Fine; maybe that’s just something you can’t compromise on at the moment. It might change in the future, but if filtering for your beliefs now gives you a greater chance of finding someone with whom you get along, that’s exactly the point of the filter. Online dating strives to make the process easier, not more difficult.

Another tactic is to attempt to mix things up, and thus avoid falling into a rut. Maybe you alternate online dating with making a sincere effort to get out and meet people the “old-fashioned way,” whether that’s through a club, church, or just approaching someone who strikes your fancy. This way, you don’t feel like you’ve limited yourself to one approach. Furthermore, the skills you gain in one can serve you well in the other - approaching people in person can make those first dates with an online match more natural, whereas getting used to sending first-contact emails can making approaching someone in person less daunting.

Another way of mixing up your routine is to try out different kinds of online dating sites. Perhaps you have a niche interest, but you’re wary of “boxing yourself in” with a niche site as the primary place you search. By trying out different sites in addition to your “main,” you can explore your niche interests and possibly even discover that you feel more comfortable in another community. Conversely, you might find that interests are less important to you than some other value - but again, you’re simply refining your priorities, not redefining them.

Doing anything long enough can feel monotonous, even dating. Taking proactive steps to combat the issue can help prevent burnout and jaded feelings and keep the process feeling fresh and fun. After all, when you do meet someone with whom you share a spark, whether through a serendipitous event or via an online site, you want to be able to appreciate and recognize it.

It’s funny: when we think about romance in our everyday lives, we tend to think in concrete terms, like, “maybe I’ll meet someone nice while I’m at this party.” When we think about online dating, we begin to fantasize: “Maybe I’ll meet my ideal image of a perfect date.”

It’s unclear why we jump to such extremes, but it probably has to do with the fact that media depictions of online dating are pretty extreme: online dates are usually either terrible or wonderful. Often, they’re absolutely awful until the protagonist meets that perfect match. One doesn’t often see a more accurate depiction: people who are perfectly nice human beings, maybe even attractive, but simply lacking that spark of chemistry.

It’s a good idea to analyze your expectations: are you falling into the beauty-or-beast trap? Falling into this trap can actually affect your dating experience. Consider: if you’re expecting everyone to be either beastly or your ideal, you don’t quite know what to do with those who fall somewhere in the middle. As such, you risk erring on either side: on the one hand, you might be so pleasantly surprised that your date is not an ogre that you agree to more dates, even though you’re ultimately not compatible. Or, even worse, you might overlook someone who does have relationship potential because you weren’t falling out of your chair at the sight of them.

In either case, you would have been better served if you had realistic expectations and confidence in knowing your own priorities. You would know to trust your gut if, ultimately, you’re not feeling that spark of a connection, even at the end of a night. Conversely, you might also be willing to open up and get past the wow-factor of a first impression. Because you’re prepared for a gray area in your dating prospects, you’re able to give the matter serious consideration, instead of trying to shoehorn your dates into Angel and Devil boxes.

You’re also more able to view your dates as real people, rather than caricatures: you’re not just adding to your collection of “terrible first date” anecdotes, or building a cutesy “how we met” tale. Real life is often far more nuanced than fiction, and being prepared for the former allows you to enjoy that distinction.

So as you take on the world of online dating, ask yourself: are you expecting either a beauty or a beast? Or are you prepared to meet real people who are far more interesting than either?

When it comes to performing online dating searches, sometimes your biggest enemy can be yourself. Why? Imagine you’re trying to solve a complex math problem, but you don’t have access to a math book, or a calculator. You try to puzzle it out yourself, but the answer is wrong. You walk away and come back to it later, but the answer is still wrong. You didn’t magically gain any new knowledge.

Online dating can be a bit like that: when you hit the same wall over and over, sometimes it’s because you’re hamstrung by your own limits. It’s hard to think outside the box because, well, it’s your box.

First, consider the sort of searches you do. Are you looking for the same key words, over and over? The same sorts of statistics? Why not try mixing it up a bit? Again, it can be hard to think of anything brand-new, so go all-out silly with it at first. Heck, do a search for the word silly. You might not ultimately find what you’re looking for, but you’ll likely find something different from the same old thing - and reading a new profile might make you think of still something else to search for, and so on, down the rabbit hole.

Next, consider the searches you aren’t doing - because your own preferences are keeping them from popping up as options. Is height really that important to you? What about age, or body type? Sure, it can be fun to watch your options winnow down to what is theoretically your dream match, but if your problem is that your options are too few, the problem may lie in what you’re looking for.

Age, for example, is one factor that people tend to feel strongly about, while at the same time admitting that it’s not a one-size-fits-all element when it comes to personality. You can be twenty going on thirty-five, and sixty going on twenty-three. But consider this: chances are you’ll be able to tell if someone really is “young at heart” or “mature for their age” just by reading their profile, let alone going on one date. Are you really that put out by taking time for a little extra reading or dating? And on the flip side, you’re opening doors to possibilities that weren’t there before.

Next time you tweak your profile, take a chance and get rid of as many preferences as you dare, just to see who’s out there. Similarly, try searching for something completely unlike you. You might just find something - a quality, a preference, an entire person - you didn’t even know you wanted.