Is love blind? OkCupid actually tested it.

"Looks aren't everything," we all say — usually right before swiping left on someone for their dead-eyed first selfie. In 2013, OkCupid stopped theorising and actually ran the experiment. Twice. The honest verdict: mostly no, love isn't blind. One test showed a face can flatline a great conversation in seconds. The other found the one exception. Here's what each really proved.

Test one: kill the lights

On 15 January 2013, OkCupid ran "Love Is Blind Day" — for about seven hours, every profile photo on the site vanished. No faces, no filters, no judging a jawline. Just words.

"It was like we'd turned on the bright lights at the bar at midnight." — Christian Rudder, OkCupid

Just seeing the other person — their photos popping up mid-chat — was enough to end a conversation that had been going great. That's not evidence looks don't matter. It's evidence they matter enormously.

Test two: date first, judge later

Around the same time, OkCupid ran a separate app — Crazy Blind Date — that sent two people on a real, in-person date with both photos blurred to mush until they showed up. It paired them by who was free and where, not by looks, so nobody was quietly matched hottie-with-hottie. Across roughly 10,000 dates, people reported a good time at about the same rate no matter how "attractive" they'd been rated.

Looks decide who you ever meet. And for the people willing to meet first and look second, attractiveness barely predicted how the date went.

TL;DR

Two experiments, both OkCupid's own — suggestive, not gospel:

1. Love probably isn't blind. A face reveal was enough to kill conversations that had been going great — when the photos came back, 2,200 people were mid-chat and most melted on sight. (That drop might be partly the fun experiment ending, not just the faces — but still.)
2. Blind dates can still go well. People who signed up to meet blind enjoyed their dates regardless of attractiveness. Good for them.

So what do you actually do?

Not "relax, looks don't matter" — if anything, the opposite. And it's not a hall pass to catfish either: oversell in the photos and the in-person reveal becomes your own private "lights on" moment.

Flattering, not fake: your best real self on a good day, not a stranger who happens to share your name.