Results: Pangkama ba Ako o Panrelasyon?

Around three weeks ago I floated a survey on what people in my cyber community think of me based on how I look: pangkama ba ako o panrelasyon? The response was overwhelming it could put to shame the average voter turnout of the last presidential election (Hello Garci?). For details on how I came up with this silly survey, scroll down and read the entry Pangkama ba Ako o Panrelasyon?.

We’ve heard people talk about real beauty residing underneath the skin and so many are living testimonies to this. But we cannot deny that looks do most of the work when it comes to getting the attention of others. Most of the time, it’s the skin that decides whether anonymity becomes the status quo or otherwise. It’s how one looks that makes the first impression which, according to a study in Ireland in 2004*, has been validated as a strong determinant of the kind of relationship people will have with new acquaintances.

The role first impressions have in relationships is given more emphasis now as more and more people do most of their cruising on the net. The first impressions elicited by the pictures that people post on their personal sites in friendster or downelink or pic-link determine the future of, to the more seasoned cyber jocks, their sex life, and to the newbies, their love life. So I did the experiment to find out if my romantic life and sex life have a future in cyberspace. I got responses from personal friends and total strangers. Naturally, I had to invalidate the response from people who knew me personally to preserve the experiment’s assumption. Here are the results:

Forty seven percent (47%) said that I am panrelasyon or relationship-material.
Twenty seven percent (27%) said I am pangkama or a sex-object.
Thirteen percent (13%) said I am both.
The last thirteen percent (13%) said they cannot decide.

I think it is a relief that in these times of wanton anonymous sex made more convenient by the Internet, there are still people out there who prefer genuine relationships over carnal pleasures. There are still more people who believe that above good-looks or the lack of it, it’s what’s within that matters. And more importantly, for socially-awkward creatures like me, it is a blessing to know that cyberspace, with all the comforts of privacy and anonymity, may just indeed work wonders for our nonexistent love life.