Many years ago, a study by Robert Epstein  had shown that everybody was lying in dating services: woman appeared to be slimmer, blonder and younger than they are in real life, and the men happened to be richer. By now, this has just become common knowledge, and everybody knows that you cannot really trust these services, even the ones that pretend to be the most exclusive and that filter their members.
Yet this does not prevent these dating services to exist and to prosper. These services have even become a part of life for the young generation as a way to socialise. Actually, playing at creating false images has even appeared as a sport to some of its sub-groups and a societal phenomenon for this generation. These services are also extensively used by older generations wanting to “settle down” and that look for an efficient way to find the perfect mate (people are becoming very difficult now, and are looking at these systems not only to reach more people, but also to have some guarantee that the other persons have the desired “qualities”).
In all these cases, the construction of an online identity is critical, and relies on an art of showing yourself that can barely be considered as new. Indeed, when you think about it, this “art of showing yourself” has existed for millennia: for instance, men and women have dressed and used make-ups to try to seduce the other all through history. However, now in the social hubs (a new name for the aggregation of services supporting some social process) this art of disguise has taken on totally new proportions since appearance is not only about how you look in a picture or a video, but how your avatar (a 3D or 2D representation of yourself) looks and behaves, who you pretend to know (the limits of “showing” your level of connectedness that existed in the real world have totally exploded in the online world!), what your personality is (the results of personality tests can be made available) or what your activities are (sports you practice, books you read, etc.). In the later cases, the connection to some services (digital libraries, supermarkets, or even location based-services) makes the declaration of the activities quasi-automatic and effortless, and provides a good feeling of reliability. In certain cases this feeling is consistent with the reality, whereas in some other cases it is totally the opposite. For instance some groups of people (that like to be referred to as “the Transluscents”) have incorporated into their life the principle of full transparency. The “transluscents”, who in their youth had the opportunity to experiment with micro-blogging services (for instance using “Twitter” for declaring their more insignificant actions or thoughts), are now using devices that make some of this tracking automatic. For some other groups (that like to be referred to as “the Opaques”) “fooling the systems” has become almost a way of life:  members of this group are using totally forged activities generators with the aim of demonstrating their activism at defending privacy. These members are taking pleasure in displaying streams of activities that create confusion in the applications exploiting this information. Needless to say that fooling dating services is an activity that is particular praised amongst the “Opaque” group. Contests have even been organised for creating the best false identity that will be the most efficient at getting the most “dates”.

Action!
Audrey, David’s younger sister, a long time user of these social hubs, knows very well the “rule of the game” of dating systems. This is especially because one of her former boyfriends was an activist of the Opaque group movement.
This time however Audrey, who is getting older and would like to settle down, plans to use the system more seriously to help her find a long term relationship. “Why not use a dating system to look for the perfect mate?”… “I know the system well, and therefore, I am confident that I will protect my privacy, and will not be manipulated”… “I also know what to expect, and therefore I will not be disappointed”.
For this “mission”, Audrey has chosen a “social hub” (well, the term dating systems is no longer used except to mean something rather negative) that is more specifically dedicated to an older audience. Actually, the affiliation to this hub is subject to the agreement from the other members by a voting system. Audrey had to present herself before being accepted. The rejection rate of this process is however low since the operator of this hub wants to have as many customers as possible, but it helps to create a first level of filtering, and in particular discards people that are really too weird. Audrey was therefore able to pass this first gateway without difficulty, although she was initially a little bit worried that they would discover her past associations with the Opaques. But her fear was not founded, especially since the operator of a hub is strictly forbidden to share the personal information with another operator and besides, there is so much competition between the operators that that they never exchange information.
When moving to this new hub Audrey was able to bring part of the “Identity” that she had developed in one of the previous hubs she was member of. However, to tell the truth, Audrey would like to make a radical change, and actually prefers to leave behind most of her previous identity that represents another period of her life. She will of course only import to the new hub the part of herself that is consistent with the new life she wants to construct. But she will also take care to erase all the information that she would not like to see pop-up in the new hub, such as the set of pictures of her graduation in which she is dressed as a clown, drinks champagne, smokes, and makes some provocative poses. However, the process of “migration of identity” is now easy (the operators have made a lot of effort to make switching to their hub as easy as possible, thanks also to the adoption of standards for exporting personal information), and Audrey was able to monitor and control the transfer at a very small level of detail.
Since Audrey had decided to start from almost a “blank sheet” in this hub, she had to construct an almost completely new profile. She also used a pseudonym: Audrey had little desire to embarrass herself with her colleagues or even worse with the members of her family. Selecting the most adequate attributes in her profile, so as to project the most advantageous image of her, turned out not to be an easy task. Indeed, “ShineoMatic”, the “impact assessment tools” assessing the attractiveness of her profile kept returning a “lousy” feedback. First ShineoMatic indicated that her current profile was mainly able to attract married persons, or very young people looking for an adventure! Really, this was not what she was looking for his time! For her second attempt, ShineoMatic indicated that she only looked attractive to low paid school teachers. Maybe this was because she had put in her profile that she was altruistic. With further revisions of her profile she appeared to appeal to accountants, farmers and bisexuals. After several other adjustments (that many would consider as falsifying the reality), Audrey finally managed to create a profile that was appealing to the right kind of person: the tall and handsome artists or journalist she was looking for.
A more difficult exercise to be conducted by Audrey was raising her level of visibility in the social space by participating in the numerous communications and events taking place in the community. An example would be to participate in the relationships advices forum. However, on a subject like this people tend to reveal more information about themselves than they want, and Audrey would prefer not to disclose some of her very definite opinions about marriage without risking potential relationships. For the time being her involvement in travel and cinema related discussions will do. Audrey has travelled a lot, and she knows a lot about cinema, two interests which her “perfect mate” probably shares. Posting and interacting related to these two topics would also automatically contribute to building her “interest profile”, which she had to validate after only a few corrections.
“Well, let’s start with this and see how many invitations I receive”. The reality check will in any case be done later, when the “real physical encounter” will happen, given that you can still have many surprises. Last small revision, activation of the profile, and joy: already some matches! “Wait a moment, one of my first matches is George, my former boyfriend the Opaque! What a big liar he is, he who pretended not so long ago that dating systems were only for the ugly, sociopathic or the dilettante!!!”