April 24, 2008 8:35 AM PDT

New dating site caters to smarties only

Posted by Daniel Terdiman

I'm sitting here, reading my morning e-mail and what pops up but a press release for a new dating site that purports to be "exclusively for intelligent people."

Called, wonder of wonders, IntelligentPeople.com, the site says that to sign up you must first "pass the IQ test required for admission."

IntelligentPeople.com purports to be a dating site only for people smart enough to pass an IQ test.

(Credit: IntelligentPeople.com)

Now, my first instinct was to look at the calendar. It's not April Fools' Day, right? No, I think that happened already. Maybe the people behind this site weren't smart enough to notice that it's way past April 1.

Well, snark aside, this is an interesting notion, this dating site for smarties.

I suppose it's no surprise. After all, there are plenty of affinity networks out there already, social networks for people who went to this college, or who play that game or who like to dress up as giraffes. So why not throw dating and high IQs into the exclusivity mix?

Of course, as anyone who's ever dated a smart person knows, intelligence isn't any kind of guarantee of a good date. Sure, smart people generally prefer to date other smart people because it probably makes for better conversation, and the potential earning power is greater.

On the other hand, would you really want to date someone who would be inclined to limit their partner trolling to a site that restricts anyone who doesn't pass an IQ test? Perhaps this was actually someone's clever notion of how to wall off a really annoying demographic from the rest of the dating pool.

Fortunately, IntelligentPeople.com says it has made its IQ test "culture fair," one of the most bland, awkward terms I've come across in some time.

That means the test "will test intelligence while minimizing cultural or educational biases."

Well, that's good, at least. This ensures the site will welcome a multicultural party of IQ test snobs.

The site also says you can only take the test twice. What this doesn't address is that people can study for IQ tests, and I daresay, could probably cheat on them, as well. I wanted to check out this IQ test to see if you could, in fact, cheat, but I realized I didn't even want my name going in their database.

Besides, maybe figuring out how to cheat on their IQ test is a sign of intelligence.

So, to those that do join this service, have fun. But make sure, when you go on dates with your fellow smart people, that you don't say anything too dumb.