OK Cupid launches Crazy Blind Date
crazyblinddate.com
crazyblinddate.com
I also like how they say "[each] Crazy Blind Date account is tied to a phone" I'd argue that's a very false sense of security/safety, as it's trivial for anyone to obtain a different (or temporary) phone number. On that point though, I guess you're just as safe with a blind internet date as with one you "electronically know".
And heck, let's be honest with ourselves. Maybe it will work better if you, the technically-inclined HN reader, is not allowed to pick-and-choose who you're going to date next, but your next date is chosen based on your interests and some "magic". After all, isn't that how love is supposed to work?
On asking women friends, the general feeling I got was that women were much more leery of going on a blind date, figuratively, blind about the other person.
However: that was my experience with women in their 30s. Will it be the same for women in their, say, early 20s? Who knows. As it is we're seeing a massive shift in social interactions with SnapChat, FB Poke, etc. People are sexting more, for instance.
It is a good idea, which, if executed well, can have legs.
I've had one young woman on OKC make the first move and ask me out, so I suspect you're right that 20-somethings are more willing to date online. (Since I'm sure everyone is curious now: Neither one of us wanted a second date. Yeah.)
As for SnapChat et al., are people using it anonymously between strangers? I had thought that the usage was mostly for people who already knew each other but wanted disposable messages.
However, women are more systematically threatened by such things in our society, and modify their behavior to avoid such things to a far greater extent than men do.
I'm not saying its right to behave hurt, or act aggressively. But it is rather screwed up when women collect points between each other for intentionally misleading guys or falsely leading them on to reject them. [Builds the ego]
The closest I've seen is a woman being friendly with a guy while being oblivious to the fact that he's flirting with her and then not knowing what to do when she realizes he's got a crush on her. Until he actually asks her out, I'm not sure there is a way to resolve this that isn't wicked awkward. Just saying, "Hey I'm not attracted to you.", out of the blue is kinda odd.
But the two major ways that women really mislead and manipulate is: 1. Claim a guy is creepy and then try to villify the guy 2. Friendzone
I'm not talking about legitimate safety has been put at risk cases for "creepy." I'm talking about the majority of cases where the guy misread the girl's communication, there was a miscommunication which hes being blamed for, he was socially awkward, the girl labeled him that way because she misinterpreted or felt like labeling him that way, or it was generally an awkward situation.
The other, friendzoning, is an intentional passive rejection of a perosn. Women aren't stupid, they know that a guy is interested in them, but can/will choose to put them in the friendzone.
Both of those situations are communicated to other girls to hurt the guys' reputation. By the time the guy realizes the scope of it, hes screwed. Its a really shitty thing, but it happens every day. The next time you're with your female friends and they're talking about, look at it from this way: Who are they telling, and whats the result of that later.
Have you ever considered that sometimes the reason a girl passively rejects a guy is because she doesn't want to hurt his feelings but hopes he will take the hint without her having to be more direct? I.e., she doesn't want to make things more awkward herself, and doesn't have perfect social skills either (most people don't!). What makes that super awkward is when the guy won't take the hint, or has seen too many "a dude just won't give up and finally wins the girl over" movies. It's a low probability outcome, better to just move on. Be friends if you want to be, or don't if you don't.
And neither men nor women are perfect at knowing when someone's interested, for that matter. Women are better at it, as far as I've seen, but it's not 100%, and then there are also creepy guys who hide that they're interested for weeks or longer, and then complain about "friendzoning" after springing it awkwardly out of nowhere. Don't be that guy!
Women are 10 fold better at determining who is interested in them. They are also loads better at determining who is congruent with the attitude/personality they're projecting. Women are also really good at hiding how they feel.
> Women are 10 fold better at determining who is interested in them. They are also loads better at determining who is congruent with the attitude/personality they're projecting. Women are also really good at hiding how they feel.
This is not true whatsoever. There is nothing inherent to gender to say that someone will be more socially aware than someone else.
By contrast, you have to: Notice that you are attracted to her (which is easy) and ask her out on a date. Though kinda awkward, this is much more straightforward. I recommend doing it early so if she rejects you, you've not gotten attached to the idea of her (fail fast and pivot!). They're your emotions dude; You've got to take some responsibility for communicating about them and managing them.
> Women are 10-fold better. uhh... have you ever picked up an issue of Cosmo or watched a "women's show"? They're full of women angsting about how to tell if a guy likes them or not and giving each other terrible advice. Women, being people, like to pretend they know what they're doing when they're in public even when they don't. This all seems like just an example of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error .
Personally, I don't want a woman that says yes to everyone. But, I don't want one that harasses every new person they meet.
I also don't want to date either a doormat or a stalker, but I have no idea what that has to do with anything.
I'm not suggesting that you're obligated to date/reciprocate or entertain the guy's fantasies. Just let them know whats what and don't encourage that kind of unbalanced relationship. Props if you can pull that off and give feedback about why you wouldn't bang him without giving him an impression that he has a chance or attempting to destroy him.
My suspicion for the last part of that is becoming a wing-girl for him and helping him to see that there are other girls out there.
For guys it is viable to be easy to get with and spread your genes about. For women, each child represents a huge resources cost. Therefore very high levels of pickiness and making men go through trials and tests and rejections is the best method for them to make the best choice. Evolution doesn't care about your feelings. If a woman has to throw a dozen good men into the friend zone along with another hundred just to get one good one, then that is the best method from an evolution standpoint, and that's what will become the genetically preferred behavior.
If I throw out any peanut that looks even slightly funny, the odds that I'll get a good peanut are a lot higher than if I only try to figure out exactly if each peanut is good inside the shell or not. In other words, don't take it personally. :)
There are biological hazards for doing so [STDs], and there are a few benefits for having a long term relationship with one person.
The scale of the pickiness is the problem. I don't mind women being picky locally, but when they spread rumors and attempt to destroy a guys reputation amongst large networks... thats the problem.
Anyone can be as picky as they want for an intimate partner, to suggest that someone lower their standards to please someone else is really offensive. Also, rumors are a totally legit form of social defense, even if rumors can have downsides, but the solution to that isn't less talking and lowered standards.
This line of though for evolutionary biology is generally rejected and has no factual basis.
> I think it makes sense that women are built from an evolutionary perspective to be picky, misleading, tough to successfully engage with, test out a guy and dump him later, etc.
The majority of people will date many partners and most relationships end in a breakup. This isn't special to any particular gender.
I actually think the situation is even worse with women in their early twenties (that they'd be even less likely to use a service like this). Anecdotally it seems women 28-35 are much more willing to try different methods of dating than younger ones (or are even looking to actually date in general).
It is?
the women under 28 don't bother with any of this because they are typically in social situations (like college) where they meet people all the time and getting dates is trivial. Their only concern is their appearance and safety. They want to appear to their peer group to be dating well and with guys that add to their status, which is where facebook comes in.
It may not be workig for you, but online dating is not broken at all...
By 'online dating' I was referring to actual online dating sites like okcupid, match, eharmony, plenty of fish etc.
This is hardly surprising, because by that time, they're well on their way to becoming "invisible" to men.
So, just like men, single women 28+ are more likely to want the internet to generate a pool of people that they might possibly date.
Eventually this power wanes and she'll get approached less and less. This is the time when she might actually have to do something to find a man, and this is the phenomenon we're talking about.
Young women do not "wield sickening power over men." Some number of them may get propositioned by strangers a good deal (though, I would suggest, less than you seem to believe). That's not the same thing.
And, in any case, "not getting as many propositions from strangers" does not equate to "becoming invisible to men."
And, finally, your argument, such as it is, seems to be based on the belief that younger women derive most of their romantic partners from that mass of unsolicited propositions by strangers. This isn't particularly true, and it kind of staggers me that you seem to imagine otherwise.
If women 28+ are more interested in online dating, it seems very likely that this is principally because of a decrease in the number of qualified potential mates in their extended social circle, rather than the decrease in the number of unsolicited propositions by strangers.
I used it back then, twice, getting two dates out of it. The first was reasonably fun but we probably weren't really right for each other and we didn't do a second date. The second resulted in a three month or so relationship. (Oh, and both I and my dates were hovering somewhere right around 30).
So my experience, from admittedly few data points, is that it was at LEAST as successful as normal internet dating, maybe much more successful.
I think that it matched me well on one fairly crucial axis: women who were interested in actually going out and seeing what you thought of a person. I found that a big killer of potential meetings on OKC proper was this death-slog of trying to assure perfect compatibility prior to a face-to-face meeting.
All this said, I eventually found my fiancee through non-internet means.
I've been out of the dating scene for quite some time but I don't think personal profiles have advanced all that much. Especially when people are notoriously bad at actually describing themselves in an accurate way. After all, we all think we're normal. The truth is rather different.
Instead of computer programs, why not just develop a site that lets your friends (your real friends) pick your perspective blind date? That would be the million dollar idea right there, IMHO.
Crowdsourcing dating. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not convinced it would work. The prospective date would have to be a friend of all the friends 'voting'- if you have that many friends in common you probably already know each other. Or even if you don't, your social circles are close enough that a bad date could be socially awkward.
People that might actually care about the outcome and aren't just looking for laughs.
If someone says "A would be good with B" and the other person doesn't think B is attractive, they say "No, I don't think A would like B".
In the UK there is a site[1] which does something similar. There was quite a bit of buzz to start with but I wasn't sure it was even still going until I searched for it.
The biggest problem with algorithmic blind dating is probably not actual average quality of dates, but rather (perceived) risk of going on a bad date. People trust their friends a lot more than an algorithm.
I wouldn't be surprised if they do more subtle things with the same data as well.
I can confirm this is true. Last year, as an experiment, I made a dummy account with a picture of former NFL quarterback Kyle Boller but the same profile/personality as me. His matches are significantly more attractive than mine. He also received this email a few weeks after registration:
We just detected that you're now among the most attractive people on OkCupid.
We learned this from clicks to your profile and reactions to you in Quickmatch and Quiver. Did you get a new haircut or something?
Well, it's working!
To celebrate, we've adjusted your OkCupid experience:
You'll see more attractive people in your match results.
This won't affect your match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match's answers. But we'll recommend more attractive people to you. You'll also appear more often to other attractive people.
Sign in to see your newly-shuffled matches. Have fun, and don't let this go to your head
The attractiveness status can change BTW: http://www.quora.com/OkCupid/Is-being-one-of-the-most-attrac.... It is a running record of how attractive you are compared to other users.
Reading this email actually disturbed me. A computer program is telling you that you're attractive, and that it's going to hustle "more of the attractive people" to you.
"the attractive people"
I'm only 20 years old and still have plenty to learn about ladies and relationships, but I know I can do better than have a server cluster tell me who is "in my league" and who are "the attractive people." Holy shit.
I can see the value in it for this website as a product, I think what really hit me was the way it's worded.
So what you're saying is you've never been to, say, a particularly hip bar or club in a big city.
Yes, the attractive women do have people who keep losers (like, say, the typical HN nerd) away. That's exactly how the real world works.
It's sort of a self-fulfilling role anyway. Staying away from an attractive woman makes you the loser. Having the mindset you just described does as well.
I tried this, and it was an enlightening experience; women's experiences on OKC are completely different from men's.
They do. They will tell you when they think you attractive. You get a message like "Congrats, you're in the top X% of attractiveness on OKC, we'll start showing you more attractive matches now." This is something only those attractive people know about.
Also a lot of men will just spam these sites and send a message to every woman within X distance of them.
Now if you think its harder to determine this for females because the amount of noise that they get...then the computer can factor in the number of "attractive" men (as judged above) who fawn over you, either by messaging or stalky profile views.
And of course, number of profile views (over time) and by repeat viewers (indicating the number of obsessed secret fans you have) is probably a good baseline to start from.
http://www.officialdatingresource.com/wp-content/uploads/200... turns into http://www.officialdatingresource.com/wp-content/uploads/200...
A self shot face picture got me about a 5-6. A side profile head shot got me about a 4 and a shot taken by a photographer friend with a good camera and my shirt half undone got me a 9.5 or something.
Obviously there's dozens of confounding variables (if you have an expensive camera, you're more likely to know how to take a good photo), but still.
[1] http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/dont-be-ugly-by-accident/
I tend to find the women OkC matches me with plain, average, or unattractive. So if their algorithms are correct, what does this say about me?
Even then, it seems like the effect would be kinda weak, no? And no individual guy loses out, except possibly to someone who was just about as attractive as him anyway (and he's equally as likely to gain).
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dati...
Of course that tune could change if something started to take off.
"The competition to attract the most desirable mates is ferocious. Consequently, those most valuable are perpetually in short supply compared to the many who desire them. People who are themselves high in mate value succeed in attracting the most desirable partners. In the crude informal American metric, the 9s and 10s pair off with other 9s and 10s. And with decreasing value from the 8s to the 1s, people must lower their mating sights commensurately. Failure to do so produces a higher probability of rejection and psychological anguish. ..." [1]
I tried OKC. A few good dates, but also several women who were 20-30 pounds heavier than their profile pictures.
I've talked to women who use OKC. In the first week, any reasonably attractive woman gets 30-150 message, 95% of them creepy/lame/from old men.
You can still find good things on OKC, but you need to learn how to filter. Women set up harsh filters against the flood of spam, and men have to learn i. How to get past those filters ii. How to tell if a woman is really herself
Women face more risks than men. Most men aren't crazy. But all it takes is one crazy man to really mess up your life. And crazy men are more likely to use something that lets them bypass traditional filters.
Meanwhile, this lets women that won't get hit on in real life bypass the filter of physical appearance.
If this could be made to work, it would be incredibly popular. But it has a ton of hurdles. You'd have to evaluate safety and attractiveness algorithmically, or you'd end up with a ton of lame/scary dates.
OKCupid already does this (the attractiveness part), and I have to say, they do it startlingly well. Attractiveness is crowdsourced, and this is present even in the default (non-blind) experience. Ever wonder what that "Special Blend" default search results sort option is all about? It's actually weighted by the user and your own attractiveness.
Are you saying that, if I never use 'Special Blend', I am unaffected by the attractiveness-matching system?
This doesn't consider the algorithmic effect of doing this, though. Although it is probably very achievable.
Surprise! Most women (even unattractive ones) get hit on in real life.
Not that this isn't necessarily a good a market, but IIRC something similar was tried with a straight version of the gay app "grindrr" and didn't go down so well.
If a woman takes the standard safety procedures--meeting in a public place, not divulging too much info, exchanging a few messages to see if the dude is a weirdo--the average woman faces the same risk that a man faces. That risk is that the date will be a waste of time, usually in the order of about 3 hours if you include transportation time and an inability to schedule anything else during that time. In the end it can amount to almost an entire evening used up. That's an investment that both sexes make.
The blind date idea makes it seem like there won't be messages exchanged. Which is why it's riskier.
""" In truth, the most radical part of Crazy Blind Date (whose name and basic concept OK Cupid toyed with in an earlier form more than five years ago) may be the way users are asked to express their satisfaction or lack thereof. After a date’s conclusion, the participants are invited to rate each other by purchasing “kudos.” Spending a few dollars implies that a date was enjoyable...
Why pay good money to improve the dating prospects of someone you might never see again? Because there’s more than generosity at play here. The user who never buys kudos for his or her dates will find himself increasingly shut out by the algorithm in the same way that your own friends would eventually stop setting you up if you rejected enough of their suggestions. “It’s a soft payment for access,” says Yagan. “How much you donate determines your product experience along the way.”
""" Who will become successful at getting dates then? Those with the most kudos purchased? And, what does that do to the quality of dates one might expect to have?
Would strongly recommend this to anyone in the market. Although hopefully it gets promoted in places other than just hacker news, or there will be obvious issues.
I know a surprisingly large number of tech people who have gotten long-term girlfriends or married via OkCupid. I only ever met actually crazy people (although interesting and fun for a few months), but somehow it seems to work for other people. I'm not sure how well it works outside the Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, and NYC, but in those markets, it's pretty good.
You need to get that sort of thing out of your system before you finally settle down.
Maybe @nmcfarl meant to say near-misses? or rather, just misses. But not as in ladies, but as in horseshoes.
However, HN did not appreciate the joke, and to be honest it was rather inane. I should try to remember that puerile humour belongs on Reddit and not HN.
The main idea here is that it's a behaviorial approach to optimizing mate-matching. The way it works now (e.g., on okcupid) is that you fill out a profile and answer some questions. You expose some signals in your profile which you think are correlated with what makes you a good mate (interests, income, etc.), and go about finding such signals in other people's profiles. The match % is also such a signal. However,
1. People lie, or at least exaggerate the truth/selectively filter
2. They might not lie but simply be wrong: they think they want x but actually want y
3. The match % is a completely made up algorithm. I mean, it kind of makes sense that people who agree on things they care the most about would make good couples, but unless you measure this in a scientific way (i.e., controlled experiments), you have no idea.
4. Even assuming that you can actually get a good signal from the profile, it is drowned out by the noise. Suppose that some girl and dude are perfect for each other. What are the chances that he will find her profile and that she will read his message?
The solution to 1-3 is to measure the thing you want to optimize, instead of optimizing based on intuition. The solution to 4 is to set people using the thing that you measured. So, after each blind date, you ask the participants, "would you go on a date with this person again?" Imagine being okcupid and being able to say, here is a person I think you'd be interested in dating, and I can say with 95% confidence that you will have a good time. If they can get to that stage, they'd be able to make good money.
There are some issues with this, of course. You could argue that the thing they should measure is whether the date leads to a happy long-term relationship, but that's pretty much infeasible for various reasons. Also, as a dating website, they'd be perversely incentivized to keep you single forever. Anyway, I am super interested to see how this does.
Does anyone know if Crazy Blind Date actually does this?
One of the great mysteries of OkCupid to me is that they do not attempt to collect this information. There is no "I met this person" button which then asks how it went and whether the match represented themselves accurately.
It seems like this would be an extremely valuable data point. There must be some reason that the feature doesn't exist, but I don't see what it is...
So between that and knowing if you're still messaging new people after messaging someone else for a while, I think they pick up a lot of it.
They take a group of three friends and pair them up on a blind group date with another group of three friends. The safety in numbers aspect is, I think, a smart addition.
* You must have 2 single friends in the vicinity willing to join you in paying $20 apiece for a single drink on relatively short notice
* The photos they showcase on the site make it look like, as a friend put it, "a six-way sexcapade"
As a startup founder who recently moved to a smaller town, I have vanishingly few friends who are both single, male and fun enough to tag a long to something like that.
And the nature of dating sites is to foreground this method of "analyzing" potential dates, which I think has to be a huge weakness in the whole model. This is to say, it's the only thing people can do on these sites.
I assume the app is still using OKC data, and just hiding it. I'm not sure that I would trust the OKC algorithm enough to rely on it, and the question is ever-present in my mind- if you're already on OK Cupid, why use Blind Date? Either you think it'll be a laugh (the best option, probably) or you haven't been at all successful at getting a date on the main site. Perhaps there is a reason for that.
Which is to say, most of the userbase. Most people, of both genders, have trouble getting dates online - pretty much anyone not in the top quartile of attractiveness for their orientation, weighted by race, height, looks, etc.
Getting a lot of messages != getting a lot of dates. Most of OKC, as it is with most dating sites, is copypasta spam. When there is no flow limit, it's individually optimal to spam as many people as possible, so that's what happens. People in the top quartile get their pick of the litter - everyone else gets either no messages, or an inbox full of "sup gurl".
We've sort of kind of gotten past the stigma of online dating. We haven't really gotten past the stigma of failing at online dating. I mean think about it, how pathetic is that? You flunked dating in real life and now you can't even do well on a computer.
We also know, as you pointed out, that people are highly judgmental online. I'd amend your comment and say that you've massively understated the level and scale of this judgment. Almost all messages are instigated based on looks alone, damn what you wrote in your profile. OKC's insistence on collecting your whole life story and having you answer hundreds of questions may help their matching algorithm, but it doesn't help you - as it gives opposing users irrational reasons to reject you "he doesn't like seafood? dealbreaker!"
People are fucking nuts when online dating. They are more judgmental, more racist, more classist than they are in real life, and at every step of the way they will use all of the above to sabotage themselves from finding someone they might actually get along with.
Blind date - properly implemented - will IMO achieve much better results for most of the dating population, but selling people on it is really the tough part. Online daters want absolute control and information, even if they will use this information to sabotage their own chances.
[edit] I also happen to think that OKCupid users would get much better results if there was a substantial rate-limit on messaging. But once again, selling it to the userbase is the tough part. People want utter freedom on your system, and any restriction - even ones that will help them - is seen as draconian.
I don't disagree, but I think that people are nuts when dating, online or off. I'd argue that it isn't optimal to spam as many people as possible with 'sup'- most (female) profiles on the site say "don't message me just saying 'sup' or 'you are hot'" for exactly that reason.
I think online dating allows people to be slightly more obvious about judging people the way that they always do.
Oh, it most certainly isn't. It's individually optimal to send as many people as many carefully worded, personalized, charming messages as possible.
Of course, this isn't actually possible, so people will fall back to either carefully-worded but identical copypasta messages. Or, "sup".
The behavior of people in online dating fascinates me (and I work in the field nowadays too, so I guess that sort of makes sense). It's incredible the lengths people will go to to sabotage themselves in the pursuit of success.
> "but I think that people are nuts when dating, online or off"
You're right, but we're arguing over degrees. People are pretty nutty when dealing with strangers, particularly in a sexual/romantic context, but this is magnified many fold when online. Small biases in real life become massive online. Someone who might have a back-of-the-mind thought "oh, he's short" IRL will make it a dealbreaker. Someone who might have a back-of-the-mind "oh, he's black" IRL will make that a dealbreaker also. People's preferences become polarized to the point where, IMO, it's actively harming their experience.
I think that's the polite way of saying that people innermost biases are in full play online, where they are (consciously or subconsciously) tempered IRL. People are, by a remarkable degree, more racist, more classist, and more judgmental than they behave in real life, to a degree they're not even fully aware of. A more cynical person might say that's a truer expression of the self, but I don't think it's that simplistic. In many ways the traditional online dating setup magnifies biases and makes mountains out of mole hills, and in that way works against the interests of the user.
OKCupid doesn't really help matters. They have statistical information on what signals actually matter in attraction and success of a relationship, but they will give you orders of magnitude more (irrelevant) signals on top of all of that. Blind dating may not work out, but I do think that "blinder" dating is necessary for online to work.
This leads to problems with both badly written, short and generic profiles (which makes writing well crafted clever messages to the person difficult) and people who find writing a message that really sells them as an ideal dating partner impossible. Not to mention that most people are uncomfortable writing about themselves in a personal way for a stranger.
I imagine the problems with rate limiting might be that users on a free site could well just sign up multiple accounts to get around this limit which would probably be yet more annoying.
Someone who is single and struggling in RL dating might like getting 100 "dam ur hot xx" messages but they probably don't want to date the sort of people who send them.
I learned the hardway, I pasted one of these links into an 80+ chat room full of 4chan rejects on IRC.
The security failure was mostly on your part, but also on the sites for not conveying a notice that email links that automatically authenticate you are in emails.
Sharing any directly copied link information from an email to a set of anonymous users, especially as unreputable as you have stated, is unadvised.
Having said that, I still signed up. What do I have to lose - an hour on HN, and three bucks on coffee? If it's awkward it's awkward; everyone could do with getting better at handling awkward situations.
1) Woman sets up the date. Place and time.
2) The system sends an invitation to several men until it gets 3-5 positive responses.
3) The woman chooses one of the candidates.
The advantages for the woman is that she controls the terms of the date. She doesn't have to sort thru tons of messages.
The advantages for the man, is that you don't have to spend a lot of time sending invitations to many women. Invitations that are basically ignored
From what I have seen, online dating sucks for men because it is very hard to get noticed. It sucks for women because they get too many choices.
I feel the question phase may slow things because you need another round. Also the fact that she can select another set to choose, may cause her to keep going and not actually make a decision. As far as monetization, I (a man) would definitely pay for each time I am in a selection set. But I need to know that she is going to select one of us.
You can probably still access it via the web interface on OK Cupid, unless I'm part of a testing group instead of a launch.
The idea of a "blind date" is scary enough when it's been set up by someone you trust.
I could certainly see creepy or slightly unhinged types making use of this and it getting a lot of bad press very fast amongst women.
I can also see it being popular amongst certain classes of gay and bisexual men who will try and use it to hook up with straight guys.
The worst story was a friend of mine who travelled over an hour on the premise of having a threesome with a swinging couple who he had met on a "casual dating" website.
He was given a home address but when he turned up he found a typical messy bachelor pad and a middle aged man waiting. He was told that the wife wouldn't be turning up for a while but to "make himself comfortable". Naturally he got the hell out of there.
It was a few years later before he actually told me the story, after I had finished laughing I asked why he had believed the guy. Turns out the guy had been copying photos from amateur porn sites and sending those as his "wife".
Naturally it should be pointed out that I'm sure the majority of gay people do not behave in such a way.
They most assuredly do not. I am a gay engineer. I've never known anyone so blatantly deceptive, but if any of my acquaintances even thought about doing something like that, I would give them a dressing down that would make a drill sergeant cry.
Gay people are like any population sample. 95% of them are normal, decent human beings; 5% are wackos.
Which means your potential pool is limited to those who can't get a date in real life (which may be because they have just moved, are atheists in South Texas, etc) and who can't get a date on the site.
So I doubt this will be effective, but hey it is a nice try.
What I really don't understand is why the design is so bad. OkCupid has always looked reasonably impressive (at least in my opinion), and this new site feels flat and amateurish. The mobile apps don't look good either.
It almost feels like they've fallen for the new "me-too" trend of exceptionally flat design, inspired by Metro, but the execution here is just not good. The typography is particularly bad. Maybe it's just me, but I think it could really use some additional polish.
What I'm really confused about is the mechanics. Does someone have to select me, or is this some algorithmic match-up? It gives the impression that a computer will say "hey, you both said Thursday night and look reasonably compatible, you two kids have fun" but then also gives you the option to browse and select dates as well.
Wish these guys the best of luck with it. And if you are curious about the service, recommend giving it a shot!
Just pick for me, and I'll go do it. It's fun!
I met my girlfriend on there too, and we were only supposedly 70% matches according to OKC but she's my perfect partner.
In other words, the algorithm is kinda off. At least in my case.
The horror stories (which are always smirkingly relayed - nothing tragic) I hear from girls about OKC messages don't exactly give me confidence in this part of the company's hypothesis. I would be happy to be proven wrong, however. In the end, even ChatRouelette attracted a wide variety of people (for a very short time). Maybe there is an opportunity to use a Chat Roulette/Airtime interaction as the precursor to a (not-so-blind) date.
So many of the profiles on OkCupid are: 1. Fake [a girl is testing the waters to see whos on there, or it could be a guy seeing his competition] 2. The girl is using it to boost her self esteem [lots of messages about guys complementing her are going on] Also, online dating [in her mind] may be "below" her. 3. Theres a low noise to signal rate. Guys learn very quickly that girls are very selective, and sometimes random about the messages they reply to. [There are a few possiblities for this] 4. Also there are girls who troll OkCupid. [They have no interest in dating or they're wayyyy over protective (practically requiring a background check before meeting in a very public place)]
So when you hear "stories" you have to be a little bit weary of the storyteller. [Even if you believe that the story teller is honest and good.]
And yes, it was too low.
When you see "replies selectively", go for it. We're not the trolls. We're the eyerollers waiting for an actual conversation starter.
EDIT: Even when being indirect on the first message you're still put in the same categories as all the other guys, its a random chance at best... screw that.
If I'm not mistaken, good on you for having a sense of humour. The girls I've met on OKC haven't had such of a thing. A lot of them mention they have a sense of humor in their profile, but completely lack it in the message.
I only get roughly 1 response for every 7 messages I send, so clearly I'm not the only picky one, and its not just the ladies holding out ;)
There have to be normal people on OKC somewhere, right? ...right?
I think the the MRAs are well meaning, but they have a very odd execution. Shame that Fedoras has given hats on mean a bad name.
I want to believe there are normal people on OKC... I want to but when it comes to recreating the profile I keep just giving up.
s/actual conversation starter/attractive man/
What you say is not replicable in the data. Send the messages famously made fun of in every "guide" to OKC: "sup" "hey girll" "omg ur cute"...from a profile with an extremely attractive man's picture (stock photos will do.) Watch replies roll in.
Good evening. In tragic news today, a woman was killed by her "Crazy Blind Date."
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.okcupid.cb...
Did you re-launch the app under a new name to get new ratings after removing Facebook auth? Seems like the sensible thing to do...
I put up a small visual traceroute app up on Google Play recently - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rc.vtrace2 - and it was selling decently (7 sales within the first few hours), but then someone put a 2 star rating and, of course, nobody has touched it since. It's pretty interesting how much impact the first few reviews actually have on an app.
Their blog has been a fantastic source of interesting articles of the things they have discovered with their unique dataset.
I'd trade my soul for a wish, Pennies and dimes for a kiss I wasn't looking for this, But now you're in my way
Your stare was holdin', Ripped jeans, skin was showin' Hot night, wind was blowin' Where you think you're going, baby?
Hey, I just met you, And this is crazy, But here's my number, So call me, maybe?