6 ms·

OkCupid has less-than-OK policies. Especially if you're "ugly."

58 points by mcantor 16y ago

callahad 16y ago
Ack! The author doesn't quite understand how this is implemented, nor how OkCupid handles matching people. If she did, I imagine she would have found the practice itself significantly less objectionable, though her points about the e-mail's phrasing stand. (Full disclosure: I have an OKC profile, and on My 28th, I received the e-mail mentioned in the article.) Members on OkCupid answer questions about lifestyles, dating, sex, etc. (e.g., "Do you think it is appropriate for parents to choose their children's religion or a lack of religion for them?") and then state how their ideal match would respond, as well as how important it is that a partner have similar views. Your set of responses is compared to every other profile's set of responses, and the intersection between each pair is used to calculate a "match percentage," which is a pretty good predictor of how folks will get on, or at least have compatible views. [0,1] Almost any displayed link to another profile is accompanied by your match percentage with that individual. It's a major component of the site. Now, when searching for people to message, most folks set up basic filters -- gender, orientation, age, kids, distance, etc. You have to order the result set somehow, and that's often either just the match percentage, or you can elect to sort by "Match & Distance," "Match & Last Online," etc. As far as I know, searching is the primary means through which people find each other on the site, and this change will not impact that at all. There are a few places where OkCupid will show you somewhat random collections of profiles: On the homepage when you log in, in the sidebar on every page, and in two features: Quickmatch and Quiver. Quickmatch is just a procession of profiles that you're asked to rate from one to five stars. If two people rate each other highly (or poorly), the site notifies them. Your "quiver" holds a rotating set of three profiles that their algorithms think are particularly good matches which you can choose to message or explicitly ignore. In all but one of these cases, the candidate profiles are displayed with little or no additional information beyond a picture. On Quickmatch, the user's entire profile is displayed, but you must rate them before their account name is revealed and you're able to communicate with them. The email indicates that OkCupid is using click-through data from these sources ferret out which profiles are the most appealing to its users. The only change that results from being one of those profiles is that when OkCupid shows you a random profile, it is more likely to pick from the set of more appealing profiles. That's it. If your profile is not within the upper half of all profiles, then you'll still get the same distribution of recommendations as before. And your profile will still show up in OkCupid's recommendations to more appealing users, albeit slightly less often. But again, that's only for places where OkCupid itself recommends profiles -- on the front page, in the sidebar, on Quickmatch, and in Quivers. Search ranking remains absolutely unchanged. Contrary to the author's assertion that "the dreaded bottom 50% presumably do not have access to potential matches in the top 50%," the bottom 50% still has exactly the same access to the top 50% as before. They're just less likely to be randomly suggested to the top 50%. I'd also challenge the assertion that "the policy reinforces the notion that hot people deserve love and happiness and "ugly" people should just get used to being alone." Rather, I think this may be designed to reward users who take the time to craft engaging profiles by showing them other profiles that have been vetted by the community. The policy assuredly does not "[make] dating decisions on the users' behalf without considering personal preferences" since match percentages and search rankings are completely unaltered. While the policy is indeed "kept secret," and the language is offensive, I find it hard to accept that the policy is segregational or that it has a significant impact on the site's operations. I'm not even sure it's "attractiveness-norm-reinforcing," since they're tracking click-through rates, which is not necessarily attractiveness. Links about match percentages: [0]: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/09/29/how-races-and-religions-match-in-online-dating/ http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/09/29/how-races-and-r... [1]: http://www.okcupid.com/faaaq http://www.okcupid.com/faaaq
rpledge 16y ago
Isn't this an obvious marketing angle designed to get people to come to the site more often? Somehow I doubt they are really giving people less matches based on this. Anyway, assuming an even distribution of matches, matching "ugly" top "ugly" and "attractive" to "attractive" will result in an even match distribution.
- reader5000 16y ago
  I would assume that men are disproportionately more unattractive than women meaning e.g. the 20% of "hot" men get their pick of 80% of women who are "hot". Just like in real life. goes reads mystery method
  - hugh3 16y ago
    If you live somewhere where 80% of women are hot, I want to move there.
    - reader5000 16y ago
      college
      - phreanix 16y ago
        What course?
        mortenjorck 16y ago
        Not CS, at least!
        whimsy 16y ago
        Someone has tragically misled you.
      - what 16y ago
        Uh, ugly people don't go to college?
twir 16y ago
At first I was like, "wow, that's offensive." But then I was like, "damn, how come I didn't get that email too?"
- qq66 16y ago
  Why is it offensive? Long-term relationships report the highest happiness levels when both partners are of roughly equal attractiveness.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    But I rate myself above average in every category! Just like everyone else!
    - die_sekte 16y ago
      Congratulations! You are more attractive than 70% of the population! Just like everybody else.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    Shit, I'm so screwed.
- GFischer 16y ago
  I was pretty amazed to receive the message :) . (I guess I chose an extremely favourable profile picture! Definitely didn't expect it) I can confirm it contains the text described. I was also surprised, as I didn't know OkCupid did any kind of segregation. Amusingly, it came just at the time I went "off the market" :P
- patio11 16y ago
  wow, that's offensive I think this is a welcome to the future moment: more and more we're going to be seeing consequential evidence-based judgments being made on people by computers. They're going to be called unfair. And they're going to work really, really, really well at optimizing for the desired goals. It will be like credit scores. "Its not fair, I was only late that one time!" "Its not fair, I needed surgery!" "Its not fair, I am basically a good person!" Credit scores ROFLstomp all over human judgement as a predictor of default risk for many, many classes of debt.
karzeem 16y ago
I'm not quite sure what the problem is. OkCupid's goal is to help its users find dates. People rarely date someone who's very significantly more or less attractive than they are. Directing people to users with whom they're much likelier to find success actually seems quite sensible, not "less than OK".
- jim_dot 16y ago
  I know what the problem is... After seeing some of the pictures of the people who got that letter, I'm pretty convinced they gave it to the bottom half.
  - callahad 16y ago
    I do wonder if they're bisecting their pool of active accounts, or all accounts. It could very well be that every active account falls within the top 50% of all accounts.
  - jules 16y ago
    That would be...interesting. Are these pictures public?
    - jim_dot 16y ago
      There were a bunch of people posting about it in the forums when this first happened.
- hugh3 16y ago
  It might make sense behind the scenes, but was it a mistake for them to actually tell their users about it? They must have known the uglies would find out about it, so you've gotta balance out the fact that you've just flattered some of your users with the fact that you've insulted the rest. Besides, ugly users are probably a lot more profitable than good-looking ones.
  - patio11 16y ago
    As you might have noticed from OKCupid's copious release of cross-racial dating data, and similar "Skipping through a minefield" marketing activities, I think they've decided "You know, dating is crowded. Better to be loved by many and hated passionately by a few than to be unknown by all and crushed by Match.com's nine figure AdWords spend."
mthreat 16y ago
So in other words, it mimics real life?
ctcherry 16y ago
My theory: I would bet that the system a sliding scale, not a hot or not situation. More than likely users are being shown matches that the system deems to have similar "attractiveness" levels, based on that click-through metric mentioned in the email. The email we see in this article would then just be a notification letting the user know that he or she has cross into the top 50% of click throughs. As their click through has been increasing slowly over the length of their membership they would have been seeing more and more other "attractive" people as their rank increased.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
byrneseyeview 16y ago
The policy discriminates against those deemed less attractive for whatever reason (bad photo, profile misspelling, etc.). Heaven forbid people are rewarded for being liked! Shouldn't a bad photo or a misspelling count against you? The policy reinforces the notion that hot people deserve love and happiness and "ugly" people should just get used to being alone. What does attractiveness mean if not that people like to look at you more? It would be weird for a dating site not to respond to this dynamic. ...we've all got different preferences when it comes to physical attractiveness, and just because someone hasn't gotten as many click-thrus as someone else doesn't mean that users won't find that person attractive. Interesting. I wonder if HotOrNot can tell you what the correlation among user ratings is (i.e. whether an 8 is more likely to be seen as an 8 or a 2). I would be pretty surprised if the 8's were just as likely to be seen as 2's by a random viewer. OkCupid is segregating the groups, which seems counter-productive to, you know, DATING. Really? If you're in a dating mood, you don't look for specific kinds of people? I doubt this. If you're actively looking for mates, you'll still write off >90% of the people you see on a daily basis (count how many people you walk past who are within 10 years of your age, a member of the sex you're attracted to, and not--by your guess--currently romantically attached). I used to think that the problem with calling prejudice "discrimination" was that it rid us of a serviceable word. But it's worse than that: now, we're rid of a serviceable concept, too. Suddenly, discrimination--making judgments about how things differ--is also a problem.
wan23 16y ago
This post doesn't make sense. It specifically says that this doesn't affect match percentages which is the primary way that the site matches people. It is just taking into account that the people who are the most conventionally attractive tend to stick together. The biggest problem I have with dating sites is that I have to go through hundreds of profiles to find someone who I like that also might like me. IMO, the smarter the matching, the better it is for everyone.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  Ehhh, I still think dating sites fail at their job, and a large part is the ease at which you can zoom through dozens of profiles and reject them all - all without having ever conversed or met the other person. You think you're making an informed choice - that this person is clearly incompatible with you (or you with them), but consider the relationships you have/had, and ones around you... how would many of those profiles look on a dating site? How many perfectly fine relationships would have been written off by either side if they had a profile to read about the other person beforehand? Which isn't to say that filtering is bad, but rather that the "scan profile, decide if you want to contact" idea is by its nature encouraging users to set bars that are too high for their own good. If their match algorithm was good enough, I'd be interested in seeing a dating site where you don't get to view the other person's profile. It will only give you the absolute most bare-bones information about this person, and put you two in contact. This is, after all, how most relationships blossom (i.e., in a general void of information about each other).
  - wan23 16y ago
    http://www.crazyblinddate.com/ http://www.crazyblinddate.com/ The people behind OKC actually started a site exactly as you describe. It's currently being renovated or something though.
  - modeless 16y ago
    OkCupid has a feature exactly like that; it's called IceBreakers. They have ten or so different ways of introducing people, each with different game-theoretic properties. (QuickMatch ratings are especially interesting).
orblivion 16y ago
This boils down to the simple fact that the truth sometimes hurts, so we avoid talking about it as much as we can. Thus it's difficult to be marketable and reflect reality at the same time.
doki_pen 16y ago
If you think looks don't matter, then this shouldn't bother you as you are just as likely to make a match no matter how attractive the subjects are. If you think looks do matter then you have no right to complain. I think people are just upset to learn that they are in the unattractive group.
adrianmonk 16y ago
They left out the main reason it's offensive: What do you mean the scales recently tipped in my favor? I'm just barely above average now, and I was previously at 49% or lower? What if I thought I was in, say, the top 25%?
- albemuth 16y ago
  so, ignorance is bliss?
  - orangecat 16y ago
    Pretty much. If you're a guy, you'll do far better if you're overconfident of your attractiveness than if you have an accurate impression.
    - sharkbrainguy 16y ago
      Unless you're actually really hot, surely.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
wzdd 16y ago
If I were running that site I would be interested in sending that email to a randomly-selected half the userbase and then seeing if and how they behaved differently on the site. After all, the letter says both that you, personally, are more attractive, but also acts as kind of guarantee that the people you are being matched with are more attractive too. There may be some ethical considerations here of course.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  This sounds like something that they'd do. Those guys are serious math nerds. > There may be some ethical considerations here of course. Reading OkTrends, I'm pretty sure they're not worried about it.
  - camccann 16y ago
    Not that they don't have standards--I'm sure they're very careful not to release anything that would reveal private information about specific, identifiable users. Other than that, yeah. Those guys pretty much do statistics for the lulz. I would not be surprised at all if wzdd turns out to have been correct...
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      Since I didn't get one of these letters, I'm pretty sure he is. ;)
- Dunearhp 16y ago
  This is what I think they are doing.
fgf 16y ago
"however, we've all got different preferences when it comes to physical attractiveness" "this policy is a bunch of discriminatory, attractiveness-norm-reinforcing" "why are they falling prey to the same arbitrary attractiveness standards as your local meat market-y douchebar?" This is what reading too much sociology will do to you. I just spent a year with it as a major, it won't happen again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_attraction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_attraction
- hugh3 16y ago
  Indeed, it does appear to make you believe things which everybody should know from experience are false. Attractiveness standards are not "arbitrary", however much you might want to believe it. We have slightly different preferences when it comes to physical attractiveness, but the differences are fairly minor. And attractiveness norms don't need any "reinforcing", they seem to be pretty damn-near hardwired in our genomes. Reading this, I expected the author to be a trollish blob, but clicking on her name reveals she's nothing awful: http://bitchmagazine.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/profile-photo/profiles/images/IMG_0039.JPG http://bitchmagazine.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/prof... I suppose that makes sense: if she were completely hideous she'd know about it, but if she's so-so in appearance then she's more likely to be offended by her non-inclusion in the top half.
thefool 16y ago
reminds me of "hot or not"

58 points by mcantor 16y ago

Ack! The author doesn't quite understand how this is implemented, nor how OkCupid handles matching people. If she did, I imagine she would have found the practice itself significantly less objectionable, though her points about the e-mail's phrasing stand. (Full disclosure: I have an OKC profile, and on My 28th, I received the e-mail mentioned in the article.) Members on OkCupid answer questions about lifestyles, dating, sex, etc. (e.g., "Do you think it is appropriate for parents to choose their children's religion or a lack of religion for them?") and then state how their ideal match would respond, as well as how important it is that a partner have similar views. Your set of responses is compared to every other profile's set of responses, and the intersection between each pair is used to calculate a "match percentage," which is a pretty good predictor of how folks will get on, or at least have compatible views. [0,1] Almost any displayed link to another profile is accompanied by your match percentage with that individual. It's a major component of the site. Now, when searching for people to message, most folks set up basic filters -- gender, orientation, age, kids, distance, etc. You have to order the result set somehow, and that's often either just the match percentage, or you can elect to sort by "Match & Distance," "Match & Last Online," etc. As far as I know, searching is the primary means through which people find each other on the site, and this change will not impact that at all. There are a few places where OkCupid will show you somewhat random collections of profiles: On the homepage when you log in, in the sidebar on every page, and in two features: Quickmatch and Quiver. Quickmatch is just a procession of profiles that you're asked to rate from one to five stars. If two people rate each other highly (or poorly), the site notifies them. Your "quiver" holds a rotating set of three profiles that their algorithms think are particularly good matches which you can choose to message or explicitly ignore. In all but one of these cases, the candidate profiles are displayed with little or no additional information beyond a picture. On Quickmatch, the user's entire profile is displayed, but you must rate them before their account name is revealed and you're able to communicate with them. The email indicates that OkCupid is using click-through data from these sources ferret out which profiles are the most appealing to its users. The only change that results from being one of those profiles is that when OkCupid shows you a random profile, it is more likely to pick from the set of more appealing profiles. That's it. If your profile is not within the upper half of all profiles, then you'll still get the same distribution of recommendations as before. And your profile will still show up in OkCupid's recommendations to more appealing users, albeit slightly less often. But again, that's only for places where OkCupid itself recommends profiles -- on the front page, in the sidebar, on Quickmatch, and in Quivers. Search ranking remains absolutely unchanged. Contrary to the author's assertion that "the dreaded bottom 50% presumably do not have access to potential matches in the top 50%," the bottom 50% still has exactly the same access to the top 50% as before. They're just less likely to be randomly suggested to the top 50%. I'd also challenge the assertion that "the policy reinforces the notion that hot people deserve love and happiness and "ugly" people should just get used to being alone." Rather, I think this may be designed to reward users who take the time to craft engaging profiles by showing them other profiles that have been vetted by the community. The policy assuredly does not "[make] dating decisions on the users' behalf without considering personal preferences" since match percentages and search rankings are completely unaltered. While the policy is indeed "kept secret," and the language is offensive, I find it hard to accept that the policy is segregational or that it has a significant impact on the site's operations. I'm not even sure it's "attractiveness-norm-reinforcing," since they're tracking click-through rates, which is not necessarily attractiveness. Links about match percentages: [0]: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/09/29/how-races-and-religions-match-in-online-dating/ http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/09/29/how-races-and-r... [1]: http://www.okcupid.com/faaaq http://www.okcupid.com/faaaq

rpledge 16y ago

Isn't this an obvious marketing angle designed to get people to come to the site more often? Somehow I doubt they are really giving people less matches based on this. Anyway, assuming an even distribution of matches, matching "ugly" top "ugly" and "attractive" to "attractive" will result in an even match distribution.

reader5000 16y ago
I would assume that men are disproportionately more unattractive than women meaning e.g. the 20% of "hot" men get their pick of 80% of women who are "hot". Just like in real life. goes reads mystery method
- hugh3 16y ago
  If you live somewhere where 80% of women are hot, I want to move there.
  - reader5000 16y ago
    college
    - phreanix 16y ago
      What course?
      - mortenjorck 16y ago
        Not CS, at least!
        whimsy 16y ago
        Someone has tragically misled you.
    - what 16y ago
      Uh, ugly people don't go to college?

twir 16y ago

At first I was like, "wow, that's offensive." But then I was like, "damn, how come I didn't get that email too?"

qq66 16y ago
Why is it offensive? Long-term relationships report the highest happiness levels when both partners are of roughly equal attractiveness.
- jrockway 16y ago
  But I rate myself above average in every category! Just like everyone else!
  - die_sekte 16y ago
    Congratulations! You are more attractive than 70% of the population! Just like everybody else.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  Shit, I'm so screwed.
GFischer 16y ago
I was pretty amazed to receive the message :) . (I guess I chose an extremely favourable profile picture! Definitely didn't expect it) I can confirm it contains the text described. I was also surprised, as I didn't know OkCupid did any kind of segregation. Amusingly, it came just at the time I went "off the market" :P
patio11 16y ago
wow, that's offensive I think this is a welcome to the future moment: more and more we're going to be seeing consequential evidence-based judgments being made on people by computers. They're going to be called unfair. And they're going to work really, really, really well at optimizing for the desired goals. It will be like credit scores. "Its not fair, I was only late that one time!" "Its not fair, I needed surgery!" "Its not fair, I am basically a good person!" Credit scores ROFLstomp all over human judgement as a predictor of default risk for many, many classes of debt.

karzeem 16y ago

I'm not quite sure what the problem is. OkCupid's goal is to help its users find dates. People rarely date someone who's very significantly more or less attractive than they are. Directing people to users with whom they're much likelier to find success actually seems quite sensible, not "less than OK".

jim_dot 16y ago
I know what the problem is... After seeing some of the pictures of the people who got that letter, I'm pretty convinced they gave it to the bottom half.
- callahad 16y ago
  I do wonder if they're bisecting their pool of active accounts, or all accounts. It could very well be that every active account falls within the top 50% of all accounts.
- jules 16y ago
  That would be...interesting. Are these pictures public?
  - jim_dot 16y ago
    There were a bunch of people posting about it in the forums when this first happened.
hugh3 16y ago
It might make sense behind the scenes, but was it a mistake for them to actually tell their users about it? They must have known the uglies would find out about it, so you've gotta balance out the fact that you've just flattered some of your users with the fact that you've insulted the rest. Besides, ugly users are probably a lot more profitable than good-looking ones.
- patio11 16y ago
  As you might have noticed from OKCupid's copious release of cross-racial dating data, and similar "Skipping through a minefield" marketing activities, I think they've decided "You know, dating is crowded. Better to be loved by many and hated passionately by a few than to be unknown by all and crushed by Match.com's nine figure AdWords spend."

mthreat 16y ago

So in other words, it mimics real life?

ctcherry 16y ago

My theory: I would bet that the system a sliding scale, not a hot or not situation. More than likely users are being shown matches that the system deems to have similar "attractiveness" levels, based on that click-through metric mentioned in the email. The email we see in this article would then just be a notification letting the user know that he or she has cross into the top 50% of click throughs. As their click through has been increasing slowly over the length of their membership they would have been seeing more and more other "attractive" people as their rank increased.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

byrneseyeview 16y ago

The policy discriminates against those deemed less attractive for whatever reason (bad photo, profile misspelling, etc.). Heaven forbid people are rewarded for being liked! Shouldn't a bad photo or a misspelling count against you? The policy reinforces the notion that hot people deserve love and happiness and "ugly" people should just get used to being alone. What does attractiveness mean if not that people like to look at you more? It would be weird for a dating site not to respond to this dynamic. ...we've all got different preferences when it comes to physical attractiveness, and just because someone hasn't gotten as many click-thrus as someone else doesn't mean that users won't find that person attractive. Interesting. I wonder if HotOrNot can tell you what the correlation among user ratings is (i.e. whether an 8 is more likely to be seen as an 8 or a 2). I would be pretty surprised if the 8's were just as likely to be seen as 2's by a random viewer. OkCupid is segregating the groups, which seems counter-productive to, you know, DATING. Really? If you're in a dating mood, you don't look for specific kinds of people? I doubt this. If you're actively looking for mates, you'll still write off >90% of the people you see on a daily basis (count how many people you walk past who are within 10 years of your age, a member of the sex you're attracted to, and not--by your guess--currently romantically attached). I used to think that the problem with calling prejudice "discrimination" was that it rid us of a serviceable word. But it's worse than that: now, we're rid of a serviceable concept, too. Suddenly, discrimination--making judgments about how things differ--is also a problem.

wan23 16y ago

This post doesn't make sense. It specifically says that this doesn't affect match percentages which is the primary way that the site matches people. It is just taking into account that the people who are the most conventionally attractive tend to stick together. The biggest problem I have with dating sites is that I have to go through hundreds of profiles to find someone who I like that also might like me. IMO, the smarter the matching, the better it is for everyone.

potatolicious 16y ago
Ehhh, I still think dating sites fail at their job, and a large part is the ease at which you can zoom through dozens of profiles and reject them all - all without having ever conversed or met the other person. You think you're making an informed choice - that this person is clearly incompatible with you (or you with them), but consider the relationships you have/had, and ones around you... how would many of those profiles look on a dating site? How many perfectly fine relationships would have been written off by either side if they had a profile to read about the other person beforehand? Which isn't to say that filtering is bad, but rather that the "scan profile, decide if you want to contact" idea is by its nature encouraging users to set bars that are too high for their own good. If their match algorithm was good enough, I'd be interested in seeing a dating site where you don't get to view the other person's profile. It will only give you the absolute most bare-bones information about this person, and put you two in contact. This is, after all, how most relationships blossom (i.e., in a general void of information about each other).
- wan23 16y ago
  http://www.crazyblinddate.com/ http://www.crazyblinddate.com/ The people behind OKC actually started a site exactly as you describe. It's currently being renovated or something though.
- modeless 16y ago
  OkCupid has a feature exactly like that; it's called IceBreakers. They have ten or so different ways of introducing people, each with different game-theoretic properties. (QuickMatch ratings are especially interesting).

orblivion 16y ago

This boils down to the simple fact that the truth sometimes hurts, so we avoid talking about it as much as we can. Thus it's difficult to be marketable and reflect reality at the same time.

doki_pen 16y ago

If you think looks don't matter, then this shouldn't bother you as you are just as likely to make a match no matter how attractive the subjects are. If you think looks do matter then you have no right to complain. I think people are just upset to learn that they are in the unattractive group.

adrianmonk 16y ago

They left out the main reason it's offensive: What do you mean the scales recently tipped in my favor? I'm just barely above average now, and I was previously at 49% or lower? What if I thought I was in, say, the top 25%?

albemuth 16y ago
so, ignorance is bliss?
- orangecat 16y ago
  Pretty much. If you're a guy, you'll do far better if you're overconfident of your attractiveness than if you have an accurate impression.
  - sharkbrainguy 16y ago
    Unless you're actually really hot, surely.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

wzdd 16y ago

If I were running that site I would be interested in sending that email to a randomly-selected half the userbase and then seeing if and how they behaved differently on the site. After all, the letter says both that you, personally, are more attractive, but also acts as kind of guarantee that the people you are being matched with are more attractive too. There may be some ethical considerations here of course.

steveklabnik 16y ago
This sounds like something that they'd do. Those guys are serious math nerds. > There may be some ethical considerations here of course. Reading OkTrends, I'm pretty sure they're not worried about it.
- camccann 16y ago
  Not that they don't have standards--I'm sure they're very careful not to release anything that would reveal private information about specific, identifiable users. Other than that, yeah. Those guys pretty much do statistics for the lulz. I would not be surprised at all if wzdd turns out to have been correct...
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Since I didn't get one of these letters, I'm pretty sure he is. ;)
Dunearhp 16y ago
This is what I think they are doing.

fgf 16y ago

"however, we've all got different preferences when it comes to physical attractiveness" "this policy is a bunch of discriminatory, attractiveness-norm-reinforcing" "why are they falling prey to the same arbitrary attractiveness standards as your local meat market-y douchebar?" This is what reading too much sociology will do to you. I just spent a year with it as a major, it won't happen again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_attraction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_attraction

hugh3 16y ago
Indeed, it does appear to make you believe things which everybody should know from experience are false. Attractiveness standards are not "arbitrary", however much you might want to believe it. We have slightly different preferences when it comes to physical attractiveness, but the differences are fairly minor. And attractiveness norms don't need any "reinforcing", they seem to be pretty damn-near hardwired in our genomes. Reading this, I expected the author to be a trollish blob, but clicking on her name reveals she's nothing awful: http://bitchmagazine.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/profile-photo/profiles/images/IMG_0039.JPG http://bitchmagazine.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/prof... I suppose that makes sense: if she were completely hideous she'd know about it, but if she's so-so in appearance then she's more likely to be offended by her non-inclusion in the top half.

thefool 16y ago

reminds me of "hot or not"