8 ms·

I'm 25, and single. I'm very social, and I work out regularly. But I find it hard to approach women in the street, and I've always detested loud pubs (My hearin

by avshyz 8y ago

I'm 25, and single. I'm very social, and I work out regularly. But I find it hard to approach women in the street, and I've always detested loud pubs (My hearing is slightly impaired, which makes it hard for me to communicate in such a place). So I've decided to sign in to OKCupid. I've always heard the dating scene in this site is toxic, but I've had no idea. I've too many toxic and horrible things written plainly in some users profiles ("I date only men with cars, I find it important to date gentlemen", "If you're of middle eastern origin - don't even bother sending a message") and been verbally abused in personal messages ("It's funny you've thought you have a chance with me", or another who've said "The only chance you've got with me is if your penis is 15 inches in length"). I was told I need to walk it off and don't let it get under my skin. But I can't. I've thought about quitting more than once, but the alternative is a status quo I've grown to hate. But I'm an engineer, so I've decided to automate my OKCupid experience. Using node & puppeteer I've run a histogram, it showed that in my country, 75% of the profiles are almost completely empty (less than 10 words). I used to manually dislike these profiles (as they'll keep coming back in the search results until you dislike it), but now my script does it for me. The next thing I've done was to sort these profiles - I give higher priority to profiles that have a longer word count, that features keywords I prefer ("fascinating", "studying", "reading", are words that I catch my attention). It used to be a very basic script, but every negative and toxic encounter has motivated me to keep it going. Right now I'm working on building a frontend to show the script's results. I'm planning on showing "suggested openers" based on the questions the potential match has said or mentioned and adding NLP features (such as sentiment analysis).

kansi 8y ago
That moment when you need to fix a product before you can get a date! Anyways is it open source :D
- Kalium 8y ago
  Online dating systems aren't really optimized for much of anyone, sadly. They tend to be balanced between optimums for different user demos.
  - lazyhummingbird 8y ago
    They tend to be optimized towards making money, frankly. They hold the valuable possibility of a connection with another user hostage behind bad user experiences and paywalls.
monksy 8y ago
How has your experience been with their anti-scraping attempts?
- avshyz 8y ago
  Certain requests returned errors unless I've fetched them in the browser's context (pretty easy using using puppeteer). I've also been throttled. My password was reset after an aggressive scrape and I was prompted with a mail stating my account's behaviour's suspicious. The solution was, obviously, to make my scraper run slower. :)
chobytes 8y ago
This sounds like a giant red flag to me. I hope you at least disclose your methods to people you contact.
- avshyz 8y ago
  I understand your concerns, to be honest. Please don't think I'm a sociopath, or a "player". I've just had too many bad experiences in this site (at one point a date told me that maybe the reason I'm not really experienced in relationships is because my parents' divorce "screwed me in the head"), have been verbally abused (Someone in the site told me that the fact I've sent her a message tells her I live in a fantasy). I've wanted to quit, but I'm shy. So shy, it feels as if this site is my only alternative. I've tried to contact okcupid's support team - I wanted them to ask them to add the options to filter out empty profiles, to reflect uncertainty in their matching algorithm (I oft see a profile with 90% ranking, only to see it's based on TWO answers!!), or to add the options to filter on the personality traits that are important to me (OKCupid allows you to filter based on people's personality traits - such us "sexpirience" or political inclinations, but they didn't allow that on traits important to me, such as "nerdiness" or "literacy" - even though they tag profiles matching these traits. They just, for reasons beyond me, don't allow you to filter that in the search page) They've refused. So I've decided to do their job, for my sake. I'm also not taking it too seriously. This is my pet project (I'm not obsessed with it), and a place where I channel the negative residue that sticks to me from logging into that site. I don't keep it disclosed, Aù contraire, I write that plain on my profile "I use a JS script to filter out empty profiles". Most of the people that send me a message in OKCupid don't even bother reading my profile (even though I've kept my it brief). And the ones who do find it amusing, and interesting.
- lma21 8y ago
  What, why? It looks a reasonable solution for a missing 'filtering' feature :-)
  - chobytes 8y ago
    They're treating people as objects to be measured and quantified. The sentiment analysis thing at the end sounds borderline sociopathic. I would personally be terrified of anyone who thought this was an ethical or acceptable thing to do.
HamSession 8y ago
Would be cool if you open sourced it, I would happily add my NLP expertise to it as I have the same issues.
- avshyz 8y ago
  It's still coarse, but once I'm done it'd be awesome!
Arete31415 8y ago
Good for you! FYI for all dating folks out there: women do not want you to approach them in the street. Like, let's say, 99.5% of the time.
- chobytes 8y ago
  This. I'm legitimately scared when random guys approach me, as I've had guys grope me, try to corner me, etc in past. Sadly, I feel like these are common experiences for women.
  - wvenable 8y ago
    Yeah this reminds me of the Louis C.K. bit: "How do women still go out with guys, when you consider the fact that there is no greater threat to women than men? We’re the number one threat! To women! Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women. We’re the worst thing that ever happens to them!" "If you’re a guy, imagine you could only date a half-bear-half-lion. ‘Oh, I hope this one’s nice! I hope he doesn’t do what he’s going to do.’" Every woman I know has had one of those common experiences -- many times -- but honestly when I was younger man I really had no idea what women go through or the frequency of it. My wife has had more than few things happen to her over the years.
    - sg7 8y ago
      That’s really strange coming from Louis CK himself.. wtf man.
    - stuntkite 8y ago
      It's weird that he did so much self aware material about male sexual misconduct. That self awareness kind of makes the Louis J.O. thing a lot more sinister.
- sg7 8y ago
  What else are you supposed to do then? Hope you miracously match with them somewhere online? If you like a woman, shouldn’t you approach her and start conversation? I understand women get constantly harassed, I have sisters and I know this very well. But I’m sure most women would be ok with a guy approaching them to strike conversation, as log as they are respectful and not breaking any boundaries set by the other party.
matt_the_bass 8y ago
Good luck! I met my wife on that site.
- avshyz 8y ago
  People like you are the reason I haven't called it a day, and quit from that site
jotux 8y ago
Someone wrote a book about this: https://www.amazon.com/Optimal-Cupid-Mastering-Hidden-OkCupid/dp/1495334244 https://www.amazon.com/Optimal-Cupid-Mastering-Hidden-OkCupi...

by avshyz 8y ago

kansi 8y ago

That moment when you need to fix a product before you can get a date! Anyways is it open source :D

Kalium 8y ago
Online dating systems aren't really optimized for much of anyone, sadly. They tend to be balanced between optimums for different user demos.
- lazyhummingbird 8y ago
  They tend to be optimized towards making money, frankly. They hold the valuable possibility of a connection with another user hostage behind bad user experiences and paywalls.

monksy 8y ago

How has your experience been with their anti-scraping attempts?

avshyz 8y ago
Certain requests returned errors unless I've fetched them in the browser's context (pretty easy using using puppeteer). I've also been throttled. My password was reset after an aggressive scrape and I was prompted with a mail stating my account's behaviour's suspicious. The solution was, obviously, to make my scraper run slower. :)

chobytes 8y ago

This sounds like a giant red flag to me. I hope you at least disclose your methods to people you contact.

avshyz 8y ago
I understand your concerns, to be honest. Please don't think I'm a sociopath, or a "player". I've just had too many bad experiences in this site (at one point a date told me that maybe the reason I'm not really experienced in relationships is because my parents' divorce "screwed me in the head"), have been verbally abused (Someone in the site told me that the fact I've sent her a message tells her I live in a fantasy). I've wanted to quit, but I'm shy. So shy, it feels as if this site is my only alternative. I've tried to contact okcupid's support team - I wanted them to ask them to add the options to filter out empty profiles, to reflect uncertainty in their matching algorithm (I oft see a profile with 90% ranking, only to see it's based on TWO answers!!), or to add the options to filter on the personality traits that are important to me (OKCupid allows you to filter based on people's personality traits - such us "sexpirience" or political inclinations, but they didn't allow that on traits important to me, such as "nerdiness" or "literacy" - even though they tag profiles matching these traits. They just, for reasons beyond me, don't allow you to filter that in the search page) They've refused. So I've decided to do their job, for my sake. I'm also not taking it too seriously. This is my pet project (I'm not obsessed with it), and a place where I channel the negative residue that sticks to me from logging into that site. I don't keep it disclosed, Aù contraire, I write that plain on my profile "I use a JS script to filter out empty profiles". Most of the people that send me a message in OKCupid don't even bother reading my profile (even though I've kept my it brief). And the ones who do find it amusing, and interesting.
lma21 8y ago
What, why? It looks a reasonable solution for a missing 'filtering' feature :-)
- chobytes 8y ago
  They're treating people as objects to be measured and quantified. The sentiment analysis thing at the end sounds borderline sociopathic. I would personally be terrified of anyone who thought this was an ethical or acceptable thing to do.

HamSession 8y ago

Would be cool if you open sourced it, I would happily add my NLP expertise to it as I have the same issues.

avshyz 8y ago
It's still coarse, but once I'm done it'd be awesome!

Arete31415 8y ago

Good for you! FYI for all dating folks out there: women do not want you to approach them in the street. Like, let's say, 99.5% of the time.

chobytes 8y ago
This. I'm legitimately scared when random guys approach me, as I've had guys grope me, try to corner me, etc in past. Sadly, I feel like these are common experiences for women.
- wvenable 8y ago
  Yeah this reminds me of the Louis C.K. bit: "How do women still go out with guys, when you consider the fact that there is no greater threat to women than men? We’re the number one threat! To women! Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women. We’re the worst thing that ever happens to them!" "If you’re a guy, imagine you could only date a half-bear-half-lion. ‘Oh, I hope this one’s nice! I hope he doesn’t do what he’s going to do.’" Every woman I know has had one of those common experiences -- many times -- but honestly when I was younger man I really had no idea what women go through or the frequency of it. My wife has had more than few things happen to her over the years.
  - sg7 8y ago
    That’s really strange coming from Louis CK himself.. wtf man.
  - stuntkite 8y ago
    It's weird that he did so much self aware material about male sexual misconduct. That self awareness kind of makes the Louis J.O. thing a lot more sinister.
sg7 8y ago
What else are you supposed to do then? Hope you miracously match with them somewhere online? If you like a woman, shouldn’t you approach her and start conversation? I understand women get constantly harassed, I have sisters and I know this very well. But I’m sure most women would be ok with a guy approaching them to strike conversation, as log as they are respectful and not breaking any boundaries set by the other party.

matt_the_bass 8y ago

Good luck! I met my wife on that site.

avshyz 8y ago
People like you are the reason I haven't called it a day, and quit from that site

jotux 8y ago

Someone wrote a book about this: https://www.amazon.com/Optimal-Cupid-Mastering-Hidden-OkCupid/dp/1495334244 https://www.amazon.com/Optimal-Cupid-Mastering-Hidden-OkCupi...