17 ms·

A Matchmaker Who Flirts on Dating Apps for You (2017)

62 points by howard941 8y ago

tptacek 8y ago
So, she's an agent! She should get 15%, the standard agent rate. What's 15% of a marriage? With a dozen clients at ~500/mo, she's not making enough to live in Manhattan right now. This is terrible, but I read this and my mind switches back to nerd stuff: how great would it be if software developers could hire someone like this but to handle job outreach and negotiation? You: kick back, solve programming puzzles, go to the occasional tech-out interview. They: reach out to prospects, arrange your interviews, and do the salary negotiation. They're really different skills, programming and job negotiation. They're not even correlated! I know so many excellent negotiators with excellent jobs who aren't even in the top 50% of programmers I've worked with, and vice versa. I suppose it's probably similar with dating; being a good partner probably has little to do with being good at arranging dates. Later Heading off a bunch of replies right here: Recruiters work for hiring firms. How you know this is, developers don't generally pay recruiters. The essence of an agent/principal relationship is that the agent works for, and is compensated by, the principal. Recruiters aren't talent agents for developers.
- hkon 8y ago
  In consulting this is quite common. Sales people have a pool of consultants they reach out to whenever an assignment pops up. You just jump on the ones you want for the pay you want. Standard cut is 10%
- zacherates 8y ago
  "... could hire someone like this but to handle job outreach and negotiation ..." They're called recruiters.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Not really! There have been a couple recruiting plays in the past couple years that have tried to do "talent agent" positioning, but I think they're all just recruiters, not agents. A talent agent is someone you, the developer, have a relationship with. They go out and apply to everything you're interested in for you. They're not working from a book of qualified openings trying to match developers to them. They'll do the negotiating lifting even at firms that won't pay their placement rate --- because you, the developer, are the one who pays them, not the company.
- swebs 8y ago
  >how great would it be if software developers could hire someone like this but to handle job outreach and negotiation? How have you not heard of recruiters? I get spammed by them almost every day.
  - maxsilver 8y ago
    Everyone's heard of recruiters, but most recruiters just don't do most of the above. Recruiters are often essentially human banner ads for job postings, and generally don't do most of the above. (Particularly since recruiters work for the company, not the applicant)
- subvocalize 8y ago
  I'm an ex-PM that works as a talent agent (100% comped by candidate, no formal relationship with companies) for tech jobs, mainly PMs but some devs. It's a side business I'm trying to grow into full-time work. I take up to 4 clients at once since it's a lot of work per person and I don't have a lot of automation in place yet. I'm amazed that professional help isn't standard, since your job determines so much of your happiness and future path, but most people rely on skills they dust off every few years to get one. Much like the article's dating example, it's not clear to the employer that I as an agent exist, because employers often categorically don't want to hear from third parties early in the game. So in practice this involves a lot of ghostwriting on a new, shared email account, which the candidate reviews and submits. Interview coaching is also a big part of it. Also, from a pure negotiation perspective, Josh Doody at FearlessSalaryNegotiation.com (I'm not affiliated) is very good and specializes in developers.
  - michaelt 8y ago
    I'm amazed that professional help isn't standard There's already a layer of "professional" "help" in the form of recruiters. They've got a terrible reputation, because their incentives are all messed up.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Their incentives aren't messed up at all. They just don't do what you think they do. Recruiters work for firms. They're not a layer of professional help for candidates.
      - michaelt 8y ago
        Employers somewhat dislike recruiters because recruiters are incentivised to (a) Tip employees off about the questions and answers to the company's tests, (b) solicit the employee to leave as soon as the recruiter gets paid for placing them, and (c) shop employees around between employers in profit order, so employers that try to reduce fees only get candidates other companies have passed on. Candidates somewhat dislike recruiters because they're incentivised to (a) post false adverts to gather CVs, (b) cold call aggressively, (c) be careless with candidates' personal details, (d) misrepresent their willingness to negotiate well on the employees' behalf and their knowledge of pay ranges, (e) misrepresent candidates to employers, and (f) apply aggressive hard-sell tactics. For both employers and candidates to dislike the results of recruiters' incentives is what I mean when I say the incentives are messed up. Firms may pay them, but it's not true to say firms are 100% happy with the deal they get.
- arkades 8y ago
  "... could hire someone like this but to handle job outreach and negotiation ..." There are lawyers you can hire to do this sort of negotiation for you. A relative of mine is one such, and did a job offer negotiation for me. Thing is, they usually work on very large deals. Their expense is enormous, so it’s not the sort of thing they usually hire out for.
- Viker 8y ago
  Well recruiters are not expensive in the grand scheme of things. If your problem solving skills are so good that someone is willing to pay you enought you can tottaly afford an assistant or an agent.
jasode 8y ago
It seems inevitable that if AI algorithms help humans flirt, it means we'll eventually have a 2 people get married because John with help from Google's flirting AI interacted with Mary with help from her Facebook flirting AI. Basically, it means it was the Google software engineers flirting with with the Facebook software programmers! Seems ripe for a Hollywood romcom script. Two people hook up because of their respective dating AI apps told them what to say. If the movie was long enough, you could include them getting divorced and the husband & wife's attorneys each using legal AI software to optimize the best divorce settlement.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- blue4 8y ago
  can this be an adultswim or comedy central short or something. he only loses the case because his law-ai.biz subscription, lapsed.
- mokus 8y ago
  I could see this as a Black Mirror script too
  - sct202 8y ago
    The "Hang the DJ" episode is sort of along those lines where your AI's pretend date in a virtual world and give a result back in an app.
    - ergothus 8y ago
      I believe Stross had that as a background detail in Accelerondo too
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    There is one, where AI copies of people's personalities are put into a weird dome world of sorts and spend (virtual) years in the (virtual) (and bizarre / forced) dating world until they find a match.
Radim 8y ago
Ah, good old "outsource non-vital parts, so you have more time for yourself (sic)". How much of your life can be outsourced, before it's no longer your life? How much of a man still makes a man? Edgar Allan Poe had a funny little story about that and technology, all the way back in 1840: https://www.eapoe.org/works/mabbott/tom2t032.htm https://www.eapoe.org/works/mabbott/tom2t032.htm
- tptacek 8y ago
  Look around your living space. Make a list of the things you do every day as part of your daily routine. Think about a person living in the middle ages, and how your routine differs from theirs. How many outsourcing relationships do you benefit from, compared to them? Do you have more or less agency than that other person?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Radim 8y ago
    Hidden in your questions is a presupposition of a well-defined "you", a human essence that decides/benefits as an indivisible whole. As that EA Poe story skilfully anticipated, and as our modernity puts more and more into practice, "you" is just a chimera, a leaky abstraction. It appears the questions of tomorrow will be around "what's the entity exercising agency" more than "how much agency". Surrogate matchmakers are but a taste of things to come.
- androidgirl 8y ago
  All of it, honestly, if that's what you want. There's no hard and fast rules on what makes an experience worth living. If automating and outsourcing everything makes you happy, do it! Life is short.
mhd 8y ago
Cyrano As A Service? Totally outsourcing it seems a bit skeevy to me, but some on-demand-coaching would be nice. "Don't tell her about your D&D group yet!" would've been some good advice in the past. For a friend of mine, of course.
- tptacek 8y ago
  Didn't Cyrano do the whole date? This person is just arranging meetings.
  - mhd 8y ago
    He wrote letters, and she's posing as her clients, so this seems roughly equivalent. Which to me personally is a step to far. If you're getting tips or even literal phrases, you still have the option of not using or changing them. Not even participating in the courtship until the first date seems morally unsound. The matchmakers of old would be the dating service itself. Or maybe their shoddy algorithms.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- paulie_a 8y ago
  What coaching is necessary? You chit chat about interests and ask to meet. It's really that simple.
mothsonasloth 8y ago
Good for her finding a niche market like this however I pity the clients and the people on the other end. Tinder and the likes are a numbers game, with everyone procuring their,"best self" in 6 photos and a witty bio. There is already so much artificiality in the interactions and this will just add more to it. I was terrible and shy when I first used Tinder but I treated it like any other problem. I iterated and reviewed; improved my appearance and well being. Then I started getting matches; at which point I couldn't think of anything funny to say. So I went with cliched or weird intros. After another bit of iteration and self reflection and lots of trial and error I was getting dates. This whole evolution took place over a year or so and was a good benchmark for me. Whether you are a woman or a man, if you are failing on Tinder/Bumble/Match/Dates etc. I suggest you do a bit of self reflection and try and change it up, I believe in you! People who are trying to skip parts out are more likely to stumble at the next hurdle in my opinion.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Viker 8y ago
  All these things do not matter if you have the cash to buy yourself out of these problems. Yes everyone "can" potentially learn to fix their cars and computers. But if they have jobs that pay better than the time it takes to do the job then that is straight up shitty investment of their time. If someone earns so much money that they can pay 700 usd a month for this service, that basically means that they have figured life out and are successful and do not need to change. People that make money understand that the better investment is to pay someone more competent to do the job. Personality has also always been something the can be influenced by money. There is a reason why women would prefer rich "jerks" to poor nice guys.
  - onemoresoop 8y ago
    Buying out of the problems will leave you with wholes in your self development which in the long run will cause more pain.
kyrieeschaton 8y ago
https://delicioustacos.com/2018/01/28/talk-to-her-for-me/ https://delicioustacos.com/2018/01/28/talk-to-her-for-me/
draugadrotten 8y ago
(2014) https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/ https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/ Video: https://datascience.hubs.vidyard.com/watch/tYeyAch76caSFrHDf5P55a https://datascience.hubs.vidyard.com/watch/tYeyAch76caSFrHDf... This is about a guy who wrote a Python script to ... "set up 12 fake OkCupid accounts and wrote a Python script to manage them. The script would search his target demographic (heterosexual and bisexual women between the ages of 25 and 45), visit their pages, and scrape their profiles for every scrap of available information... After three weeks he'd harvested 6 million questions and answers from 20,000 women all over the country. " Not. Creepy. At. All.
- aboutruby 8y ago
  http://weboob.org/applications/havedate.html http://weboob.org/applications/havedate.html
lm28469 8y ago
Yes please, let's remove everything that makes life worth living so we have more time for work and media consumption. The trend of micro managing/optimising our lives is really getting out of control. Dating apps are already dehumanising most of the dating process, let's see how bad we can make it. I wonder if people in the future will be able (or even know that it's possible) to start discussions with the opposite sex outside of dating apps.
- hombre_fatal 8y ago
  Without commenting on the TFA, the thing is that dating is already a crapshoot. Ever go out to try and meet women? I'm comfortable enough with it that I've gone to bars alone just to do it, yet I'd still call it uncomfortable at best. You're essentially cold-approaching strangers and don't know if they're single much less if they even find you attractive. Sometimes you hit it off like a romcom which is rewarding, but everything that's not that is a crapshoot. Certainly doesn't feel "humanizing". Ideally you meet women through your social circle or your social events. I met my last girlfriend through a kayaking event on meetup.com in Guadalajara. But your social circle might not have anything to offer you. Or you find meetups just as impersonal or you don't have time or are still working up the courage to conquer your own anxieties or you're in a new city with no friends yet. Dating already was a numbers game. Dating apps like Tinder have improved my quality of life here enormously. The ability to narrow down strangers to the ones who at least find you attractive (attraction isn't a choice) is an invaluable tool, and not having this tool in the physical world isn't any more humanizing. You just have to remember easy come, easy go. You can't fixate on one woman and you can't be outcome-dependent, but those were already things you shouldn't be doing in the physical world. Besides, the point of dating apps is to quickly escalate to a face to face meetup. Something that can help you meet more humans face to face seems the opposite of dehumanizing. My suspicion is that dating apps are so easy to hate because they bring to the surface what dating really is, and it was never all that pretty to begin with.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >Ever go out to try and meet women? I'm comfortable enough with it that I've gone to bars alone just to do it, yet I'd still call it uncomfortable at best. You're essentially cold-approaching strangers and don't know if they're single much less if they even find you attractive. Sometimes you hit it off like a romcom which is rewarding, but everything that's not that is a crapshoot. Certainly doesn't feel "humanizing". Pretty much any sort of sales job has this sort of learning curve. The part where you either hit it off or it's obvious that this is a waste of both your time reminds me a lot of selling used cars on the side. You usually know pretty quick whether your chances of making a sale are <10% or >90%.
908087 8y ago
Seems like the next logical step in the instaface generation quest for total inauthenticity. Maybe we can use "AI" to create "influencer couples" who are well suited to pushing specific corporations' products. Eventually we can even tune the algorithms to match couples who are most likely to give birth to "influencer babies".
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
The problem is that the target (that seems like an appropriate word) finds the matchmaker interesting, not you. That may get you a date. It also may leave the other person rather disappointed when they meet you and find out that you aren't the same in person as they thought you were online.
- firstbreath 8y ago
  It makes me think of how successful someone can be at getting a job interview if they use someone else's resume. Will they be ready for that next step, whether an interview or a date? I assume they won't, but I'm not sold on specific cases where someone is only bad at digital flirtation. To your point, they'll have to figure it out to keep the success (of more dates) moving forward.
- 908087 8y ago
  We can solve this by going one step further and having the matchmaker follow along on dates to continue the conversation for you while you sit quietly and stare.
  - MrMember 8y ago
    There was a Black Mirror episode sort of like this. The person on the date wore glasses with a camera and an earpiece so the "matchmaker" could tell them what to say and do.
xfitm3 8y ago
I’ve used services like this - in addition to self improvement. Messaging women takes a lot of time and it’s a pain in the ass. I’d rather just meet them.
notTyler 8y ago
I'm sure this woman's clients see lots of success, because I'm guessing she probably screens them based on whether they're actually dateable or not from a female point of view. (Similar to the way that if Eharmony thinks you're a sociopath they will straight up refuse your money.) If it works for them and they end up in good relationships, great. But I think for a majority of people who have trouble dating, it's not just "getting past the first few messages and onto a date." But if she helps people, more power to her.
sixstringtheory 8y ago
Wow this is from early 2017, I’m falling behind the curve thinking this is clever for today!
paulie_a 8y ago
This is really stupid. If you can't get a first date with a few messages back and forth of general chit chat, then asking to meet up you are doing something seriously wrong. Unless there is a schedule conflict that delays meeting, the conversation should be 4-20 messages tops.
esotericn 8y ago
This feels, quite frankly, extremely odd to me. What's the long term? Do you tell your partner on your wedding day "hey, remember when we first got chatting? that wasn't me, it was hired help, oho!". Unless you have a very transactional attitude to relationships (e.g. a sort of elite-dating style situation where you just want a partner that earns well and looks good at social occasions) I can't see this working out well. Your entire relationship is built on a lie. Oh, then there's the limiting case. Two matchmakers end up pitted against each other. A prime candidate for automation!
- MrMember 8y ago
  >Unless you have a very transactional attitude to relationships (e.g. a sort of elite-dating style situation where you just want a partner that earns well and looks good at social occasions) I can't see this working out well. Your entire relationship is built on a lie. I don't see it that way. Dating apps are a game. If you don't play the game "correctly" you're putting yourself at a huge disadvantage. And if you're an average man you're already starting at a disadvantage. To succeed you need the "correct" photos and profile. You need the "correct" opening line. You need the "correct" witty responses. And that's all before you even meet someone in person! I can see the value in a service that bypasses the game to get right to a face to face meeting.
elliekelly 8y ago
Woman here so I would guess my dating app experience is a bit different from most HN readers. Just reading the headline I was kind of disgusted. But then I read the article: > When she messages potential matches, Golden typically comments on their photos: What a cute dog! Oh, your kids live in the city, how lucky are you? She types out full sentences, and she does not use emoji, and she certainly does not use innuendo. “I’m not gonna say like, ‘How big are your feet?’” she giggled. Women are absolutely bombarded with so many messages on these apps that they can't possibly respond to most and have to narrow it down. At a very high level, the process of elimination for most women goes like this: 1. First, skip all of the creeps who fortunately make it super easy for you to spot (bathroom selfies & "Wanna sit on my face?" messages). 2. Then narrow it down by intelligence so anyone who seems to have trouble putting together a full sentence or spelling gets a pass. 3. Finally, narrow it down based on effort so 90% of the remaining messages are ignored because they're some variation of "hey" or "there she is!" These filters suck. But they're the best we can do with an overwhelming amount of inputs and limited additional information. Occasionally creeps get past the filter and we don't find out until we meet in person. Conversely, are all men who take bathroom selfies or ask 'wut u doin' or who play the "numbers game" by sending 'hey' to 1000 women worthy of being skipped over? Probably not. I bet there are a lot of awesome guys who have done one or more of those things and get "filtered out" by women who would otherwise really enjoy their company. But, for now at least, women don't have a better way of separating the wheat from the chaff. The messages Golden sends on behalf of her clients bypass all of these filters. My boyfriend is 13 years older than me, twice-divorced and has a 12 year old. We never would have met via a dating app because I would've filtered him out for a hundred different reasons. (And he's a numbers guy so he would absolutely be guilty of #3.) Assuming Golden does some sort of creep-QC on her clients, if two people meet in person and really hit it off because Golden was able to get the right guy past the right girl's tinder filters, well I think that's great. But also, someone needs to come up with a better way to deal with women's dating-app inboxes. Bumble tried to make an effort but there is a LOT of room for improvement.
- tormeh 8y ago
  Tinder already did that. I think I saw a screenshot once from the olden days of OK Cupid, where men could and were expected to send a message to any woman they found interesting. I think there were hundreds of messages per day or something.

62 points by howard941 8y ago

So, she's an agent! She should get 15%, the standard agent rate. What's 15% of a marriage? With a dozen clients at ~500/mo, she's not making enough to live in Manhattan right now. This is terrible, but I read this and my mind switches back to nerd stuff: how great would it be if software developers could hire someone like this but to handle job outreach and negotiation? You: kick back, solve programming puzzles, go to the occasional tech-out interview. They: reach out to prospects, arrange your interviews, and do the salary negotiation. They're really different skills, programming and job negotiation. They're not even correlated! I know so many excellent negotiators with excellent jobs who aren't even in the top 50% of programmers I've worked with, and vice versa. I suppose it's probably similar with dating; being a good partner probably has little to do with being good at arranging dates. Later Heading off a bunch of replies right here: Recruiters work for hiring firms. How you know this is, developers don't generally pay recruiters. The essence of an agent/principal relationship is that the agent works for, and is compensated by, the principal. Recruiters aren't talent agents for developers.

hkon 8y ago
In consulting this is quite common. Sales people have a pool of consultants they reach out to whenever an assignment pops up. You just jump on the ones you want for the pay you want. Standard cut is 10%
zacherates 8y ago
"... could hire someone like this but to handle job outreach and negotiation ..." They're called recruiters.
- tptacek 8y ago
  Not really! There have been a couple recruiting plays in the past couple years that have tried to do "talent agent" positioning, but I think they're all just recruiters, not agents. A talent agent is someone you, the developer, have a relationship with. They go out and apply to everything you're interested in for you. They're not working from a book of qualified openings trying to match developers to them. They'll do the negotiating lifting even at firms that won't pay their placement rate --- because you, the developer, are the one who pays them, not the company.
swebs 8y ago
>how great would it be if software developers could hire someone like this but to handle job outreach and negotiation? How have you not heard of recruiters? I get spammed by them almost every day.
- maxsilver 8y ago
  Everyone's heard of recruiters, but most recruiters just don't do most of the above. Recruiters are often essentially human banner ads for job postings, and generally don't do most of the above. (Particularly since recruiters work for the company, not the applicant)
subvocalize 8y ago
I'm an ex-PM that works as a talent agent (100% comped by candidate, no formal relationship with companies) for tech jobs, mainly PMs but some devs. It's a side business I'm trying to grow into full-time work. I take up to 4 clients at once since it's a lot of work per person and I don't have a lot of automation in place yet. I'm amazed that professional help isn't standard, since your job determines so much of your happiness and future path, but most people rely on skills they dust off every few years to get one. Much like the article's dating example, it's not clear to the employer that I as an agent exist, because employers often categorically don't want to hear from third parties early in the game. So in practice this involves a lot of ghostwriting on a new, shared email account, which the candidate reviews and submits. Interview coaching is also a big part of it. Also, from a pure negotiation perspective, Josh Doody at FearlessSalaryNegotiation.com (I'm not affiliated) is very good and specializes in developers.
- michaelt 8y ago
  I'm amazed that professional help isn't standard There's already a layer of "professional" "help" in the form of recruiters. They've got a terrible reputation, because their incentives are all messed up.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Their incentives aren't messed up at all. They just don't do what you think they do. Recruiters work for firms. They're not a layer of professional help for candidates.
    - michaelt 8y ago
      Employers somewhat dislike recruiters because recruiters are incentivised to (a) Tip employees off about the questions and answers to the company's tests, (b) solicit the employee to leave as soon as the recruiter gets paid for placing them, and (c) shop employees around between employers in profit order, so employers that try to reduce fees only get candidates other companies have passed on. Candidates somewhat dislike recruiters because they're incentivised to (a) post false adverts to gather CVs, (b) cold call aggressively, (c) be careless with candidates' personal details, (d) misrepresent their willingness to negotiate well on the employees' behalf and their knowledge of pay ranges, (e) misrepresent candidates to employers, and (f) apply aggressive hard-sell tactics. For both employers and candidates to dislike the results of recruiters' incentives is what I mean when I say the incentives are messed up. Firms may pay them, but it's not true to say firms are 100% happy with the deal they get.
arkades 8y ago
"... could hire someone like this but to handle job outreach and negotiation ..." There are lawyers you can hire to do this sort of negotiation for you. A relative of mine is one such, and did a job offer negotiation for me. Thing is, they usually work on very large deals. Their expense is enormous, so it’s not the sort of thing they usually hire out for.
Viker 8y ago
Well recruiters are not expensive in the grand scheme of things. If your problem solving skills are so good that someone is willing to pay you enought you can tottaly afford an assistant or an agent.

jasode 8y ago

It seems inevitable that if AI algorithms help humans flirt, it means we'll eventually have a 2 people get married because John with help from Google's flirting AI interacted with Mary with help from her Facebook flirting AI. Basically, it means it was the Google software engineers flirting with with the Facebook software programmers! Seems ripe for a Hollywood romcom script. Two people hook up because of their respective dating AI apps told them what to say. If the movie was long enough, you could include them getting divorced and the husband & wife's attorneys each using legal AI software to optimize the best divorce settlement.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
blue4 8y ago
can this be an adultswim or comedy central short or something. he only loses the case because his law-ai.biz subscription, lapsed.
mokus 8y ago
I could see this as a Black Mirror script too
- sct202 8y ago
  The "Hang the DJ" episode is sort of along those lines where your AI's pretend date in a virtual world and give a result back in an app.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    I believe Stross had that as a background detail in Accelerondo too
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  There is one, where AI copies of people's personalities are put into a weird dome world of sorts and spend (virtual) years in the (virtual) (and bizarre / forced) dating world until they find a match.

Radim 8y ago

Ah, good old "outsource non-vital parts, so you have more time for yourself (sic)". How much of your life can be outsourced, before it's no longer your life? How much of a man still makes a man? Edgar Allan Poe had a funny little story about that and technology, all the way back in 1840: https://www.eapoe.org/works/mabbott/tom2t032.htm https://www.eapoe.org/works/mabbott/tom2t032.htm

tptacek 8y ago
Look around your living space. Make a list of the things you do every day as part of your daily routine. Think about a person living in the middle ages, and how your routine differs from theirs. How many outsourcing relationships do you benefit from, compared to them? Do you have more or less agency than that other person?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Radim 8y ago
  Hidden in your questions is a presupposition of a well-defined "you", a human essence that decides/benefits as an indivisible whole. As that EA Poe story skilfully anticipated, and as our modernity puts more and more into practice, "you" is just a chimera, a leaky abstraction. It appears the questions of tomorrow will be around "what's the entity exercising agency" more than "how much agency". Surrogate matchmakers are but a taste of things to come.
androidgirl 8y ago
All of it, honestly, if that's what you want. There's no hard and fast rules on what makes an experience worth living. If automating and outsourcing everything makes you happy, do it! Life is short.

mhd 8y ago

Cyrano As A Service? Totally outsourcing it seems a bit skeevy to me, but some on-demand-coaching would be nice. "Don't tell her about your D&D group yet!" would've been some good advice in the past. For a friend of mine, of course.

tptacek 8y ago
Didn't Cyrano do the whole date? This person is just arranging meetings.
- mhd 8y ago
  He wrote letters, and she's posing as her clients, so this seems roughly equivalent. Which to me personally is a step to far. If you're getting tips or even literal phrases, you still have the option of not using or changing them. Not even participating in the courtship until the first date seems morally unsound. The matchmakers of old would be the dating service itself. Or maybe their shoddy algorithms.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
paulie_a 8y ago
What coaching is necessary? You chit chat about interests and ask to meet. It's really that simple.

mothsonasloth 8y ago

Good for her finding a niche market like this however I pity the clients and the people on the other end. Tinder and the likes are a numbers game, with everyone procuring their,"best self" in 6 photos and a witty bio. There is already so much artificiality in the interactions and this will just add more to it. I was terrible and shy when I first used Tinder but I treated it like any other problem. I iterated and reviewed; improved my appearance and well being. Then I started getting matches; at which point I couldn't think of anything funny to say. So I went with cliched or weird intros. After another bit of iteration and self reflection and lots of trial and error I was getting dates. This whole evolution took place over a year or so and was a good benchmark for me. Whether you are a woman or a man, if you are failing on Tinder/Bumble/Match/Dates etc. I suggest you do a bit of self reflection and try and change it up, I believe in you! People who are trying to skip parts out are more likely to stumble at the next hurdle in my opinion.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Viker 8y ago
All these things do not matter if you have the cash to buy yourself out of these problems. Yes everyone "can" potentially learn to fix their cars and computers. But if they have jobs that pay better than the time it takes to do the job then that is straight up shitty investment of their time. If someone earns so much money that they can pay 700 usd a month for this service, that basically means that they have figured life out and are successful and do not need to change. People that make money understand that the better investment is to pay someone more competent to do the job. Personality has also always been something the can be influenced by money. There is a reason why women would prefer rich "jerks" to poor nice guys.
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  Buying out of the problems will leave you with wholes in your self development which in the long run will cause more pain.

kyrieeschaton 8y ago

https://delicioustacos.com/2018/01/28/talk-to-her-for-me/ https://delicioustacos.com/2018/01/28/talk-to-her-for-me/

draugadrotten 8y ago

(2014) https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/ https://www.wired.com/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/ Video: https://datascience.hubs.vidyard.com/watch/tYeyAch76caSFrHDf5P55a https://datascience.hubs.vidyard.com/watch/tYeyAch76caSFrHDf... This is about a guy who wrote a Python script to ... "set up 12 fake OkCupid accounts and wrote a Python script to manage them. The script would search his target demographic (heterosexual and bisexual women between the ages of 25 and 45), visit their pages, and scrape their profiles for every scrap of available information... After three weeks he'd harvested 6 million questions and answers from 20,000 women all over the country. " Not. Creepy. At. All.

aboutruby 8y ago
http://weboob.org/applications/havedate.html http://weboob.org/applications/havedate.html

lm28469 8y ago

Yes please, let's remove everything that makes life worth living so we have more time for work and media consumption. The trend of micro managing/optimising our lives is really getting out of control. Dating apps are already dehumanising most of the dating process, let's see how bad we can make it. I wonder if people in the future will be able (or even know that it's possible) to start discussions with the opposite sex outside of dating apps.

hombre_fatal 8y ago
Without commenting on the TFA, the thing is that dating is already a crapshoot. Ever go out to try and meet women? I'm comfortable enough with it that I've gone to bars alone just to do it, yet I'd still call it uncomfortable at best. You're essentially cold-approaching strangers and don't know if they're single much less if they even find you attractive. Sometimes you hit it off like a romcom which is rewarding, but everything that's not that is a crapshoot. Certainly doesn't feel "humanizing". Ideally you meet women through your social circle or your social events. I met my last girlfriend through a kayaking event on meetup.com in Guadalajara. But your social circle might not have anything to offer you. Or you find meetups just as impersonal or you don't have time or are still working up the courage to conquer your own anxieties or you're in a new city with no friends yet. Dating already was a numbers game. Dating apps like Tinder have improved my quality of life here enormously. The ability to narrow down strangers to the ones who at least find you attractive (attraction isn't a choice) is an invaluable tool, and not having this tool in the physical world isn't any more humanizing. You just have to remember easy come, easy go. You can't fixate on one woman and you can't be outcome-dependent, but those were already things you shouldn't be doing in the physical world. Besides, the point of dating apps is to quickly escalate to a face to face meetup. Something that can help you meet more humans face to face seems the opposite of dehumanizing. My suspicion is that dating apps are so easy to hate because they bring to the surface what dating really is, and it was never all that pretty to begin with.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >Ever go out to try and meet women? I'm comfortable enough with it that I've gone to bars alone just to do it, yet I'd still call it uncomfortable at best. You're essentially cold-approaching strangers and don't know if they're single much less if they even find you attractive. Sometimes you hit it off like a romcom which is rewarding, but everything that's not that is a crapshoot. Certainly doesn't feel "humanizing". Pretty much any sort of sales job has this sort of learning curve. The part where you either hit it off or it's obvious that this is a waste of both your time reminds me a lot of selling used cars on the side. You usually know pretty quick whether your chances of making a sale are <10% or >90%.

908087 8y ago

Seems like the next logical step in the instaface generation quest for total inauthenticity. Maybe we can use "AI" to create "influencer couples" who are well suited to pushing specific corporations' products. Eventually we can even tune the algorithms to match couples who are most likely to give birth to "influencer babies".

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

The problem is that the target (that seems like an appropriate word) finds the matchmaker interesting, not you. That may get you a date. It also may leave the other person rather disappointed when they meet you and find out that you aren't the same in person as they thought you were online.

firstbreath 8y ago
It makes me think of how successful someone can be at getting a job interview if they use someone else's resume. Will they be ready for that next step, whether an interview or a date? I assume they won't, but I'm not sold on specific cases where someone is only bad at digital flirtation. To your point, they'll have to figure it out to keep the success (of more dates) moving forward.
908087 8y ago
We can solve this by going one step further and having the matchmaker follow along on dates to continue the conversation for you while you sit quietly and stare.
- MrMember 8y ago
  There was a Black Mirror episode sort of like this. The person on the date wore glasses with a camera and an earpiece so the "matchmaker" could tell them what to say and do.

xfitm3 8y ago

I’ve used services like this - in addition to self improvement. Messaging women takes a lot of time and it’s a pain in the ass. I’d rather just meet them.

notTyler 8y ago

I'm sure this woman's clients see lots of success, because I'm guessing she probably screens them based on whether they're actually dateable or not from a female point of view. (Similar to the way that if Eharmony thinks you're a sociopath they will straight up refuse your money.) If it works for them and they end up in good relationships, great. But I think for a majority of people who have trouble dating, it's not just "getting past the first few messages and onto a date." But if she helps people, more power to her.

sixstringtheory 8y ago

Wow this is from early 2017, I’m falling behind the curve thinking this is clever for today!

paulie_a 8y ago

This is really stupid. If you can't get a first date with a few messages back and forth of general chit chat, then asking to meet up you are doing something seriously wrong. Unless there is a schedule conflict that delays meeting, the conversation should be 4-20 messages tops.

esotericn 8y ago

This feels, quite frankly, extremely odd to me. What's the long term? Do you tell your partner on your wedding day "hey, remember when we first got chatting? that wasn't me, it was hired help, oho!". Unless you have a very transactional attitude to relationships (e.g. a sort of elite-dating style situation where you just want a partner that earns well and looks good at social occasions) I can't see this working out well. Your entire relationship is built on a lie. Oh, then there's the limiting case. Two matchmakers end up pitted against each other. A prime candidate for automation!

MrMember 8y ago
>Unless you have a very transactional attitude to relationships (e.g. a sort of elite-dating style situation where you just want a partner that earns well and looks good at social occasions) I can't see this working out well. Your entire relationship is built on a lie. I don't see it that way. Dating apps are a game. If you don't play the game "correctly" you're putting yourself at a huge disadvantage. And if you're an average man you're already starting at a disadvantage. To succeed you need the "correct" photos and profile. You need the "correct" opening line. You need the "correct" witty responses. And that's all before you even meet someone in person! I can see the value in a service that bypasses the game to get right to a face to face meeting.

elliekelly 8y ago

Woman here so I would guess my dating app experience is a bit different from most HN readers. Just reading the headline I was kind of disgusted. But then I read the article: > When she messages potential matches, Golden typically comments on their photos: What a cute dog! Oh, your kids live in the city, how lucky are you? She types out full sentences, and she does not use emoji, and she certainly does not use innuendo. “I’m not gonna say like, ‘How big are your feet?’” she giggled. Women are absolutely bombarded with so many messages on these apps that they can't possibly respond to most and have to narrow it down. At a very high level, the process of elimination for most women goes like this: 1. First, skip all of the creeps who fortunately make it super easy for you to spot (bathroom selfies & "Wanna sit on my face?" messages). 2. Then narrow it down by intelligence so anyone who seems to have trouble putting together a full sentence or spelling gets a pass. 3. Finally, narrow it down based on effort so 90% of the remaining messages are ignored because they're some variation of "hey" or "there she is!" These filters suck. But they're the best we can do with an overwhelming amount of inputs and limited additional information. Occasionally creeps get past the filter and we don't find out until we meet in person. Conversely, are all men who take bathroom selfies or ask 'wut u doin' or who play the "numbers game" by sending 'hey' to 1000 women worthy of being skipped over? Probably not. I bet there are a lot of awesome guys who have done one or more of those things and get "filtered out" by women who would otherwise really enjoy their company. But, for now at least, women don't have a better way of separating the wheat from the chaff. The messages Golden sends on behalf of her clients bypass all of these filters. My boyfriend is 13 years older than me, twice-divorced and has a 12 year old. We never would have met via a dating app because I would've filtered him out for a hundred different reasons. (And he's a numbers guy so he would absolutely be guilty of #3.) Assuming Golden does some sort of creep-QC on her clients, if two people meet in person and really hit it off because Golden was able to get the right guy past the right girl's tinder filters, well I think that's great. But also, someone needs to come up with a better way to deal with women's dating-app inboxes. Bumble tried to make an effort but there is a LOT of room for improvement.

tormeh 8y ago
Tinder already did that. I think I saw a screenshot once from the olden days of OK Cupid, where men could and were expected to send a message to any woman they found interesting. I think there were hundreds of messages per day or something.