6 ms·

A big thing to consider is the fact that everyone got online all the time during the enshittification phase of OKC - it wasn't just OKC's userbase, but it was t

by sneak 3y ago

A big thing to consider is the fact that everyone got online all the time during the enshittification phase of OKC - it wasn't just OKC's userbase, but it was the median of the whole internet that got dumber and less sophisticated/more basic. When OKC was great, the random median many-hours-on-the-internet-every-day user was a lot better than it is today. Now that's just a median member of the general public, thanks to the ubiquity of social media.

johntiger1 3y ago
The internet really took a turn for the worse once they let people like me on to it. /s
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  to paraphrase a director: "any club that would let me be in it is a club that I probably shouldn't be in"
  - trelane 3y ago
    It's never gauche to quote Marx.[1] Especially Groucho. He wasn't a director, though, as far as I can tell.[2] [1] https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0000050/quotes https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0000050/quotes [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx
    - ctchocula 3y ago
      "director" is probably a reference to Woody Allen quoting Groucho Marx in Annie Hall [1]. It's a great movie btw. Comes highly recommended from Roger Ebert [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejnp589JuL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejnp589JuL0 [2] https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-annie-hall-1977 https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-annie-hall-19...
User23 3y ago
When I first got online the average user’s IQ was no joke north of 120. Now of course it’s around 100. Someone needs to come up with a pithy term for how a subpopulation’s average value for any attribute approaches the population’s average value for same as the subpopulation’s size approaches that of the population. It’s conceptually a simple, even trivial, notion, but it’s cumbersome to talk about. That’s also why undergraduate degrees are no longer a particularly good signal. And I expect if it were easier to talk about many more cases would become apparent.
- butterNaN 3y ago
  IQ is a bad measure of the thing you're trying to quantificate here
- tacitusarc 3y ago
  Seems like the law of small numbers to me.
- theresistor 3y ago
  Regression to the mean
- Retric 3y ago
  Undergraduate degrees are becoming a stronger signal just not in the same way. It’s even more obvious with high school degrees. Most people cross that threshold, so the people who didn’t now represent a usual group of under achievers. The threshold is far below what FAANG’s are looking for, but requiring a HS/collage degree can effectively presort applicants for jobs with lower thresholds. Unfortunately, such methods consistently exclude many worthwhile applicants from a wide range of jobs the same way asking for a criminal background check. But that then sets up a stronger feedback loop as people have stronger incentives to cross that threshold.
  - fingerlocks 3y ago
    Paradoxically, if you have an undergraduate degree but don’t have a high school degree, it can be even stronger signal than having both. “I actually dropped out of high school and went straight to college.”, sounds impressive. Of course you have to omit the part about taking a gap year and being a community college transfer student.
yencabulator 3y ago
OKC even early on had lots of new users that didn't necessarily fit well in the site culture (/formed different subcultures). Those people had more visually-oriented profiles, focused less on funny writing, would largely not use the quizzes, and if they did they'd answer quizzes very differently from you, and you'd still get your great >90% match dates filtering them out, and it didn't really matter! The filter worked! (I found my literal 99% match before OKCupid went too wrong, so I don't really know how it fell. I'm assuming overt monetization poisoned the well.)

by sneak 3y ago

johntiger1 3y ago

The internet really took a turn for the worse once they let people like me on to it. /s

red-iron-pine 3y ago
to paraphrase a director: "any club that would let me be in it is a club that I probably shouldn't be in"
- trelane 3y ago
  It's never gauche to quote Marx.[1] Especially Groucho. He wasn't a director, though, as far as I can tell.[2] [1] https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0000050/quotes https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0000050/quotes [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx
  - ctchocula 3y ago
    "director" is probably a reference to Woody Allen quoting Groucho Marx in Annie Hall [1]. It's a great movie btw. Comes highly recommended from Roger Ebert [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejnp589JuL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejnp589JuL0 [2] https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-annie-hall-1977 https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-annie-hall-19...

User23 3y ago

When I first got online the average user’s IQ was no joke north of 120. Now of course it’s around 100. Someone needs to come up with a pithy term for how a subpopulation’s average value for any attribute approaches the population’s average value for same as the subpopulation’s size approaches that of the population. It’s conceptually a simple, even trivial, notion, but it’s cumbersome to talk about. That’s also why undergraduate degrees are no longer a particularly good signal. And I expect if it were easier to talk about many more cases would become apparent.

butterNaN 3y ago
IQ is a bad measure of the thing you're trying to quantificate here
tacitusarc 3y ago
Seems like the law of small numbers to me.
theresistor 3y ago
Regression to the mean
Retric 3y ago
Undergraduate degrees are becoming a stronger signal just not in the same way. It’s even more obvious with high school degrees. Most people cross that threshold, so the people who didn’t now represent a usual group of under achievers. The threshold is far below what FAANG’s are looking for, but requiring a HS/collage degree can effectively presort applicants for jobs with lower thresholds. Unfortunately, such methods consistently exclude many worthwhile applicants from a wide range of jobs the same way asking for a criminal background check. But that then sets up a stronger feedback loop as people have stronger incentives to cross that threshold.
- fingerlocks 3y ago
  Paradoxically, if you have an undergraduate degree but don’t have a high school degree, it can be even stronger signal than having both. “I actually dropped out of high school and went straight to college.”, sounds impressive. Of course you have to omit the part about taking a gap year and being a community college transfer student.

yencabulator 3y ago

OKC even early on had lots of new users that didn't necessarily fit well in the site culture (/formed different subcultures). Those people had more visually-oriented profiles, focused less on funny writing, would largely not use the quizzes, and if they did they'd answer quizzes very differently from you, and you'd still get your great >90% match dates filtering them out, and it didn't really matter! The filter worked! (I found my literal 99% match before OKCupid went too wrong, so I don't really know how it fell. I'm assuming overt monetization poisoned the well.)