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> "or you haven't been at all successful at getting a date on the main site" Which is to say, most of the userbase. Most people, of both genders, have trouble

> "or you haven't been at all successful at getting a date on the main site" Which is to say, most of the userbase. Most people, of both genders, have trouble getting dates online - pretty much anyone not in the top quartile of attractiveness for their orientation, weighted by race, height, looks, etc. Getting a lot of messages != getting a lot of dates. Most of OKC, as it is with most dating sites, is copypasta spam. When there is no flow limit, it's individually optimal to spam as many people as possible, so that's what happens. People in the top quartile get their pick of the litter - everyone else gets either no messages, or an inbox full of "sup gurl". We've sort of kind of gotten past the stigma of online dating. We haven't really gotten past the stigma of failing at online dating. I mean think about it, how pathetic is that? You flunked dating in real life and now you can't even do well on a computer. We also know, as you pointed out, that people are highly judgmental online. I'd amend your comment and say that you've massively understated the level and scale of this judgment. Almost all messages are instigated based on looks alone, damn what you wrote in your profile. OKC's insistence on collecting your whole life story and having you answer hundreds of questions may help their matching algorithm, but it doesn't help you - as it gives opposing users irrational reasons to reject you "he doesn't like seafood? dealbreaker!" People are fucking nuts when online dating. They are more judgmental, more racist, more classist than they are in real life, and at every step of the way they will use all of the above to sabotage themselves from finding someone they might actually get along with. Blind date - properly implemented - will IMO achieve much better results for most of the dating population, but selling people on it is really the tough part. Online daters want absolute control and information, even if they will use this information to sabotage their own chances. [edit] I also happen to think that OKCupid users would get much better results if there was a substantial rate-limit on messaging. But once again, selling it to the userbase is the tough part. People want utter freedom on your system, and any restriction - even ones that will help them - is seen as draconian.

untog 14y ago
People are fucking nuts when online dating. I don't disagree, but I think that people are nuts when dating, online or off. I'd argue that it isn't optimal to spam as many people as possible with 'sup'- most (female) profiles on the site say "don't message me just saying 'sup' or 'you are hot'" for exactly that reason. I think online dating allows people to be slightly more obvious about judging people the way that they always do.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "I'd argue that it isn't optimal to spam as many people as possible with 'sup'-' Oh, it most certainly isn't. It's individually optimal to send as many people as many carefully worded, personalized, charming messages as possible. Of course, this isn't actually possible, so people will fall back to either carefully-worded but identical copypasta messages. Or, "sup". The behavior of people in online dating fascinates me (and I work in the field nowadays too, so I guess that sort of makes sense). It's incredible the lengths people will go to to sabotage themselves in the pursuit of success. > "but I think that people are nuts when dating, online or off" You're right, but we're arguing over degrees. People are pretty nutty when dealing with strangers, particularly in a sexual/romantic context, but this is magnified many fold when online. Small biases in real life become massive online. Someone who might have a back-of-the-mind thought "oh, he's short" IRL will make it a dealbreaker. Someone who might have a back-of-the-mind "oh, he's black" IRL will make that a dealbreaker also. People's preferences become polarized to the point where, IMO, it's actively harming their experience. I think that's the polite way of saying that people innermost biases are in full play online, where they are (consciously or subconsciously) tempered IRL. People are, by a remarkable degree, more racist, more classist, and more judgmental than they behave in real life, to a degree they're not even fully aware of. A more cynical person might say that's a truer expression of the self, but I don't think it's that simplistic. In many ways the traditional online dating setup magnifies biases and makes mountains out of mole hills, and in that way works against the interests of the user. OKCupid doesn't really help matters. They have statistical information on what signals actually matter in attraction and success of a relationship, but they will give you orders of magnitude more (irrelevant) signals on top of all of that. Blind dating may not work out, but I do think that "blinder" dating is necessary for online to work.
astine 14y ago
If spamming and message quantity is the big problem for women I wonder why OKC doesn't just limit the number of first contacts or non-reply messaged a user can send out in any given time period. Add a notice to users encouraging them to use their first contacts wisely and to take their time in composing messages, you might see an improvement in messaging health.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  One problem is that a huge number of people are simply terrible at expressing themselves via the written (or typed) word. Without wishing to flatter ourselves , the level of discourse experienced at HN is far higher than you will experience on the internet at large. This leads to problems with both badly written, short and generic profiles (which makes writing well crafted clever messages to the person difficult) and people who find writing a message that really sells them as an ideal dating partner impossible. Not to mention that most people are uncomfortable writing about themselves in a personal way for a stranger. I imagine the problems with rate limiting might be that users on a free site could well just sign up multiple accounts to get around this limit which would probably be yet more annoying.
starpilot 14y ago
I think a lot of the apparent neurotic preferences of online daters stems from our usual goal of using the internet for instant gratification. Linkbait headlines, meme images, "mind-blowing" photos, and of course, porn. With online dating, the closest thing providing a similar rush is finding a person who's really hot in their photos. Writing off people for any foible or plain appearance is just a habit from ignoring anything remotely unstimulating on the internet.
jiggy2011 14y ago
There's also the added complication that a lot of people actually use online dating more for ego re-enforcement than actually looking for a date. Someone who is single and struggling in RL dating might like getting 100 "dam ur hot xx" messages but they probably don't want to date the sort of people who send them.

untog 14y ago

People are fucking nuts when online dating. I don't disagree, but I think that people are nuts when dating, online or off. I'd argue that it isn't optimal to spam as many people as possible with 'sup'- most (female) profiles on the site say "don't message me just saying 'sup' or 'you are hot'" for exactly that reason. I think online dating allows people to be slightly more obvious about judging people the way that they always do.

potatolicious 14y ago
> "I'd argue that it isn't optimal to spam as many people as possible with 'sup'-' Oh, it most certainly isn't. It's individually optimal to send as many people as many carefully worded, personalized, charming messages as possible. Of course, this isn't actually possible, so people will fall back to either carefully-worded but identical copypasta messages. Or, "sup". The behavior of people in online dating fascinates me (and I work in the field nowadays too, so I guess that sort of makes sense). It's incredible the lengths people will go to to sabotage themselves in the pursuit of success. > "but I think that people are nuts when dating, online or off" You're right, but we're arguing over degrees. People are pretty nutty when dealing with strangers, particularly in a sexual/romantic context, but this is magnified many fold when online. Small biases in real life become massive online. Someone who might have a back-of-the-mind thought "oh, he's short" IRL will make it a dealbreaker. Someone who might have a back-of-the-mind "oh, he's black" IRL will make that a dealbreaker also. People's preferences become polarized to the point where, IMO, it's actively harming their experience. I think that's the polite way of saying that people innermost biases are in full play online, where they are (consciously or subconsciously) tempered IRL. People are, by a remarkable degree, more racist, more classist, and more judgmental than they behave in real life, to a degree they're not even fully aware of. A more cynical person might say that's a truer expression of the self, but I don't think it's that simplistic. In many ways the traditional online dating setup magnifies biases and makes mountains out of mole hills, and in that way works against the interests of the user. OKCupid doesn't really help matters. They have statistical information on what signals actually matter in attraction and success of a relationship, but they will give you orders of magnitude more (irrelevant) signals on top of all of that. Blind dating may not work out, but I do think that "blinder" dating is necessary for online to work.

astine 14y ago

If spamming and message quantity is the big problem for women I wonder why OKC doesn't just limit the number of first contacts or non-reply messaged a user can send out in any given time period. Add a notice to users encouraging them to use their first contacts wisely and to take their time in composing messages, you might see an improvement in messaging health.

jiggy2011 14y ago
One problem is that a huge number of people are simply terrible at expressing themselves via the written (or typed) word. Without wishing to flatter ourselves , the level of discourse experienced at HN is far higher than you will experience on the internet at large. This leads to problems with both badly written, short and generic profiles (which makes writing well crafted clever messages to the person difficult) and people who find writing a message that really sells them as an ideal dating partner impossible. Not to mention that most people are uncomfortable writing about themselves in a personal way for a stranger. I imagine the problems with rate limiting might be that users on a free site could well just sign up multiple accounts to get around this limit which would probably be yet more annoying.

starpilot 14y ago

I think a lot of the apparent neurotic preferences of online daters stems from our usual goal of using the internet for instant gratification. Linkbait headlines, meme images, "mind-blowing" photos, and of course, porn. With online dating, the closest thing providing a similar rush is finding a person who's really hot in their photos. Writing off people for any foible or plain appearance is just a habit from ignoring anything remotely unstimulating on the internet.

jiggy2011 14y ago

There's also the added complication that a lot of people actually use online dating more for ego re-enforcement than actually looking for a date. Someone who is single and struggling in RL dating might like getting 100 "dam ur hot xx" messages but they probably don't want to date the sort of people who send them.