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Man Poses as Woman on Online Dating Site; Barely Lasts Two Hours
- Dewie 13y agoLink to Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/1uqym6/as_a_guy_i_wanted_to_know_what_it_was_like_to_be/ http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/1uqym6/as_a...
- mnw21cam 13y agoMy wife and I met on an online dating site. Mainly because we were chatting on the open forum about how weird everyone was, and how fed up with it we were.
- swombat 13y agoI have some friends who got married via an online dating site, but it was a paid one. I get that this problem plagues free sites like OKC or POF - is it also a problem on paid sites?
- masklinn 13y ago> I have some friends who got married via an online dating site, but it was a paid one. Note that it's not a post against online dating sites, commenters on both 2x and jezebel note that they've met significant others on dating sites. > I get that this problem plagues free sites like OKC or POF - is it also a problem on paid sites? Creepy messagers have as much money to spend as others (if not more) I'd guess, unless the site finds out they make people leave (and stop paying) I'd expect little difference. But you'd have to ask women using or staff of these sites to know/get a comparison really.
- tekalon 13y agoI met my husband on OKCupid. It took two weeks for us to meet and about 2-3 months for us to get married. That said, I did get a good amount of creepy emails/messages. My two sisters have both met their husband/fiance on OKCupid. I didn't hear horror stories from them, but I assume they got the usual internet treatment. I would usually just block them, occasionally respond 'not cool.'
- cynusx 13y agosounds like a good opportunity for dating sites to do pre-moderation of inbound messages. I am sure some of it can be caught with a relatively simple classifier (machine learning) and the rest can be handled with mechanical turk. Another approach would be to have a karma system that over time will filter out the bad actors.
- nodata 13y agoYou want to send private messages to mechanical turk? Not a good idea. Karma would work (but could be abused).
- cynusx 13y agoyea, good point about Mechanical turk. Moderators would get expensive quite quickly but if it is such a royal pain I suppose it can be a paid-for feature which is sustainable.
- onion2k 13y agoThere's a subset of men who enjoy sending sexually explicit messages to strangers. This is not surprising. Depressing, but not surprising. What is slightly surprising is that online dating websites, for all their sophisticated matching algorithms, haven't bothered applying some of the most basic anti-spam heuristics to the problem. The first dating site that does it, you'd imagine, would get a very good reputation very quickly. Dating websites actually want people to stay single and remain on the site paying their subscription or viewing adverts, but an add-on that filters out the awful rubbish is surely something women would pay for.
- camus2 13y ago> There's a subset of men who enjoy sending sexually explicit messages to strangers. IMHO the majority of men. > but an add-on that filters out the awful rubbish is surely something women would pay for Most dating sites are free for women. In my experience, the most effective dating sites are social networks that are about anything but dating. Where you can meet somebody with whom you share a hobby or something like that. I met my girlfriend on a foreign language learning website and we are still together after 4 years. I guess it's more complicated to meet girls on a Java forum...but the fact that one engages a discussion without sex or relationship in mind can make a future relationship more genuine. EDITED! since I just found out this subject is a very "sensitive" one for some here. But i still stand by my point.
- vdaniuk 13y ago>I would say 95% of men on dating sites... Citation please or be responsible and remove this baseless claim.
- masklinn 13y agoAnecdote is not data, but see comments in the 2x thread which seem to indicate that 95% (of active male users) is — if anything — an understatement. E.g. > Out of over 300 messages, less than 10% were actual introductions rather than a plain 'hi' or some rude sexual commentary. I responded to every single one of them. 90% of those [nb: the initially actual non-sexual introductions] turned into something sexual in less than 8 back/forth exchanges. In the end out of somewhere around 340 first contact msgs received, only one guy actually carried on a normal, reasonable conversation longer than a few paragraphs, and even he made one or two not entirely subtle hints in the process.
- infruset 13y agoReading this is interesting both from the content it describes (a guy passing for a girl on a dating site and being horrified by the messages he gets) and from the tone, that all this is self-evident and why don't guys just know this? Well, they don't. But when they learn it, they are as horrified as it deserves.
- Fuxy 13y agoWell I don't know about you guys but that isn't surprising to me at all. It's amazing how big the mountain of stupid is out there and it's not easy when their all trying to talk to you. That's why us guys have it hard in general. When she has to sift through so many emails to find just a half decent guy. Lesson 1: You need to stand out if your just like the other 20 guys she's talked to these past hours you're doomed to fail. Be yourself but be your best self and don't be afraid to be unique or weird as long as its not in a creepy way. Lesson 2: Don't be a wuss or needy let her reply in her own damn time and if you're writing a follow up be funny and bust her balls a bit for not replying in a timely manner. If she still doesn't reply ...oh well there's plenty of other fish in the sea.
- masklinn 13y agoI'm impressed by your skills at completely missing the point, victimisation reversal and turning a discovery/report of many women's day-to-day creepy and harassy experiences (on dating websites specifically, but the 2X comments make it clear this extends to online and off-) into "yeah mates it's hard for a guy to get noticed, here's one weird trick to be picked"
- Fuxy 13y agoIf you discovered a cure for guys being horny and stupid go ahead I'm listening. This is not something new women have been dealing with this since the birth of the internet and there's nothing you can do about that. All you can change is yourself and learn from other guys stupidity.
- hpaavola 13y agoI was part of the team that rewrote Finland's most popular dating site about two years ago and this was one of the problems we tried to fix. We got pretty good results by letting users block messages from users who do not meet certain criteria. We gave users three different filters: 1. Allow messages from users who live in those areas where you are looking company 2. The same as 1., but also age and gender must match your "dream partner" settings 3. And finally allow messages from users who meet X percent of your dream partner settings And of course you could block users after they have messaged you, but that is already too late if you get 100 harassment messages per day.
- Gravityloss 13y agoThough if we're talking about Suomi24, the site is so buggy in general it's almost abandoned now. For example it loses your login status all the time.
- hpaavola 13y agoI don't know about the current situation, but at least first 6 months after the update the site did grow faster than it used to. But yes, we did have quite many problems after the rewrote.
- ishener 13y agowhy not block a user from sending messages to anyone after, say, 3 complaints? yes, maybe it's a little harsh and not democratic, but it will make men much more considerate
- watwut 13y agoSystems like this are too easy to abuse.
- hpaavola 13y agoSuch a system was built for images; if user images got too many complaints, then those images were hidden and sent to moderation queue where moderators could decide wheter those complaints were valid or not. It would have been fairly simple to do same for messages, but problem is that Finnish law does not permit moderators to read private messages. So it would have been unfair for some users.
- Recoil42 13y agoI love the topic, bur god, Jezebel's writing is painfully atrocious.
- JonnieCache 13y agoUnbelievable isn't it? It used to be a good source of interesting articles about gender/sexual politics but at some point they must have worked out that the excessively conversational "new york" style articles get more traffic, and now you can almost hear the exposed brickwork in every sentence.
- tmikaeld 13y ago☑ Don't show commonly blocked users and prevent them from contacting you. ^ This would be an attractive feature.
- camus2 13y agoEven better , ghost them and make them pay for each message they send... (kidding,as it would be fraudulent).
- pgsandstrom 13y agoI was part of developing a Swedish dating app, and during this time I discussed online dating with many friends of both genders. While many women would find the attention a bit tiring, and sometimes had to report someone for the tone in their messages, no one ever told me anything like this. I would guess that it heavily depends on which kind of dating site you use. So to counter this story, I share that I've heard 10-15 stories that was much more positive.
- adnam 13y agoCall me jaded but I suspect OKCThrowaway22221 was in fact a woman, posing as a man, posing as a woman.
- taspeotis 13y agoIf you wanted to be more or less confident of this, you could try running some of what (s)he wrote through that application that guesses your gender from how you write stuff. EDIT: I put the paragraphs quoted into http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php#Analyze http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php#Analyze Genre: Informal Female = 1683 Male = 1466 Difference = -217; 46.55% Verdict: Weak FEMALE Weak emphasis could indicate European. Site carries this disclaimer: The system generates a simple estimate (profiling). While Gender Guesser may be 60% - 70% accurate, it is not 100% accurate. This is better than random guessing (50%), but should not be interpreted as "fact".
- adnam 13y agoThe prose sounds like a schoolgirl wrote it: "At first I thought it was fun, I thought it was weird but maybe I would mess with them or something and freak them out and tell them I was a guy or something..." (Without wishing to offend females of school-attending age)
- jules 13y agoWow. I'm stunned by how well that works. I've copy pasted 5 male and 5 female paragraphs, and it got every single one correct.
- wikiburner 13y agoHow did Jezebel get unbanned? Aren't they part of the Gawker/Valleywag hive of scum and villainy?
- philosophus 13y agoI don't know but I can tell you I stopped reading at "teh poor menz." Do people still do that "teh" thing?
- kfk 13y agoMatching couples looks like an easy problem to solve, here, you have my little algo to find the optimum match for n couples: https://github.com/kfk/scripts/blob/master/match-date.py https://github.com/kfk/scripts/blob/master/match-date.py Ok, joking a bit, but there is a point to this. If you have a finite set of people (and I bet in a short time frame you can make that assumption), then in the WORST case you have to do n*(n+1)/2 matches. Let's say it takes 1 hr to run a date, then we can match 10 people in 55 hrs in the worst case. Now, try matching 10 people using these websites. Enter the texting game and no proper filtering (by looks, age, location, etc.). It will take X time my worst case scenario to maybe match half of the population. Point is: somebody should make a system that clusters people and randomly assigns them to dates. Without any prior texting that is. Which, by the way, would simulate the way people met until 20 years ago more or less.
- yummyfajitas 13y agoSomeone should try a similar experiment: "Unemployed Homebuilder poses as Software Engineer on Jobs Site, OMFG too many recruiters". Or "Poor Indian wears Fair&Handsome and poses as Rich Western Tourist, barely lasts two hours before getting annoyed by beggars". Related thoughts from the often interesting Scott Alexander: http://squid314.livejournal.com/327849.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/327849.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/327957.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/327957.html (Yes, I'm one of those big jerks who has as much sympathy for the sexually deprived as the monetarily deprived, which is not a huge amount. Feel free to make status-lowering comments in response.)
- timje1 13y agoNo need to comment if we simply disagree. That's what downvoting was made for!
- chippy 13y agomany hacker news members are unable to downvote. There is some kind of threshold limit based on account age. My account was created about 1000 days ago, and my karma is 182. I am unable to downvote at this time, because I lurked for long part of that 1000 days.
- taspeotis 13y agoLast time I checked it was karma-based [1] and you needed 1,000 internet points before you could downvote. [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- chippy 13y agoYeah that FAQ doesn't quite answer that, but the unofficial one does: http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ Edits: Yes, that doesn't have anything about some kind of ratio though... just that there is a threshold. Thank you :)
- 13y ago
- belorn 13y agoIn online dating, and human interaction in general, you need 2 basic things. #1: People to talk to. #2: The person need to a person you want to talk to, ie not a "predator", scam artist, bot, creepy, and so on. The question the person had was if women had a easier time on dating services than men. By experiment, he concluded that the mass of men wanting to talk to a female profile and the over predatory attitude quickly overwhelmed the person who made the fake profile. By this, he concluded that women has a worse time than men. Just me who do not think he actually answered his question?
- wvh 13y agoThe very first thing I did as a teen when I tried the internet in '95 or '96 was to pretend to be a woman in a chatroom (I realise how weird that must sound). That brief experience was a valuable lesson and taught me how not to talk to women. Still, I'm very much a typical horny male – it often takes no more than about 2 seconds to go from noticing a woman anywhere to mental procreative scenery. For all the feminist talk about the female libido, I doubt women generally experience as strong (or perhaps "swift" is a better word here) urges as many men seem to do. This discongruence is perhaps one of nature's cruelest jokes... The question is how to avoid demonising (all) men without victimising women. However, before this whole discussion turns into another bitter (anti-)feminist warzone, this particular case has probably at least as much to do with the medium as it has with issues between men and women. As it stands, the (unwalled) internet is generally somewhat of a lost cause since the distance, anonimity and lack of social consequences make it very hard to compel people to do the right thing – at least according to current societal norms. If you prefer the wild west over the walled gardens of strictly regulated sites (block, ban, ignore, real ID), I'm afraid you better bring a gun to handle the coyotes... Not many seem to be in favour of policies such as Real Name or let alone forms of official identification.
- MarkMc 13y agoWhat about a dating website that allows each guy to send only one message per day?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- yaix 13y agoWhy didn't he just click "block" and wait for normal people to contact him? There are probably some idiots who jump onto every new profile that pops up. Once blocked, it will become much easier.
- DanBC 13y agoDo you remember when spam filters didn't work?
- ddd1600 13y agoblubber c
- hamoid 13y agoWhy not limit the amount of messages people can send per day? 3 for instance? Wouldn't that make you think before sending a message? Maybe users could choose to only receive messages from people who send less than N messages per day. It would be funny if messages from users who are reported as annoying get redirected to a horny bot which keeps them "entertained" :)