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I see some pessimism in these comments, but IMO one needs to consider the problem from both genders (assuming we're talking about straight dating exclusively fo

I see some pessimism in these comments, but IMO one needs to consider the problem from both genders (assuming we're talking about straight dating exclusively for a sec). The problem with OkCupid is that the experience is horrendous for women. While the men would love to have choice, and "unlimited" matches, in reality this only means one thing: Spam. Spam spam spam spam spam spam. More spam. The success of Tinder should be in large part attributed to the fact that the basic interaction model removes spam. Men will swipe right on the majority of "matches", making women the actual gatekeepers of conversation - and this model works, though you obviously lose a lot of nuance and depth along the way.

hangonhn 12y ago
Yeah I've heard total horror stories from women. It's like men on OKCupid took the idea of "numbers game" way, way too far. Consequently I also didn't want to be on there and be lumped in with those guys either.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    I don't think so. While most spammers aren't particularly sophisticated, it doesn't take a genius to figure out you can copy-paste formulaic messages to hundreds of women in only a few minutes. Even a user who isn't particularly nefarious and say, sends 20 original (not copy-pasted) messages each session, it's still an overwhelming amount of messages for women to sort through. It's important to note that when I say "spam" I don't just mean "bad actors who deliberately attempt to game the system". I mean that even what appears to a user as a "natural" amount of messages in fact makes the system nearly unusable. It's almost trivial for female users to end up with literally hundreds of messages per day - just managing the messages themselves is a chore, much less viewing the profiles associated.
- Kalium 12y ago
  Long story short, men discovered that being a well-behaved actor is a losing strategy on dating sites.
  - shkkmo 12y ago
    Thanks for stereotyping me and grouping me with the worst actors in my gender.
    - Kalium 12y ago
      Speak for yourself. I, personally, discovered through direct and firsthand experience that being a well-behaved actor was a losing strategy. Then I stopped to think about it and understood why.
      - shkkmo 12y ago
        I did speak for myself, you were the one that presumed to speak for me.
        Kalium 12y ago
        Excuse me. "Many men, though not all, because some Thing Differently, though judging by available statistics most..." Happy? Or would you prefer #NotAllMen?
        GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
        Don't neg me, bro.
      - shkkmo 12y ago
        I think what you said in your reply works just fine: "I, personally, discovered..."
        Kalium 12y ago
listic 12y ago
Spam. Spam spam spam spam spam spam. More spam. Could you please elaborate? Do women get spammed a lot? Do men have to spam to be spoken to?
- gk1 12y ago
  A lot of men find it easier to send short and generic messages ("Hey ur cute wats up?") to many women rather than taking time to write something thoughtful. The logic is that if you message 100 women, at least a few are going to respond. As a result of this, female members are under a constant barrage of mindless messages, which is what's being referred to as spam.
  - pyre 12y ago
    > The logic is that if you message 100 women, at least a few are going to respond. While this is true that some people subscribe to this logic[1], the number of messages (good or bad) that women get seems to out-weigh the number that the men get. I've heard (anecdata alert!) that some men get frustrated and will start sending out "form messages" because they will take the time to craft meaningful messages only to get no reply[2]. [1] I heard a similar story of someone (a "dad's friend" of a friend a long time ago) that would basically ask every woman at a party for oral sex. He would get lots of slaps in the face, but he never went home empty-handed (allegedly). [2] I would personally liken it to investing time into job-hunting (i.e. trying to craft a decent cover letter) and then just getting no response from the potential employer. Though depending on the situation one other the other might be more stressful (e.g. searching for a job while unemployed).
    - was_hellbanned 12y ago
      I've heard (anecdata alert!) that some men get frustrated and will start sending out "form messages" because they will take the time to craft meaningful messages only to get no reply This was documented on the old OKCupid blog. I think the post was taken down after Match bought them. Men grow frustrated and get tired of wasting their time, so they stop sending in-depth messages. Women are then even less likely to respond, which ultimately sends men into a downward spiral of desperation.
Kalium 12y ago
The problem is that women don't use sites where they are in charge and make all the decisions. So you get a catch 22. (EDIT: Before anyone asks, of course it's been done. HerWay comes to mind. The userbase is miniscule.)
- dusklight 12y ago
  That's a bit of faulty induction going here. Just because one site didn't work doesn't mean it will never work. There are all kinds of other variables involved, maybe it was just the execution. It is certainly insulting to say that women don't want to be in charge or make the decisions.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    I've looked at sites that try the empower-the-women-depower-the-men approach. With depressing reliability, they all wind up re-introducing the ability for men to initiate contact. That's quite suggestive. It's not perfect, but it's far from meaningless. Also, just because it can be read as insulting doesn't mean it's not true. If we want to identify and address problems, we have to deal in truths. If it eases your conscience any, I can edit in verbiage to make extremely clear that I as speaking solely to typical behavior in the arena of online dating.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
fubu 12y ago
"and this model works" for women <- FTFY > Men will swipe right on the majority of "matches" Great stereotyping you have going there. Could you share some more insight into your "Women as the gatekeepers and men will hit on anything" life view? Maybe some men would prefer not to have to "swipe right" and face constant rejection? Maybe some women might prefer to approach men first instead of waiting on a man to present himself? Naw, what am saying? Gender roles were defined for a reason. Let's all just stay in our places.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Men and women statistically behave differently in known ways on dating websites. This is a fact, not advice or a prescription. This also says nothing about how you behave or should behave, or how any particular person you know behaves or should behave. Recognizing this does not mean that you think that the behavior causes the expectation, as opposed to the expectation causing the behavior, the expectation and the behavior both being caused by a third thing or combination of things, or the behavior and the stereotype being a result of random coincidence. It also doesn't mean that other behaviors shouldn't be accommodated, even if it inconveniences the most common usages.
- sarciszewski 12y ago
  I don't know why this was downvoted. It's a fair argument.
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    Eh, I felt it was accusatory and putting words in my mouth (though I didn't downvote it - I can't, since he replied to me). He seems to have taken my description of general gender dynamics in online dating to be an endorsement of said gender dynamics. This is in no way true. He seems to also have taken my description of aggregate gender behavior in huge user bases to indicate specific individual behavior - this is also in no way true. There are plenty of users on both sides who don't subscribe to the larger usage trends, but ultimately the trends are pretty overwhelming. I for one am all for upending gender roles, but we're talking about how online dating works right now, not how it could hypothetically work in a society where gender roles as we know them didn't exist.
nether 12y ago
Women have far more choice on OkCupid, it's the men who do not: http://www.alternet.org/why-online-dating-sucks-men http://www.alternet.org/why-online-dating-sucks-men She talks about how easy OkCupid is for women, how she recommends her female friends to try it out, but how she also dissuades her male friends from trying it. Because the site is so difficult for men.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  I think the reality is a bit more complex. Women have "more choice", expressed in the form of an avalanche of messages that would take a part-time job just to cut through. Which is a bit of a false freedom. You're presumably there to find promising dates, not take on a new part time job sorting messages. It sucks for both sides, in different ways.
  - shkkmo 12y ago
    Except women on OKC can just ignore the spam messages, look at a couple of profiles and send their own messages. Their messages won't be buried in piles of spam. The best interactions I had on OKC worked that way.
    - king_jester 12y ago
      It is really taxing for women to have to deal with the spam, though, and that can really burn users out of even using the site. Too many messages and too few messages are both problems for different (sometimes overlapping) groups of people.
      - errantspark 12y ago
        I've dated several women that I've met on OKC for various lengths of time and they all agreed that for the most part OKC was a good experience. I could see how people without a thick skin could be turned off by the spam, but that hasn't been the case in my experience. The women I've met have mostly seemed to treat the spam similarly to YouTube comments, it's just accepted that most of them are garbage. One of them described the experience with something like "It's Amazon for boys, for negative money." which seems like a pretty positive review to me.
tuxidomasx 12y ago
"one needs to consider the problem from both genders" Exactly. I think Tinder's model is more aligned with how men and women meet IRL. As a guy, my modus operandi is to present myself as a high-valued man to everyone and have the women pre-select me so I can start the interaction. How men use Tinder: like like like like "Oops, I wanted to see the rest of her pictures" How women use Tinder: nope nope nope nope "Oops, he was cute" Its the 80/20 rule-- 20% of the guys will get most of the likes from the girls. With all that repetition, I think there must be an even better model for matching people up...

hangonhn 12y ago

Yeah I've heard total horror stories from women. It's like men on OKCupid took the idea of "numbers game" way, way too far. Consequently I also didn't want to be on there and be lumped in with those guys either.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- potatolicious 12y ago
  I don't think so. While most spammers aren't particularly sophisticated, it doesn't take a genius to figure out you can copy-paste formulaic messages to hundreds of women in only a few minutes. Even a user who isn't particularly nefarious and say, sends 20 original (not copy-pasted) messages each session, it's still an overwhelming amount of messages for women to sort through. It's important to note that when I say "spam" I don't just mean "bad actors who deliberately attempt to game the system". I mean that even what appears to a user as a "natural" amount of messages in fact makes the system nearly unusable. It's almost trivial for female users to end up with literally hundreds of messages per day - just managing the messages themselves is a chore, much less viewing the profiles associated.
Kalium 12y ago
Long story short, men discovered that being a well-behaved actor is a losing strategy on dating sites.
- shkkmo 12y ago
  Thanks for stereotyping me and grouping me with the worst actors in my gender.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    Speak for yourself. I, personally, discovered through direct and firsthand experience that being a well-behaved actor was a losing strategy. Then I stopped to think about it and understood why.
    - shkkmo 12y ago
      I did speak for myself, you were the one that presumed to speak for me.
      - Kalium 12y ago
        Excuse me. "Many men, though not all, because some Thing Differently, though judging by available statistics most..." Happy? Or would you prefer #NotAllMen?
        GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
        Don't neg me, bro.
    - shkkmo 12y ago
      I think what you said in your reply works just fine: "I, personally, discovered..."
      - Kalium 12y ago

listic 12y ago

Spam. Spam spam spam spam spam spam. More spam. Could you please elaborate? Do women get spammed a lot? Do men have to spam to be spoken to?

gk1 12y ago
A lot of men find it easier to send short and generic messages ("Hey ur cute wats up?") to many women rather than taking time to write something thoughtful. The logic is that if you message 100 women, at least a few are going to respond. As a result of this, female members are under a constant barrage of mindless messages, which is what's being referred to as spam.
- pyre 12y ago
  > The logic is that if you message 100 women, at least a few are going to respond. While this is true that some people subscribe to this logic[1], the number of messages (good or bad) that women get seems to out-weigh the number that the men get. I've heard (anecdata alert!) that some men get frustrated and will start sending out "form messages" because they will take the time to craft meaningful messages only to get no reply[2]. [1] I heard a similar story of someone (a "dad's friend" of a friend a long time ago) that would basically ask every woman at a party for oral sex. He would get lots of slaps in the face, but he never went home empty-handed (allegedly). [2] I would personally liken it to investing time into job-hunting (i.e. trying to craft a decent cover letter) and then just getting no response from the potential employer. Though depending on the situation one other the other might be more stressful (e.g. searching for a job while unemployed).
  - was_hellbanned 12y ago
    I've heard (anecdata alert!) that some men get frustrated and will start sending out "form messages" because they will take the time to craft meaningful messages only to get no reply This was documented on the old OKCupid blog. I think the post was taken down after Match bought them. Men grow frustrated and get tired of wasting their time, so they stop sending in-depth messages. Women are then even less likely to respond, which ultimately sends men into a downward spiral of desperation.

Kalium 12y ago

The problem is that women don't use sites where they are in charge and make all the decisions. So you get a catch 22. (EDIT: Before anyone asks, of course it's been done. HerWay comes to mind. The userbase is miniscule.)

dusklight 12y ago
That's a bit of faulty induction going here. Just because one site didn't work doesn't mean it will never work. There are all kinds of other variables involved, maybe it was just the execution. It is certainly insulting to say that women don't want to be in charge or make the decisions.
- Kalium 12y ago
  I've looked at sites that try the empower-the-women-depower-the-men approach. With depressing reliability, they all wind up re-introducing the ability for men to initiate contact. That's quite suggestive. It's not perfect, but it's far from meaningless. Also, just because it can be read as insulting doesn't mean it's not true. If we want to identify and address problems, we have to deal in truths. If it eases your conscience any, I can edit in verbiage to make extremely clear that I as speaking solely to typical behavior in the arena of online dating.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

fubu 12y ago

"and this model works" for women <- FTFY > Men will swipe right on the majority of "matches" Great stereotyping you have going there. Could you share some more insight into your "Women as the gatekeepers and men will hit on anything" life view? Maybe some men would prefer not to have to "swipe right" and face constant rejection? Maybe some women might prefer to approach men first instead of waiting on a man to present himself? Naw, what am saying? Gender roles were defined for a reason. Let's all just stay in our places.

pessimizer 12y ago
Men and women statistically behave differently in known ways on dating websites. This is a fact, not advice or a prescription. This also says nothing about how you behave or should behave, or how any particular person you know behaves or should behave. Recognizing this does not mean that you think that the behavior causes the expectation, as opposed to the expectation causing the behavior, the expectation and the behavior both being caused by a third thing or combination of things, or the behavior and the stereotype being a result of random coincidence. It also doesn't mean that other behaviors shouldn't be accommodated, even if it inconveniences the most common usages.
sarciszewski 12y ago
I don't know why this was downvoted. It's a fair argument.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  Eh, I felt it was accusatory and putting words in my mouth (though I didn't downvote it - I can't, since he replied to me). He seems to have taken my description of general gender dynamics in online dating to be an endorsement of said gender dynamics. This is in no way true. He seems to also have taken my description of aggregate gender behavior in huge user bases to indicate specific individual behavior - this is also in no way true. There are plenty of users on both sides who don't subscribe to the larger usage trends, but ultimately the trends are pretty overwhelming. I for one am all for upending gender roles, but we're talking about how online dating works right now, not how it could hypothetically work in a society where gender roles as we know them didn't exist.

nether 12y ago

Women have far more choice on OkCupid, it's the men who do not: http://www.alternet.org/why-online-dating-sucks-men http://www.alternet.org/why-online-dating-sucks-men She talks about how easy OkCupid is for women, how she recommends her female friends to try it out, but how she also dissuades her male friends from trying it. Because the site is so difficult for men.

potatolicious 12y ago
I think the reality is a bit more complex. Women have "more choice", expressed in the form of an avalanche of messages that would take a part-time job just to cut through. Which is a bit of a false freedom. You're presumably there to find promising dates, not take on a new part time job sorting messages. It sucks for both sides, in different ways.
- shkkmo 12y ago
  Except women on OKC can just ignore the spam messages, look at a couple of profiles and send their own messages. Their messages won't be buried in piles of spam. The best interactions I had on OKC worked that way.
  - king_jester 12y ago
    It is really taxing for women to have to deal with the spam, though, and that can really burn users out of even using the site. Too many messages and too few messages are both problems for different (sometimes overlapping) groups of people.
    - errantspark 12y ago
      I've dated several women that I've met on OKC for various lengths of time and they all agreed that for the most part OKC was a good experience. I could see how people without a thick skin could be turned off by the spam, but that hasn't been the case in my experience. The women I've met have mostly seemed to treat the spam similarly to YouTube comments, it's just accepted that most of them are garbage. One of them described the experience with something like "It's Amazon for boys, for negative money." which seems like a pretty positive review to me.

tuxidomasx 12y ago

"one needs to consider the problem from both genders" Exactly. I think Tinder's model is more aligned with how men and women meet IRL. As a guy, my modus operandi is to present myself as a high-valued man to everyone and have the women pre-select me so I can start the interaction. How men use Tinder: like like like like "Oops, I wanted to see the rest of her pictures" How women use Tinder: nope nope nope nope "Oops, he was cute" Its the 80/20 rule-- 20% of the guys will get most of the likes from the girls. With all that repetition, I think there must be an even better model for matching people up...