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Poll: OkCupid stories

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Re: Poll: OkCupid stories

#51

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #26
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it as business: improve your marketing. There are many women who ignore anyone who messages them because they want to be in control of the situation. Therefore they troll the male listings and respond to the ones they like. I used to take both approaches, but met more women when they came to me rather than the other way around. Make sure you have a great profile and a nice picture. SMILE!! LOOK HAPPY!!!

Are you sure about smiling? Read myth #1 at http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-4-big-myths-of-profile... Of course one will have more success if women come to them, but I think it only works if you have the natural looks to pull it off. Some people, even when they're not ugly, don't have the looks required to entice women to message them no matter how they dress, pose, or how much they go to the gym.

I think the take home message is that most guys' profiles set the bar pretty low. It doesn't take much to rise above the noise floor: by simply attempting to be personable and have a decent photo you're well ahead of the game.

Sounds obvious, but I used to check out men's ads just to see what I was up against, and I was definitely not impressed!

Re: Poll: OkCupid stories

#52

Post by jamesteow »

strlen wrote: post #45
vaksel wrote: post #8

personally I find all these dating sites to be completely useless for guys...too much competition. when you hit on a girl in the real world...at worst, you are competing with the 10-15 other guys who've had the guts to talk to her in the past week. with online, you are competing with pretty much every guy within 100-150 miles...and since most play the numbers game...you are just one of the hundreds who've messaged he…

> you are just one of the hundreds who've messaged her. Actually, I found it to be completely the opposite. Most of the guys messaging the girls either (sorted by frequency): 1) Send a picture of their privates 2) Send something incoherent e.g., "GURL UR SO HOT" 3) Send a long, creepy essay 4) Have zero compatibility with her, haven't read her profile (past the picture), etc... and are sending something generic. So i…

"So if you actually read their profile and send intelligent messages selectively, you'll get responses."

In a dream world. I've done that on OKC and have gotten zero responses.

Re: Poll: OkCupid stories

#53

Post by takameyer »

I tried it, and it generally just depressed me that all my compatible matches were over 100 miles away. Guess I should get out of South Dakota if I ever want this service to do any good for me. It would probably be good for my sanity and career if I did.

Re: Poll: OkCupid stories

#54

Post by danilocampos »

MistyKaye wrote: post #50
danilocampos wrote: post #49

I met the best woman ever on OkCupid. Three years on and it's better than ever. Product wise, it's much better than Match.com to be sure. It's the nicest, cleanest, most fun user experience on the web for meeting new people. Pro-tip: Skip sending messages and hit up your prospects via the site's built-in IM. Realtime interaction gives you more opportunities to stand out and express yourself.

I have to disagree with your tip. When someone IMs me out of the blue without any prior contact I think it's a little too eager. I prefer to start with a message or two and then move into more real-time interaction.

Well, protip for MistyKaye is to email. I could see how it might put you off, but if you introduce yourself with a bit of fun, don't come off as a weirdo, it can work.

By and large, for me this generated much more reliable results than the email method. As good as 1 in 3, versus 1 in 12 for emails.

(Yeah, I kept rough stats. I was an SEM nerd in those days, shudder, and looked at it like a campaign to be optimized.)

Re: Poll: OkCupid stories

#55

Post by babul »

Generally found that most Caucasian dating sites work if you are Caucasian (or want to date Caucasian people), which in hindsight seems obvious really.

The "popular" ethnic sites (e.g. shaadi.com) are geared more towards "marriage" than "dating", but surprisingly most ethnic people on them want to "get to know you first" for a long time (in most Indo society this is usually done in a family context i.e. with others around, and for a relatively short period of time before a marriage decision is made, the short time frame being there to protect the individuals i.e. modesty of girls, and prevent "undesirable" behaviour, all this being counter balanced by the families getting involved to ensure matches are good and process does not take excessively long), which is basically "dating" by another name (but seems more socially/culturally acceptable, especially in Indo cultures, due to the "marriage" pretext/context).

Perhaps many people are on them as there is no major ethnic alternative, hence I think an ethnic OKCupid (or clone) would do well. I may even try to build (an albeit rubbish) one for Show HN November, lol.

Of course this is a single view garnered through anecdotal evidence, observation of many others (over the years), lots of general discussion on the topic with people from all walks of life, and based on a small sample size, so totally unscientific, but yet remarkably true.

Re: Poll: OkCupid stories

#56

Post by al3x »

I met my wife on OkCupid. We weren't a highly-rated match (70-something percent, IIRC), and I was a bit outside the geographic area she was looking in. But we got to talking on the site, based in part on shared musical interests, and here we are.

I think the lesson is: OkCupid is great, but don't assume that their system is going to do all the work for you. Most of the people I was better matched with, according to the site, weren't in the least bit interesting to me.

Re: Poll: OkCupid stories

#58

Post by GFischer »

OkCupid doesn't have people in my country (basically 3 active girls for the whole country), but I did meet my current girlfriend (more than 6 months) through an online dating site (she's pretty shy about that, though, and prefers saying that we met through common interests on Facebook which is more socially acceptable than a dating site).

Re: Poll: OkCupid stories

#59

Post by stonerinsoma »

OKCupid is awesome! I've probably had 50 dates through them over the last 4 years, in the 3 cities I've lived in. I just broke up with a girlfriend of 1.5 years who I met there. Seriously, if a guy like me can meet women on OKC anybody can.

Re: Poll: OkCupid stories

#60

Post by mxavier »

I've been a member for about 3 or 4 months. I was in one short relationship from OKC during that time. I would say that my experience has been good so far. Surely I'm doing much better than I would have trying to meet women considering that I'm a hacker by trade, shy, and don't drink (thus excluding me from the bar scene).

I've noticed that if you live anywhere remotely near a large metropolitan area but prefer not to date there for whatever reason (Seattle in my case, I hate navigating/being in large cities) you're kind of screwed. I'd estimate that 90% of the results/suggestions I get are from Seattle, regardless of any distance constraints I put in.

Also, the woman I dated briefly from OKC next met some guy about 25 years her senior and wound up in the passenger seat of a car going 100+mph with a man heavily intoxicated with pills and alcohol pointing a gun at her. I'm sure that happens very infrequently but I'd argue that dating sites might make it a bit easier for nutjobs to control their appearance to potential victims.

Aside from that, OKC is, as far as I know, the best-designed dating site out there.

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