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The Tyranny of the Marginal User

nothinghuman.substack.com

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Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#541

Post by Brajeshwar »

wbobeirne wrote: post #349

I worked at OkCupid from 2013-2017 and totally resonate with the author that mid-2010s OkCupid was a really special product, and that it took a steep decline as the decade went on. It's not entirely fair to say that the Match acquisition immediately caused that decline; I started a couple years after Match got the company in its hands, and only two of the original founders were still focused on OkCupid full time. But…

The best thing about OKCupid was the data-backed articles. It was our source of inspiration and data point to continue on a dating website we built. We started as a side project in 2006 but got shelved after my company was acquired. I returned to it in 2010-2011, and OKCupid was our constant fodder for data and inspiration.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#542

Post by dredmorbius »

ivee wrote: post #56
dredmorbius wrote: post #24

I'd arrived at a similar conceptualisation which I call "The Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User": https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://old.redd... > In terms of impacts on software / application complexity, capability, and suitability to the needs and interests of advanced users, I feel somewhat similarly. I do take exception however with the notion that serving the needs of the much larger set people…

great essay! saving people a click: https://web.archive.org/web/20230606224134/https://old.reddi...

Thanks, on both points. And I'd meant to post the direct URL.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#543

Post by bbu »

geraldwhen wrote: post #442
switchbak wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As did I! OkCupid was a shining star of a product that treated its users with respect and provided a really valuable service. I didn't realize that it's no longer. I feel old pining for the internet of yesteryear. As is obvious only in retrospect, you don't realize when the golden years are!

I also met my wife on okcupid. I wonder how many of us their are.

me too :)

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#544

Post by Semaphor »

> I’m now quite skeptical of quantification of romance and the idea that similarity makes for good relationships.

That was part of what made OkCupid amazing: It wasn’t even always similarity. You could answer a Question with A, want your match to answer with B or C, and assign how important that answer is.

This level of "complexity" seems unthinkable in modern apps.

I, too, met my wife on OkCupid around 2014, we both had over 1000 questions answered. Luckily, you could also get matches outside your area, she was on another continent ;)

Another thing I realized is that as an average looking, slightly overweight guy, you could easily get replies from "rarely replies" women by actually reading their profile and writing more than one sentence without being an asshole.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#545

Post by Noumenon72 »

raisedbyninjas wrote: post #401
switchbak wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As did I! OkCupid was a shining star of a product that treated its users with respect and provided a really valuable service. I didn't realize that it's no longer. I feel old pining for the internet of yesteryear. As is obvious only in retrospect, you don't realize when the golden years are!

Anybody else remember the data blog posts? Those were interesting and satisfying. It was another confirmation that I'd found the right dating site and probably a like-minded userbase.

Information has gotten harder and harder to come by as the Internet has matured. Think how much Tinder, Twitter, and Hinge know about human flirting and attraction. I believe it's just too black pilled to see the light of day.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#546

Post by [deleted] »

grishka wrote: post #521
whack wrote: post #478

This is a hilarious read but I think the author is too optimistic about the state of humanity. Marl isn't the "marginal" user, Marl is the "average" user. If the average user actually cared about deep and meaningful content, then any A/B test that throws her under the bus in order to please Marl will show bad data, and the proposed change would be killed. Yes, the author tries to hand-wave this away as "product is st…

> The only way to escape this is to take on a huge pay cut and work at a company that doesn't care about growing profits. Go ahead, you first. Gladly! Where do I sign up?

[deleted]

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#547

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

UI design didn't get more consistent since the start of the century, if you ask me. Once upon a time every major platform had its UI guidelines, you knew what to expect and where The 'Settings' dialog was expected to be in a program, and how it would look like (Now 'Settings' it is sometimes called 'Preferences')

Now it's a major endeavor to find 'that setting' and how to interpret the meaning of 'that setting'. i often need to google for it, and then it may turn out that the info found on 'the internet' is already outdated (especially true with this shiny Mac thing)

i suspect that UI design turned to postmodernism, now there is 'no one right way' to do things, in other words: things are messy.

This mess was likely inevitable with the advent of the Web and later the mobile UI. Now you have both these native apps, and the web apps - and you can't have everything subject to the same guidelines. So the answer is: get rid of the guidelines.

Also you got devices with a big screen and devices with a small screen, who wins? Now that's an easy one: the most common denominator. So I guess that user interfaces are being dumbed down due to a combination of both business and technical factors.

Another factor is imitation: nowadays TikTok is king, so everyone is trying to be like them - regardless if a model like this is appropriate or not.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#548

Post by polygamous_bat »

fouronnes3 wrote: post #183
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many versions of utilitarianism never specified the function to compute the sum for the many. Your example assumes that the function is simple addition, but others have been proposed that reflect some of the complexities of the human condition a little more explicitly (e.g. sad neighbors make neighbors sad).

Assuming linearity of utility either in individuals or in aggregation is a very common straw man of utilitarianism.

Doesn't have to be linear, ANY strictly increasing function for aggregating the utility leads to the same conclusion.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#549

Post by zachthewf »

grishka wrote: post #521
whack wrote: post #478

This is a hilarious read but I think the author is too optimistic about the state of humanity. Marl isn't the "marginal" user, Marl is the "average" user. If the average user actually cared about deep and meaningful content, then any A/B test that throws her under the bus in order to please Marl will show bad data, and the proposed change would be killed. Yes, the author tries to hand-wave this away as "product is st…

> The only way to escape this is to take on a huge pay cut and work at a company that doesn't care about growing profits. Go ahead, you first. Gladly! Where do I sign up?

there are lots of swe jobs with the government.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#550

Post by grishka »

zachthewf wrote: post #549
grishka wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way to escape this is to take on a huge pay cut and work at a company that doesn't care about growing profits. Go ahead, you first. Gladly! Where do I sign up?

there are lots of swe jobs with the government.

I would rather not involve myself with the government of my country.
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