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How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

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Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#151
i did something like it 6-7 years ago with friendster when it got 'who looked at me' new feature then. i scrapped million ids of teenagers to below-age-30 women. my friend list went from below hundred to full 3000 (the max at the time) in a week or two. facebook was not popular in my country (not usa)

the scrapper was written in newlisp (save search result pages with curl, use regex to match and collect the ids). it's probably easier to write in other languages, but that's what i knew.

i used wget and curl to loop over the ids but it's too slow because they download the whole page. later i found out about 'curl -i' (header only) and a million ids was done in about hour or two (i moved my operation from my home's 64kbps to my colo datacenter mbps internet).

my account is no longer exist (probably banned); however, i do still have a screenshot of me having 3000 female-only-friends and 70000 non-hidden-females 'look back at my profile'

initially, i talked to any interesting woman; however, later i made a strict rule to only respond to women who wrote at me. there were just too many fake female-accounts.

i got a couple of dates from this feat; however, i met my wife in a traditional catholic youth retreat. when i let her know about this friendster thingy, she just laughed. now i'm happily married with a 15-months-old boy.

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#153
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After I figured out OkCupid I had about a 30%-40% message to date success rate. I've shown friends and while they haven't had quite my success they've drastically increased the number of responses they receive. The key is to keep it simple, 3-4 sentences. First is a funny line about something in her profile to grab her attention, next comment on something shared, finally a funny open ended question. One or two messag…

Agreed, I've used other sites, not OkCupid, but ended up with the same result. I keep it dead simple, write a couple of lines, and if they respond with a hint of interest, I just ask them out for something casual. It works really well. Approaches that failed... 1. Short messages like you said, 'hi, how are you?'. They basically get deleted instantly. 2. Long, thoughtful messages. I'd write a few paragraphs trying to…

asking out early for me works opposite way, maybe i am not fancy enough with just offering to grab a coffe together.

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#154
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And then met a girl the very next day (not kidding) that I really hit it off with when I wasn't looking" This, IMHO, is the best advice. I remember the Dalai Lama's advice about finding happiness. How do I find happiness? "Stop lookin, be happy", he said. Same with dating. How do I find a date? Stop looking. More exactly, live life, and in time, you'll meet someone. Part of the reason why is that someone sort of on…

> "Stop lookin, be happy" It's true that happiness comes when you're settled with your lot in life. But you will instinctively rebel if you settle too early, on too little; this site is sort of dedicated to the art of not settling too early.

Enjoying your life does not imply getting satisfied with what you have.

You can enjoy your journey and be thankful for what you are having at the moment, not only the finish.

Translating this to our members of startup: concentrate on your activity, rather than focus on getting your first million.

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#155
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 55 dates really isn't too hard to do without the hacking, it's just a question of time. That I disagree with, 4 years and hundreds upon hundreds of hours sunk into OKC, and I've had maybe 2 dozen dates from it. Knowing how to optimize the site would be very useful. From pictures (OKC has MyBestFace that helps with that) to profile text. This guy obviously had good pictures (great pictures alone can make a profi…

In 2008 I did something similar with OkCupid, but for totally different reasons (friends with benefits) but instead I would find a girl I liked, who was also not looking for LTR, then use fake profiles running scripts auto answering every question to find the answers to all the questions she had done since they are normally hidden. I filled out my real profile exactly the same so we would be a 97%+ match. I then woul…

This is why I wish they had the internet when I was dating pre-my married days.

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#156
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After I figured out OkCupid I had about a 30%-40% message to date success rate. I've shown friends and while they haven't had quite my success they've drastically increased the number of responses they receive. The key is to keep it simple, 3-4 sentences. First is a funny line about something in her profile to grab her attention, next comment on something shared, finally a funny open ended question. One or two messag…

Agreed, I've used other sites, not OkCupid, but ended up with the same result. I keep it dead simple, write a couple of lines, and if they respond with a hint of interest, I just ask them out for something casual. It works really well. Approaches that failed... 1. Short messages like you said, 'hi, how are you?'. They basically get deleted instantly. 2. Long, thoughtful messages. I'd write a few paragraphs trying to…

I should collate all these responses like yours and the parent comment and compile an eBook I can market like Nathan Barry - "OkCupid for Geeks". And then retire on the proceeds.

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#158
It might be nice if people put down their dating apps for a little while and went out into the actual physical world to meet people by chance i.e. at line in a Starbucks, on a flight back home, or dare I say it: a bar - preferably during happy hour. Level of attraction in these real world situations is instantly assessed and doesn't take days or weeks of back & forth messaging before even meeting up.

Also, anecdotally I believe men far outnumber women on these sites so that clearly skews the ratio in women's favor which means by law of supply and demand women choose on these sites and not men in most cases. I've gone on dates with women I met online and many of them told me it was not uncommon for them to receive hundreds of messages a day and here we have a brilliant PhD student happy with 20. Just sayin

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#159
post #157

A white guy, tall, decent looking, math professor, rock climber, guitarist. He didn't need to hack OKCupid to end up with an Asian girl of his dream.

Everyone has interesting talents that can attract mates. And most people can look good if they dress well and develop proper grooming habits. Cheer up.

Re: How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

#160
There are other ways to hack dating sites that use other means completely.

Have several friends on the site, all with their real profiles. When you like a girl, have a friend with the most compatibility message her, and introduce you two. If such a "cool" guy vouches for you, how great must you be? She is intrigued. She hasnt gotten messages like this. And you go out w her. Not only that but you start w a warm introduction and something to talk about.

And if she doesn't respond to him, you can message her yourself, and bam - double your chances.

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