My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

>"I became an online dating magician who knew how to optimize a profile — A/B testing pictures and message. If I changed my profile picture and got more “likes” as a result, that meant it was better. I was tracking data, which made it easy to see what performed best.

>This one worked, probably because it hides the bulging stomach and the balding head."

No, your A/B test doesn't mean it's 'better', unless you're counting only number of first dates.

But you keep talking about finding "The One".

So here's some unsolicited advice - you are optimising the wrong variable.

If you're really looking for "The One", instead optimise number of dates that remain interested in you after the first or later, not maximising the number of first dates.

And along this line - use a picture that is more representative of yourself? If you're worried about potential dates being turned off by the bald head and bulging stomach, won't they be turned off when they meet you in person?

At that point it becomes game theory, do you aim for more first bites with lower followup success, in hopes that your personality shines through?

Do you cast a wide net, as you're doing, and exert a LOT of effort with first dates hoping you don't risk losing a potential "the one"?

Or should you be yourself from the beginning, "happy to be a hippo" so to speak[1]. You'll probably get fewer first bites, but ones that get through have shown they don't care about your balding head and bulging stomach.

Though I haven't been on the dating scene in 16 yrs, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-does-happy-as-a-hippo-mean

You're beholden because you're married, not because you're a slave. You have a choice of divorce, nobody is stopping you from leaving, being financially dependent that doesn't justify cheating on your spouse.

People have reverse engineered the API, there are libraries for it on github.

It's a nice example of looking for the keys under the light aka if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

A bit more interesting analogy would be the Big Data craze. We do them because we can. Are the results produced by Big Data as relevant as the dating automation? Do we understand and handle them as effectively as 150 dates with zero involvement? And what do we miss instead? Whose time and place is taken by getting lost in superficial data oceans?

Not really disagreeing with you, but your conclusion is almost necessarily true, which says something about Strategy 1.

One thing on my mind lately is how often people convert from one strategy to another, and how that's patterned and why.