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Never pay for online dating (2010)

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Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More Orwellian still, they edited articles that contained data inconvenient to the politically correct narrative and elite ideology. Edit: Here's an example. “I’m bisexual.” REALITY: 80% of self-identified bisexuals are only interested in one gender. People who describe themselves as bisexual overwhelmingly message either one sex or the other, not both as you might expect. https://web.archive.org/web/20170307114207/h…

Any examples? Their blog post on the dating economy being skewed away from black women seemed to match with economic and social realities.

They do have memory-holed some very inconvenient blog posts, such as this https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/ (probably exists somewhere on archive.org)

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#53

The problem really happens when you do algorithmic price setting, which incentivizes you as the developer to get people addicted to the experience of swiping, regardless of whether or not the swiping has the desired outcome for the end user. A user base with just the right levels of dopamine from interactions and loneliness will probably end up buying one of the weekly promotional deals. That's why when you first sta…

The problem is worse than that... The app/site developers interests are directly opposing the users interests.

The user (perhaps) wants to find a lifelong partner, and never use dating apps again.

The site developer wants users to never find a lifelong partner, and to spend months/years returning to the app to find new candidates.

In my experience, the developer usually wins - some users on dating sites have been there a decade or more, and active much of that time.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#54
post #26
post #8

OkCupid used to have great engineering blogs often with an embedded and nuanced social commentary regarding the haves vs have-nots when it comes to the dating world. I believe at one point they divided users, or rather let them self-classify as A-team and B-team. Some would never even pass each other in the hallway based on this score and designation.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying about A/B or how hallways fit into online dating.

My girlfriend once got a message on OKCupid, that she was categorized into the group of especially popular people.

I contacted the staff, but never found out what this meant in the end.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#55

I paid for OkCupid to get advanced filters to find my wife, shortly after this article was written. I paid for a single month of premium back in the day. So this article is odd.

I like to read this that you were already married when you found your wife, and were trying to see what you needed to do to get OkCupid to recommend her.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#57
post #9

You, as a user of a dating app, are forever in a Nash Equilibrium with the dating app. When you find the love of your life, you delete the app forever. Therefore, everything the app does to help you find that person works directly against their own goals (user growth, “engagement”. subscriptions).

Isn’t hinge addressing this

Is it?

To a complete outsider it feels as if Hinge is just becoming the new Tinder. Anecdotal of course (mostly from women friends), but partly supported by the growth of Hinge lately.

People looking for relationships don't want to be matched with people only looking for hookups, and people looking for hookups don't want to part of a club that accepts them. Apps have the incentive to make money so they don't really do anything.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#58
Aside: I'm in my late twenties and have used various of the currently popular dating apps on/off over the last few years. Whenever I see one of the old OKC blogposts around the internet, it's kind of striking how different the pictures look from what you'd see on the apps today. It's possible/not unlikely I'm overinterpreting based on the different style/fashion alone here, but it just all seems a lot less posed & staged, and like there's much more variance than with the pictures you see today, and even the extremely attractive examples seem much more natural.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#59
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their motto is that their app is "meant to be deleted." They don't want to you stay on it, but they DO want you to tell all your single friends about it. Hinge's free tier is absolutely excellent and I have gotten multiple dates, as well as a girlfriend, without paying a cent. What's the catch, you may ask? As with most dating apps, let's just say that if you don't have a "highly competitive" profile, you will strugg…

AFAIK from past discussions on here, the Hinge model is to make it harder with people with a low Elo on the app, and to provide them with more fine-grained options to pay to boost their chances ("roses" etc.) If you have a higher than average Elo, it will seem like having a free lunch. But that's because it's fueled by someone else's desperation at being caught in low Elo feedback loop early. You then have high Elos…

Yeah, that sounds about right. I am actually single again (ha...), so the quality of the match is not gonna be as deep as a compatability based algo like OKC - Hinge profiles are relatively shallow, and hard to get right. It's much better for getting laid, not finding the love of your life.

I don't plan on returning to any apps, because the whole experience feels dehumanizing, and I'm looking for something enduring now.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#60
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any examples? Their blog post on the dating economy being skewed away from black women seemed to match with economic and social realities.

They do have memory-holed some very inconvenient blog posts, such as this https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/ (probably exists somewhere on archive.org)

> (probably exists somewhere on archive.org)

Yep!

https://web.archive.org/web/20091121080804/http://blog.okcup...

God I love archive.org

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