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My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

themission.co

61–70 of 159 posts

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#61

Ehh... the issue is mostly that online dating doesn't go very well for the vast, vast majority of people. On the other hand, I know plenty of not-particularly-attractive people who've met partners through all sorts of weird and whacky situations. Fact of the matter is that finding potential partners, like finding anyone, is about constantly growing the network of people you interact with. I meet new people nearly eve…

>Also, speaking personally... the sort of person who thinks it's fun to spend their time automating personal interaction is not the sort of person I want to date.

forgive me for waxing poetical but i've thought about this a lot - since i have tinder and okcupid accounts - online dating is one of the most nihilistic enterprises to come out of the digital revolution. take one of the most personally rewarding and edifying experiences and completely formalize one of the most exciting parts of it (if not the most). what becomes the point of your life???

i read a stupid platitude somewhere that you should do something that scares you every day and approaching people you're attracted to (not on the street you pua twats) is one of the few "scary" things still available to us as denizens of modernity (i'm not sailing over the ocean blue, summiting mt everest, hunting moby dick, etc.). why would you want to sidestep that.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#62
post #39
post #36

From my friend group there are two types of individuals: 1. Individuals who date many people, breaking up if they find something non-optimal. These include minor things like, not cleaning up on occasion, or not liking something you do. 2. Someone who dates very few (1-3) individuals, sticking with them until a serious, fatal flaw appears, like being racist or physically harming others, etc. If you define a successful…

Group 1 is mostly women and group 2 is mostly men. At least in my experience.

Unless the majority of people you know are gay, that isn't possible.

For each hetero man you know following strategy 2, by definition, there is a corresponding woman (his partner).

And vice versa with the women who are using strategy 1.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#63
post #51

It's like the programmer who applies to 150 jobs. The programmer cannot do the research on all 150 so the interviews lack the personal connection. Far better to focus on the 10 you really want do the research and put in the effort to really wow the interviewer.

I don't think the comparison to applying to jobs works. When applying to jobs you have a pretty sizable knowledge of the companies. When online dating, you know very little about each person (the amount of data varies greatly depending on the service and person). You can't know if you're going to like someone until you meet them in person, but you can have a pretty good idea of whether or not you're going to like a company by researching online.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#64
post #29

Somewhere out there is a girl spamming the hell out of online dating services, looking for this dude. Let's hope when their bots meet, they're programmed to exchange numbers.

That would be the most romantic story IMO.

Truly, the romantic comedy for the late 2010s.

Actually, could be a nice quirky film - and profitable too. Romcoms are cheap to shoot. We're past peak American-romantic-comedy (I think) so the whole "ugh, not another one" factor might be actually pretty low in 2017. So yeah, could be pretty nice.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#65
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to turn this question around: Are you saying that you should live your life beholden to someone else just because they're supporting you financially? Isn't that servitude?

Beholden to someone? Servitude? I'm simply saying that it's unethical to live off of someone else's salary, in marriage, while trying to find a replacement (it's called an affair).

Ten years is a long time, and people change significantly. Think drug abuse. If your SO is strung out all the time, and you have no ability to support yourself, what would you do?

Unfortunately this isn't a corner case. It's a sad but common story.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#66
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the problem was that his bot didn't filter very well and ended up matching him with tons of people that he had to instantly reject on the date. I wonder if there is a mentality problem here too. He had invested so little into each date that there was little incentive to put in the effort to pierce the surface and look for common interests. Going on 150 dates and not finding a single match tells me that you…

> Going on 150 dates and not finding a single match tells me that you are shooting outside of your league. Total nonsense attitude. You should never feel "outside of your league" for many reasons, particularly since you never know who you are compatible with. Don't be afraid to aim high in a partner.

The flipside is "be brave enough to be alone forever".

If you set impossibly high standards you are just wasting everybody's time.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#67
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Group 1 is mostly women and group 2 is mostly men. At least in my experience.

Unless the majority of people you know are gay, that isn't possible. For each hetero man you know following strategy 2, by definition, there is a corresponding woman (his partner). And vice versa with the women who are using strategy 1.

Not true. It's perfectly possible you have a scenario where for example the top 10% of men date 100s of women, the bottom 50% date 3 or fewer women and women have a much more even distribution and date an average much higher than 3. These numbers are just an example but in reality I think something a bit like this situation does actually exist.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the problem was that his bot didn't filter very well and ended up matching him with tons of people that he had to instantly reject on the date. I wonder if there is a mentality problem here too. He had invested so little into each date that there was little incentive to put in the effort to pierce the surface and look for common interests. Going on 150 dates and not finding a single match tells me that you…

Yeah, either his "optimal" picture made him look a lot better than he looked in person, his personality was off, or he was really picky. 150 dates in a place like the bay area, where probably lots of his dates had something in common with him (blogging, tech, etc.) and not being satisfied with any that liked him back? That seems crazy to me.

He starts off describing himself as short, bald, and fat. I'm guessing that picture is old or he has a distorted view of body image.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#69
post #14
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in that case, why wear the ring in the picture? Edit: On second look, that picture looks to be a stock photo, not one of the dates the author went on.

Is nobody wearing rings just for fun?

I've certainly met people who wear rings specifically to suggest they're unavailable, or at least cut down on the number of propositions.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#70
post #56
post #47

Slight tangent, but how do you script interaction with a mobile app like Tinder? For the web, you use a headless browser. But what about automating interaction with mobile?

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

Bingo. Use wireshark to identify the protocol and if it is http then use mitmproxy.
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