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Never pay for online dating (2010)

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Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#61

Post by photochemsyn »

Here's an interesting probable side effect of the spread of dating apps:

> "According to Rhode Island's Department of Health, the numbers for STDs rose drastically between 2013 and 2014. Syphilis cases increased by 79 percent, newly identified HIV infections increased by 33 percent, gonorrhea cases increased by 30 percent — and it's mostly young adults (along with African-Americans and Hispanics) who are becoming infected at these higher rates."

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/55888/20150527/tinder-dat...

Now if we look at the majority shareholder ownership of say, Gilead Sciences (a major provider of STD pharmaceuticals) and Match Group (owner of Tinder) on Yahoo Finance, the overlap is fairly large. (This of course is true for most corporations in the USA, so it's perhaps not as much of a plot as it might seem).

But still... it makes one wonder about investment capitalism. It's always finding a way to create value and improve people's lives. A nice square deal. Make money promoting risky sexual behavior when they come in the front door, make more money treating the resulting STDs when they leave via the back door. Rather similar to pushing the soft drinks and junk food on the kids, and then reaping profits from the high hospital bills a few decades later. Gifts that keep on giving, right?

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#62

Post by EmilyHughes »

I don't get it. Why does no government anywhere run a non-profit dating site from tax-payer money when this is becoming the most popular way people are meeting?

All the options people have are using toxic apps which entire business model is to undermine the self-esteem of young men and scamming them out of their money. And then people wonder where the mental health problems and mass shootings come from.

I really don't understand how this stuff is still not regulated anywhere, it's a dangerous scam.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#63

Post by jugg1es »

bschne wrote: post #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 & st…

If you are saying that the profile photos on dating sites seem a lot less staged, than you are right. Good quality cameras on cell phones were not nearly as ubiquitous in 2010 as they are now. I think it was better back then because you could get a good sense of the person's personality from their photos than you can now.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#64

Post by anon23anon »

bragh wrote: post #51
wavefunction wrote: post #39

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)

I was a regular reader of their blog. It was great. They had a bunch of data on how we data and they weren't afraid to let the data speak. This resulted in some ppl getting upset b/c they had to hear something that didn't fit their worldview.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#65

Post by ratww »

Bakary wrote: post #42
lake_vincent wrote: post #35

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…

Isn't that exactly how Tinder also works, or at least used to work? I remember Tinder being heavily criticised for using Elo ranking.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#66

Post by afavour »

wavefunction wrote: post #39
houstonn wrote: post #28

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.

Not sure why you're being downvoted for asking this, editing blog posts ought to be very easily traceable using archive.org.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#67

Post by georgeecollins »

bryan0 wrote: post #11
geraldwhen wrote: post #2

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.

Yup I paid for online dating around when this article was written and it was one of the best decisions of my life!

I am happy for you but I think if you met your wife in a car crash (I knew a person this happened to for real!) I don't think you would say a great way to meet people is car crashes. Also, maybe OKC was better than some.

I think dating apps would be creepy, but to be fair I am a person who married before they were that popular. I have a college age son who is in a committed relationship with someone he met through friends so I believe IRL meeting is still possible. The important thing is to build strong relationships so do what works for you.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#68

Post by AyyWS »

bschne wrote: post #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 & st…

Article from 2010. Instagram was created on October 6, 2010. I bet it's related.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#69

Post by harvey9 »

troupe wrote: post #26
aliqot wrote: 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.

I take it to mean people so different in socio economic status that they would never be in the same building in real life.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#70

Post by robertlagrant »

jimbokun wrote: post #49
idealmedtech wrote: post #15

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…

> That's why when you first start on any dating service, you're (typically) inundated with activity, so that you can always chase that high, and when you can't get it, you try to pay for it. It's striking how the business model is indistinguishable from how cocaine dealers were described to us as kids in the 80s.

Only two industries call their customers "users" (-:
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