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The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

jmtame.posthaven.com

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Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#61

Post by teuobk »

seldo wrote: post #16

I'm honestly really surprised to hear that anybody thinks there is still stigma attached to online dating. I don't know what it's like for straight people, but online dating definitely has zero stigma for gay folks. I mean, compared to Grindr -- where all criteria for meeting somebody have been reduced to "I don't want to have to walk more than a couple of blocks" -- online dating like OKCupid is staid and respectabl…

Not only does online dating have zero stigma for gay folks, it's one of the few viable routes for finding other gay people who don't appear flamboyant or effeminate. What I really wish existed was a way to find other nearby gay guys without the hookup overtones associated with Grindr.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#62

Post by derefr »

safrolic wrote: post #53
derefr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can already matchmake you without you knowing it offline; what's the difference if it's online? Presumably they wouldn't be allowed to use your real name or super-identifying photos or anything, so this "dating persona" they set up from you is divorced from the rest of your identity, and nobody will find it by looking for you.

How would you disallow them to use your name or identifying pictures ? Funny thing is IINM this is probably illegal in several countries around the world, both setting up an online profile for someone else, without his/her knowledge being aggravating, and not providing exact personal information. If my friends did this to me, it would probably put a definitive end to that friendship.

> How would you disallow them to use your name or identifying pictures ?

By making it against the TOS of the site, and banning profiles that do it.

> probably illegal ... not providing exact personal information.

Presumably it's a profile about you, but it's not a profile impersonating you. They don't sign up using your name/birthdate/et al; they have their own account, which they use to fill in the details of your profile.

To be clearer: the concept isn't really that you're filling out someone else's profile. Instead, it's more like (exactly like) a "review" site--friends giving "product reviews" of friends, talking about how you should "buy" this friend or that. They just appear without attribution, conglomerated into a "consensus profile" of "what others think about this person." I imagine it's very clear that the person themselves didn't make the profile, any more than hockeyfan3392 on Amazon made the Macbook his review is attached to.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#63

Post by derefr »

rayiner wrote: post #50
derefr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For an actual, sound reason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons Just as with employers looking for employees, some of the people who are looking just haven't found the right fit yet. The rest are people nobody wants. The former churn (or dwindle if the market isn't being replenished), while the latter remain constant. The game-theoretic optimum in a market for lemons--whatever you might think of it--…

I don't think that's a particularly apt analogy, for the simple reason that people break up for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with one or the other person being a "lemon." Relationships are based on idiosyncratic compatibility, unlike cars where "lemon" is a well-defined, universal concept. E.g. it's rare that one person's lemon will be another person's dream car, but that's often the case for relation…

People break up with their cars for many idiosyncratic reasons as well. That just means there are good deals churning into the market; not that it's not a market for lemons. The requirement of a market for lemons is simply that it's very hard to discern the quality of a product, and that the people offering low-quality products are incentivized to hide the defects, so defective products "pile up" in the market, rather than being "flushed out" by some sort of spam-filtering process.

Also,

> a market where deals are hard to match up, transaction costs are high, and the repetition rate of testing compatibility to lead to a possible deal is low

This describes the housing market perfectly. It's also a market for lemons, or rather, it would be--homeowners are incentivized to hide defects in their homes--but we have house inspectors to remove this property from the system. There are no date inspectors.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#64

Post by bmm6o »

gcb0 wrote: post #23
seldo wrote: post #16

I'm honestly really surprised to hear that anybody thinks there is still stigma attached to online dating. I don't know what it's like for straight people, but online dating definitely has zero stigma for gay folks. I mean, compared to Grindr -- where all criteria for meeting somebody have been reduced to "I don't want to have to walk more than a couple of blocks" -- online dating like OKCupid is staid and respectabl…

well, the stigma is that it outright tells me you don't have friends. i never had to go out alone to find a significant other. Sure a few days i had to stay home because none of my friends wanted to go out. but that's life. ... you will probably not meet, and be happy with, someone you meet in a dive bar, or online dating. it's just common sense, or you may call it stigma.

> well, the stigma is that it outright tells me you don't have friends.

That doesn't even make sense. Want to try again?

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#65

Post by jonnybu »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #38
gcb0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, the stigma is that it outright tells me you don't have friends. i never had to go out alone to find a significant other. Sure a few days i had to stay home because none of my friends wanted to go out. but that's life. ... you will probably not meet, and be happy with, someone you meet in a dive bar, or online dating. it's just common sense, or you may call it stigma.

I picked my girlfriend[1] of four years up at a bar. After a few dates, she broke it off with a guy she'd been dating casually who she met through Match.com. [1] Ivy-educated, Ph.D.-holding, tenured professor girlfriend.

Do you not count that as her cheating on you?

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#66

Post by rayiner »

officemonkey wrote: post #56
rayiner wrote: post #13

Maybe it's my social circle (busy pushing-30 professionals) but I think there is almost zero stigma among my friends over online dating. In fact, less so among women than among men. Men for some reason feel they have to play the bar scene even if they don't like it or aren't good at it, but women feel no such need. Indeed, for a lot of my women friends, online dating offers the very real advantage that it's socially…

Stigma may exist for the young kids, but on-line dating stigma doesn't exist for older people. I have several older divorced and single friends (mostly women) and they date on-line for one main reason: it's just too damn hard to have an active social life while you're raising kids. I got married before the whole internet dating took off, but the 90s did have "date-lines." It was basically an voicemail system. However…

Meeting on-line doesn't have to be just about photography, it can also be based on shared interest. My wife and I were on the same law forum and exchanged messages (not romantic, more like "you're so wrong about x, y, z") a few times before we met in real life in a related context (she was at my law school interviewing for admission). Several other marriages and engagements came out of the same batch of people on the same site, from city group meet-ups. Alcohol + a group of people comfortable with each other because they at least vaguely know each other online + a group of people with shared interests is a great way to spark relationships.

I don't think online dating is perfect as it's currently structured, but it has a lot of potential. I'd picture something like a dating site where you couldn't search for people ad-hoc, but which interest-specific discussion forums could link into. You'd create a profile, but only be found by people who reached out through some interest-specific site. This serves two purposes: it prevents women from getting spammed as easily, and it provides some context (posting history) for them to evaluate.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#68

Post by muyuu »

malandrew wrote: post #44

You're completely right, people are lazy, but online dating is also way more work than it has to be. Women receive so many messages that it becomes overwhelming and too much work and men try sending earnest messages for a little while and then concede that it's basically a numbers game. These two phenomena are self-reinforcing. The more messages women receive, the less likely they are to respond. The more messages a…

These points are good, esp. the aided detection of spammers. But what you are proposing is basically some amendments to classic dating sites, nothing about the very premise of this startup helps.

And honestly, I believe the idea of having friends writing your profile is very flawed. Maybe it's my own personality, but I cannot see that happening to me or any of my friends.

Online dating is never going to be perfect because no dating is ever going to be perfect. But roughly speaking, everything is already invented. Dare I say, pay sites do the bulk of the filtering by having people pay (mostly us males), and that just works and finances the site. As simple as it is. And this is why they still exist.

So yeah, you can add a few elements, maybe some enhancements to traditional dating sites but the basic mechanics are just that: everybody self-promoting and looking for other people, following their basic instincts. How much can you direct that to be more effective? probably not that much more.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#70

Post by jmtame »

gonehome wrote: post #39

I think you're right about a lot of the problems with dating websites - I wrote about this recently too here ( http://www.zacharyalberico.net/blog/dating-websites/ ). I remember checking your site out when you posted it and it's nice to see someone trying something actually new, but I feel like this concept doesn't solve the common problems and adds some new ones. Women will still be over messaged and men are still u…

Women will still be over messaged and men are still under messaged. People still ignore profiles in favor of photos - what does this change?

Aren't you more interested in reading what somebody's friend has to say about them rather than what they're saying about themselves? Also, we have Facebook accounts (100+ friends required to join) which are not easy to replicate and we can rate limit. On OkCupid, the worst that happens is they ban you for spamming, and then you come back under a different username. Sure, girls might recognize the same photos, but you're fundamentally a free radical in the system.

Now you need your friends to create a profile for you (granted at least it's not of the essay variety) and you need your friends to try and find people for you? I have a hard time seeing anyone doing that considering it's a relatively boring process with little return (the problem with the current sites).

It relies on reciprocity, and it's actually fun when you try it out. If you're commenting on your friends' profiles, they'll naturally want to comment on yours. All of the comments on my profile happened not because I asked my friends to do that, but because I started out by commenting on theirs.

With the stigma, it's largely an issue skewed by age. More women in their 30s using dating sites socially, the sites just aren't designed to be social.

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