Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

jmtame.posthaven.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 258 posts

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#91

Post by thaumasiotes »

jmtame wrote: post #70
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…

Just as a point of reference, I have 28 facebook friends, and I've been thinking about trimming that number down... but I'm pretty sure I exist.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#92

Post by benched »

dkarl wrote: post #54

Here's what I'm getting at: if we were all more social about online dating, it'd suck a lot less. A majority of problems go away with online dating sites when you make it social. Trying to make this sound cool by using the word "social" doesn't stop this from being the classic awkward kid's lament: "If only people were straightforward about mating and romance! If only there wasn't this forest of doublespeak and taboo…

You've written the awkward kid character to sound enlightened.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#93

Post by djcapelis »

SilentStump wrote: post #87
safrolic wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my thoughts reading the post, reeks and relents of heteronormativity and heterosexism. Using facebook for a dating site is plain wrong (what happens the day facebook opens a dating service and shuts your website access to facebook down ?) but only using facebook is definitely a tell to go away.

I think the thought process is that if you're going to be a wing person for your friend, you're going to know if they're interested in women or men. I the same idea of whether or not you would invite a friend that's in a relationships. I think the point is very valid though.

I mean the whole idea relying (solely?) on friends to find me dates thing already seems pretty bizarre, but even if you put that aside, the site has a browse functionality for a reason and presumably the intention of it existing is for people to be able to browse...

I mean I love my friends and when opportunities to set people up in good ways come along, I go ahead and make them happen... and I don't mind if a friend sets me up. But the whole feeling of a service where friends are setting up friends without having a dialogue about consent or you know, whether I'm even at all interested in them being involved in my dating life (god knows I have plenty of friends where I'm not interested in their suggestions) is just not really okay. And did I mention creepy? I did. But I should say it again for emphasis, because this doesn't feel like friends helping friends, it's just creepy.

I think adding a social aspect to dating is a great idea, but it's something that has to be done carefully and IMO this implementation seems radically bad.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#94

Post by [deleted] »

curt wrote: post #84
gimeq wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, just be tall, good looking, confident, and comfortable conversing in contrived situations like bar/cafe meetings with strangers. Wonder why guys can't figure that out?

you can teach yourself to be confident and comfortable around women. I used to HORRIBLE back in the day.

[deleted]

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#95

Post by dclowd9901 »

gimeq wrote: post #75
dougk16 wrote: post #41

One theory on why the author might be having a little trouble with OkCupid comes down to this sentence: "Unless your parents are Jewish and they threaten to disown you for not having a Jewish boyfriend...yea, you may not want to message me in that case." I mean, I laughed, it's a funny profile, but ultimately it implies bitterness over your last relationship, which, in my experience, is a turn off for both sexes. Don…

That's actually a common problem, for Jewish people or other people in inward-focused culture X X person meets a non-X, they get along, and then X's parents turn the screws, ruining the relationship.

And JDate, BlackPeopleMeet, et al don't solve these culture x problems?

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#96

Post by ahh »

djcapelis wrote: post #74

It was creepy the moment it wanted to authorize so much information from Facebook. Got creepier the moment the site asked me to start involving my friends without me knowing whether or not they wanted to be involved. Got super frustrating that my ability to even see how this site worked required me to drag my friends into this mess without their consent. And from what I can see, there's no way for me to specify which…

So...90% of people, give or take, are straight.

Online dating is a clusterfuck of failure for straight people (ask anyone who's tried it, or the OP.)

Online dating mostly works for gays and lesbians (you say so, I've seen the same from others.)

And this guy is an idiot for trying to cater to the straight dating market? Precisely why?

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#97

Post by ameen »

dbecker wrote: post #14

I think this may be solving a legitimate problem, but I think you are incorrect that the source of the problem is hollywood. Online dating follows historically from personals classifieds. Personals ads contained very little information (in part because they had to be so short). This meant you were going on a date with someone you knew nothing about. It was worse than just a blind date... because you didn't even have…

If anything, it helps to have a link-bait title. You read it, didn't you?

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#98

Post by itistoday2 »

SilentStump wrote: post #90
itistoday2 wrote: post #77

How about you lie to us too buddy? The problem is men don't read online dating profiles, they only look at the pictures. It's not just a difficult and repetitive task, but it's wasted time. I am a man, and I read every word of ~90% of the profiles I'm interested in enough to visit, and 100% of the profiles I send a message to. So what does that say about your statement? The study you linked to didn't even use OKC, it…

More like use a generality than lie. I know, while I read some profiles, I don't read any until I am physically attracted to the person.

If he knew he was making a generality (and, for his sake, I hope so), and yet still made that statement, then that's lying (at least, using boolean, and not fuzzy logic) because his statement was absolute and unqualified. Absolute, unqualified statements are not generalities.

"People are dumb" (absolute, unqualified) vs "Most people are dumb" (absolute, qualified) vs "Most people I've met are dumb" (relative, qualified).

A comment like "people are dumb" is usually assumed not to be taken literally, but when you quote a study and say something like "men don't read online dating profiles", you're now in a very different territory, and the misuse of language could give the impression of a deliberate false statement (i.e., a lie).

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#99

Post by cheald »

curt wrote: post #84
gimeq wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, just be tall, good looking, confident, and comfortable conversing in contrived situations like bar/cafe meetings with strangers. Wonder why guys can't figure that out?

you can teach yourself to be confident and comfortable around women. I used to HORRIBLE back in the day.

Fake it 'til you make it. If you act like you know what you're doing for long enough, that will actually end up building confidence.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#100

Post by aashay »

malandrew wrote: post #78
muyuu wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

Completely agree. I only read the post. I didn't check out the guy's dating site because I'm in a relationship and I'm still working on trying to make it more open. The one habit I think still needs to be taught to people on dating sites is the value of publicness and openness. About two years ago I got my mom to sign up for OkCupid (a few years after her divorce) and the biggest problem I encountered was her relucta…

While your point is valid, I'm left wondering if too much openness becomes a problem. When I was single, I made an OkCupid profile and decided to, for better or worse, be as open and honest as possible (a principle I adhere to in meat space as well). I had over 1200 questions (this is a lot) answered and never tried to make myself seem like something I wasn't.

I figured I was doing everything right, and I was optimistic (a good handful of my friends had great success on OkC), but I barely got any dates, and the ones that I did ended up being duds. I did this for maybe 8 months.

Contrast that to the couple of months I signed up for a paid match.com account (pro tip: paying for a service and looking for someone else who has paid for a service shows a mutual seriousness about the service; OkC's barrier to entry is practically zero so many people don't end up taking it seriously) and here I am with a going-on-three-years-now happy relationship. Match barely has any information to fill out and it makes me wonder if that ends up being a more successful model, as it pushes much of the "screening" process to meat space, where it's a lot easier to discern people's idiosyncrasies.

Of course, being open once you're offline is absolutely key. I'm just not sure how well it works for the first online impression.

Edit: I don't mean to attribute my relationship success to my choice of service, that was pure luck. I just wanted to point out that it'd be interesting to see more data about openness' influence on dating site success rates.

Post reply on HN