
OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction - boh
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/technology/okcupids-unblushing-analyst-of-attraction.html
======
cbhl
I really enjoyed reading OkTrends posts, but having near radio silence for
three years (apart from one post last July) followed by a full-on PR blitz for
a new book (comes out on Tuesday) makes me a little sad.

This piece almost makes it sound as if Rudder has been blogging based on
OkCupid results this whole time... and if you go to the OkTrends site, you see
huge inline placement for Rudder's new book.

~~~
beloch
OKTrends went dormant when OKCupid was sold to the company that operates
match.com. I don't know what Rudder's involvement with OKCupid was after that,
but he was no longer one of the owners. He might have still worked there, but
kept his blog silent under pressure from management.

~~~
chimeracoder
I used to work at OkCupid, on OkTrends.

You're not the first person to propose this question - there's a comment like
this almost every time OkCupid makes the front page - and here's what I wrote
the last time[0], which I think explains it well:

There were a number of factors. A bit part is that, in 2010, there were 2.5
people working full-time[1] on doing research for OkTrends, which allowed us
to research, write, and publish posts much more often.

The blog posts took a _lot_ of work. "The Real Stuff White People Like"[2]
took almost two months of my time, plus some from Max and Christian as well.
(Much like the product design process, since we didn't start each post off
with a clear end result in mind, not all the work was visible in the final
product).

I left to go back to school. Max ended up taking on more responsibility for
other data/stats work, which slowed the pace a bit, and he left at the
beginning of 2012 to do his own stuff. And Christian became in charge of
running OkCupid after the acquisition, which meant he had even less time then
he did before Max and I joined.

People asked me for the last three years whether the reason OkTrends hadn't
posted since 2011 was because of the Match.com acquisition and whether Match
shut them down and I had to tell everyone "No, trust me, they're still around!
It's just a coincidence!". Thankfully I no longer have to. :)

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8097780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8097780)

[1] 2.5 full-time means: Two of us full-time, as well as Christian, though he
split his work time between OkTrends (the blog) and other stuff.

[2] [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-
peopl...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-people-like/)

~~~
xcubed
Christian had time to write a book, but did not have time to update the blog.

I would suggest that in the interests of the OKCupid business, updating the
blog would have been a better thing to do than write a book. The blog drew
many users to OK Cupid. It's possible that writing a book was in Christian's
interest.

If Christian was no longer working at OK Cupid while he wrote the book, then I
understand. In that case the error is on the part of the New York Times for
describing him as currently in that role.

~~~
seanflyon
Perhaps Christian took his own time to do what was in his own best interest
(and also beneficial to the company).

------
keerthiko
I have a lot of respect for the people behind OkCupid. They tread a lot of
grey areas that many online entities are scared to.

On the whole, I also think usage of willfully submitted and gathered user data
for things _other_ than advertising is amazing. Too many companies have
invested too many resources into data analytics purely for increasing revenue
from advertising.

I think if companies can find ways to gain better social understanding and
from that provide better value to end users (rather than to advertisers as in
the advertising model) in a way that gets them revenue, it will be amazing. I
am all for social media companies doing research from their user data, in the
hope that we can move on from the ad-driven web.

~~~
Theodores
> I have a lot of respect for the people behind OkCupid.

Those people being match.com - the same people that operate the 'tinder' app.

Much like how the company that sells the eco-friendly smoothies is probably
Coca Cola.

Ultimately match.com want to own online dating. Since there is always going to
be a niche for free dating sites (as well as the subscription model), they
have to have the best 'free'/freemium dating site going. The marketing/PR
consists of 'insights' rather than TV adverts or social networking thingies.
The site is just one part of their strategy to own online dating. People on
the site might not pay, however those adverts probably bring in a lot of
revenue - see Plenty of Fish story.

Returning to the eco-friendly smoothies - there are no saints at the helm of
the company determined to make a better world, they are just doing what is
needed to bring in the revenue for the parent company and making sure nobody
else is in that space. Another analogy - big software company making sure
their software is reasonably easy to pirate so people don't use any other
software, free or paid for.

Clearly OKCupid was more valuable to match.com than anyone else hence they
bought it. However the idea is no more respect worthy than the operations of
the eco-friendly smoothie company owned by a fizzy drinks giant mega
corporation.

~~~
keerthiko
I see what you're saying. Sure, by some definitions the people behind
match.com are behind OkCupid, but I'm pretty sure they're quite hands-off from
okc's operations and general demeanor. Of course, they are probably involved
in their profit strategies as you say, and that's hard to avoid.

I still have respect for whoever came up with the eco-friendly smoothies and
was able to pose enough of a threat to Coca Cola, but instead of getting
crushed by them is able to harness the giant's resources to make more eco-
friendly smoothies. It's a lot better than folding under the evil.

There are no saints at the helm of any for-profit organizations, or they'd get
destroyed. I'm talking within that (very realistic and tolerable) space, they
do some creative things [as a past okcupid user and as someone interested in
their data] that provide interesting value to the customer that are hard to
find elsewhere.

------
philip1209
I'm always confused by the phrase "African-American." OkCupid is
international. Why does somebody with African ethnicity have to be classified
as "African-American"?

~~~
iamdave
It's a question I've been asking, as a black man for a very, very, _very_ long
time.

Couldn't count on two hands, even a third if I had one the number of different
answers I've gotten, and not a single one of them-no matter the rationality or
validity behind the _history_ of it, has yet to answer why we _still_ use it.

That said, "Person of Color" seems to be the new trendy thing and that baffles
me even more (well, to be succinctly snarky about it: other people's reactions
to that phrase are what baffle me. That's an entirely different conundrum not
fit for HackerNews, though.)

~~~
vacri
I remember seeing an article talking about a black British model, born and
raised in the UK, in a French fashion shoot, described as African-American.
Her own country would refer to her as British, not African-British...

Here in Australia we're getting infected with this compound term, to reassert
that heritage doesn't mean non-citizen. It's really annoying, because I grew
up in a suburb of Greeks and Italians, who were also Australians... and now
(from some corners) it's Greek-Australian and Italian-Australian. It wasn't
perfect - the stereotypical Australian is still seen as a WASP - but this
compound noun system isn't the answer to fixing the problem.

~~~
iamdave
Agreed. John McWhorter brought up a lot of decent and salient points about the
words we use to describe individuals, and how simply substituting one for
another doesn't really solve the problem ([http://time.com/2369/richard-
sherman-thug-n-word/](http://time.com/2369/richard-sherman-thug-n-word/)).
That can be said about a _lot_ of social ailments in swiftly moving, developed
civilizations, if I must offer a caveat.

There's a lot of bluster that goes on among certain "progressive" crowds that
ultimately sums the solutions up to policing of rhetoric; and while I have to
admit they're somewhat onto something with the notions that "language informs
impressions", a lot of their approaches seem deeply misguided if only because
there's a vacuum of nuance.

I personally don't have the answers to how to remediate the baggage that comes
with cultural nomenclature... I do however believe rather sternly, that
demanding a change of vernacular is not a silver bullet.

~~~
philip1209
I'm in favor of saying "ethnically African." It says nothing about
nationality.

In the context of a statistical analysis, like the OkCupid analysis, it's
completely correct to segment people by ethnicity and by nationality
separately, and it makes a lot more sense in that context to say "Americans of
African ethnicity." "African Americans" is an equivocal phrase in an
analytical context because people use it to refer to ethnicity, when it
actually refers to both nationality and ethnicity.

~~~
vacri
Ethnicity also includes culture - a black person in the US sharing the same
phenotype as a black person in Africa is not ethnically African, no more than
an English white is ethnically French. It's difficult in that there isn't a
clean solution, otherwise it would already have been found.

~~~
selimthegrim
Do people not say "of X extraction" anymore?

------
deciplex
This is really annoying (emphasis mine):

>Mr. Rudder is particularly interested in the divide between the mates people
claim they want and their actual online pursuits. Witness the actions of
35-year-old heterosexual men on OkCupid. These men typically search for women
between the ages of 24 and 40, Mr. Rudder reports, yet in practice they rarely
contact anyone over 29.

> _“I see this as a statement of what men imagine they’re supposed to
> desire,”_ he writes in the book, _“versus what they actually do.”_

For a guy talking up all the awesome science he thinks he can do, this is
rather unscientific. I'm sure he realizes there are other explanations for
this trend (older women are more likely to be divorced or have kids, for
example), but by promoting his own narrative he muddies the waters. For what
it's worth I don't think his interpretation of the data is correct in this
case.

A lot of other stuff on the OKCupid blog, e.g. claims of racism because black
women receive fewer first messages than women of other races, fell into the
same trap. The blog was very interesting to read, to be sure, but I couldn't
take it seriously because there was so much pseudoscience and just-so stories,
even if it was backed up with mountains of data and nifty charts.

~~~
colmvp
> A lot of other stuff on the OKCupid blog, e.g. claims of racism because
> black women receive fewer first messages than women of other races, fell
> into the same trap.

I don't see how that was faulty.

It's pretty clear that Black women are involved in interracial marriage at a
significantly lower rate than women of other races, or even black men. Then if
you look at response rate by race (a previous OKTrends post), black women
generally have a lower response rate from men of all races compared to women
of other races. Data supports the idea that black women are generally not
favored.

------
norswap
The blog was dormant for 3 years, apparently they just posted a new post... Of
course I unsubscribed last month :D

------
paulhauggis
I'm still not sure why this article is equating preference with racism. If I'm
attracted to white women and I'm white, it has nothing to do with racism.

~~~
jeorgun
Individual preference (it seems to me) isn't racist, but in aggregate it at
the very least raises questions about where those widespread preferences come
from.

~~~
colmvp
> Individual preference (it seems to me) isn't racist, but in aggregate it at
> the very least raises questions about where those widespread preferences
> come from.

Thank you. It's so easy to brush under the rug peoples racial preferences as
if they are sacrosanct

~~~
paulhauggis
I see. So if a gay female only looks for other females, are they sexist?

------
kevinthew
Might be cool stuff they're doing but it doesn't make it any less unethical no
matter how much they try to whitewash it. This is slippery slope stuff

~~~
Mikeb85
Using aggregate data (ie. not any individual's personal data) about
interactions to study societal behaviour is unethical? On a website that you
willingly sign up for, no doubt with disclaimers about how they're allowed to
use your data?

As far as slippery slopes go, Facebook crossed that line quite a while ago...

~~~
burgers
When you publicly disclose the results, without any way for the data to be
peer reviewed? Absolutely.

------
kachnuv_ocasek
Off-topic, but why am I getting told to log in on the NYT website?

------
burgers
The spookiest thing is not the data or the experiments, but the off the cuff
conclusions.

For example: _> As a group, for instance, Latino men rated Latinas as 13
percent more attractive than the average for the site, while they rated
African-American women 25 percent less attractive._

That is an insane generalization going on.

What metric are we using to determine this? Is it possible that people who
tend to participate in the rating of the looks of potential mates are more
inclined to align with race? Not purely Latino men. Which is an enormous
initial generalization to be making at the outset.

 _> Witness the actions of 35-year-old heterosexual men on OkCupid. These men
typically search for women between the ages of 24 and 40, Mr. Rudder reports,
yet in practice they rarely contact anyone over 29._

Again on this one, was age the only possible metric that caused the under 30
to be contacted more by 35 year old men? There isn't anything else that might
be different about an under 30 profile that causes more communication to
occur?

This is the actual scary stuff to be publicly releasing as real science. Just
as the general public is ill informed about the experiments going on, they are
also not aware of what metrics are used to determine these results. In my
experience, many of these metrics are not as concrete as the appear and full
of pushing the data to fit a narrative etc.

Combine that with the fact that most of this data is proprietary and private
with no way to be peer reviewed. Dangerous stuff.

~~~
beachstartup
> That is an insane generalization going on.

yes, it can be shocking to be presented with plainly spoken, cold hard facts
when you grow up in and are surrounded by a sterile bubble of non-fact-based
discourse. especially in a topic as taboo as dating, sex, race, and marriage.
this is called cognitive dissonance.

trust me, as an asian american male, none of the cold facts of reality were
ever hidden from me behind a facade of soothing lies. when i was much younger,
i couldn't get laid, and i had to face reality head-on, and seriously work on
myself to get ahead of the curve during my 20s.

> In my experience, many of these metrics are not as concrete as the appear
> and full of pushing the data to fit a narrative etc.

in my experience the okcupid blog's conclusions fit the narrative of reality
when it comes to sexual market value, race, and attraction, whereas you're
espousing a more politically correct kind of conclusion that fits an
_artificial_ narrative of egalitarian bullshit that in no way, shape, or form
applies to the modern sexual marketplace (online dating and the hookup scene).
there are winners, and there are losers, period. if you're not getting laid,
you are losing. there is no long courtship period anymore. chivalry is dead.

how is it so radical and "dangerous" to conclude that men generally prefer
younger, more fertile women, or that latino men generally prefer latino women?
i mean are you even being serious?

~~~
burgers
So while its fun to play around with data, these are not real insights. The
very idea that they can think some metric you've gathered via an online app
can determine whether someone finds someone else attractive is goofy. But then
publicly publishing that narrative, which is straight up pseudo science, is
dangerous as people in the general public will use this kind of thing to say
stuff like, "I read online that they did this study about Latino men and it
said that they all think black women are ugly".

Grow up and take some responsibility for the world around you.

~~~
beachstartup
> "I read online that they did this study about Latino men and it said that
> they all think black women are ugly"

what you're doing is called "projection" \- you're taking your own thoughts,
and assuming others have the same ones.

ironically, i bet you're a white guy - because all of the black, latino, asian
guys i know talk about this stuff openly. in general, my white friends find
this kind of talk extremely unsettling and uncomfortable.

~~~
burgers
_> people in the general public will use this kind of thing to say stuff like,
"I read online that they did this study about Latino men and it said that they
all think black women are ugly"._

Maybe you should go back and read what I wrote one more time. I said that
"people in the general public", not "I think that".

1\. I know this is pseudo science so I don't read anything into it. 2\. Plenty
of people have no experience with data science and do not know the difference
between causation and correlation.

Can you do me a favor, and stop projecting your issues with political
correctness onto me? I'm sorry you've had your difficulties with it in the
past, but my comments have nothing at all to do with the topics making me
uncomfortable. It's because as a society as a whole, there are many people
that will use this type of information to spread hate. If okCupid or anyone
else is going to do it, they need to release all of their data publicly at the
same time so that there can be a complete and two sided discussion with all
the data available.

Lastly...

 _> because all of the black, latino, asian guys i know talk about this stuff
openly._
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I%20Have%20Bl...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I%20Have%20Black%20Friends)

~~~
beachstartup
so in other words... i'm right, you're a white guy.

~~~
burgers
No, I was just trying to point out how racist you sound. Saying things like
"my white friends"? Seriously? I now just realized that you are a very
stereotyping person and exactly the kind of person that makes these okCupid
releases dangerous. Yikes.

~~~
scrollaway
Ooh. The guy has "white friends". He must be such a bad person.

/sigh

