
How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love - daw___
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/
======
crazygringo
It's funny... doing all this 'hacking' to create profiles with awesome match
%'s... is pretty pointless. In my personal experience, a match below 80% is a
red flag (serious incompatibilities), but above 85% there aren't any big
differences.

Like he said, he went on 55 dates, but only three second dates. The 55 dates
really isn't too hard to do without the hacking, it's just a question of time.
And the "three second dates" means his filter wasn't even that great -- he
probably would have done better just simply browsing on the site, and only
directly messaging the girls he found interesting in the first place.

But the real interesting thing here is the clustering into 7 types of women --
that's fantastic! I'd _love_ to read more about that -- if he could write it
up in a blog, OkTrends-style, I feel like it could get a huge number of hits.
I think tons of people, including myself, would be interested in the details,
especially if he did it for both men and women.

~~~
keerthiko
I spent about one year on OkC @ approx 40minutes/day on the site, and got
about 20 first dates, 10 second dates, 2 third dates, and 2 fourth dates. They
were almost all 85+% matches, and weren't that hard to find. However, I would
say that my manual filtering probably took way less time than he spent
implementing his models.

He probably learned more engineering and advanced math while I learned how to
read subtle messages of profiles, project the right ones of my own and know
what's worth talking about ahead of time by having conversation online first.

He probably got the satisfaction of 'hacking' the system, while I had more
efficient expenditure of money (dates can get expensive on average for guys
when you decide to at least offer to pay).

None of my OkC prospects looked like they would work out long-term, though I'm
still good online friends with over half of them. I flippantly shut down my
account 3 months before I would have to leave the country, because even if I
met someone I didn't want to be in a long-distance relationship, so I decided
to save myself the trouble.

And then met a girl the very next day (not kidding) that I really hit it off
with when I wasn't looking, and we're planning to go traveling in Asia next
month (it's been 7 months).

I'm a diehard hacker and nerd and all, but when things like this happen, it's
hard to not wonder if the traditionalists do have a point when saying you
can't figure these things out with numbers. At least not when people are
gaming their numbers :)

The math is super-fascinating though, and I hope OkC team does some research
into it and integrates some of the ideas: obviously they wouldn't want to
support uber-profile optimization for multiple groups, but maybe help find the
right groups, etc.

I do think his biggest win as a male on OkC was being able to generate all the
inbound traffic he would want with no invested marketing on his part (besides
writing his scripts). That's something even the most skilled male OkC
connoisseurs find difficult to do.

Edited: to add last thought.

~~~
alan_cx
"And then met a girl the very next day (not kidding) that I really hit it off
with when I wasn't looking"

This, IMHO, is the best advice. I remember the Dalai Lama's advice about
finding happiness. How do I find happiness? "Stop lookin, be happy", he said.

Same with dating. How do I find a date? Stop looking. More exactly, live life,
and in time, you'll meet someone.

Part of the reason why is that someone sort of on the hunt isn't that
attractive, because such a person isn't being totally natural, or themselves.
The dating game becomes false. That is subtly there to see, and is a turn off.
If not then what you get is potentially two false people under pressure to
maintain something.

Yeah, I know, it can't work for all, circumstances, time, and all that. But so
far, regardless of who I have passed this notion on to, regardless of their
situation, in time, its worked. And worked solidly.

Unfortunately, this is something people do get fretful about, and then decide
something has to be done.

~~~
khafra
> "Stop lookin, be happy"

It's true that happiness comes when you're settled with your lot in life. But
you will instinctively rebel if you settle too early, on too little; this site
is sort of dedicated to the art of not settling too early.

~~~
tripzilch
Alan Watts said: (paraphrased)

Life is not a journey pilgrimage with an important goal at the end, it is a
musical thing and you are supposed to laugh and sing and dance along the way.

For the full text, check out this cool youtube animation made by the Southpark
folks from his lecture: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-
GC4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4) (animation style is
Southpark-like, content is Alan Watts)

------
hcarvalhoalves
> It was first date number 88. A second date followed, then a third. After two
> weeks they both suspended their OkCupid accounts.

You know... there's a damn big chance you find _someone_ worth having a
relationship after _88 dates_. Something tells me his technique was no better
than just dating at random.

~~~
cperciva
He wasn't optimizing for "finding a good match". He was optimizing for "get
dates with the type of people who might turn out to be good matches".

~~~
izaidi
Even so, it speaks poorly of his method (or maybe just his personality?) that
it took 90 dates to actually find a good match.

~~~
nostrademons
Friend of mine used to run a dating site. She said that on average it took
people about 6 months of solid dating, usually 50-100 dates, before they found
a good match.

There are some people that get into relationships much more quickly, but
oftentimes those are the same people who get _out_ of relationships really
quickly, because they didn't choose a good match to begin with. There are also
outliers who find someone great when they're not really looking, but they are
outliers.

Think of it this way: someone who went on 90 dates before they found a match
set their bar at the 99th percentile. Someone who went on 10 dates set their
bar at the 90th percentile. Someone who went on 2 set their bar at the 50th
percentile. These aren't exact figures - there's luck involved too - but they
illustrate the trade-off involved.

~~~
jaimebuelta
It seems quite weird to me that 100 dates are needed before founding a "good
match" (I guess that means something you date more than a couple times). Seems
like an incredibly inefficient (and potentially emotionally complicated)
process, even will all the "magic algorithm" part.

If this is truly a numbers game, not sure if speed dating or something similar
is a much better approach...

------
mehkcupid
I did something similar 4 years ago. My OkCupid profile was receiving about
3-10 visits/week from women, and I had only a small handful that I matched
90+% with. I deleted all my answers and answered just the minimum required
with complete honesty but zero possibility of controversy. My match % was 95+%
with everyone and my inbound views turned into 100+/week.

The match percentage was useless as a filter, but who cares? The new filter
was my profile, and women who liked it messaged me.

Within a few weeks I'd been on several dates — I'm now married to the last
woman I dated from then. She messaged me.

~~~
Pxtl
...so wait, their system treats you like dirt if you provide _more_
information? Somewhere out there a data miner is laughing his ass off.

------
birken
I'll give the guy credit for coming up with a creative idea [1], but for a guy
who was overly concerned with efficiency, going on 55 first dates and only 3
second dates strikes me as absolutely insane and a waste of time. It would be
similar to having 55 in-person interviews and only making 3 offers. Something
is going wrong in the funnel.

I don't see how his system was better than just using the site as it is
intended, nor do I think it should be romanticized as much as it is in this
article.

[1]: Though it fails the categorical imperative. If everybody did this okcupid
would be much worse off.

~~~
mgraczyk
This is a little bit off topic, but although I agree that [1] does fail the
categorical imperative, it isn't because "If everybody did this okcupid would
be much worse off."

The categorical imperative is not a consequentialist motivation. It doesn't
say, "Don't do X if doing so would make Y worse off."

~~~
barrkel
The guy you're replying to didn't say "Don't do X if doing so would make Y
worse off" for any values of X or Y.

------
asnyder
This is a duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7098563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7098563)

Also, here's my .02 re-posted from the comments section:

Rather than answer the questions that were important to him he decided to find
a set of people he thought he would like then only answer the questions they
care about, and not even the way he would naturally answer them, rather he
used an algorithm to determine the weight that would be best to get the
highest match %. The fact of the matter is he could've spent a fraction of the
time just answering all the questions honestly and with his honest weights and
he would've found high matches too. Furthermore, he could've narrowed it down
to just the kind of people he wanted through a normal search and then filter
their questions based on what's important to them (which is a normal question
filter on OkCupid).

So in fact what he did was pretty bad, violates OkCupid's TOS in numerous ways
and at the end of the day wasn't honest to himself as he created specific
profiles for his targets.

Honestly, we should not be celebrating this.

To recap what he did:

1\. Didn't want to answer questions, so let's find all the questions that are
important to everybody from the categories of people he thinks he likes based
on clustering and then browsing a profile or two of people in that cluster.
(He did this by creating numerous fake profiles and having those bots answer
all the questions so he could scrape his targets question)

3\. Create specific profile for his targeted group. With words and information
that he knew they would like.

2\. Answer ONLY the set of questions deemed important to those people. He
answered these with weights determined by an algorithm that determined the
best weight to achieve the highest match% rather than honestly.

3\. WIth new found 99% matches go on dates with these people and follow normal
dating process.

Now that we see the above broken down we can see that it's really not good. In
fact, he was only answering what they wanted, and created profiles for them.
But he wasn't being honest with himself or with his answers. If we're trying
to match with everyone, which is essentially what he did, it's not that
difficult to do. The fact that he eventually found someone is great, but the
information used was faulty. Obviously there's no way he would be 99% with
that many people normally.

~~~
cocoflunchy
Yeah, I feel like all he did in the end is find a way of getting a lot of
people interested in his profile (by tweaking the score so that it would be as
close as 100% as possible) and then go on a lot of dates.The real issue here
is probably the asymmetry in male/female messages and requests rates on
OkCupid...

~~~
fchollet
I always thought that the messaging asymmetry on dating sites was purely a
reflection of the real-world asymmetry of dating, where females will almost
never initiate a flirt sequence themselves. The universal expectation is that
it is the role of the male to manifest interest in, and worthiness of, the
female. Not that I agree with this, but it would be difficult not to observe
it.

I remember reading somewhere that there were actually more female users of
these dating sites. So the difference would be purely one of behavioral
habits.

Thinking about it, I can't think of a single animal species where the female
is the one seeking out the males. Then again, evolutionary analogies are very
un-PC around here.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
> females will almost never initiate a flirt sequence

It's the opposite. In environments like parties and bars women subtly initiate
most interactions. They maneuver closer and do the glance thing.

~~~
judk
They do, but men don't notice that. Men initiate conversation regardless, or
women go home wondering why no one responded to their cues.

~~~
klipt
> or women go home wondering why no one responded to their cues

Same reason they ignore certain men - lack of attraction.

------
x0054
Though unrelated to this post in particular, I figured I would post a method
of finding dates that worked particularly well for me.

Post a "Blind Date" message in the M4W section of CL. In the message describe
your self as honestly as you can, while still being interesting and flattering
to yourself. Ask the women to describe themselves to you in the reply. Say one
or two interesting things about your self, and what you are looking for.
Request that the responding girl does NOT send you a picture, and wait for the
messages to roll in :)

I picked up quite a few dates that way, all the girls were beautiful, smart,
and very interesting to talk to. Because we weren't a "100%" match, we
actually had some different points of view, which lead to fun conversations.

You might think this would lead to you perhaps going out with girls who are
not very good looking. First of all, you can have lot's of fun with a girl,
even if you are not sexually attracted to her. But in reality, only girls who
are very beautiful and confident in their appearance would actually reply to
this message.

In any case, it worked great for me. I met lot's of cool girls, and eventually
found the love of my life.

------
pella
TED: Amy Webb: How I hacked online dating

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wG_sAdP0U](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wG_sAdP0U)

 _" Amy Webb was having no luck with online dating. The dates she liked didn't
write her back, and her own profile attracted crickets (and worse). So, as any
fan of data would do: she started making a spreadsheet. Hear the story of how
she went on to hack her online dating life -- with frustrating, funny and
life-changing results."_

~~~
monksy
Man... I kept listening to her go on and I couldn't help but to think "I'm
picky, but why am I so lonely." "I don't want to do anything, its everyone
else's fault."

------
ceautery
OkCupid is how my wife and I met. She was one of two women I exchanged
messages with, and the only one I met in person. We've been married for 5
years and have had two children.

I have no idea what our match percentage was, and there were a few things in
my profile that were turn-offs for her, all of which appeared in my only
picture on the site: Me, with a fresh buzz-cut, jogging up a hill with my dog.
She's allergic to dogs, doesn't run because of her asthma, and prefers long
hair.

All of that was superficial, and she was able to look past it. She engaged me
mainly because of the descriptive content in my profile. I just went nuts
explaining who I was, in a chatty, stream of consciousness manner.

In the end, I re-homed my dog with her own parents, and let my hair grow to
21", which I started growing out again after we'd been married for a year.
That wasn't all her; I had hair that length in high school and chopped it off
to help me stay employed.

What's my point? The content matters most. You can optimize your approach to
searching for matches, and you can go on lots of dates, but you can't force a
good real-world match. If it's there, you'll know. No mathematical model of
searching, nor red-pill-esque approach to building self confidence will be
more effective than an open exchange of ideas between a couple. Get to the
messaging. Give her a chance to be disinterested, because that's a hurdle
you'll need to cross at some point in the relationship... assuming, that is,
that you're looking for love.

------
vellum
There was a woman who did something similar:

[http://forward.com/articles/170925/hacking-jdate-to-find-
the...](http://forward.com/articles/170925/hacking-jdate-to-find-the-perfect-
jewish-hubby/?p=all)

------
azernik
What's interesting to me is how this guy inverted the gender roles on OkCupid.
Normally (says OkTrends data) men take the initiative, and women filter
incoming messages. In the later stages of this setup, the guy set up bots to
get himself in the "inboxes" (list of profile views) of lots of women, getting
enough incoming messages that he could take the normally female role in this
online dating dance.

------
llasram
At least one useful take-away: k-modes clustering. I initially thought it was
a typo/miscommunication, but the soybean reference seemed bizarrely specific.
It apparently actually exists, and is an extension of k-means to categorical
data, using Hamming distance instead of Euclidean distance.

~~~
wjnc
Good answer on stats.stackexchange [1] regarding k-means, standardization and
discrete or categorical data

[1]
[http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/58920](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/58920)

------
hs
i did something like it 6-7 years ago with friendster when it got 'who looked
at me' new feature then. i scrapped million ids of teenagers to below-age-30
women. my friend list went from below hundred to full 3000 (the max at the
time) in a week or two. facebook was not popular in my country (not usa)

the scrapper was written in newlisp (save search result pages with curl, use
regex to match and collect the ids). it's probably easier to write in other
languages, but that's what i knew.

i used wget and curl to loop over the ids but it's too slow because they
download the whole page. later i found out about 'curl -i' (header only) and a
million ids was done in about hour or two (i moved my operation from my home's
64kbps to my colo datacenter mbps internet).

my account is no longer exist (probably banned); however, i do still have a
screenshot of me having 3000 female-only-friends and 70000 non-hidden-females
'look back at my profile'

initially, i talked to any interesting woman; however, later i made a strict
rule to only respond to women who wrote at me. there were just too many fake
female-accounts.

i got a couple of dates from this feat; however, i met my wife in a
traditional catholic youth retreat. when i let her know about this friendster
thingy, she just laughed. now i'm happily married with a 15-months-old boy.

------
acqq
I am feeling sorry for all the women subjected to all that spam, not only by
this guy. And talking about this guy, let's be honest, he was different from
other "spam" contacts by implementing a bot-assisted spamming, nothing he
should be praised for.

Math genius? More a spambot writer, but not for money, for an advantage.

~~~
beachstartup
don't kid yourself. women are people too, just like men. they love the
validation of receiving tons of messages, even if it's spammy.

------
vph
A white guy, tall, decent looking, math professor, rock climber, guitarist. He
didn't need to hack OKCupid to end up with an Asian girl of his dream.

~~~
normloman
Everyone has interesting talents that can attract mates. And most people can
look good if they dress well and develop proper grooming habits. Cheer up.

------
programminggeek
I think the most interesting part of this is that an algorithm told people
they are 99% compatible and that changed their behavior enough to make it easy
for them to go on a date. Funny that an artificially high number on a computer
screen completely changed people's behavior and perception of the world.

~~~
kazagistar
See things like fashion, subcultures, etc.

------
ajays
I've dated around on OKC since the early days. His lack of success on first
dates points to a problem with him; maybe he was too picky or had some other
issues which turned women off. If he was looking for that Hollywood-style
instant spark, he was mistaken; that doesn't always happen.

When I was on OKC, about 1 in 20 messages would result in a first date; but
you bet that more than 50% of first dates turned into second dates.

When women first meet you, it's almost like they're going through a checklist
in their heads: is this guy a creep? A rapist? A jerk? etc. etc. (this is just
the impression I got). If you don't trigger any of the alerts, you're golden.

One of the biggest mistakes nerds (like myself) make on their profiles and on
dates is that we try to impress the woman with our encyclopedic knowledge of
some esoteric subject. That's a sure turnoff.

Maybe we should have an "ask HN" on dating ... :-)

------
Paul12345534
Once upon a time, I was seeking a Filipina gf. At the time, DateInAsia didn't
have any good search interface but it was a good place to meet people if you
weeded out the scammers.

I was looking for very specific things (Catholic, educated, no kids, 25 or
older, etc). I scrapped (slowly) the site content and threw all the fields in
a database so I could query it locally :)

I filled out my profile as complete as possible about myself and who I was
looking for. DateInAsia lets people know when you viewed their profile... so
my Python script automatically viewed all the profiles that matched my search
queries. Many of them viewed my profile in return and those who were
interested messaged me. I met some nice ladies that way but it turned out to
be a Filipina lady I met in an unrelated chatroom who I fell in love with.

My own more humble attempt at mixing geekdom with love :) but love comes in
unexpected places not ruled by math

~~~
70forty
My current girlfriend is Cambodian, and we met via OkCupid. I noticed that of
the ~1000 Cambodian girls using the site, none of them matched above 80% with
me. I disregarded this and I'm really glad I did. Personally, I was searching
for someone who seemed sweet, adventurous, and spoke English well.

I think I read through just about every one of those 1000 profiles, but my
girlfriend's stood out... in a way that I could not have discerned
computationally. Our match percentage was around 60%, for instance. She was
the first/only girl I messaged. Things are still going great!

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I'm gonna assume you and Paul12345534 aren't white dudes b/c that'd be a
behavior for creeps.

~~~
nostrademons
There's a big difference between dating someone specifically because she's
Cambodian and dating someone who happens to be Cambodian. If I read the GP
right, he's talking about the latter.

~~~
qq66
Is there anything actually wrong with dating specifically because they're
Cambodian? Anymore than dating someone specifically because they have a
certain body type, or certain hair color, or certain sports team affiliation?

~~~
normloman
Limiting your dating pool to just Cambodians is just as stupid as limiting the
pool to just blondes or just Yankees fans. Because in the long run, these
things don't matter. Unless you're a special little snowflake who just can
bare to sleep with a Mets fan.

I can see body type making a difference, because it's important to find your
mate attractive. But even then, don't harp on it too much. I know a guy who
refuses to date any girl who isn't a size zero. Unsurprisingly he gets no
dates. If he just gave other girls a chance, he might discover that he's
attracted to a wider variety of body types than he thinks he is.

~~~
qq66
I agree with everything you said, but it seems as though dating someone
because they're Cambodian is often judged more harshly than dating someone
because they're blonde. Yet, from my uninformed guess, I'd speculate that
people from a specific country have more specific cultural or personality
traits than people of a certain hair color or sports fandom. For example,
despite millions of exceptions on each side, Australians are more extroverted
and gregarious than Swiss. I can imagine an extremely extroverted Swiss person
trying to find a similar companion saying, "I'd like to date an Australian
person" instead of the much more complicated process of finding similar
personality types among their compatriots.

------
morgante
It's a happy story, and I'm sad to see all the naysayers in this thread. I
really don't see what's unethical about his behavior. He never lied about his
views and his fiancee knows the whole story.

It seems like a totally rational response to the insanities of online dating.
Especially as a guy, you have to message hundreds of women to even get a
handful of replies. Through automation, he's equalized the playing field so
that, like women, he has the opportunity to filter only amongst those who have
already expressed interested in him. No more time/effort wasted on women who
never reply.

I actually was working on an automated framework for batch messaging and a/b
testing on OKCupid
([https://github.com/morgante/abcupid](https://github.com/morgante/abcupid))
before realizing I don't have time for a relationship.

------
kqr2
Link to the guy's website:

[http://christophermckinlay.net/](http://christophermckinlay.net/)

Also a link to the kindle edition of his analysis:

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HY351S2](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HY351S2)

~~~
beamer99
r Read the foreword to his book. Something I should have done before buying
the book. It is not about the statistical methods he used and how he collected
the web data. It's more of an online dating manual. If Christopher is on HN,
an article on your site about your methodology would be great.m

------
EGreg
There are other ways to hack dating sites that use other means completely.

Have several friends on the site, all with their real profiles. When you like
a girl, have a friend with the most compatibility message her, and introduce
you two. If such a "cool" guy vouches for you, how great must you be? She is
intrigued. She hasnt gotten messages like this. And you go out w her. Not only
that but you start w a warm introduction and something to talk about.

And if she doesn't respond to him, you can message her yourself, and bam -
double your chances.

------
thrush
Everyone, this is a pivotal moment. This is when online dating becomes like
the trading algorithms of the stock market.

You could even say that the stock exchange is like a dating site but for
investors.

------
S4M
What I take from this article: \- OkCupid is good for finding a one night
stand \- their matching algorithm could be improved

Disclaimer: I'm married and never used OkCupid or any dating site.

~~~
mohamedzahid
This article explains what could be improved in OKCupid's algorithm:
[http://proofmathisbeautiful.tumblr.com/post/13186514242/what...](http://proofmathisbeautiful.tumblr.com/post/13186514242/whats-
wrong-with-okcupids-matching-algorithm)

------
CmonDev
I am confused, what is English for an 'actual genius' these days?

------
socrates1998
I applaud his effort, but that is not a very good % of second dates. I say his
problem wasn't his process, it was his ability to get/want a second date.

I am glad it worked out for him, but I would recommend people to just focus on
connecting with people when they are on a first date rather than worry about
if they are a "match".

------
fatjokes
If only one out of 55 first dates ended up in a 3rd date, sorry buddy, sounds
like he may be the problem, not his profile.

------
chalgo
He would have had better luck finding a partner by getting away from the
computer, sleeping in a real bed, improving his lifestyle and learning to be a
better conversationalist. Sounds like he was a recluse "Sleeping at his
computer cubicle" and spending no time actually going out and enjoying life.

------
fjabre
It might be nice if people put down their dating apps for a little while and
went out into the actual physical world to meet people by chance i.e. at line
in a Starbucks, on a flight back home, or dare I say it: a bar - preferably
during happy hour. Level of attraction in these real world situations is
instantly assessed and doesn't take days or weeks of back & forth messaging
before even meeting up.

Also, anecdotally I believe men far outnumber women on these sites so that
clearly skews the ratio in women's favor which means by law of supply and
demand women choose on these sites and not men in most cases. I've gone on
dates with women I met online and many of them told me it was not uncommon for
them to receive _hundreds_ of messages a day and here we have a brilliant PhD
student happy with 20. Just sayin

------
lazyant
"McKinlay had popped up in her search for 6-foot guys with blue eyes", I'm
completely out of touch with dating but is it normal or accepted nowadays to
search for narrow physical attributes? to me this is an example of
shallowness.

------
ben010783
> McKinlay had popped up in her search for 6-foot guys with blue eyes near
> UCLA...

I find it interesting that he did so much analysis based on interests,
beliefs, etc. and he ended up getting messaged because of a search that was
pretty superficial.

------
BornInTheUSSR
I have a feeling that approach is no better when compared with going on dates
with a random sample of 88 women (within some range of compatible
age/attractiveness), but I don't have the data to prove it.

------
auctiontheory
I appreciate (admire) his ingenuity, although even at a distance I can see two
or three problems with the actual relationship.

------
abus
How about meeting people from the site at random and then finding patterns in
the answered questions of the ones you liked?

------
underlines
TED Talk: Amy Webb - How I hacked online dating
[http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_webb_how_i_hacked_online_dating...](http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_webb_how_i_hacked_online_dating.html)

------
wat0
Wasn't there a ted talk by a Jewish woman who did this already?

Edit:yes Amy Webb ted talk
[http://tinyurl.com/ktrb2f4](http://tinyurl.com/ktrb2f4)

------
abhi3188
Wow, I wish he open sources his scraping script and algos.

------
bwhmather
Mandatory link to [http://blog.okcupid.com/](http://blog.okcupid.com/) Less
story, more analysis.

------
simik
They should make a movie out of it.

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acd
I think that was a really cool hack and nerdy as hell :).

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Noelkd
Is this legal?

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a8da6b0c91d
Isn't the whole concept of matching on a bunch of survey questions BS? 90% of
attraction is butt-sniffing DNA match stuff you only get in person.

~~~
TillE
The questions are an _excellent_ initial filter if you've flagged a few
obvious deal breakers. It's the FizzBuzz of dating. Then you move on to
personally examining the profiles of people who have passed that test, contact
them, and so on.

It's certainly not an optimal system for casual sex, but it does a reasonable
job of finding candidates for any relationship more serious than that.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
But people are totally full of it on what their deal breakers are. They'll
thoughtfully answer a survey one way but then behave very differently in
smelly meatspace.

~~~
gweinberg
Hey, if you can come up with something better, there's a market opportunity.
Matching people up by scent isn't the worst idea I've heard.

~~~
klipt
I think something better already exists - it's called speed dating. It was
invented by a rabbi as a Jewish matchmaking event where you meet many people
over a short space of time (maximising the chance of finding mutual
attraction). But most cities have very few events which are consequently
overpriced due to lack of competition.

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marincounty
I couldn't imagine 55 "What do you do?"\--Ugh. I look back at all the women
whom I would drop everything for and marry, and there was just one; I met her
on fourth street, and regret not saying yes to a request in 2007. She had
beautiful green eyes and dirty cuticles(don't ask). I hope you are doing well,
and I have always felt bad for not doing more(I did refer to Mills Street). I
couldn't do more because I was a pussy at the time. I still think about you
and hope you are doing well. She was beautiful on the outside and inside. She
was not jaded, and seemed like her own version of "Zooey and Fran" with Sylvia
Plath mixed in?

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kimonos
True love sometimes comes unexpectedly! Best wishes to this couple!

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quenlinlom
Does anyone think that this is really creepy?

I mean, men using dating sites like OkCupid are mostly creepy people already,
but actually writing programs to automate stuff on OkCupid?

That's basically fulfilling the prophecy that men are just in for the sex.

~~~
Crake
>Does anyone think that this is really creepy?

No.

>I mean, men using dating sites like OkCupid are mostly creepy people already,

Wow.

>but actually writing programs to automate stuff on OkCupid?

Do you realize what site you're on?

>That's basically fulfilling the prophecy that men are just in for the sex.

Uh...how, exactly?

