Just when you thought it was safe - OK CUPID PART 3: The Return of the WOO!

Plus re dinner - sorry, another rule and I'm sure we covered this above - I personally don't ever let my date pay for both of us, not even on later dates unless it turns into an actual relationship (at which point I can get the check sometimes, my date can get it other times, no big deal). I don't in any way disapprove of others letting their date get the check, but it's not for me. It's easier not to get into an end-of-date-fuss about this if it was just drinks and not dinner. Maybe I'll have to change this up on later dates now that I'm a student as there's more likely to be a much greater income difference than there has been in the past. Depends on their taste in restaurants!

That is enough rules from me.

tbf i had a date last week that at first was like whoa this person is weird then became really quite good -- at least enough to wonder if our weirdnesses matched up at all, anyway

there's surely a difference between women being weird and dudes being weird, though

Dudes being weird, if it's good-weird or intriguing-weird, can definitely prolong my interest and puts the 'is there chemistry' decision in the balance for a while.

I think okc has made me think/care about people's specific facial features A LOT more than I would have otherwise. When you meet someone you get an overall impression that includes someone's bearing, voice, how they look at you...you're not like, "God I HATE his CHIN, no, no, I could never look at that every day" or whatever.

ljubljana, apologies if this advice is unwanted, but one of the best messages I have taken away from the Enthusiastic Consent movement is that "I can't really think of any reason not to" is not a good reason to do something (in their context, it's "be in a relationship with" or "have sex with" - but I think it also works for "go on a date with".) We're always taught that we have to have a good reason *not* to do something (especially something that someone else, often a man, wants to do) - but really "I don't feel any particularly strong reason to do this" *IS* a perfectly valid and reasonable reason not to do something.

Yes, that's true. With online dating, though, if I'm always holding out for 'feeling chemistry from the moment I look at the page' I feel as though I'm stymying myself a bit! And if I had a bad feeling (not even 'bad' - more 'bored' or 'annoyed') from someone's profile, of course I wouldn't meet them. That's generally what happens, in fact!

My problem is, really, that I'm far more likely to converse with or even meet someone who makes me feel "annoyed" than "bored" because "annoyed" can actually be a mild aphrodisiac. I have realised that this isn't healthy - but again, this might come back to the "edgy" thing.

yes, there are definitely several flavours of 'annoyed'!

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/all/1

He retasked his bots to gather another sample: 5,000 women in Los Angeles and San Francisco who’d logged on to OkCupid in the past month. Another pass through K-Modes confirmed that they clustered in a similar way. His statistical sampling had worked. Now he just had to decide which cluster best suited him.

this is legit hide-behind-sofa horror

this is like something market research firms have done for years, except they give the clusters more evocative names

http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=30&menuOption=segmentexplorer&pageName=Segment%2BExplorer

"The breakthrough came when he coded up a modified Bell Labs algorithm called K-Modes"

smh

But mathematically, McKinlay’s compatibility with women in Los Angeles was abysmal. OkCupid’s algorithms use only the questions that both potential matches decide to answer, and the match questions McKinlay had chosen—more or less at random—had proven unpopular. When he scrolled through his matches, fewer than 100 women would appear above the 90 percent compatibility mark. And that was in a city containing some 2 million women (approximately 80,000 of them on OkCupid). On a site where compatibility equals visibility, he was practically a ghost.

He realized he’d have to boost that number. If, through statistical sampling, McKinlay could ascertain which questions mattered to the kind of women he liked, he could construct a new profile that honestly answered those questions and ignored the rest. He could match every woman in LA who might be right for him, and none that weren’t.

you could not get more stereotypically "math genius, otherwise moron" than this

Those bubbles are called 'god', 'mindful', 'dog' and then there is one called 'Samantha' and it's super creepy.

After a month of dating equally from both of his profiles, he decided he was spending too much time on the freeway reaching east-side women from the tattoo cluster. He deleted his A-group profile. His efficiency improved, but the results were the same. As summer drew to a close, he’d been on more than 55 dates, each one dutifully logged in a lab notebook. Only three had led to second dates; only one had led to a third.

Most unsuccessful daters confront self-esteem issues. For McKinlay it was worse. He had to question his calculations.

lol dude. dude. look at yourself.

The bubbles are confusing/gross! Is there a "Which SatC character are you?" question that I deleted/have blocked out??

well, it has a happy ending so, who's laughing now, humanities grads

such a calculating pre-dater.

As summer drew to a close, he’d been on more than 55 dates, each one dutifully logged in a lab notebook. Only three had led to second dates; only one had led to a third.

i can only gather from this that he was logging his data -during- the dates

I don't find it any more creepy than Claritas/Prizm and their "Shotguns and Pickups" and "Young Influentials" -- I think it just is a bit too revealing in terms of what OK Cupid is and how it functions

ugh estela that rly doesnt work in any civilized accent, poor show given the source c-

this is the wired version of an article written for the nyt style section

"the breakthrough came when he coded up a modified NASA algorithm called newton's second law"

lol 'the match questions McKinlay had chosen—more or less at random—had proven unpopular' maybe you should have answered the first hundred or so poindexter

the #3 question on that chart is the same-sex encounter one, which is *really* fraught as a comparison, since the "rules" about that are totally different between men and women (like it or not)

http://i.imgur.com/uTsr7Ni.jpg

how do i shot girlfriend algorithm

calculating baout things

Do you mean shoot as in photography?

There is already a study on that published by OKC, I believe. I think it was published quite a while ago.

Let me look for it...

Here we go: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/dont-be-ugly-by-accident

"how do i shot" is web 1.0 slang

http://www.dvdactive.com/images/reviews/screenshot/2005/11/spiderman_5.jpg

Never knew that was a thing/meme

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-do-i-shot-web

has anyone managed to go on over fifty dates in a single summer and *not* fall in love?

hexy, i don't think it's going to work out between us, we just don't have the same interests

if only we could have taken some kind of compatibility test before we met

how do i shot mandatory

http://www.haro-online.com/stuff/50first2.jpg

@f. hazel, do you think anyone would actually fess up?

@j, you're breaking my heart. Just know that you will make a special appearance in my diary tonight.

pfft, as a number, no doubt

Ive discovered something curious: when I am looking at the profile of someone I like/match well with, I started paying attention to the "similar users" list at the bottom right. And I realised that a large majority of the people showing there *were not showing up in my matches lists*. And yet often they were high matches, and good looking! The hell.

hehehe in orbit as soon as I hit "submit post"

also this past week that list stopped displaying the more/less qualifiers

aka "less interested in sex" and "more adventurous"

xpost

i think the 'search by username' box disappeared too

I'm sitting here trying to think if I've been on that many first dates in my entire life. I still haven't even been to Hawaii!

also this past week that list stopped displaying the more/less qualifiers

I just 5 mins ago noticed that too. Always thought it was a bit useless tbh

I wouldn't mind if it got added after our usernames on posts here though

more deraily

clickbaitier