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

DC, those algorithims suck anyway. Why don't you just stalk people at your campus library?

... what?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DKF3cVCXUAE06yC.jpg

lol had to look that up to see if it was real and not satire... it is

another new change: people you've 'liked' no longer show up in search results - you have to click through the stars menu to get to "who you've liked" - and "hide" has been transformed into "pass" although it's ambiguous whether they're still hidden forever or "until you've run out of other options" as the dialogue box states. basically they're trying to get it to a tinder-like "MAKE A DECISION NOW YES OR NO." which isn't exactly how i use the site but might not in itself be an unhealthy change to make. it's just really clunky and inconsistently rolled-out.... you can't "pass" from the match-browsing itself (though you can Like there), only from the profile or from DoubleTake (formerly known as QuickMatch). if you pass people on that they now stay marked as passed (as opposed to "not starred") which i guess makes sense but just ... a lotta stuff getting shifted around.

seems like at least some of the decision-makers really really want everybody to just be using DoubleTake. and then other people are pointing out that the whole brand is built on the higher-quality percentage matching and the filters and "special blend" and so on, and so "matches" sticks around. if i actually had to bite the bullet and yes/no everybody in the city i would soon be down to nobody left to look at and the site would be at an end for me. maybe that's okay.

the big one is that you can't "hide" from the browsing-matches screen anymore which is REALLY fucking annoying

This was mildly interesting (given that OKC have crunched stats saying how prevalent racism is in dating choices):

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609091/first-evidence-that-online-dating-is-changing-the-nature-of-society/

so making you like people's profiles before you message them, sure, fine, maybe it will cut down on random assholes sending women terrible messages. but now the message buttons they stuck on every single picture and every single paragraph have all become "like" buttons. so now on fiddly touchscreen interfaces, accidentally touching a random spot on the screen will now result in liking a profile like 50% of the time. which, no problem, i'll just undo it, right? except that they also just made it impossible to unlike someone's profile without hiding them completely for an arbitrarily long period of time. just unfathomably shitty design.

this really may be in a death spiral for me. not being able to hide profiles directly from the match results is INSANE. so to hide someone i obviously have no interest in i have to click to open another tab to their profile, let it load, click "pass," and close the tab. except that there's the vague threat that passed profiles may eventually come back into view whenever the algorithm feels like it. so actually you have to click on the three dots and then click "block," then close the tab. this is a lot of work multiplied over a number of profiles, especially when you're dealing with identical spam profiles and so on. so obviously i'm not going to do much of this and therefore the results just gradually fill up with more and more people i have no interest in. whyyyyyy would you set something up this way

okc's site is p garbage

why dont u use the app? you can "swipe" match results without clicking on them and click the "x"

but i have noticed some results come back, but lately they are not (okc is always fuckin with us)

i don't want to do the swipey quickmatch thing, i want the full desktop experience with filtered search controls and the ability to come back through and browse later, not necessarily give someone thumbs up/down right this second. is that possible in the app?

also i missed a click above, you have to click to confirm you want to block someone. jesus.

also the hidden people potentially coming back is a comparatively new thing, right? happened as part of the changes i was kvetching about on oct. 12.

on the iPhone one the bottom controls have swipey Tinder-like mode first, search next, then chats/likes/profile

Is the search tab with filters a special thing I've signed up for or something?

so in the app you click on the search icon (magnifying glass) then click match% and the results appear, and you left swipe the caption below the picture to "x" them

never used the browser filtered search options, but you can filter search options in the app by a bunch of parameters. i accidentally purchased a year subscription so i have the extended search options. not sure if the app limits search options for non-paying users

and yes this is for iphone

hmmm. maybe i'll see what the android app looks like then...

okcupid is the same company as match dot com, tinder, and apparently plentyoffish (??)

their entire shtick is having slight variations in product now, but they're all moving toward the monetizable center and "I'm not 22 but still want to meet people to be friends and also casually date" is not as monetizable as "I want a spouse" or "I want to make quick decisions" imo

almost posted this on the boutique service value thread, but none of these is a boutique version

okcupid -> "quirky", somewhat more friend oriented with long-form profiles, younger
plentyoffish -> normy, more hookup? all ages
tinder -> social network savvy swiping, no profiles
match dot com -> give me wife (?)

plentyoffish used to be unsolicited dick pic HQ according to women I know who used it, guessing that's changed if they're part of that cartel now

I almost posted "low class" but that's a horrible social judgment. Got the impression POF is very much myspace-era aesthetic for dating

what was that music video where someone was comically using plentyoffish?

Lady Gaga "Telephone"

yes! thank you. god what a wonderful video.

Dude was showing the gorilla pictures of female gorillas and he for real is like "next one please" pic.twitter.com/o2FPjCJPMb

— Sierra Anderson (@Sierra_2015) November 12, 2017

bananr

<3 u gorilla. don't settle!

errybody is supposed use their first name now apparently

I got off this pos app

Partly bc i got a fwb and another woman who has me feeling like i cld be in love again but were only friends rn. Taking it slow w the latter bc im actually rly afraid of messing it up or ~something~ happening that will draw us apart as per usual

Man I know that latter feeling! I hope it works out!

Thank you

Bless 🙏

omg this real name thing

are you fuuuuuuuuucking kidding me

‘newb cybok’ is some wheels-within-wheels nerd
shit doc c, kudos

sybok even bah

haha thank you

just one of the many wonderful usernames okcupid will no longer let me use to protect my identity, safety and employment

lol and they're already tripping over themselves trying to halfway walk it back

We love our members. You do not need to use your government name or even your full first name. Use the name, nickname, or initials you’d like your date to call you on OkCupid.

— OkCupid (@okcupid) December 22, 2017

lol do they not have any internet people working for them at all????

it's kind of disillusioning to find that everyone is just named like stacy or whatever

but for some people it makes them less absurd, not to have some goofy meaningless self-invented marketing tag

iirc Doc Casino actually has a cool name, but one that might make it easy for people to search for him elsewhere, which would suck

I would just be Mike again, which is fine since I suck at cool tags anyway

you can type in any name you want, so you could be stacy too

how long can you be inactive before they just delete your profile? i think i'm approaching a year

yeah there is no way in hell i am typing my real name in that box, my profile has been painstakingly anonymized for a reason

I mean I think I can understand reasons, but for you, why is it important for it to be semi-anonymous?

if it’s a particular proclivity or fetish or w/e no need to answer, I’m just curious if “exists on a meet-up/dating site” is professionally detrimental. I’ve seen a few coworkers on there, assume they saw me, but I guess that puts you on even ground

Being in academia and searchable by sexual interests is a different situation to seeing ppl in similar business fields to you looking for dates

yes. and okc's whole thing is built around giving answers to questions about pretty personal things, some of which are job-ending etc. could make those all private and take out all revealing info from the profile - but then might as well not have an okc profile. more generally being stalked/doxxed is generally not an appealing prospect. and a lot of groups/communities have gravitated to okc and deliberately NOT to first-name sites/apps, in order to maintain their personal safety or the experience of being able to define yourself. okc blog's babbling about how the names your parents gave you are sooo much better than the ones you'd choose for yourself is stunningly tone-deaf for a notionally 'hip' site, in 2017.

but yeah no, not gonna go into detail on my reasons for being anonymous, on a site where i am not anonymous. (no offense taken just sayin, my D.C. identity has always been pretty well tagged to my IRL one for better or worse)

that all makes a lot of sense and I appreciate your discretion!

but yeah, people are judgmental about the wrong things and everyone deserves some discretion, for sure

if you google me you mostly get a lead character from a popular video games series I’ve never played, so... thank you, video game industry

imo their fumbling is partially an inability to let the site exist and grow with the same demographic it’s had. I get the impression their clientele is both aging and shrinking, and owning multiple dating sites means they’re trying to constantly figure out how to capture users without cannibalizing their other sites

I don’t think the aesthetic of Tinder with the transparency of match.com is what anyone wants — okcupid was the site where you created a story of yourself that’s less straightforward and more nuanced.

the conspiracy theory, as with many of their other bad changes, is that they want okc to die so they can focus on those other sites. but that's a silly theory - it's an established brand, you'd want to parlay it into SOMEthing.