Re: Online Dating Rants

[nearly_takuan]

The best thing I ever did for my career was get hired: from the day I got my current job to now, I've been getting frequent offers from recruiters to connect over LinkedIn and attend Professional Networking Events.

And now that there are a few people I speak to regularly on OkCupid, I'm suddenly getting far more views and "likes" and even a couple of unsolicited messages from actual people. This despite much less frequent profile updates and still rapidly decreasing interest in even gracing the site with a log-in anymore. Now, I am suspicious. "Sort By: Magic" lets the rich get richer, so to speak, doesn't it? Or the lucky get luckier, if that sounds more palatable.

There's probably good reason for it. Profiles that are engaged in frequent back-and-forth conversations are presumably less likely to be bots or zombie accounts or otherwise uninvested in the site. But it also means that for regular users, out of mind is out of sight.

I don't mean this as a direct complaint about my present situation; it's inestimably better by any reasonable metric than where I thought I'd be now, as recently as a month ago. I'm just grumpy with the System.

[eselle28]

Interesting. And, I kind of buy it, because my immediate reaction to Sort By Magic has always been Sort By Match, because Sort By Magic has routinely served up profiles that aren't appealing to me at all and that are really poor matches. In a smaller town with a smaller population of internet daters, I suspect the people who communicate the most and those who are somewhat compatible with me aren't factors that are as likely to be found in the same people (the - generally atheist, always moderate-to-liberal, and sometimes childfree - men I typically go out with have all pretty much said that there weren't many women within an hour or two who they found interesting and even fewer were interested in them).

[The Wisp]

If true, it makes me wonder if there can be a black hole effect, where if you don't get many views or responses to your messages after a while, you just get stuck in purgatory? I got 3-4 likes a week the first couple of weeks, and then like one a month after that. There was a similar pattern with views. Even after I completely changed my photos and profile, the lack of likes and views was still present.

[nearly_takuan]

Yeah, I always knew Sort By Magic was a garbage algorithm anyway, but I also figure most people aren't super-users and will just use whatever the default is. Especially since it seems to reset itself to defaults from time to time anyway, no matter how I was filtering and sorting things previously. So I care about my visibility on those kinds of algorithms, y'know?

[Xexyz]

Based on OKC's algorithms an argument could be made that I'm actually pretty racist; I have to scroll way down into the sub 70% match range before women of color (except for Asian women) start showing up with any regularity.

[fakely mctest]

Got my third message from a guy that I'd once been messaging with actual years ago -- to be clear, these are three different guys.  They've all seemed...weirdly angry and/or passive aggressive, which definitely leads to the ol' block-and-hide on my part.

Truth of the matter is I can't remember 2 1/2 years back on a dating site and who I may have exchanged a couple messages with and I CERTAINLY can't remember specific reasons why I didn't reply.  Most likely scenario is no rapport or the other person was asking zero questions and I was doing all the "conversational" work.  Not about to meet someone in person if just sending a couple short-ish messages feels like walking uphill in the snow both ways.

[WJMorris3]

So I got flagged on OKCupid for my picture in a suit, or at least someone told me that.

Yep. Same one who pre-rejected me.

Mind you, I've not sent her back a message but now I'm told that I was "triggering" her because I "look like a rapist".

She's entitled to her opinions, of course, but I don't see how she got from point A to point B here?

[Enail]

Block her block her block her.

[litterature]

So I got flagged on OKCupid for my picture in a suit, or at least someone told me that.

Yep. Same one who pre-rejected me.

Mind you, I've not sent her back a message but now I'm told that I was "triggering" her because I "look like a rapist".

She's entitled to her opinions, of course, but I don't see how she got from point A to point B here?

You're just being trolled, chances are she (?) isn't even who she is pretending to be. And if she is, she's just 3D 4chan.
Hope you're alright!

[eselle28]

Yeah, just block her.

Also, don't worry about moderation. I'm actually a moderator myself, so I get to see the process first hand, and the moderators tend to be a pretty reasonable bunch. They're super harsh on "not the user" in a way that I think is a little counterproductive, but the site's policies on "not the user" are in and of themselves harsh and counterproductive and I think the mods are just trying to follow the rules when it comes to that.* Most of the debates tend to be centered around how close a picture needs to be zoomed in to count as an extreme closeup. No one there's going to have much tolerance for a report about a picture someone just thinks looks creepy.

*I get that it's to cut down on people who post a picture of a sunset instead of a picture of themselves, but I think it's uncool that the flat policy means that someone who's posted 5 or 6 pictures of their face and body can't also then include a picture of their dog or their artwork.

[Perlandra]

WJ I'm sorry you went through that. Definitely block him/her, and if they make a new account to harass you again, report them.

I met someone a few weeks ago from an OLD site, who acted really awkward and uncomfortable. He waited until the middle of the night the following night, and sent me a really trollish message. I've run into him at an event since then, and it was super awkward.

[Izmuth]

Can I rant for other people?

It happens with alarming regularity that friends of mine get cold-negging(cold-reading/negging "Well, you seem messed up, but I suppose I can try to make it work") messages and it really leaves a bad taste in their mouths about OLD, even though they know those messages are sent to everyone.

It's sick people send that kind of crap. It almost makes you wish people would stick to "hi".

[WolfBlitzer]

I'm an American living in the UK. I've had an OLD and Tinder profile for most of the last 2 years, and had practically zero responses in OLD, and not a single Tinder match in that time. I always stated that I was an American in my profile, and finally a couple months back as an experiment I stopped saying that in my Tinder profile. I got half a dozen matches in the space of a weekend. I shouldn't have been surprised as I was, there are a *lot* of stereotypes about Americans here and outright snobbery.

On the bright side, I've got 4 months left here before my contract is up and I head back to the US.

[BasedBuzzed]

>people who list their location as something different to see what convos come up
Stanford prison experiment tier social engineering.

Also:
"Just came back from 1 1/2 years of teaching English in Bangkok"

"What I'm doing with my life
...as less as possible."

The cringe is real.

[Xexyz]

Not exactly a rant, but I think I found the most illogical combination of question/answer/partner preferred answer on OKC. The question is: For you personally, is abortion an option in case of an accidental pregnancy? We both answered yes, but my answer appeared in red meaning that's an unacceptable answer to her. Wut. She must have indicated her match answer preferences incorrectly (I've make mistakes around questions as well) because this combination just makes no sense whatsoever.

[BasedBuzzed]

>Tinder on Bluestacks
>due to the town's demographics, it's absolutely loaded with sorority-tier blondes
>pics are inevitably a mix of Colour Run, duckface with rest of house, beach, gala, sepia filter with eyes invisible, ski vacation, mirror selfie
I want to go on a grand adventure where this all turns out to be a conspiracy about cloning technology.

[eselle28]

ill give u multiple organisms

I'm almost tempted to ask what sort of organisms are being offered. I don't think I'd turn down a pumpkin or a nice bowl of strawberries, but I have enough cats and I definitely don't want mosquitoes.

[BasedBuzzed]

ill give u multiple organisms

I'm almost tempted to ask what sort of organisms are being offered. I don't think I'd turn down a pumpkin or a nice bowl of strawberries, but I have enough cats and I definitely don't want mosquitoes.

Alternate hypothesis: it's an alien trying to imitate the standard oneliner about giving a girl babies.

[eselle28]

Alternate hypothesis: it's an alien trying to imitate the standard oneliner about giving a girl babies.

You know, assuming the author of that message and profile was an alien would explain a lot .

[Enail]

What was the profile that went with it like?

[reboot]

ill give u multiple organisms

I'm almost tempted to ask what sort of organisms are being offered. I don't think I'd turn down a pumpkin or a nice bowl of strawberries, but I have enough cats and I definitely don't want mosquitoes.

Alternate hypothesis: it's an alien trying to imitate the standard oneliner about giving a girl babies.

Another hypothesis is that the person is disclosing their STI status. Many organisms involved in that.

[eselle28]

What was the profile that went with it like?

Sideways profile picture. Strictly monogamous but only looking for casual sex. "I'm really good at..." is followed by "eating u out," which is slightly more charming if I imagine that the alien is simply picturing taking his new human friends to various restaurants.

[Wondering]

Could also mean To Serve Man, though. Better watch out.

[BasedBuzzed]

>Tinder spambots have profile texts that are the exact same as the fake profile blurbs during my brief stint as a chat operator
Who writes them? Who does the market research for the archetypes and most optimal combination of terms? Which women make a buck selling their photographs to serve as profile filler? Such mystery.

[CP96]

Reactivated on Okcupid to see if anyone new had joined at all.

Why do I even bother with that site?

[Sponsored content]