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.<p>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.<p>But the real interesting thing here is the clustering into 7 types of women -- that's fantastic! I'd <i>love</i> 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.
> It was first date number 88. A second date followed, then a third. After two weeks they both suspended their OkCupid accounts.<p>You know... there's a damn big chance you find <i>someone</i> worth having a relationship after <i>88 dates</i>. Something tells me his technique was no better than just dating at random.
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.<p>The match percentage was useless as a filter, but who cares? The new filter was my profile, and women who liked it messaged me.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>[1]: Though it fails the categorical imperative. If everybody did this okcupid would be much worse off.
This is a duplicate of <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7098563" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7098563</a><p>Also, here's my .02 re-posted from the comments section:<p>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).<p>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.<p>Honestly, we should not be celebrating this.<p>To recap what he did:<p>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)<p>3. Create specific profile for his targeted group. With words and information that he knew they would like.<p>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.<p>3. WIth new found 99% matches go on dates with these people and follow normal dating process.<p>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.
Though unrelated to this post in particular, I figured I would post a method of finding dates that worked particularly well for me.<p>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 :)<p>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.<p>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.<p>In any case, it worked great for me. I met lot's of cool girls, and eventually found the love of my life.
TED: Amy Webb: How I hacked online dating<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wG_sAdP0U" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wG_sAdP0U</a><p><i>"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."</i>
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
There was a woman who did something similar:<p><a href="http://forward.com/articles/170925/hacking-jdate-to-find-the-perfect-jewish-hubby/?p=all" rel="nofollow">http://forward.com/articles/170925/hacking-jdate-to-find-the...</a>
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.
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.
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)<p>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.<p>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).<p>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'<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>Math genius? More a spambot writer, but not for money, for an advantage.
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.
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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Maybe we should have an "ask HN" on dating ... :-)
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.<p>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 :)<p>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.<p>My own more humble attempt at mixing geekdom with love :) but love comes in unexpected places not ruled by math
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.<p>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.<p>I actually was working on an automated framework for batch messaging and a/b testing on OKCupid (<a href="https://github.com/morgante/abcupid" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/morgante/abcupid</a>) before realizing I don't have time for a relationship.
Link to the guy's website:<p><a href="http://christophermckinlay.net/" rel="nofollow">http://christophermckinlay.net/</a><p>Also a link to the kindle edition of his analysis:<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HY351S2" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HY351S2</a>
There are other ways to hack dating sites that use other means completely.<p>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.<p>And if she doesn't respond to him, you can message her yourself, and bam - double your chances.
Everyone, this is a pivotal moment. This is when online dating becomes like the trading algorithms of the stock market.<p>You could even say that the stock exchange is like a dating site but for investors.
What I take from this article:
- OkCupid is good for finding a one night stand
- their matching algorithm could be improved<p>Disclaimer: I'm married and never used OkCupid or any dating site.
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.<p>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".
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.
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.<p>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 <i>hundreds</i> of messages a day and here we have a brilliant PhD student happy with 20. Just sayin
"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.
> McKinlay had popped up in her search for 6-foot guys with blue eyes near UCLA...<p>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.
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.
TED Talk: Amy Webb - How I hacked online dating
<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_webb_how_i_hacked_online_dating.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_webb_how_i_hacked_online_dating...</a>
Wasn't there a ted talk by a Jewish woman who did this already?<p>Edit:yes Amy Webb ted talk <a href="http://tinyurl.com/ktrb2f4" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/ktrb2f4</a>
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?
Does anyone think that this is really creepy?<p>I mean, men using dating sites like OkCupid are mostly creepy people already, but actually writing programs to automate stuff on OkCupid?<p>That's basically fulfilling the prophecy that men are just in for the sex.