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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

So they created fake accounts and pretended to be attractive women, just to get with a random girl? If that's not the definition of creepy, I don't know what is. The fact that he doesn't want the girl to find out should make this obvious -- any woman who found out you were doing this would be put off immediately, as they should be.

Instead of spending so much time with some weird scheme in an attempt to put down the "hunks," how about just becoming a more attractive and more interesting person on your own? Newsflash, guys: women are attracted to confidence and a sense of self-worth, among other things, not complex mechanisms to distract the other guys.

There are two ways to be the biggest building. One is to tear down the other buildings. Or two, just build the biggest building. - Gary V

Sorry, but this is just really strange, and the lack of ANY negative feedback on here or Reddit is even more disconcerting.

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So you've done this online? It worked well for you?

So you know the three sentence opener that is going to compensate for a less than attractive picture?

Let's hear it.

Or is your answer just a stand-in to let you morally condemn these others?

In person, one can project confidence, intelligence, humor etc. Online, being unique is bit harder, not just because someone can copy your words but also because you get to use far fewer of them before a decision is made.

I'm not condemning or condoning the original post. But it's telling that a lot of condemnations for "gaming the dating system" that I hear are prefaced by "it's easy, just become more confident/relax/be yourself". Supply-and-demand says that the common measure of "success" in dating aren't inherently easy. They might not be desirable either but that's a different story.

I think online dating with photo does create a real quandary because it gives one very little time and thus makes the likely winners more based on immediate visual factors.

...but online dating.. ha ha, go out into the real life, so you don't need to hide behind or show off your online profile..

Of course the one hack that will actually improve the success with your desired gender is being downvoted. Because it would mean... going out and meeting people, how gruesome.

Yes, of course, it was downvoted because it means going outside.

Or maybe it's just because "LOLOL ONLINE DATING< WHAT LOSERS!" isn't very constructive. Different people meet people in different ways. I've done it both ways: it's all pretty much the same thing in the end.

Just because you use a website to meet people does not mean that you're some kind of troglodyte whose skin is burned by the sun.

Besides, doing _both_ would increase your chances even more...

Perhaps you would like to explain what is wrong with morally condemning others when what they did is in fact morally wrong?

It's very simple and clear cut: he distorted the truth in order for him to get an advantage and put others at a disadvantage. There is no greater good behind the lie, it's just self-interest.

Morally wrong by whose standards? Just because you consider it morally wrong, does not make it morally wrong by all standards, or even necessarily by society's standards.

Morally wrong by general societal standards such as: * lying is wrong - especially when done with self-serving interests in mind such as in this case. They lied to the other members of the site and he is hiding the truth from the girl. He KNOWS that what he did is wrong and he knows that she would dump him if she found out. * more lying is worse - he now wants to "automate this"

So this is a typical case of someone breaking the rules, getting away with it (even getting commended!) and then wanting to break the rules on a larger scale.

That's really a short-sighted way of seeing things. If you lie to your sister about her not looking fat in that new dress then that's not morally wrong. If a girl goes into a relationship with you after you used this trick then she still did it willingly.

she still did it willingly

If, of course, you confessed everything and left no false pretenses.

Confessing everything is better than continuing to hide that you lied. But it doesn't excuse lying in the first place.

General societal standards - are you sure? The society I know may tell you that their standard is 'lying is wrong', but societies actions proof the opposite.

The whole society works by lies. Sure, they have different names - omission, bluff, exaggeration and so on - but in the end they are still lies and everyone is using them.

"Morally wrong"?

As the poet said: all is fair in love and war.

He also said "like two peas in a pod" and "where there's smoke there's fire". He was a poet, not a moral authority.

I think the gist of the quote is, in love and war folks fall from the path more often than in less important things. Don't think even John Lyly thought it was moral.

Perhaps you would like to explain what is wrong with morally condemning others when what they did is in fact morally wrong?

If you read my post closely, I hope you'll find that I objected to the "you don't have to do that, there's an easy other way" part. If the poster had just said, "don't cheat, it may be the only way to win this game but you shouldn't do it, it's wrong", well I'd just pass over that comment entirely.

Knowing their targets well and distracting the competition is "morally wrong"?

If, for nothing else, the guy stands out for cleverness.

> So you've done this online? It worked well for you?

So we can't condemn this unless we have an alternate suggestion for those that can't get any? "I'm not getting any, so immoral hacks are OK"? You could use the same argument to justify rape.

Perhaps we could condemn the lying without doing any ourselves.

Simple condemnation of their deception would have ended after the first paragraph. Continuing on to say "it's easy, just be yourself" supports the implicit rule that unattractive males of mediocre net worth don't deserve physical affection.

> "I'm not getting any, so immoral hacks are OK"? You could use the same argument to justify rape.

You could, most people would reject such reasoning.

The vast majority of people in dating situations are less than 100% honest. The vast majority of people are also not rapists. This suggests to me that most people do in fact see dishonesty as being different from rape.

This doesn't rank high on the "cruel" factor. It is more resourceful (and hard work to pull off) than cruel. To me, the second guy who pretended to be the hunk, got inside info and then got the woman on a date seems to have used a much more creepy strategy. Why? Because he lied TO THE PERSON HE IS SEEING. The denial of service wasn't lying to the person he is seeing. It is lying to all the other dudes. Which is just fine. Lots of guys are COMPETING for the same girls, and in a competition like that, you don't necessarily have to play fair. I see this more as using intelligence to get a leg up on the competition, and frankly, the only reason why he wouldn't want to confess this to her -- is NOT that he would seem like a lying creep -- but because it would highlight the fact that he wouldn't be able to get her otherwise.

As if girls never do a "denial of service" attack to guys when they are competing for the same guy. Like not inviting their hotter friend along when they are first meeting each other.

PS: Do you find Hitch (the character in the movie) a creepy liar?

> This doesn't rank high on the "cruel" factor

Really? You wouldn't mind messaging a bunch of profiles, receiving no responses, only to later find out that they weren't even real people? That no matter how much time you spent carefully composing your messages, you might as well have directed them to /dev/null?

Seems pretty cruel to me. And once other people start adopting the same strategy, it'll render dating sites useless for everyone. Ultimately the sites will be forced to ask for some kind of proof of identity.

believe it or not, many dating sites start off exactly this way. So first of all, this guy was no more cruel than the creators of the dating site. It won't render dating sites useless, only FREE dating sites. And yes many of them are already littered with fake bots.

Secondly, I didn't say it wasn't cruel at all. I was saying that this guy lied to OTHER GUYS, and not to the object of his affection. It's like walking into a bar, showing up all the other guys, and getting the girl. Many of them, if given the chance, would have done the same to him.

And finally ... sometimes even "lying" to the girl (or rather playing / flirting with her) can be charming. See Hitch the movie as he gets the girl in one of the early bar scenes, when she is surrounded by guys, by getting her all emotionally riled up and chasing him ... right out of the group of guys. She appreciated his efforts.

If the woman was not attracted to him, then he wouldn't have made it past the first (or second date). He obviously has qualities that she desires.

So if a woman that is into you would lie and deceive others in order to be with you, you would want a relationship with that woman?

If someone were to do that, it would destroy my confidence in them. The whole relationship has started with a lie, no matter if I like them or not.

  > The whole relationship has started with a lie

You keep using that phrase but I do not think it means, what you think it means.

Should I be worried that my relationship 'started with bribery' because I handed the maitre'd $20 to get us a good table?

I don't know whether you should be worried. I do know that this type of behaviour is antisocial though - it promotes unfairness - people that made reservations or are waiting outside have to wait longer because someone has bribed their way in.

Maybe next time someone will pay $50 - because it is not something to worry about,no? - and you'll have to wait 15 minutes to get a seat.

Along similar lines, it's unfair to get pictures professionally taken, or to use cologne or makeup. Sorry, mating has always been an arms race to some extent, and that's not going to change.

> mating has always been an arms race to some extent, and that's not going to change.

Well. At least we are past the kidnapping and rape stage that was still common a couple centuries ago...

He has an available penis. That's the conclusion I got - deprived of better hunks, she settled.

Maybe she deserved it, being shallow and horny. But that doesn't speak to the morality of it at all.

i'd readily point out the fact that online dating is a two way street. its not a meat market where guys go out and select, while girls sit around waiting to be selected.

if this girl wasn't at least into this guy, and wasn't getting any prospects messaging her, she could've gone looking actively herself and found the exact same guys in the area.

Ok, That speaks to the moral issue. In the end, She chose.

Furthermore, its not the lady that he was messing with. Its the guys that were on the wild-goose chase. He approached this woman in the normal manner.

I don't know, even if she knew, she might give him an A for effort.

You seem to have the idea that using different channels is somehow the wrong way to go about courtship. Have you ever studied nature? There are tons of animals that abuse and cheat courtship rituals for their own benefit.

Really, the courtship ritual is a game. The women look for traits they desire, but these traits are expensive, so (some) men attempt to fake the traits. The women adapt, the men adapt. It's basically an evolutionary arms race, but about sex, because the reproductive & evolutionary interests of males and females when it comes to mate selection are diametrically opposed.

Dude... were talking online here.

Everybody is 7 foot high jock on teh internetz[1]. Everybody is lying and people discount for that. So unless you lie a bit you started loosing your ground even if you are otherwise the tallest building. Take your moralism somewhere else - cuz. this is teh internetz (and its serious business too!)

You remind me of people who keep whining about cheezy tactics in games - they are there so use them. Have you ever heard that winners are those who are willing to do stuff, losers won't?

[1]: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online...

Understanding people is hard sometimes. If you yourself have managed to improve yourself in some way, it's particularly hard to understand why someone else couldn't do it too.

It could very well be that because after he created all the fake accounts he felt the confidence he needed.

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