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Comment by nonameiguess | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea if OkCupid still does this, but they used to segment their users based on attractiveness ratings. At first, I think it was solely just literally your attractiveness rating. They had a feature where you could rate people 1-5 stars and if you were in the top 50% of all rated users, you'd only see other people in the top 50% in your search results. If you were lower 50%, you'd only see people in the lower 50%. I think they eventually made this more sophisticated by augmenting the explicit average star rating with other measures of engagement like how often people saved your profile, how many messages you received, and the rate at which your own messages were answered.

Something like this could have been valuable to get you into the upper tier.

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The whole top vs bottom 50% attractiveness bit was a gag thing. It's such a common outraged-post topic that the okcupid subreddit has a FAQ about it in the sidebar.

OKCupid used to be substantially weirder than it was before it was swallowed up by IAC. I mean really fucking weird. One of many examples: the signout page had a clipart photo of an airport firefighter (ie silver suit head to toe) in a veeeeery suggestive pose with a firehose.

However, dating sites absolutely engage in the same techniques to hook users and reduce "churn" that free-to-play / cosmetic-sale-funded games do. Tinder is basically ELO applied to matchmaking coupled with the same psychological tricks (like initially showing your profile to much more attractive people / showing you much more attractive people, before dropping the liklihood of your profile appearing in anyone's stacks, and periodically re-boosting your profile just a tad to keep you from deleting your account.)

Edit just to say I forgot: why on earth is okcupid allowing links at all? Seems ripe for abuse. I guess it would encourage people to switch to off-site messaging quicker...

The FAQ says it's determined by likes. Not it was a gag.[1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/OkCupid/wiki/faq#wiki_1._.22we_just...

Apparently it's been changed, and I guess the mod team is in on the gag, because it's just an anti-churn email.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/okcupid-hot-or-not-list-o...

The FAQ used to say the message was more common than you think.[1] But the message said you're among the most attractive people on OkCupid. Not just above median.

The article implied the message should say interesting not attractive maybe. But it implied the segmentation is real.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20130420011526/https://www.reddit...

I have no idea if it's a gag now, but they definitely used to actually do this. If you were around from the beginning, which I was (joined January 2004), you were very likely to end up in the top half when this first began. And you could trivially create a new account with otherwise identical details in the same location and see that your matches and search results were not the same people. After a few years, your new account would not just see different people, but noticeably uglier people.

OkCupid used to have real social features. You got a personal journal and could follow the journals of other users, and this clustered the sort of "power users" into cliques. This was actually how I met my wife, way back in 2007 though we didn't even live in the same state at the time and didn't physically meet until much later after discovering we'd both moved to Texas. Match axed the feature and we all moved to a Facebook group, but I've since quit Facebook, so only keep in touch with a limited number of people I had real contact details for whenever I happen to visit their cities for some reason.

This quite visibly split us. Knowing who in the group was top half and who in the group was bottom half was fodder for a whole lot of flame wars. And, of course, being it was a dating site, mate selection and the question of to what extent attractiveness can be objectively quantified was always a huge topic of contention. It's interesting to see so many years later how the split between the people taking distinct sides of that has evolved. Back then, those on the "objectively attractive" side of the coin were super into evo-psych, Austrian economics, and libertarianism. Those on the other side were quite a bit more varied, but I guess at least universally against the war in Iraq. 16 years later, the same people I still know have now segmented in extremely predictable ways, like anyone who really cared about Austrian school economics back then is now firmly red-pilled, anti-immigrant, super pro western-culture, into scientific racism and "human biodiversity" and somehow all migrated from libertarianism to backing classic right-wing nationalism complete with strong-man dictatorial leadership. The other side used to have a huge diversity of opinions on most things, but now all seem to universally be super into anti-racism, anti-fascism, and trans rights activism.

It's like the entire trajectory of what a person would ever come to believe as guiding principles upon which to base their lives was decided by a single trivial controversy with bad evidence in either direction that they nonetheless decided to take a hardline stance on decades ago.

With respect to the dating site techniques, I think it's important to distinguish between the OkCupid of today owned by IAC and the original OkCupid owned by Humor Rainbow. Match and IAC monetize using the same normal strategies of free to play games. But Humor Rainbow's strategy was to be the first to use fledgling big data techniques to fine-tune algorithmic matchmaking (in contrast to eHarmony's attempt to use conventional wisdom from the existing body of psychology knowledge), and then sell that technology to the highest bidder and cash out. The incentives of the current ownership and the incentives of the founders were quite different.

> Something like this could have been valuable to get you into the upper tier.

Only valuable until people view my profile picture.

Oh, someone that knows what they're doing photographically can help quite a bit there. A good professional portrait photographer has probably forgotten more tips and tricks to do with posing and lighting than the average Instagram professional ever knew.

And then what? You score the date and rely on your awesome personality to make up not only for being physically disappointing, but having to some degree lied about it via a professional portrait photographer's tips and tricks?

And if all that works, you found someone who liked the look of a fake/augmented version of yourself, but whom you persuaded to like the real self anyway... Congratulations?

I think sometimes having a foot in the door helps anyways. Of course grossly misrepresenting yourself is a bad idea but enhancing a bit, why not? Also, it is indeed possible that your potential partners may value other aspects besides your appearance, not everyone is obsessed with looks. But of course your mileage may vary depending who you met in your life, and also based on where you live / local customs etc.

Then there is the issue of how you perceive yourself, when I was in my 20s and 30s I used to think of myself as not attractive, but now when I look back at my old photos from a more detached point of view, I think I was a fairly attractive young man. Excessive self criticism can be bad and artificially put you down.

After entering a "serious" relationship and then getting married in my 30s I was able to look at myself in a more balanced way. I think my previous self-criticism was fuelled by some vague fear that I would never find a partner and I would live a lonely life. Probably it's a common thought among people of that age.

I'd like to underpromise, but overdeliver - that's my motto!

Ditto

> having to some degree lied about it via a professional portrait photographer's tips and tricks?

Those tips and tricks are no different in kind that what people do themselves, the only difference is knowledge.

> And if all that works, you found someone who liked the look of a fake/augmented version of yourself, but whom you persuaded to like the real self anyway... Congratulations?

Let's not act like first impressions have no meaning, and that getting around them doesn't have benefit and allow other traits or a more accurate impression to come through that wouldn't have gotten a chance otherwise.

Haven't you ever become friends with someone that you disliked or avoided to some degree initially because of some bad first impression?

There a few cognitive biases that can assist. People can become more attracted to someone simply by learning the other person was attracted to them. Also, the more time you spend with someone, the more attractive they will become.

Think of it more like ignoring job requirements when submitting your resume. Once you get an interview, that's all that matters.

Or rather, lying on your CV, claiming you meet the requirements; having someone who knows all the tips tricks and buzzwords edit it for you?

But hey, once you get an interview!

Maybe "interview" is a euphemism in this context?

Eventually, we’ll have glasses that can apply everyone’s preferred filter in real time

It depends. If you have a good few textual exchanges that show you to be engaging, they may forgo some facial appearance shortcomings. So if the other person engages with good looking ones but those disappoint in their conversation but you do well in conversation, getting your foot in the door with the good photo of yourself could make the difference.

Sometimes people with good looks fail to cultivate other aspects of their person. An average looking person can take advantage of that by developing these other areas. But... you need that first opportunity.

Some people just take good pictures.

My sister was voted best looking at Redwood High School. The same school our governor graduated from. It was a hugh graduating class.

When she was younger, people used to tell her she should be a model. Well after watching Brook Shields endlessly she decided to give it a try.

She got my dad to fund a professional photo shoot. Something my cheapskate dad never forgot about.

Anyway, I always thought my sister was ascetically very pretty.

I thought she was a shoe in.

Well we got the photos, and it was a huge no.

While being literally breathtaking in person, so didn't photograph well.

Years later, I was with her husband while he went to a modeling addition. Every applicant's picture was taken at the door with a Polaroid.

I asked a photographer why. He stated some people just don't photograph well, and without that picture we would be wasting time.

Anyhoo--Personally I have never liked being photographed. Why--because I'm homely in life, and pictures just confirm it.

Being popular is a "sexy attribute" on its own, to many people.

They had a thing where if you dismissed the top attractive users they would segment you as attractive as well and bump you up to the upper tier.

> Something like this could have been valuable to get you into the upper tier.

Maybe not! Perhaps users would have more positive experiences if they "swam in their lanes."

It's probably better to be erroneously in the bottom tier than erroneously in the top tier for reasons that should be obvious.

All the dating apps use a derivative of this and you can game that. They deny any particular label like ELO, used in online game lobbies. But knowing how leveled game matchmaking works will allow you to optimize your experience in dating apps far greater than wondering if you need a picture of a dog in your profile to get more matches.

Hope you guys don't mess up my experience with this knowledge! But I’ve been using these tweaks for years, so I’ll probably be on to something else after this gets arbitraged away.

Any recommendations on where to learn how leveled game matchmaking works?

Not sure.

Basically you start as a baseline or perhaps an average, and your own behavior influences who you get matched with.

So in dating apps, matching indiscriminately in frustration to getting few matches will ensure you get thrown into the less attractive bucket. As you match with mostly other people already in that bucket. You can delay or prevent this from happening by being more discerning, not dissimilar from trying to chat up everyone in a cried. But you can get the algorithm to only show you other people considered attractive by a large population.

Note: if your ranking is too low, people you see are not actually seeing you. So they aren’t really expressing an opinion on accepting or rejecting you. So keep it high. Apps are different and they update alot, but just assume this is happening behind the scenes.

The sad or sadder part of this is to not match with unattractive people. Keep them in pending forever even if you rarely get matches. The algorithm also has to learn to show you to people that are widely considered attractive. Takes 3-7 weeks and then its a gravy train (in the cities), or time to reevaluate other aspects of your profile.

Its not really that complicated, just counterintuitive.

Last thing I’ll add is that attractive people have the same anxieties or “awesome personalities” or other attributes as unattractive people. So you can prioritize your time accordingly.

Why is this downvoted?

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