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Comment by aliqot | Hacker News Reader

OkCupid used to have great engineering blogs often with an embedded and nuanced social commentary regarding the haves vs have-nots when it comes to the dating world. I believe at one point they divided users, or rather let them self-classify as A-team and B-team. Some would never even pass each other in the hallway based on this score and designation.

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Their articles were really interesting too; its sad Match took all of them down. One of the ones I distinctly remember was about the right profile pictures. Its been years, but I clearly remember for men it was something along the lines of "full body, outdoor picture, while shirtless looking away from the camera"

Photofeeler did a post about trying replicate some of this and apparently some of okcupid's results were probably pretty questionable: https://blog.photofeeler.com/okcupid-is-wrong-about-smiling-...

Nice! I hadn't read this counter argument. I would say I still think their articles gave an interesting look into how humans behaved online, however skewed it may be. Clickbait is well known now and I do recall they were one of the first to talk about the "MySpace angle" photos not being considered good (again, potentially skewed for views).

I would say a study done in 2020 is obviously going to have different results than 2010. You have 10 years of difference and changes in how people interact online. You also have different apps that fill certain niches. Shirtless may work on some platforms and not others. Selection by women may have changed because there are so many options, there may be finer selection criteria they use now that wasn't as common in that era.

Bumble will tell you which of your photos caused the most right swipes. In my case it was EXACTLY that: photo of me from behind shirtless while rock climbing, muscles on display.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying about A/B or how hallways fit into online dating.

My girlfriend once got a message on OKCupid, that she was categorized into the group of especially popular people.

I contacted the staff, but never found out what this meant in the end.

Was this a poly/open relationship? I've heard women in those arrangements are perceived as easy. Doesn't really make sense when you consider the fact they already have someone and aren't in any rush.

I take it to mean people so different in socio economic status that they would never be in the same building in real life.

it was data that indicated to them that there were two groups, an attractive group and the remainder.

Christian Rudder, the author of this article and many other great posts on the OKCupid blog, wrote a book with a lot of the same insights repackaged.

https://www.amazon.com/Dataclysm-Christian-Rudder-audiobook/...

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