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Comment by baron816 | Hacker News Reader

Last year, I came up with my own "Completely Scientific, 100% Accurate Compatibility Survey" which aimed to make first dates more fun than you get by asking the same old introductory questions (eg "6. What's a movie that you're at least a little bit embarrassed to admit you like?" and "4. Pete Davidson: Hot or Not?"). It also allowed me to ask a bunch of questions that could be weird to ask in a different context that I can glean a lot of useful info from (eg "7. What is one thing you want to do in the local area that you haven't done yet?" and "2. What are your favorite cuisines (up to three)?").

Only got to use it once though. She agreed to a second date, then cancelled last minute and ghosted me. So, IDK, maybe don't try this.

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The point of these questions isn't the content of the questions themselves, it's the increasing level of intimacy. Just like kissing isn't about the utility of putting your tongue in someone else's mouth.

I probably don't care what a stranger's guilty pleasure is, but being let in to that private part of their life is a big part of what makes dating feels special.

I think folks prefer to talk about themselves naturally rather than answer pre-scripted shallow end questions.

Honesty I might even get bored and bail on the date if it'd been a reasonable amount of time (1+ hour) to know it wasn't going anywhere beyond a me pub quiz. There's an entire world going on in here, stop gleaning useful information and start conversing! I'm not an NPC and this ain't a dialogue tree!

The picture in my head is that you're running through the questions without injecting any real conversation in there so I could be way off. I'm also imagining they left not knowing a thing about you haha

Tbh a "hot or not" question would be the end of the date for me mentally anyway unless things really picked up from there. Reducing an entire person to a boolean is unstimulating and kinda gross lol. I think you need to at least A/B test the questions.

> Tbh a "hot or not" question would be the end of the date for me mentally anyway

I think that’s fair because that’s a filter in an of itself. For me personally I’d be happy to chat about whether I find a celebrity hot, it feels like a useful question in establishing things like jealousy levels.

But I do think you’re right in that it’s all about “the vibe”, you should know how that question is going to be received before you ask it.

Oh absolutely, on a meta level the quiz worked perfectly for me in 4 questions.

As the parent comment only used it once though I imagine fail fast isn't the methodology they were going for

"She agreed to a second date, then cancelled last minute and ghosted me."

This being HN, I knew this phrase would be included somewhere in this thread before I even opened it...

Wait are we reading about “the 36 questions that lead to love” or “the 36 questions that lead to loving where you work”?

Do my manager and I have to stare silently into each other’s eyes for 3 minutes?

Only if you want to get intimate with HR...

Needs more field testing for it to be scientific, don't give up!

> ghosted me

Hopefully it achieved it’s purpose. Otherwise you found a false negative.

Unfortunately, my ”methodology” produced similar results in 2022.

> Only got to use it once though.

Expected the next sentence to state that you were now married, hence the "single-use".

Sounds great fun even for couples, where’s the repo!

I wanna know the rest of the survey questions!

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