My first stab at OKCupid lead me to... d'oh!

[pseydtonne]

A few of you... and I'm not going to name names, tkitch, because I've heard that's wrong... have suggested that I try OKCupid.com. Well, okay.

About 110 questions into the process, I decided to try the "find me some matches" button. For some reason, I got nothing but straight boys. Why? Dunno. I looked at my profile, tweaked it twice and finally got females on the third try. Note that at no point did I try changing my gender prefs.

Guess who my top match was? Of course, adaptively. If you don't know her, she's a rawkgod person but we are not matches this way. We're good at causing problems for other people and I dig her immensely but the same way I dig thunderstorms. Meanwhile, she was running an experiment when she set up the account so now I'm part of her proof of her hypothesis of the fuqupedness of OKCupid... I think. Anyway, I think it means I owe you drinks, dude.

Damn it! Metro boston is supposed to have 3 or 4 million people, right? How does a set of algorithms decide social incest is the best solution? Gah. New people, machines! I need new victims to slake my idiotic thirst.

-dunking my head back in the tub full of apples, Dante

P.S.: I knew it from her photo. Didn't have to read a word.

Comments

[cos]

When you click on "view matches" you will always get a list of people of exactly one sex and preference: either a list of straight men, or gay men, or bi men, or straight women, or gay women, or bi women. You will never get them all mixed up on the same list. Which sex & preference combination you get, is selected by a menu which you can change at the top of the "view matches" page. I don't know how they pick your initial default, but usually if you change it, it sticks until you change it again. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your profile or your gender prefs - anyone can select any of the six choices on that pulldown menu.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

By the way, you came up as my best match the second time males came up. Again I was looking at the pic and said "too... familiar... oh dude. This major American city is too small! And I'm still getting guys." I repeat: I changed none of my preferences about my gender nor which gender I sought before it gave me what I asked for on the third try.

[cos]

I repeat: I changed none of my preferences about my gender nor which gender I sought before it gave me what I asked for on the third try.

And I repeat: What sex+preference combination you see on the "view matches" page has nothing at all to do with any of your profile preferences or your own gender. Nothing. It is selected by a menu at the top of the "view matches" page itself (you have to click on the links to make it a menu), and if you hadn't made a selection from that menu, you'd just get some random default that okcupid comes up with in a mysteriously random way.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I am so confused now. Your answer delineates, leaving bare a mystery beyond either of our kens.

I'd mind this a lot if I hadn't filled out this one survey which had a picture of Julie from The Maxx which has become my desktop wallpaper. I am happily drooling between tasks.

-fast food for the brain, Dante

[tkitch.livejournal.com]

I dunno dude, I've yet to find anyone on there I knew, except thru them finding me or me diving thru intrests and just seeing who's out there....

[grace-of-gemini.livejournal.com]

I finally broke down and tried Yahoo Personals...not that there's anything to report yet. But I did get a response from someone who looks a lot like an X of mine...Im gonna go crawl under a rock now.

[adaptively.livejournal.com]

You dig me like you dig thunderstorms!

That's the best compliment I've ever received, I think. You rock the house.

[grace-of-gemini.livejournal.com]

Yes he does!

[modpixie.livejournal.com]

perhaps you should try eharmony?

::ducks::

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

At least OKCupid isn't pretending their research is worth $50 at the door. I may give into that later but I'll start with this.

It's essentially LJ-the-Hookup: you answer a billion questions, die a little inside, and sed a fake email or two.

It could all be so much worse. My first job in Boston was the phone bank at the personals for about 100 newspapers. I dealt with the schkievily desperate in towns across the USA and in Toronto. Gah, I say.

[dimers.livejournal.com]

Metro boston is supposed to have 3 or 4 million people, right?

Depends on just how metro you get, I suppose. Boston itself is around 580,000. Much smaller than I'd thought.

[cos]

I believe Boston used to be over 700,000 when I first moved here in the 70s, but it is a little under 600,000 now. I think it has grown since the 2000 census, and the latest estimate I saw is about 580,000. However, that's just the City of Boston itself. Cambridge has over 100,000, Somerville 78,000, Brookline 57,000, Newton 84,000, ... these are all places that, in just about any other city in the US, would be part of the core city. They are closer to downtown than portions of the actual City of Boston is. We're just weird here, with all these municipal boundaries. People generally consider Boston to be about a million people. An expansive measure of the metro area would also include the whole 495 belt, and that would be 4 million, I think (when you add in Worcester, Lowell, Lawrence, etc.) 495 is Boston's outer belt, and would be considered part of the "metro area" for most any other US city... but our sense of distances is weird here too, because the cities are all so close together.

[dimers.livejournal.com]

Exactly what I meant to say. =)