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mattnewport comments on Open Thread, September, 2010-- part 2 - Less Wrong
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While OKTrends does contain a lot of interesting, well-explained, and often entertaining statistics, I would be very cautious about mentioning it in the same breath as anything to do with how to attract people. The folks at OKC can describe the kind of photos which get a user lots of messages--basically, pointing the camera down your cleavage if you're female, cropping your head out in favor of your abs if you're male--but a fat lot of good that does you if you have a small chest or a belly. (Or if you want to get messages other than "UR HOT WANNA GO OUT 2NITE.") Similarly, knowing that "vegetarian" is a first-message keyword which disproportionately leads to conversation is not all that helpful if you aren't one.
Relatedly, their data is collected from a large and surprisingly mainstream userbase; if LWers are as atypical as we say we are, very few of those users are going to be similar to whomever you're trying to attract. Maybe you know a geeky, intelligent woman who wouldn't roll her eyes at the headless ab shot, but I don't. If you don't believe that the target audience of OKC is very different from LW's readerbase, read the comments on any OKTrends post. They're not all inane, but ...
(I suppose I'm making the assumption there that LWers looking for dates are more interested in someone smart and with common interests than someone who relies on having tits to get attention. If I'm wrong, feel free to disregard.)
By the way, just in case you don't feel insecure enough yet, OKC claims to be quietly segregating its users by hotness. I've seen it theorized that that was a publicity stunt or a sneaky way to pull back inactive users, which seems quite plausible to me, but doesn't make the stunt any less scummy.
Don't get me wrong; I like and use OKC. Just remember that, no matter how clever and statistically sound their algorithms are, most of their data still comes from people who think that what checkout stand magazines say about people, dating, and sex is actually the gospel truth. The site's judgments are based on that standard. So don't take them too seriously.
I'm pretty sure it's some kind of stunt since I got that email. I'm curious why you think the idea is 'scummy' though? Given how skewed first messages are towards physically attractive women (the same effect doesn't seem to exist for men) it seems like some kind of mechanism for balancing this effect would be useful.
I've thought about a dating site where you have to 'pay' more (probably points of some kind rather than real money) to contact the most contacted people to try and reduce this effect but I'm not sure how you'd pitch it so as not to offend people. It would help counteract the trend for the hottest girls to be overwhelmed with messages and the average girls left receiving few messages though I think which could potentially be good for everyone.
Not segregating people by hotness, emailing them to tell them so. It's the equivalent, by omission, of sending a bunch of their users a message saying "you're not pretty enough." It's a message which saturates our culture, and I'm not a fan, whether it's stated outright or not.
This would solve the balance problem from a technical perspective but not a human one. If you set a site up this way, the value of an incoming message would be proportional to the cost of messaging you. If you're "cheap," an incoming message is just as likely to mean the messager couldn't afford anyone better as that someone's interested. If you're "expensive," every message means interest ... but you get fewer of them than you might elsewhere. Nobody wins.
I'm definitely interested in better algorithms for matching people up, but I don't think that particular idea is viable.
This is definitely a problem. I think you'd need to somewhat disguise what was going on so people didn't feel they were being 'priced'.
I'm not sure you appreciate the dynamics of messaging on these sites. The hottest girls get vastly more messages than anyone else, more than they can possibly read and reply to. The problem they face is filtering out messages they might actually be interested in from the noise. For these users fewer messages is better, particularly if the messages are higher quality (which they will probably tend to be if they are expensive to send).
Meanwhile less physically attractive girls and most guys get few or no unsolicited messages. The system should help increase the number of messages they receive. They may indeed be receiving messages from people who 'couldn't afford anyone better' but they are getting messages and chances are the messages they receive will be from more realistic matches. As wedrifid pointed out, people tend to end up in relationships with people of roughly equal attractiveness. All the average guys who send dozens of messages to the hottest 1% of girls who they have little hope of success with might consider messaging someone whose profile interests them but who is of more average physical attractiveness.
I may not have made it clear that the idea would be that the recipients receive some or all of the cost of messaging them. This way the most in demand users would be able to 'afford' to message people of similar attractiveness but wouldn't be deluged with messages from people 'beneath' them who they likely have little interest in.
Agreed.
No, trust me, I know this part. :p But I see what you mean; my afterthought about how it would reduce their message quantity missed the point.
I wasn't assuming that would be the case, although
this would mean that hot people would mostly receive messages from other hot people. Which, according to your link, would be preferable for them. Interesting.
Okay, I retract my immediate rejection, at least enough to admit that I'm curious about how this would pan out.