We Experiment On Human Beings!

July 28th, 2014 by Christian Rudder

I’m the first to admit it: we might be popular, we might create a lot of great relationships, we might blah blah blah. But OkCupid doesn’t really know what it’s doing. Neither does any other website. It’s not like people have been building these things for very long, or you can go look up a blueprint or something. Most ideas are bad. Even good ideas could be better. Experiments are how you sort all this out. Like this young buck, trying to get a potato to cry.


We noticed recently that people didn’t like it when Facebook “experimented” with their news feed. Even the FTC is getting involved. But guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how websites work.

Here are a few of the more interesting experiments OkCupid has run.

Experiment 1: LOVE IS BLIND, OR SHOULD BE

OkCupid’s ten-year history has been the epitome of the old saying: two steps forward, one total fiasco. A while ago, we had the genius idea of an app that set up blind dates; we spent a year and a half on it, and it was gone from the app store in six months.

Of course, being geniuses, we chose to celebrate the app’s release by removing all the pictures from OkCupid on launch day. “Love Is Blind Day” on OkCupid—January 15, 2013.

All our site metrics were way down during the “celebration”, for example:



But by comparing Love Is Blind Day to a normal Tuesday, we learned some very interesting things. In those 7 hours without photos:

And it wasn’t that “looks weren’t important” to the users who’d chosen to stick around. When the photos were restored at 4PM, 2,200 people were in the middle of conversations that had started “blind”. Those conversations melted away. The goodness was gone, in fact worse than gone. It was like we’d turned on the bright lights at the bar at midnight.



This whole episode made me curious, so I went and looked up the data for the people who had actually used the blind date app. I found a similar thing: once they got to the date, they had a good time more or less regardless of how good-looking their partner was. Here’s the female side of the experience (the male is very similar).



Oddly, it appears that having a better-looking blind date made women slightly less happy—my operating theory is that hotter guys were assholes more often. Anyhow, the fascinating thing is the online reaction of those exact same women was just as judgmental as everyone else’s:



Basically, people are exactly as shallow as their technology allows them to be.

Experiment 2: SO WHAT’S A PICTURE WORTH?

All dating sites let users rate profiles, and OkCupid’s original system gave people two separate scales for judging each other, “personality” and “looks.”
I found this old screenshot. The “loading” icon over the picture pretty much sums up our first four years. Anyhow, here’s the vote system:



Our thinking was that a person might not be classically gorgeous or handsome but could still be cool, and we wanted to recognize that, which just goes to show that when OkCupid started out, the only thing with more bugs than our HTML was our understanding of human nature.

Here’s some data I dug up from the backup tapes. Each dot here is a person. The two scores are within a half point of each other for 92% of the sample after just 25 votes (and that percentage approaches 100% as vote totals get higher).

In short, according to our users, “looks” and “personality” were the same thing, which of course makes perfect sense because, you know, this young female account holder, with a 99th percentile personality:



…and whose profile, by the way, contained no text, is just so obviously a really cool person to hang out and talk to and clutch driftwood with.

After we got rid of the two scales, and replaced it with just one, we ran a direct experiment to confirm our hunch—that people just look at the picture. We took a small sample of users and half the time we showed them, we hid their profile text. That generated two independent sets of scores for each profile, one score for “the picture and the text together” and one for “the picture alone.” Here’s how they compare. Again, each dot is a user. Essentially, the text is less than 10% of what people think of you.



So, your picture is worth that fabled thousand words, but your actual words are worth…almost nothing.

Experiment 3: THE POWER OF SUGGESTION

The ultimate question at OkCupid is, does this thing even work? By all our internal measures, the “match percentage” we calculate for users is very good at predicting relationships. It correlates with message success, conversation length, whether people actually exchange contact information, and so on. But in the back of our minds, there’s always been the possibility: maybe it works just because we tell people it does. Maybe people just like each other because they think they’re supposed to? Like how Jay-Z still sells albums?

† Once the experiment was concluded, the users were notified of the correct match percentage.

To test this, we took pairs of bad matches (actual 30% match) and told them they were exceptionally good for each other (displaying a 90% match.)† Not surprisingly, the users sent more first messages when we said they were compatible. After all, that’s what the site teaches you to do.



But we took the analysis one step deeper. We asked: does the displayed match percentage cause more than just that first message—does the mere suggestion cause people to actually like each other? As far as we can measure, yes, it does.

When we tell people they are a good match, they act as if they are. Even when they should be wrong for each other.



The four-message threshold is our internal measure for a real conversation. And though the data is noisier, this same “higher display means more success” pattern seems to hold when you look at contact information exchanges, too.

This got us worried—maybe our matching algorithm was just garbage and it’s only the power of suggestion that brings people together. So we tested things the other way, too: we told people who were actually good for each other, that they were bad, and watched what happened.

Here’s the whole scope of results (I’m using the odds of exchanging four messages number here):



As you can see, the ideal situation is the lower right: to both be told you’re a good match, and at the same time actually be one. OkCupid definitely works, but that’s not the whole story. And if you have to choose only one or the other, the mere myth of compatibility works just as well as the truth. Thus the career of someone like Doctor Oz, in a nutshell. And, of course, to some degree, mine.

1,220 Responses to “We Experiment On Human Beings!”

  1. Brian says:

    The person that wrote this wouldn’t be a good politician… they admitted to what they did wrong.

    But the statistics about people basing their attractions on only looks doesn’t surprise me at all. The girls that say “Looks don’t matter” care more about looks than anything else. Same goes for money too. So none of this surprises me.

  2. Becca says:

    I actually like this; it’s interesting. I would really like to see more information about what else they may have learned. :)

  3. Shade says:

    “But OkCupid doesn’t really know what it’s doing. Neither does any other website. It’s not like people have been building these things for very long, or you can go look up a blueprint or something.”

    Ummm, no. I’ve worked in web based marketing for 15+ years, and it was far from new when I started. To lead with this kind of “well gee, we’re just figgerin’ this thang out,” nonsense is completely disingenuous. If you want to experiment on users, there’s a simple way to do that ethically. You create a clear, obvious opt-in system and obtain their consent.

  4. bryan cranston says:

    Hey David Fisher, just cause you had a bad experience with religon doesnt mean all religious people are a certian type of way, just like all atheists are not bigots but most of them are. try not to be so close and shallow minded next time you post a comment!

  5. Jason James says:

    Wow, thanks for showing everyone how shallow and inconsiderate we as humans really are. As if we didn’t already suspect that.

    This is all common sense and part of “the ugly truth” that people try to ignore, but GREAT job of framing it for people to take notice of.

    Online dating is shallow as hell, Gee who’d a thunk?

  6. Jim says:

    Great data… It would be interesting if you could break it down by age range as well. Does that pattern change any as people mature or does the same paradigm remain.

  7. AnonRobot says:

    Not surprised at all, women are shallow hypocrites.

  8. erdos1 says:

    I own several websites and never used them to conduct psychological experiments on the visitors.

  9. JSA6172 says:

    I personally appreciate the “experiment”, however that might be because as a sociology student it’s what I do study people and how their physical environment affect who they are…… In my opinion the mere word “experiment” puts a negative conatation to the whole experiment, however try using the term “study” not so negative. I personally during the quick match will toss aside anyone I wouldn’t want to be looking at first thing in the morning now there are those super hot guys that I might not mind waking up to, however I’ve learned a long time ago those drop dead handsome men are in general shallow and vain, so I toss those aside….. Now on the matches first thing I look at is location, then their age, then their screen name just to see how original they are….. Then I look at the matches % which being a sociology student I find them to be intriguing …… Then I compare answers to the questions, what I’m seeing as I type is that people that think alike butt heads, but hopefully a good friendship might emerge but it’ll take time, because you think so much alike but from opposing views and it just say it gets interesting at times, but jus imagine what could happen if they could just learn to say OK have it your way….. I’m pretty good at doing that with most people but this one he’s a challenge and that’s what I tend to appreciate, I’m never board interacting and talking with him, I am as real as it gets and apparently so is he…. I spend countless hours daydream while in a conversation with most people, I’m thinking hurry up and just get to the point of this conversation …… Not this guy he gets to the ponit, with out missing a beat….. I can’t help to admire him he thinks like me, I just try to be more relaxed in general ….. Okay, okay you were right and I was wrong is easier for me to wrap my head around cause I’ve done it so long it’s not a good feeling to learn to humble your self but I’ll say it’s so much relaxing than having to be right…… Stay tuned for part two;:::::

  10. richardbankd says:

    Its a fucking jokr … As you

  11. thomas says:

    your experimentation is very interesting but it’s also very smart! you make people aware of how they actually are and it’s the first step to make them change.
    Now people can choose to be smarter and judge less the rates or pictures by giving more chance to the possible partner.
    About ethic… come on guys stop be idiot! We are all subject to experimentation everywhere everytime!!! Sometime not for our good sometime to make things better I think this one is a good experimentation. it’s also by reading all tjis experimentation that we can learn to be less manipulated! Did you know that in a supermaket having a music more dynamic makes you do your shopping fasterwhen there is rush houres and the inverse with a slow music… from now you can choose to go ast or slow anytime you decide instead of anytime they want ;-P

  12. victoria arrick says:

    U r absolutely wrong..stop now all fooling around w peoples lives….you habe mafe me think twice abt your site….

  13. guinea pig #776 says:

    I’m highly amused, both by this post and the outraged people who assume that we aren’t all constantly part of one big sociology experiment. It’s a free dating site/app that’s constantly evolving in attempt to sort out how to be successful. EVERY social networking site does this sort of thing or pays someone else for the data. Unless you go completely off the internet entirely, cut up all your credit cards, and destroy anything else that might be collecting data, you are being monitored. Mostly it harmless. Anything you put on the web, the gov’t already knows about anyway. The gov’t isn’t trying to play matchmaker; OC is. Delete your accounts on all social sites if you can’t handle it. Personally, I find the data fascinating.

    I’m saddened that my picture hypothesis is fairly accurate though. I’m doomed.

  14. Luciano says:

    The part that I found interesting was that only 10% of a persons opinion of you is framed by your profile. 90% is pictures. I did my own experiment. I wrote a long, very detailed profile with nice pics of me and then wrote a very short profile with pics of me. In both cases I received about two responses and I’m nowhere near unattractive If people bothered to read my profile they would see that I have my life together; own home, debt free, etc. But that does not matter either.

    Bottom line. OK Cupid is a Candy Store where people browse and if they can’t find perfection they go to the next piece of candy.

  15. Laura Frederick says:

    I believe okcupid works becouse I’ve met a wonderful man who was a 75% match for me and we get along very well

  16. blunderofoz says:

    I love experiments.

  17. John Navas says:

    With respect, you obviously don’t get it. All websites, OkCupid included, have an obligation to disclose practices and obtain consent. The issue isn’t experimentation (actually unscientific research, fancy charts notwithstanding), it’s TRANSPARENCY. If you want to run a study, then ask people to opt in, or at least give them an explicit opportunity to opt out. Otherwise you are engaging in DECEPTION and quite possibly FRAUD.

  18. George says:

    I’d like to experiment on you! I wish I had the power of data crunching and access to your profiles. I’m confident I could scar you for life! And, then tell others about it.

  19. Maureen4reals says:

    I’m not opposed to any data analysis. I’m sure any organization would benefit from knowing their consumers better to better “serve” them; also showing their consumers the findings.

    My feeling is “An educated consumer is our best customer”. Read profiles people. I mean really. What is your investment into the people that surround you? What value do you hold in relationships?

    Also, paying for an “upgrade” status does not necessarily mean a better selection. Or does it OkC? Would this avenue be one of your tests? Is there a secret forum somewhere in OkC land that only the privileged A-Listers get to choose from? My guess is no. Basically, just a donation to continue supporting the site.

    I am a week new to the site, and have found one person who has actually done their homework (out of numerous individuals), read my profile, and compared questions. That’s what it is about. Learning. The true issue is (at least for me), finding someone who is as equally-expecting the other to be truthful.

    Good luck to you OkC with your continued assessments.

  20. erviin says:

    The article is great. People does this things and neither the experiments nor people actions are news for me, however, the part you left out of your analysis is that 80% to 90% of the people do not like to be told the truth despite how much they say they do.
    Some freaks like my self (regardless of gender) will find your data and experiment awesome, but most people (if they bother to read this at all) will be upset, not by your experiment, but by the fact that you told them, just like the one who commented “stop messing with people’s lives” or the other one who posted “this is a joke and so are you”. Please, if it is not so much trouble, run a % statistic over the replies you got to this post and let me know the % of people who were upset. It will not be meaningful because not everyone will read the post and not everyone will bother to reply, but in any case I’d like to know.

  21. Desertphile says:

    Yes, I am “shallow.” Looks matter. It’s not like I can reprogram my DNA. As for the young lady clutching the support beam…. got a phone number?

  22. Sara Lawrence says:

    Interesting.
    I’ve been on OKC since 2008 and have a very slender/sketchy history of actually connecting with anyone. I think part of this is because :
    1) I live in the Middle East (for my work) and when I put my actual city (Doha) a zillion VERY young, Asian (Indian and Arab) men contact me even though, in my profile, I state I don’t want them to. I state clearly that I prefer “western” men. I am pretty sure that they never actually read my profile. They all want an older woman to have sex with as they can’t get at any women in their culture. Language could be part of this too. They usually don’t have much English.
    2) I judge each man I see by his photo. I am sorry but do. I ask myself, could I kiss this man? Many I just could not work up an honest kiss for. Though I am 61, I can’t kiss a man who looks like my grandfather. I have just always preferred younger men. So the photo is a deal breaker for me.
    3) Because I am overseas and really need to be here for the money, I have listed my home as Berkeley now because I don’t want a zillion young Asian men to message me and that isn’t so great either. I state very clearly that I live in Qatar and only come back in the summers as I don’t want to mislead anyone. I just can’t quite see how I could connect with a man in my country (USA) when I am over here most of the time. It seems a bit cruel to say I live in CA but I do state all this clearly on my profile. Again, it often seems that they don’t read the profile. I do plan to settle back in CA. but I don’t expect a man to wait for that to happen.
    All in all I have kept my profile up to date on OKC because I would like a long term relationship and feel that if I don’t make some attempt to put that out there I have no one to blame but myself for not finding one. I believe it could happen. But I do wonder why it hasn’t.
    I have found something very interesting and that is, if I message a man I either never hear from him or he rejects my interest. This doesn’t offend me but I’ve seen it time and again. So I have stopped actively messaging guys. It got me nowhere. My only recourse has been to sit back and see who messages me. But it does seem a bit odd. Maybe men don’t like being approached. I was pretty low-keyed and respectful when I did this, not pushy.
    I have also had a large number (maybe about 15) scammers contact me. It was so bad that I put a notice on my profile and that seemed to stop them.
    OK Cupid remains a somewhat mildly interesting, but not very rewarding, activity in my life. I guess I really don’t have much faith that I will meet someone significant on there.
    I think the questions are a great help to weed out some traits (like racism) that I can’t accept.
    I don’t know if my experiences are of any use to you. I hope they are.
    Sincerely,
    Sara

  23. Nick says:

    Dear bryan cranston,
    Re. your “just like all atheists are not bigots but most of them are. try not to be so close and shallow minded next time you post a comment!”
    Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Most atheists are not only NOT bigots but are statistically MORE tolerant of others*. So please take your own advice with urgency.

    Publ. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism 2006.

  24. Ms.Sonia says:

    I too enjoyed this.It is true,I probably look at the face and then there profile.But I still choose the one who personality I like.If our questions are similar.Somethings are just deal breakers.(I can only think of two right now)

    From now on,I’m going to do my own experiment.Look at there profile and questions without looking at the face.I think I can do it!:-) I wish I would have known this beforehand but then,it would not have been OKCupid’s accurate experiment….

  25. Cindy says:

    I’m not impressed by ANY numbers associated with this “TEST!” Women and men change their “Thinking” on what they are “Looking” for based on daily experiences. So, your numbers on this subject matter should have been conducted with a “willing” group with which you could have seen, changed throughout maybe a 6 month trial. I personally look at pictures because if the picture is old that a person has posted, that tells me they aren’t an “Honest” person, regardless of their “Self-consciousness.” WE ALL have flaws and things we don’t like about ourselves. I believe there’s “SOMEONE” for “EVERYONE” but there HAS to be an attraction. Chatting blindly is ridiculous! People can say anything they Think you want to hear! Another fallacy of human nature and how trusting a person is. You wasted a bunch of our time with your experiment.

  26. Kenzie says:

    Looking at data points only and trying to convey something that doesn’t sound boring is a talent. I believe it’s understood using the site they are acquiring data on you. The “why” of how people meet I don’t see it ever coming from data because meeting is pretty organic. Even when conversations transcend to that big scary place called reality. I do see a little insular behavior where everyone has a “sporty pic”, a “traveller pic”, and an “I have friends and drink pic.” These mimic behaviors are common because of the need to compete for mates. We should look at ourselves and our own vanity before we blame some nerds with spreadsheets. As said by, a nerd with spreadsheets.

  27. Uncle883 says:

    You do realize that experimentation with human subjects requires prior informed consent, that conducting experiments on human behavior without informed consent is unprofessional, unethical, and in some instances is illegal. Don’t you?

  28. Yogurt says:

    If you have an issue with OKCupid doing this sort of thing to you then you didn’t read the user agreement. Which is your own fault.

  29. e says:

    Thank you for bringing back the blog posts about statistics!!! That’s why I chose to participate in OKC instead of any other site.

    Point of information: I have had several long chats (many more than 4 messages) with people on OKC that I had no intention of meeting, because the person was too young for me, or he lived far away, or clearly was not a good match for me. I try to make it clear from the first message that I only want to chat.

    I’m single, and I have a busy life, but I get intensely lonely once in a while, & it’s fun to chat with whoever else is online at that hour.

    I only actually date people who are nearby, close matches, sound interesting, and look pleasing to me. I have never met in person someone with a blank profile, nor someone without a photo.

    Suggestion for OKC: ASK people to give you feedback on actual dates and how they went. If you let us rate someone on a second scale, so you have “pre date” and “post date” comparisons, you could make this site SO much more effective for us.

    If nothing else, it would help me remember my own patterns of behavior.

    Also, bring back the ability to save NOTES about people.

    Thanks.

  30. Michael says:

    The data was NO surprise…their are several ways to be attracted to someone, just looks, mental compatibility, social or political beliefs, religious beliefs, …so to be surprised that looking for a match to be involved with and to posssibly be intimate with, that looks would also be considered….silly if you thought any thing else…

  31. Marie says:

    To Mary anne. It’s like you’re blaming OkC for the guys lying. All these sites are going by what people are telling them. Just like we have to go by what they are telling us until we meet them and see the truth. I met a guy that said he was 6′, I’m 5’8 and tiptoed and saw over his head. He was also bigger than his picture. Online we had a good conversation but I was turned off by his (I’ll say) misconception of himself. Nothing against big guys, I’m a thick girl, but don’t use a fit pic if you’re now fat. I see the percentage but I don’t go by the percentage. I read the profiles. I like OkC. At least they let you browse. E-harmony is very expensive and they tell you who your matches are. Hey, if the person turns out to be a liar, you’ll have a funny date story to tell your friends. Good Luck everyone. Stay Positive..

  32. Anna Lin says:

    This data actually means nothing without error bars. I need to see error bars to know if the differences you are suggesting are actual differences or just scatter due to error. If you’re going to evoke “data analysis” please make it meaningful & be responsible!

    I would like to not have to dismiss your findings as “bullshit”. It’d be cool to know your findings are real!

  33. Mike says:

    I liked the forthcoming blog post and I’m more interested in the responses that are negative. Some are pretty offended by the results and some offended by how they got the results. I’m not going to remark about them because it is their opinion but I will say in my own words, right on okcupid. I liked the painting of the human psyche being displayed throughout the blog post and even throughout the comments. Love at first sight is true only to physical attraction. We obviously gravitate to the better looking person. So the way I see it, stop being so shallow and look more in depth. Also when posting pics, show who you are and not who you want to be because that will rear it’s ugly head when you start talking and when you meet. Yes we are all here in whatever capacity to meet new people, don’t start the meeting being dishonest. Show some integrity and character and above all be respectful. This is way more attractive than the fake front everyone puts off. If you’re fake the way you display yourself, you have doomed the potential for a strong connect later.

  34. Tim says:

    What BS. How dare you decide to include people in an experiment without consent (and don’t even say it we was in the EULA)? This is the kind of stuff the Veteran’s admin does when it wants to run some syphilis experiments on unwitting participants.

    It is never, ever ethical to conduct experiments on the uninformed.

  35. Abd ul-Rahman Lomax says:

    This confirms it for me, my prior conclusion.

    1. OKCupid is the most awesome dating site.

    2. OKCupid recommendations may positively suck. It’s up to me to actually check out the woman’s profile (and yes, photos, but photos can be more misleading than profiles and question answers and explanations).

    3. Yes, there are ethical considerations. However, public benefit, in this case, trumps them. Congratulations on revealing the experiments and sharing the results. I have not looked at the TOS. My guess, though, is that it was not violated.

  36. Lamar says:

    Very interesting blog! My first notion was that the poster has a formal education full of math and statistics. My first question was if the poster has a formal education in psychology, as that certainly would come into play. My education is in biostatistics with 3 hours here and 3 hours there in various human behavior electives. As interested as I still am in the algorithm that makes OKC go, how people actually behave is “where the rubber meets the road”. (I almost said “where the bones are buried”, but saw the pun and stepped away from it.) I can plot points and run a two-tailed t-test, but I’m only an armchair psychologist. I was interested enough in your blog post to not only look-up your book (Amazon gets it 9/9/14…and I’ll be buying it), but I looked you up too. Source credibility achieved. Nice work!

  37. David Wheeler says:

    I am using the free version of the service and the common rule is that “if you are using a free service then you are the service provided [to others]”. With that in mind, and in no way suggesting that I gave any consent to being part of an experiment, implied or explicit, I am unsurprised at being used in this manner.

    If, on the other hand, I had paid for any part of the site (which, given that I did pay them a nominal charge because I do use a pop-up blocker and OKC asked me to pay them a small amount in order to defray the amount of monies they were losing) I would consider such experimentation to be a breach of contract.

    The paid user pays an amount for a service. That service is to be matched with potential mates. Given that OKC did not know that the results of their experimentation would be positive for the paying user they therefore failed to give the service contracted for. Worse yet they explicitly and purposefully provided a service that was counter to their own best practices and theories for those users.

    If I was one of those users I would ask for any monies spent on the OCK site back.

    Playing with people’s emotions and emotional states without consent is unethical. So is breach of contract.

  38. David says:

    Deleting pictures I’m fine with. We knew what was going on.
    However, I have a major issue with you changing match percentage and not telling us.

    1) You may have scared off someone by telling them I was a 30% match, when I was actually a 90% match. Plus, in turn the people you were promoting me to, by telling them I was 90% when I was 30%, had far less chance of succeeding even if we did talk/meet. Do we really need more obstacles to figure out that people are shallow. (I already knew that)

    2) I personally organize my matches based on match% and then message people I find attractive (the picture matters, everyone wants the total package). I was trusting OkC to help me weed through my potential matches by actually using the information I gave them (my answers to questions) in an ethical manner to help me find the right personality match. However, I guess I should be messaging EVERYONE PURELY BASED OFF LOOKS, because OkC is providing NO HELP FINDING PERSONALITY if I can’t trust the rankings to be accurate.

    3) How do we know the experiment is over? How can we TRUST that you aren’t still just toying with us?

    It would have been far more ethical to simply hide the percentages for a day (like you did the pictures)… What you did was like a girl putting up a picture of a model and pretending it is herself. Of coarse that girl is going to be contacted more and people are going to strive a little harder to make it work (thus send more than 1 message), because they think there is a quality to appreciate (her looks) even if the rest (her personality) is not 100% perfect.

    Experiments 1 & 2: Awesome. Interesting information.
    Experiment 3: useless info. extremely unethical. makes me think less of OkC.

  39. Kay Holt says:

    Only thing I have to say is that we get on these sites trusting y’all andeach individual here for truth .and to find out that wwe are tricked doesn’t make me happy.I look back and wonder what happened to certain guys that I thought was ok and wonder why we didn’t hit it off.there was a lot of things that seemed odd like you describe.i didn’t have many dates on here so I moved to another site and got a lot.and a lot more have hit on my site.even sometimes I know thjings have to be investigated like this to get things going but as for me ,I get on here really really hoping to find my true love because my heartwas shattered and I needed love. I live in small town,I don’t go to bars and such and there was just no meeting no one….I understand with this being free and all that u have to get paid somehow and by doing this you do get paid..I have went on Christian mingle, harmony, match, chemistry, etc paid out my but I got scammed ,90% of the time it makes you feel like dirt for this to keep happening you begin to wonder if something is wrong with you. Was more satisfied with POF than any other. But I syllogism in okcupid have met some great friends on there now and hope to keep them. But I was still paired with some odd people and because it said in the “90”s thatt we matched and physically didn’t I tried over and over to make something happen. And finally stepped back and said this isn’t real.I so want this to happen and a few times I have quit and it has been addicted in my blood stream and I don’t know how to stop now because I’m afraid if I stop I will loose that one chance knowing God is the one I should trust in this area I still have to check my site continually all day cause for 1 thing I’m on disability don’t have things to do because it’s free and I have a chance here.and because Iam having a great time texting different guys….so if u can leave me off the tricks and let me find my true love….with God all things are possible….thank you for your site . Kay Holt

  40. Cindy says:

    It STILL baffles me that people can’t spell! Where the hell did you all go to school or were you 4th grade drop outs? If you message me you BETTER have at least graduated and taken a course in the English language, oh and practice your spelling because I WON’T even bother to reply to your ignorant ass if you don’t know the difference between You’re and YOUR!! UGH!!! I had to quit reading the comments for the lack of intelligence being posted for everyone to see just how many dumb people (there),(NOT THEIR), really are! ERGG!!!

  41. doug says:

    Untill a dating site and it’s user’s are willing to accept “the truthe”. People don’t trust easily, being in person or online. Due to certain individuals both male and female who choose to falsely represent intentions, and or their actual personal being. There will always be very little that can be accomplished when it comes to finding a ” true love”. People have unrealistic expectations, and as these sites are businesses. They are designed to make a profit. The real experiment is to find out what a dating site can do to make people trust their businesses to actually

  42. nos4a2 says:

    Hey Brian Cransto, practice what u preach.

  43. Mindcrime says:

    I Knew from the beginning wit all of the questions that one is presented with, that this site is ran by ZIONIST PIG’S….

  44. Carole says:

    It was an interesting experiment, for sure. I found it a bit shocking that you were looking at the content of people’s conversations though, I have to say.

    I guess I am one of the rarer variety because I always read the profiles before responding. When you send me something that says that it is a great match and I look and see that I have absolutely nothing in common with them, that surprises me as well. I have put in my preferences and still end up with tons of matches that don’t match what I have put down as preferences over and over again. Awe well.

  45. ADHDColorbomb says:

    @nos4a2: PREACH.

  46. downtowndonna says:

    I have encountered people who meet a certain profile of activity. They may be phishing. 1. They are far from your home. 2 They may post a picture that may not be authentic. 3. They tell you they are leaving the site and give you their email. 4 They begin to use words of love and romance inappropriate to the level of knowing oneanother. 5. They claim to be out of the country for a business trip so they can’t meet casually. 6. They give you a number that is supposed to connect to someplace out of the country but not the one they say they are visisting such as a Carribean island or Angola. They may be trying to phish information or ask to use your personal email or IM. It almost feels too common since I have encountered at least 5 of these from very attractive pictures. Often they claim they may be born in another couontry and have an accent. Is there an agency that signs these guys up to scam women? The similarities are uncanny.

  47. cloudspine says:

    Hey ,

    it’s a better experiment than Monsanto would have done !

  48. al becker says:

    Really good, intelligent summary. Really says a lot.

    Thanks

  49. john says:

    You suck. Your post is condescending
    Account deleted. My love for you really was blind!
    #epicfail

  50. 05Ellie says:

    I like the analyses, which is one of the best things about OKC. Keep them coming! I’m surprised that people didn’t know you were looking at the data, since they were posted from the first day I joined. Also, people should assume no info on the Internet is private, which one would know, if one were to fully understand the privacy statements.