Post: #1

Step aside Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram... OkCupid might be the next place where organic reach has been nerfed.

Before you call me paranoid, hear me out.

OkCupid was the shit for game 2012-2015(ish). I was able to rack up a lot of bangs between then by just sending a funny message, meeting the girl for coffee, and walking her back to my cheap apartment in under and hour.

Now, the quality of girls has vastly decreased and competition is stiffer. That's okay - I'm in better shape than I was then, and my game is better. I just got out of a six month relationship, and am eager to get back into the game, so I think - why not try OKC again?

Wow has the platform changed. First - girls can't even see your message unless they like you. First message used to be where the game was. Now, it's the cold read of your profile. If they leave a like, contact can happen. However, in order to like your profile, they first have to see it.

Here is where the weird starts - my number of likes was not moving. I'm getting matches on other platforms, so this seems odd to me. So I make a fake female account to see if I'm showing up in search. There is a section where you can search by keyword, and I have a very specific keyword in my profile unique to me. Sure enough - there I am. So no big deal right?

When I search from my real account - the female profile doesn't show up. I included a rare keyword in it too... strange. Maybe it just needs time to include it in search, because the profile is new right? A day later my account stops showing up in search from the female profile.

My guess - OKC, like all the other social networks - Facebook, Instagram, etc. - wants you to pay for reach. Even Tinder doesn't show you to everyone in your area unless you pay for gold or use a boost (I know because I tried it for a month). My guess is that OKC nerfs the organic search of regular non-paying accounts, in order to get money for their subscription service.

It seems like this is the direction all the dating apps are going. It makes sense - there is an abundance of thirsty men, and a scarcity of low BMI women. So charging the men is their business model. It's effectively pimping. But it makes me wonder - what is the future of online game?

There is a business guy I follow who talks about going after under-priced attention - the places where there is attention and not everyone has gone yet. Early 2012, not many people were doing online dating. If you had game, you could clean up, because it was mostly nerds and girls "just trying this out." Now, everyone has tinder and it's been run into the ground. Where is the under-priced female attention now?

Post: #2

Face to face, in an innocuous-to-onlookers way, usually pivoting off of something in real time, riffing on it, then personalizing without asking her name or details -- let her ask you yours first. Don't want a number or anything. Just a fun connection, if we make plans, then contact. Make her invest, and then give her some too as needed. Don't be afraid of success -- plan for it. (I.E. she doesn't want number, she wants to hang with you now -- what are your logistics?).

I totally agree about underpriced attention. (My advice applies to big cities btw. Sidewalks in afternoon and evening, non-meatmarket venues, casual observations, eye contact, direct subcommunications, talk to everyone mode, and the like.

Business-wise -- I think Tinder et. al. are essentially UBER where you outsource your Cocklife to some computer code, while the platform owner mercilessly tweaks supply and demand to his benefit, not yours. Drivers making great money at first, but then little by little they sink to the average, and then Uber VC's redirect funds and decrease driver subsidies over time, catering to riders over drivers once they have a safe oversupply.

Post: #3

I can go you one better than "just sending a funny message." I never sent out any first messages at all.

What I did was devise a profile that was so idiosyncratic (in a funny/cute way) that women felt like they needed to leave their opinion on it. Kind of like the way people do when they see those controversial news stories that have deliberately provocative headlines.

What I wound do was find a woman's profile I liked, then visit it a bunch of times. Back then, OKC users could see who viewed their profile. So a good amount of the time, the women whose profiles I visited would go to my profile, get a chuckle out of it, and then write me first.

That made it easy. Since they were the ones that made the initial emotional investment, I had "hand."

Late last year they did away with the "who viewed my profile" feature. Not only did it kill my game, it looks like it killed the site. Dozens of profiles disappeared overnight.

Then it got worse. They started coming up with things like gay pride hashtags. The actual subject isn't so much the issue. The problem with things like this is that if you *didn't* put the hashtag on your profile, they made it seem like you were an intolerant bigot. The (female) CEO wrote a preachy, didactic essay about these hashtags, which is posted elsewhere on the site.

I don't think the pay model is going to work, since they just about annoyed everyone with these two moves. Craigslist is gone. For Tinder you need a smart phone (something I refuse to buy -- ever).

The only place I can see working now is Plenty Of Fish -- which is where a lot of the old OKC users seem to have gone. The problem is that it's also owned by the Match.com company (which owns OKC), so get while the getting is good, before they ruin it.

Post: #4

OkCupid has been the sewer of the online dating world for some time now. It was dead even back in the days of POF. Especially in my area, OKC even in 2012 was a garbage fire. As things shift to an app economy, desktop style sites like okc will die with it. People's attentions spans are so short now that swiping right or left after seeing someone for a fraction of a second is pretty much the only way to go about it.

Why are you going to a place where ratios are so bad? If you walked into a club and there were 500 dudes and 5 good looking girls, why the fuck would you stay? This is essentially online platforms, especially now that there are pushes for "women to start the interaction". Come on, how could that ever be a winning formula?

You need day and night game now more than ever. I don't think anyone here has ever endorsed online game as the only way of going about game. 99% of guys are going to tell you that online game should only supplement your real life interactions with women, I will echo this. And, guess what, if you have game in 2018, as well as your lifestyle locked down; you are in the top 5% of dudes, it's never been easier. The competition doesn't exist anymore, people are so reliant on this online shit that you can clean up.

Post: #5

Back in 2012 and early 2013 most dating sites were killed by Tinder.
If you look at pof/okcupid/match they all try to be more user friendly like Tinder was back then.
Now Tinder has shit the bed because of algorithms and the over saturation of ugly people only looking for relationships. Now the pretty people have fled to bumble and other dating apps.

Okcupid was never "good" or "great" it was mearly "ok" compared to pof.

Post: #6

Tried it one week ago. Deleted account 15 minutes later. Weird interface, practically no opportunities and degenerate girls/people. To clarify, I come from a small city from which there are no female OKC profiles so I had to extend radius of search to Zagreb for example. But at the same time it catches profiles which are geographically even towards Slovenia. Opportunities are too far from me, well over 45 minute drive rule. Also, descriptions on profiles are practically the reason why you might consider OKC to be sewer of online dating world (like TheFinalEpic masterfully said).
Bottom line, sad!

Post: #7

it's the same it has always been. OKcupid was bad even when I first tried it years back.

It's only use is that once in a while you can just mass spam a bunch of chicks you think are decent - but the ratios are really bad especially in the west, a lot of fuglies for sure.

Post: #8

I tried OKC again about a month ago after not using it for four years. The "like to see a message" feature killed my game, too. Not only that, but quality has dropped significantly. It's always been the realm of fatties, single moms, and trannies, but now that's literally all it is. The only meaningful match/conversation I had with anyone was a girl who recognized me from an old job I used to have. Unfortunately she's put on a significant amount of weight.

Does anyone look at the male profiles to judge the competition? They're equally as bad as the females, objectively speaking. They all deserve each other.

Post: #9

Does anyone know how POF is doing these days? That site was a goldmine for me between 2012 and 2014. It was always a horror show, but in those days there were plenty of diamonds in the rough - as well as new users who you could snatch up quickly before the realised they had entered Dante's seventh layer of Hell and bailed.

Unfortunately it became a pain in the ass to use (my profile was constantly deleted and then I was IP-banned for some time; no idea why). The quality dropped off significantly, and the last time I looked I saw some of the same faces from 5 years ago. When I last joined up for another go-around (about a year ago) I had to spend about a week working on leads to get a date with an average-looking single mom who played it excessively cool with me.

Fuck that shit.

Post: #10

Last thing I heard is that POF is a vessel with no captain onboard after Markus sold it to Match and handed over the keys. 2011 seems a long time ago when I had 5 dates in a week from POF. Now I am lucky to get 5 tinder matches a week.

It still has the 14 year age gap rule, which I think killed it for many men here. I didn't join it especially to date younger women but I found that few women in their 30s had been in a relationship for more than 2 years, which begged the question "what have they been doing since their teens?"

Post: #11

What it's got me wondering now though is - where is the place that was like early OKC today?

Closest bets:
- Instagram, if you have niche fame or abs
- Seeking Arrangement, if you can afford it

Unfortunately, I don't have abs (yet) or wealth.

What else?

Post: #12

(06-23-2018 10:32 AM)Barbarian_Brad Wrote:  What it's got me wondering now though is - where is the place that was like early OKC today?

Closest bets:
- Instagram, if you have niche fame or abs
- Seeking Arrangement, if you can afford it

Unfortunately, I don't have abs (yet) or wealth.

What else?

Pornhub is good. Not for abs but for biceps workout if you alternate hands. It's free so it's good for building wealth too.

Post: #13

Nerfed is internet gaming wtf. Is that even real game. Lol Then to call something NERFED because your bang count has dropped. OkCupid may be the best for them and there comrades. Next you may say hookers are raising their rates, what lows will you go to for the bang. OMG desperate much to name call.

Post: #14

(06-23-2018 12:32 AM)N°6 Wrote:  Last thing I heard is that POF is a vessel with no captain onboard after Markus sold it to Match and handed over the keys. 2011 seems a long time ago when I had 5 dates in a week from POF. Now I am lucky to get 5 tinder matches a week.

It still has the 14 year age gap rule, which I think killed it for many men here. I didn't join it especially to date younger women but I found that few women in their 30s had been in a relationship for more than 2 years, which begged the question "what have they been doing since their teens?"

But it allows gay men to hook up. So, basically, they're saying "OK" to the number one thing that spreads AIDS -- gay male sex -- but no to men dating younger women, which has been the norm throughout human history.

Nothing exemplifies the perverse, reverse-morality of liberals better than this. This is not "live and let live." This is "live how we tell you to live."

Fuck them and their ugly female CEO. I hope the whole site comes crashing down when some gay guys sue them for getting full-blown AIDS because of their hypocritical policies.

Post: #15

(06-23-2018 12:32 AM)N°6 Wrote:  I found that few women in their 30s had been in a relationship for more than 2 years, which begged the question "what have they been doing since their teens?"

We all know the answer to that, and that's a large slice of the woman on internet dating sites.

"sick of the clubbing scene and looking to settle down"

What a great advertisement for a beta to saddle up a used up whore.

Post: #16

(06-23-2018 12:32 AM)N°6 Wrote:  It still has the 14 year age gap rule, which I think killed it for many men here.

OKCupid jumped on that bandwagon a year or two ago, by making it so that if a girl's designated age range excludes you, she won't show up in your search results. I.e., if you're 35, only girls who have set their "looking for" age range maximum to 35 or above will show up for you. (Before that they used to let you pick; there was a check box saying "only show profiles interested in my age" which you could uncheck.) I've searched past threads but have never seen anyone talking about this. Am I wrong?

Post: #17

(06-23-2018 05:37 PM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:  

(06-23-2018 12:32 AM)N°6 Wrote:  I found that few women in their 30s had been in a relationship for more than 2 years, which begged the question "what have they been doing since their teens?"

We all know the answer to that, and that's a large slice of the woman on internet dating sites.

"sick of the clubbing scene and looking to settle down"

What a great advertisement for a beta to saddle up a used up whore.

Of all places, I had an argument with a 30-something woman about this unspoken element to modern dating on a Christian dating site. Its forums are full of women who are tired of "kissing frogs" complaining that the Christian princes whom they hitherto ignored are chasing younger women as if it some sort of sexual deviancy. The woman I argued with is a member of one of those feminised "Jesus is my boyfriend" pop ballad churches who was a clubber in her 20s.

The thing is, Christian women in their 20s on this site were very hostile to me being in my late 30s too and they sometimes said so in their message replies. Meanwhile I received quite a lot of winks and messages from women in their 40s and even 50s.

Post: #18

(06-23-2018 05:46 PM)Arcite Wrote:  

(06-23-2018 12:32 AM)N°6 Wrote:  It still has the 14 year age gap rule, which I think killed it for many men here.

OKCupid jumped on that bandwagon a year or two ago, by making it so that if a girl's designated age range excludes you, she won't show up in your search results. I.e., if you're 35, only girls who have set their "looking for" age range maximum to 35 or above will show up for you. (Before that they used to let you pick; there was a check box saying "only show profiles interested in my age" which you could uncheck.) I've searched past threads but have never seen anyone talking about this. Am I wrong?

It is not just women trying to regulate men's dating pools by restricting them to "appropriate" ages so that men have less choice than even women of a certain age do, many such older women are competing for the attentions of young women.