ottawapharmer

Hi Sam! I was wondering what historical data tells us about all these new users (for both genders) that pop up at the beginning of the year, presumably because they made finding love part of their 2015 resolution? Sometimes I wonder how many of them will actually end up sticking around the OKCupid community, or will most of these 'rush' profiles end up being abandoned/deactivated in a few days, much like gym goers in January disappears after the first week, and not really worth messaging?

By the way, thank you for founding OKCupid! You've helped me find happy, meaningful relationships that helped me grow over the years :)

Hi Sam,

I recently listened to an Paul Oyer, author of Everything I Ever Needed to Know about Economics I Learned from Online Dating, propose on Freakonomics' What You Don’t Know About Online Dating episode that if only people approached dating like an economist, they’d be better off.

Now, we often see lots of people claimed to have cracked the OKcupid code, that if you message like this or post a photo like that, then you'll have better luck on OKcupid. Some write books and magazine articles about it, while others on reddit on a daily basis. But sometimes I feel like this is an over-optimistic view of online dating, and when I listen to your colleague Christian Rudder on Cracked.com's episode, How a Dating Site Proved Society Is Doomed, what I got out of it is that people are basically always going to be at their worst when they're on an online dating website cause no one's watching, and there's not a whole lot we can do.

So if so many people are now interacting on a medium like online dating that brings out the worst in everyone, is the ultimate solution to understand and manipulate this medium to get the best out of it, or should we avoid it altogether cause we will always be at our worst whenever we touch it?