Just measure how far you had to read before thinking "ok, I get it, he is joking".
I had to get to the part about the Odesk virtual assistant.
Pro-tip: It's rarely idiomatic English to call someone "a female," unless you're purposefully trying to compare her to an animal.[1] Female is a species-neutral term (like "breeding"). When talking about humans, it's proper to use the anthropic term "woman."
[1] My observation is that women refer to men as "male" much less often than the reverse, but when they do they often intend the comparison to animals.
I'm also surprised about how often I see English-speakers talk about "females" rather than "women". I vaguely suspect that might say something profound about an aspect of American culture that's deeply wrong about how it views women.
I'm pretty sure that was the whole point.
I would infer it more as a sign of pseudoscientific language than as a comparison to animals, and the pseudoscientific tone is appropriate in the context of TFA.
The male gaze.
Protip: the male in the story became the robot. And critiques of language usage is the first step to oppression.
On the one hand high frequency dating is a good thing because it adds liquidity to the market.
On the other, it raises the risk of of increased volatility and flash crashes (when your partner finds out).
Ewwwww.
The door to a whole world of truly unsavory double-entendre has been opened.
And, why not? The pieces were believable: OpenCV, NLTK, some scripting and API twiddling. The virtual assistant wasn't much of a stretch either.
Especially if you're familiar with modern online dating sites now. Still thinking that online dating is like browsing an organized list of potential dates where an online host helps you with searching is naive. Craigslist personals are still like that, stripped down, no profile, anonymous and no algorithms.
OKCupid, like other dating sites, makes money via ad revenue, not by connecting you with a partner, so what's their priority? Who knows if your experience is affected by: - how often you visit the site - if you use an adblocker (they know, and they let you know they know) - if you're on a free account - message response rate - if you use their features (quickmatch, etc.) - how many questions you've answered (at a tech talk recently, Sam Yagan co-founder said answering more than 10 questions was pointless) - your quantcast/cookie/tracker profile - sentiment analysis of your profile/messages
Here's a fun anecdote: As a new user of their iPhone app, I was interested in using the Locals feature (to see who was available on short notice for a date). The first day it worked, let me see those in my vicinity. The next day it was completely removed from the app. No warning. Something (I was a new user) must've decided that that feature wasn't for me.
This goes beyond dark design patterns which attempt to influence your behavior (i.e. on another dating site, you have to pay to send messages, and attractive people send you collect messages, that you have to pay to read.). With dark design, if you're aware, you know what the site wants you to do. If your online dating success is controlled by black box methods without feedback, they silently judge.
So, how soon before hackers decide they're tired of being gamed and start using tools they're familiar with defensively? Could this be the start of a new arms race?
I on the other hand get a warm, smug feeling from knowing that if my girlfriend decides not to see me anymore (or I get bored, whichever comes first), new prospects are a walk to the nearest club/bar away. Good luck to you too.
But I think we can take this further, surely she's into automation too? So he-bot and she-bot are the ones that actually get together.
But then why bother with the physical world if it's all software? The entire exchange can be virtualised and simulated at high speed, then you only need to actually bother the meatspace human if the whole thing has been electronically predetermined to be acceptable to all parties.
That way you can find the perfect match in seconds. Unless, of course, they were a little creative or devious in their parameter settings, but nobody would ever do that, right?
Must work, guy goes on 2-3 dates a week.
I had originally thought that the below post was a parody. I'm told it wasn't, though in my defense it definitely reads like a parody... I mean the perfect cutlery... the most meaningless item in anyone's house??
This reminds me of another parody post here a while ago about someone who said they'd bought the perfect cutlery.
They went a bit further and beat the joke to death talking about the difference between several cutlery sets. It was bit better because it started out with some good points bout optimizing your life and buying the best and then it jumped into how to buy what is probably the least important thing in anyone life...cutlery
I think this hacking your life is starting to jump the shark:)
Here is the other parody post:
Yanagi designed his flatware to stand the test of time. He died in 2011, but his design lives on.
However, having finished the post, I now think that a long term relationship leading to marriage and children would be possible. Some tweaking might be required. Ideally, a long and meaningful relationship could develop with 0 physical contact.
[1] http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~neeraj/publications/base/pap...
"I guess I see what’s supposed to be funny here, Rob, but I don’t think everyone will. As the man behind an awfully high-profile startup, I don’t think this is likely to attract any beneficial attention to you, and may very well attract some negative attention. Even if this is meant in good fun, I’m not sure it’s in your best interests."
Jokes are funny when they punch up [at people with more power/status]; they're asinine when you punch down. This is an excellent satire, which should have become obvious when the robot shows up...
He's neither punching up nor down, but in: the optimal direction to punch.
He's pretty much parodying himself here, which is what makes this so effective.
She was a yahoo or aim chatbot (can't remember which) that pretended to be a slightly flirty teenage girl but logged all her interactions to the author's website. There was some great material in there.
- Once the simulation gets sufficiently advanced, it will want to pass the buck to another simulation, because that's what you did.
- In a world where many people do that, if you find yourself on a date with someone, that raises the chance that you're a simulation. What you do with that knowledge is up to you :-)
Amy Webb: How I hacked online dating
http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_webb_how_i_hacked_online_dating...
Additionally, the robot self destruct seems like overkill. It would be better to simply wipe them and start over. After all it, it wasn't a hardware failure that resulted in a bad date, but a software problem!
I actually know a few programmers, who are also pick up artists, that do something similar but less complex.. they write scripts that spam msg to girls on dating site and just shot gun approach.
I think I've found my next project...
You misspelled misogynist.
If you intend to spend any amount of time together, what you hear is just as relevant as what you see.
The people who drop out after that second message are probably the real keepers. The ones that stay apparently didn't say anything worthy of a response anyway.
Question: how many messages iteratactions we need to have a 90% confidence of a good face to face date for both?
http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_webb_how_i_hacked_online_dating...
