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Chris McKinlay and his now fiancee Christine Tien Wang. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied
A MATH genius from a US university used his skills to hack the dating site OkCupid and found his wife.
Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Wednesday, January 01 2020 @ 10:08 am Okcupid is now owned by match.com. They're deliberately killing the platform to reduce competition with Match.com. On OkCupid, you’re more than just a photo. You have stories to tell, and passions to share, and things to talk about that are more interesting than the weather. Get noticed for who you are, not what you look like. Because you deserve what dating deserves: better. By clicking Join, you agree to our Terms.
- On OkCupid, you’re more than just a photo. You have stories to tell, and passions to share, and things to talk about that are more interesting than the weather. Get noticed for who you are, not what you look like. Because you deserve what dating deserves: better. By clicking Join, you agree to our Terms.
- While Facebook and OkCupid won’t be creating clones anytime soon, there is a legitimate concern here. In academia, research involving human subjects is severely limited and carefully monitored.
- OkCupid’s Incognito Mode makes your profile visible only to people you “like” or message. You can browse with wild abandon, and no one will be the wiser. Your private profile also won’t show up in the Match Search or DoubleTake sections of anyone you haven’t liked or messaged.
35-year-old, Chris McKinlay told Wired that he had got sick of the crappy compatibility suggestions that OkCupid had come up for him, so he decided to take things into his own hands and started to try dating 'like a mathematician'.
The system, McKinlay worked out only gave him suggestions for women who answered exactly the same questions as him in the online survey. So to counter this, the UCLA student created up to 12 fake OkCupid accounts and wrote a script to manage them.
The script then searched through his target demographics for exactly what he wanted in a partner, and since he had programmed the bots so that between them all, each question in the survey had an answer, he was then able to see all the women in his area to pick from.
He eventually got caught out by OkCupid, but by the time he did, McKinlay had already got all the data he needed and found his true love.
After narrowing down his 20,000 potential partners, he ended up going on 87 dates before finding his soon-to-be wife, Christine on the 88th.
They ate sushi and walked around a sculpture garden on their first date, and something clicked. When he revealed his secret hacking abilities, Wang was weirded out at all. She was intruiged.
'I thought it was dark and cynical,' she said. 'I liked it.'
While most people wouldn't be able to replicate McKinlay's complex computer trickery, he says what he did is just a large scale version of what normally happens when people use online dating sites.
McKinlay adds that it wasn't maths that made their relationship a success.
'It was just a mechanism to put us in the same room. I was able to use OkCupid to find someone.'
'People are much more complicated than their profiles,' said Wang. 'So the way we met was kind of superficial, but everything that happened after is not superficial at all. It's been cultivated through a lot of work.'
Though if you want to try and replicate McKinley's success, you can pick up a copy of his book on his OkCupid experience, title Optimal Cupid: Mastering the Hidden Logic of OkCupid, which helps people get the most out of the dating site.
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Controlling who can see your profile
If your profile is set as gay or bisexual, you can opt to not see or be seen by straight people, regardless of what your Looking For settings say (for example, if you're bisexual and are interested in men and women, you will only see non-straight men and women; or if you're gay and looking for friends of any gender, you will only see non-straight folks). This can be turned on in your OkCupid account's 'Privacy' settings.
Also see this article on other general privacy controls.
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Be careful while traveling. We recognize and believe in the importance of being inclusive of all gender identities and sexual orientations, but the reality is this: nowhere in the world is without potential risk, and some countries have specific laws that target LGBTQ+ people. Check out the laws around you when you travel to a new place and research what types of legal protection, if any, are available to you based on sexual orientation. In the event that you’re in unsafe territory, we suggest disabling your OkCupid account or going Incognito. It’s important to exercise extra caution if you choose to connect with new people in these countries - as some law enforcement have been known to use dating apps as tools for potential entrapment. Some countries have also recently introduced laws that criminalize communications between individuals on same-sex dating applications or websites and even aggravate penalties if that communication leads to sexual encounters.
Visit ILGA World to see the latest sexual orientation laws by country, and consider donating to support their research. Source: ILGA World, Updated March 2019
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