> Men will swipe right on the majority of "matches"
Great stereotyping you have going there. Could you share some more insight into your "Women as the gatekeepers and men will hit on anything" life view? Maybe some men would prefer not to have to "swipe right" and face constant rejection? Maybe some women might prefer to approach men first instead of waiting on a man to present himself? Naw, what am saying? Gender roles were defined for a reason. Let's all just stay in our places.
Men and women statistically behave differently in known ways on dating websites.
This is a fact, not advice or a prescription. This also says nothing about how you behave or should behave, or how any particular person you know behaves or should behave. Recognizing this does not mean that you think that the behavior causes the expectation, as opposed to the expectation causing the behavior, the expectation and the behavior both being caused by a third thing or combination of things, or the behavior and the stereotype being a result of random coincidence. It also doesn't mean that other behaviors shouldn't be accommodated, even if it inconveniences the most common usages.
Specifically for Tinder, this is a good strategy. Dating is a numbers game. Online dating, even more so. By spamming right swipes, you increase the chances of finding someone who swiped right on you.
Unless you're a good looking guy. To which, I am not.
ETA: I ended up deleting my account, because even with finding a match, and sending a decent intro message, I still got radio silence from 70% of the matches, which was probably less than 1% of my right swipes.
Eh, I felt it was accusatory and putting words in my mouth (though I didn't downvote it - I can't, since he replied to me).
He seems to have taken my description of general gender dynamics in online dating to be an endorsement of said gender dynamics. This is in no way true.
He seems to also have taken my description of aggregate gender behavior in huge user bases to indicate specific individual behavior - this is also in no way true. There are plenty of users on both sides who don't subscribe to the larger usage trends, but ultimately the trends are pretty overwhelming.
I for one am all for upending gender roles, but we're talking about how online dating works right now, not how it could hypothetically work in a society where gender roles as we know them didn't exist.
It was the phrase "and this model works". You could have said "and this model is very profitable". But "works" implies correctness and fit for purpose which is seen to me as an endorsement.
But yet it works. The tricky thing about gender roles is that while they may not be progressive nor just, much of the participation is voluntary.
There isn't exactly the Gender Role Police sitting around going "NO! SWIPE RIGHT!" "NO, SWIPE LEFT!". These trends are voluntary from the participants.
This may be a bit tragic - i.e., people voluntarily disempowering themselves by reinforcing gender roles that work against them - but yet this happens. En masse even.
"It works" doesn't imply correctness. It just implies that it produces the desired result to a sufficient level of consistency/reliability.
Again with the generalizations that lead to stereotyping.
Beyond that, you must realize that a platform(environment) can reinforce and even encourage a particular behavior. To say that they are all 100% rational actors is not accurate. Research has shown many times that people react differently based upon their environment.
One may see Tindr's popularity happening for a different reason. Dating sites are a network effect business like no other. Tindr was very effective at their initial marketing push at colleges. Could it actually be Tindr's very effective network building and marketing at the early stages that has to do with it's success? Could it be that Tindr is closer to how college age daters work? And once the network effect took hold it spread to other demographics the mechanics were not the reason for it's growth? I'm sure some will agree that much of OkCupid's early success had to do with the fact that people just thought the quizes were fun. Plenty of people go to clubs with music they don't really like because they want to meet new people and that is where the people are right now.
All of a sudden we might discover a situation where a platform is reinforcing gender stereotypes proactively. In many cases against the wishes of non trivial portions of their users simply because that is where the people are? This reinforcement can actually change the views of people outside an environment once they have spent significant time inside of it.
Unfortunately, all of this is a lot more complicated just like stereotypes are. And is why we should take a step back and be careful when saying things that might reinforce them.
Off topic life advice: When you tell someone to stop doing something, don't start out with the word "Please". It doesn't really make any sense as it's a pleading word used as an order. It comes off passive aggressive and abrasive. Same thing with "I'd really appreciate it if" and "Would you mind". If it really is a simple request, then by all means, but when it's an order or a direct request, just say it without the weird prefix.
The phrase "Please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users." is standard English. There is nothing wrong with the please in that sentence. Your advice is weird and wrong. Please is just a word used to convey politeness and civility with a request.
As a native, English, English speaker, I don't see anything at all wrong with goodside's phrasing. I think they successfully expressed what they were trying to express, succinctly and with appropriate tone.
As a native English speaker I agree with the comment parent. "Please x" is just passive-aggressive. You see it a lot on hacker news because people want to be "civil" without actually being so.
Please tell me (pun intended) how the hell you're supposed to be civil if being civil leads to you being accused of pretending to be civil for ultelior motives? This is stupid.
It's not civil to say "Please stop spamming." That's like saying "Please stop beating your wife." It contains an accusation, which is never a civil thing to say. There is no civil way to bring up how your conversational partner is beating their wife or spamming OkCupid.
Adding a "Please" is pretending to be civil.
There are just some conversations that cannot be had "civilly". If you think this is stupid ....I can't really help you. Try to go have a civil conversation about someone's weight gain with them.
> There are just some conversations that cannot be had "civilly"
I think here lies our disagreement. I do believe that you can talk about anything in a civil manner. Being polite is completely orthogonal to the topic discussed. In this case, "please stop spamming" is just a more polite way of saying "stop spamming", period. The difference is in tone, not context, and this is how the word "please" is supposed to be used. Also, what goodside said was not "please stop spamming", but "please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles (...) and spamming our users". Which is a request, not an order.
Accusations have nothing to do with civility. Telling me "please stop beating your wife" when I'm beating my wife is valid, just like saying "please stop spamming" is valid here because they're spamming. If you believe goodside is dishonest about Dating Ring's employees spamming OKCupid, address that.
> Tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users.
Seems to be what the poster really means.
>Please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users.
That means the poster is begging the person stop? Does that really make sense? It sounds like someone is directly telling someone something, but is adding "Please" to get themselves off the hook for being seen as directly telling someone something.
As a native English speaker, I cannot remember anyone, except maybe an old person at dinner saying "Please pass the salt", say the world "Please" at the start of a phrase where it wasn't an aggressively postured order. Like this obviously was.
Serious question: Could you tell me what I'm missing with that?
The idea that "Please" means "I beg you" is archaic. It's a prefix added to convey civility. It is not contradictory to use it while also being firm or even abrasive.
I sometimes find the English language to be quirky or frustrating, and I have some sympathy with efforts to change it for the better. I think in this instance you are tilting at windmills, and not offering sensible or sincere "life advice".
When you add "Please" to a request, it makes that request less of an order. The word is there because part of being civil is not ordering people around abruptly. (Even if you have the authority to give them tasks.) So in fact, when it is used for civility, it does mean "I beg you". Or at least, "I softly order you".
So in fact it doesn't make sense in some circumstances (though those circumstances are narrower and fewer than fubu seems to think).
For instance, "please" is clearly out of place in "please put the gun down on the pavement, or I will shoot!".
The civility-conveying meaning of the word is out of place in abrasive speech; for instance it is out of place in "please get off the f___ing road!" In abrasive language, if "please" appears, its presence is ironic. For instance, in a sentence like "please don't start with that bullshit again!", "please" doesn't have any connection to being civil; it doesn't function that way. Other such politeness words are also ironic in abrasive speech. "Kindly keep your mutt off my lawn!"
(There is even the usage of the word "please" by itself, or nearly so: "Oh, please!" or its variant "Puh-lease!" which expresses disagreement or disapproval.)
You made a very accurate description, though I'd argue that depending on situation and culture, "please" in "please put the gun down on the pavement, or I will shoot!" might not be that much out of place.
It conveys friendliness, the concept of "we're all friends here and we don't want anyone to get hurt, so let us sort this out without a mess"[0]. On the other hand one could argue that abrasive speech is very effective at bypasing various psychological bareers and delivering message straight to the target - after all, that's the reason for so much shouting and insults in the military. So there's a trade-off.
[0] - I guess I might have been watching too much Star Trek in my childhood, which gave me a deeply ingraned attitude that we can all see the bigger picture if we try hard enough.
Context? If you're at dinner with friends you don't say "would you mind passing me the salt". With a stranger you met for the first time you certainly might.
"Please" is not a pleading word, it's a polite word. If you're going to give life advice, make sure it's right.
True - I was using an extreme example to make a point.
It would be more accurate to say that I don't have to, and that I sometimes don't. I'd be more likely to say "Can you pass me the salt?" or "pass the salt, will you?", which strikes me as a middle ground between "Please can you pass me the salt" and "Pass me the salt."
On Topic death advice: when giving someone advice, don't start your sentence with "Off topic life advice", as you will drop 30% of your readers* when vision hit the "off topic" part.
*No scientific evidence behind this statement, but this is the internet, so it's true.
It's okay. If only one person reads it and stops the passive aggressive, office speak?, whatever that bizarre stuff is, I've done the rest of the normal sane people a favor. I'll take plenty downvotes to save just one person from having to listen to that weirdness even once.
I'm a fan of what Bayes Impact, but the article opening seems really naive about what the financial situation is for a pretty big chunk of US residents.
>> As a Westerner, getting a credit card is only slightly more complicated than tying my shoes. My world is raining with opportunities to borrow money to go to school, open a store, consolidate loans, or buy an iPhone 6.
A little under 10% in the US are without a bank. And the "Underbanked", people have some type of banking but still use Money Orders and stuff like Payday loans, is over 20%. I wouldn't say "Raining with opportunities" lines up too closely with those people.
Like I said, it's great to see what Bayes Impact is trying to help, but just needed to clarify a bit about the US.
Edit: Updated to clarify that this was directed to the tone of the article opening, not the author. I had previously used the word "author" instead of "article"
It is true financial access is a problem even in developed countries like the US -- though it is nothing compared to the situation of people in developing countries (and I would say calling the author naive is an unnecessary stretch), you are right in that it's important to raise awareness about the underbanked in the US as well.
You'd be glad to hear we are actually working with other financial institutions in the US like Opportunity Fund that provides microloans to Californians. At Bayes Impact, we have a commitment to building repeatable processes -- the good thing with using data to tackle problems is that it allows us to benefit from economies of scale when working with different actors that are facing similar problems.
I didn't mean to come across as saying the author was unaware, partly because I'm positive the author is extremely well versed in the financial industries within the US. I meant to relay that it "seemed" that way from what was written to open that article.
I should have clarified more explicitly that I was discussing the way the article appeared and not trying to make a statement about the authors aptitude or understanding of the US situation. My apologies to the author.
The rendering engine is a non trivial portion of what Mozilla is. To be an advocate of the web user in standards discussions involving things like HTML5 and ECMAScript. If they do not have a large enough market share of web users on their engines, they will loose their voice in those discussions.
When you use a browser on the web, you are literally voting for who gets the most control of those discussions.
This is good advice. I used to help maintain a bit on the bigger size project on Github and our lead developer I think really wanted to spend time looking over and trying to give quality responses. Which ended up sometimes taking a long time or not at all. Unfortunately, it came off to some people as not caring about their submissions. Just a simple message about being busy and asking them to remind you if you forget works wonders.
Example:
"Thanks for sending this in. I'm busy right now but will look into it later. If I haven't responded in a week or two, do me a favor and ping this thread."
Also, in my experience a lot of people do not always use the underlying database constraints even in InnoDB.
Not sure if that was the intent of the authors, but just so that others may understand that it could be more than just "PHP land". Might be a little closer to "MySQL land".
The point is that fundamentally overpowered features of this sort, while potentially quite useful (in some cases), should be optional (and the default setting should point to the non-enabled case).
Being as they can certainly make for very rude surprises, when you discover them by chance.
Ah, I missed that part of your statement. Snarky comments like "PHP land" while clever and gives us all a big chuckle can be a bit difficult to understand in context. If you actually want someone to understand what you are saying, subtle digs and pretentious put downs, while funny and I'm sure make you feel better about yourself, don't really contribute much beyond dividing people and making others feel bad.
A Union Rep. Its something, I imagine, people who have never been in a Union have no real concept off. As an employee you have onsite representation. All the grey area nonsense that people in many industries deal with fades away when you have a clear, detailed and most importantly enforceable contractual agreement of what your employment does and does not include.
When your boss tells you that you have to do something, you can text your Rep and ask them. It sounds simple but it is really incredible peace of mind to have. They might say "I know it stinks but you do", but at least you have that peace of mind knowing that you are working within the bounds of the contract you and your fellow workers agreed to.
And with the being said, is 6B really that unrealistic of a buying price for Apple to get a quick jump in share of the market? Or for that matter any of the other competitors in the Apple scale space knowing they need to accelerate their offerings in light of Apple Pay?
I'm not that aware of how Silk Road 2.0 works, but with all the anonymity involved, would it be very difficult for a seller to complete transactions to herself with dummy accounts to pump up their ratings? This was very common in the Amazon and Ebay world when I was around those several years ago.
It would not. Of course, they still have to pay the SR2 commission on all the turnover. There have been a lot of complaints on the SR2 forums over the past year that a lot of feedback is untrustworthy compared to SR1, among many other complaints about the poor operator performance.
I don't know first hand, but several articles about SR (2.0? 1.5? no clue) said that the admins are very good at weeding out fake reviews. Though it wasn't mentioned how they do it.
> Men will swipe right on the majority of "matches"
Great stereotyping you have going there. Could you share some more insight into your "Women as the gatekeepers and men will hit on anything" life view? Maybe some men would prefer not to have to "swipe right" and face constant rejection? Maybe some women might prefer to approach men first instead of waiting on a man to present himself? Naw, what am saying? Gender roles were defined for a reason. Let's all just stay in our places.