Delayed Reentry

For whatever reason, let's say you'd like to keep your OkCupid account up, but not have randos find you and ask "How r u lol" or whatever message sparks out of their keyboard as they drool on it while breathing out of their mouths.

Beyond flipping switches to make yourself invisible (ie, making your profile only "new friends"), may I suggest a change in location to somewhere that OkCupid doesn't have other people?

Changing it out of the US presents challenges -- their country/city matching's a little wonky when you want to try and use the most uninhabited places on earth -- so I offer these Zip Codes of cool-sounding places where no one's going to find you unless they're searching globally.

88264, Maljamar, New Mexico

01719, Village of Nagog Woods, Massachusetts

16261, Widnoon, Pennsylvania

79344, Maple, Texas

59044, Greycliff, Montana

I set up some similar accounts in large cities over Christmas, with not a lot of gap in the time they went live.

The surprising thing was for the female profiles was how much of the deluge was clearly copy pasta, coming into all these different accounts

many of the same users sent the same generic message exactly

even the ones I thought at first might be real, when they didn't mention anything in the profile specifically, weren't -- they'd be sent exactly to several accounts

5% of messages were unique

5%

That's beyond the issue of how terrible the messages were, and how obviously inattentive they were (many complimented "pics" on profiles with one picture, for instance) 

There was one part of my profile I've never liked. I re-wrote it over and over, and finally in a fit of frustration I just removed it. I was nervous seeing the "I'm blank" even knowing that the section doesn't show up as blank to visitors.

Doesn't matter. Messages, responses, everything just kept on normally. Might even have been an uptick.

...so don't message anyone with YOLO in their username. Or profile. Or messages to you.

I rejected someone today because in their primary profile photo she's got a pair of Beats by Dre headphones around her neck.

This is what the vast number of choices drives us to: not responding to people for the most superficial reasons, just so that we can narrow the set of possibilities down to something manageable.

I hate that OkCupid exposes the exact time someone last logged in. Because it can cater to our worst instincts: have they been on since I messaged them? After our last date? I mean I thought it went pretty well, but they haven't talked to me since and I can see they're logging on every day... they're online now? Why are you online and not responding? I'll just send a quick second -- welp, see, now I'm needy and have blown it.

And in doing that, it encourages a particular vicious circle. Let's say you've gone out with someone, had a couple of good dates, but you haven't had the exclusivity conversation or otherwise defined the relationship. If you're online, you can see that while they might agree it went well, they're also still online.

Probably looking at you, online, wondering why you're still checking messages when you seemed to have such a good time, and there's clearly a connection...

Search for "work hard, play hard" in profiles.

"I categorize my life as events before and after I discovered Family Guy."

Her: "...I watch x, y, and porn."

Me: (double-take)

Her: "What?"

Me: "I'm sorry, did you say..."

Her: "Porn."

Me: "Ah. It's just that I've never heard someone say that."

Her: "You've never met someone who likes porn?"

Me: "You did say... porn?"

Her: "Yes, I like foorr-ennnn films. What?"

Me: "Ohhhhhhhh."

From Reddit's /r/OkCupid:

Let's say you're a couple dates in with someone who seems really promising. You haven't had the "let's turn off our profiles" discussion, or anything like it. Maybe you're finding yourself a lot less likely to log into OkCupid, or do the grind it requires.

What do you say to someone else who seems like a good match?

"I'd love to go out with you but I'm a couple dates in with someone else, and I don't want to have a discussion where you learn you were severely handicapped from the start, so maybe we should hold off and wait until this other thing flames out, as long as that doesn't make you feel like too much of a fall-back option, if that's cool with you?"

Why?

Do they assume if you put "married" or "seeing someone" and still have things in "looking for" that the message will be clear?

Because it's not -- there's a huge difference between "I'm cheating" and "I'm available" and this lumps them together.

Personally, I always liked that it was easy to see from different places that someone was in an open marriage/poly relationship, since I just don't do that. And it seems like from the other side, it'd be useful to convey that information without being lumped in with adultery and sneaking around on someone.

Update! I've heard they're rolling out an "open relationship" status, but it's not available everywhere, or something's broken. I wish they'd be more open about these kind of changes.

And it's clearly been janky tonight -- I used the Sexy Time profile to test it, and it was there:

Based on my past dates, for your amusement and edification, in order of belief in astrology

Did not even pick their sign: does not believe in astrology at all

Sign "but it doesn't matter": does not believe in astrology at all, or might read a horoscope randomly and not give it much significance

Sign "and it's fun to think about": reads horoscope, will want to talk about it at some point in first two dates, hints they believe it a little more than letting on

Sign, no selection for added text: believes in astrology, will talk about it on the first date and be quite serious. The subject of the compatibility of your signs may come up.