Dating site profiles... OKCupid Etc.

I used to put it first thing on my profile but I sometimes found that it was like a red flag to a whole field full of bulls. Massive influx of messages from people who thought I would just have sex with anyone who asked. So I took it off and just have my status as 'seeing someone' and 'strictly non-monogamous'.
 
Ugh, what's with stupid people? Here's some insight, dear stranger on the internet: my lifestyle is much, much more important to me than you are, and that decision was made long before I knew your username. And don't get me started on the undesirability of people who expect me to give up my personal values just for the privilege of basking in their presence.

It's right up there with the guy I was dating casually (who was allergic to cats) and knew I had a cat and (theoretically) knew how much I loved the cat (if he paid any attention to the words coming out of my mouth about the cat, he'd have gotten it), and yet, around six months dating, announced that I had to "make arrangements" for the cat, because he wanted to get serious and move in together. Thus, the cat must go. Mmmmm...no. Keeping the cat, losing the guy (who didn't ask me how I felt about things getting serious - it have helped him out enormously, had he done so).


Magdlyn said:
OKC changed in recent months. Used to be, you could list yourself as married, but still looking for dates. Then your status would be listed as "available" right next to your user name. Now it seems they've changed? Now I am listed as "woman," and men I look at are listed as "men." No "single, married or available" anymore. I guess transpeople can list themselves as trans now. They got rid of the marital status thing in favor of gender ID, so that transphobes won't unwittingly chat up a transperson? Ugh. Most transpeople I know want to list themselves as simply man or woman anyway. sigh...

That seems like an odd change...how are those things even related? I should check my profile and see if anything has changed due to OKC updating things - I haven't really looked at it for the last six months.
 
Nobody on OKCupid is just looking for friends. Of course, a sprinkling might be, but I've never seen them. I think we sorted out earlier how married people can identify themselves as open/poly: in your "vital stats" area, written on your profile page and in the many questions about open relationships/poly. The married people I've run across mostly state that they are in open/poly relationships. Very few who have fully filled out profiles are (admittedly) cheating. Cheating seems to be "out of fashion" on OKC and there is another huge website for that. OKC very clearly has addressed the poly/open option and is a great place to meet poly people in your area who you otherwise would never even know about. I'm not exactly hiding, but I don't go around telling all and sundry that I'm poly and I have never been to a meet up.

BTW, you can deactivate and activate your OKC profile at the touch of a button (if anyone is on the fence about joining up.) It's not an all or nothing decision. When I get overwhelmed there or when I'm feeling that I have plenty already going on in my personal life, I just deactivate my profile for as long as I need the break from the world of "potential."

Really useful, thanks Karen.
 
Nobody on OKCupid is just looking for friends. Of course, a sprinkling might be, but I've never seen them.
Ah, it used to be more prevalent back when their Journals were still active (when Match bought OKC, they shut the Journals down). The OKC Journaling community was very strong, with lots of friendships and occasionally organized outings/activities for people to meet just for friendship and parties, etc. I believe OKC started out as more like a social networking thing that also had a dating component. Most of the online friends I made there were via the Journals. It's sad they took them away, because unless I favorited the Journalers I followed, it's hard to recall who was who, in order to stay in touch with them.
 
it gives you the choice of "married and just here for freinds" or "single" (and still does today)

I didn't believe you, so I just setup a test profile. It didn't ask me anything about my marital status. Orientation and gender, birthday and location. That's it.

Account created, I went in to edit my profile and saw that it had defaulted me as "single." Then I have the same choices as always to change that to Single, Seeing someone, Married, In an open relationship.

So we're both wrong.
 
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One thing that did annoy me was that, even though it gives you every conceivable option for gender, if you choose anything outside the binary, it still forces you to list yourself as "Include me in searches for Men" or "Include me in searches for Women." So that sorta defeats the whole point of identifying as gender neutral. Seems like you should be able to search for anything. After all, OKC isn't just about dating, it's also about friendship. Maybe a trans or gender neutral person might want to search for other trans or gender neutral people as friends, for support and understanding from someone who knows what they're going through.

I completely disagree that no one goes on OKC for friendship. Proof by example: me. I'm polysaturated but I'm still open to meeting friends. I don't have many.

If you're looking for partners and have your parameters set accordingly, could be that all your only matches are those who want something other than just friends...
 
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I didn't believe you, so I just setup a test profile. It didn't ask me anything about my marital status. Orientation and gender, birthday and location. That's it.

Account created, I went in to edit my profile and saw that it had defaulted me as "single." Then I have the same choices as always to change that to Single, Seeing someone, Married, In an open relationship.

So we're both wrong.

Nope just tried, still asks me if I'm married, and just looking for friends or single at first sign up. Perhaps its a geographical thing.
 
Nope just tried, still asks me if I'm married, and just looking for friends or single at first sign up. Perhaps its a geographical thing.

Huh. Weird. Or a male/female thing? We're both talking about OKCupid, right?
 
Interesting. I wonder if it has anything to do with this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31926661

It involves a different French dating website, but if encouraging adultery really is against the law in France, maybe okC has just done it's homework in advance and is doing things differently to avoid coming up against this in a legally clear-cut way.
 
Interesting. I wonder if it has anything to do with this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31926661

It involves a different French dating website, but if encouraging adultery really is against the law in France, maybe okC has just done it's homework in advance and is doing things differently to avoid coming up against this in a legally clear-cut way.

Could be, but weirder and weirder, just tried again and the registration screen first thing asks this question when I use my Android tablet, but on the PC it does not appear.

Not sure adultery is really illegal in France the last 4 French presidents have had mistresses, but this lot have been highly litigious suing all sorts of groups against gay rights, gay marriage, gay adoption etc and I would expect nobody wants to be tied up in months of contentious litigation.
 
I think it's one of those things where technically it's the law but it hasn't been enforced it forever. I mean divorce laws has been changed in France so that adultery isn't automatic grounds for divorce anymore (it's just an aggravating factor that's taken into account among other things. For instance if your spouse doesn't come home at night most night due to having a lover, the "not coming home at night" is what's considered the problem).

And adultery isn't illegal, nobody goes to prison for it. The French list of marital duties also includes having children but it's not illegal not to have them.

This issue is just a super religious trying to make some noise because they're offended. Not as common in France as it is in the US, but it happens, especially now with same-sex marriage being legal and bigots freaking out about it.
 
Could be, but weirder and weirder, just tried again and the registration screen first thing asks this question when I use my Android tablet, but on the PC it does not appear.

Hey, same here! That is strange. I was on my pc last time. So they're using a mobile version of the website with a "streamlined" registration, but that streamlining appears to drastically change the user content, not just the UI. That's bad programming...
 
Hey, same here! That is strange. I was on my pc last time. So they're using a mobile version of the website with a "streamlined" registration, but that streamlining appears to drastically change the user content, not just the UI. That's bad programming...

Yup it is. More than likely not version control or design control has gone wrong and one version is out of date or the developers of one UI have not implemented the same policies as the developers of the other. So much for separating content from presentation.
 
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