On December 21, the U.S.-based online dating site OkCupid announced that it would begin to phase out usernames in place of real names, or more accurately, "what [users] want their dates to call them". The "flippant" announcement post made fun of several (slightly edited) usernames that had been in use. Users have not reacted positively to the change:
Days after deleting an OKCupid profile that included personal information, Reddit user Drinkscocoaandreads logged onto Facebook to find an unpleasant surprise. "I had like three guys find me on Facebook within two days, screaming at me for leaving mid-conversation/not ever acknowledging their initial message," the Redditor wrote in a thread about OKCupid. "One of them also added a few of my friends before I figured out what was happening and got him blocked."
Drinkscocoaandreads is one of many Reddit users reacting to OKCupid's recent announcement that it will ditch usernames in favor of a real-name policy. "It's because, like the recent goodbye we said to AIM screen names, it's time to keep up with the times," OKCupid explained. "We've also heard from many members of our community that they want to maintain the privacy they enjoy with usernames—with this change, we won't be collecting full names; instead, we encourage our users to go by the name they'd like their dates to call them on OkCupid."
Via email, a company spokesperson told The Verge that OKCupid won't require legal names, but the shift is already unpopular with users. Online, the reaction to the news has been overwhelmingly negative, with users either flocking to Reddit to discuss the change, or leaving angry comments on the post itself.
The change isn't just, as OKCupid's flippant post suggests, about users no longer going by aliases like "BigDaddyFlash916." The allure of a place like OKCupid as opposed to, say, Tinder, is that it was a secure place to share more intimate personal details, including sexual preferences. Dating apps made for phones are generally looking for users to find matches based on proximity, age, and gut-instinct attraction to other people's photos. OKCupid invites users to answer questionnaires, build elaborate profiles, and describe themselves thoughtfully. For users, this is a double-edged sword: you get to know people better, but you also make yourself vulnerable to strangers who can potentially learn a lot about you.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 25 2017, @08:48AM (15 children)
The densest person in the world should understand enough about personal security to dump the platform. This ain't Facefook, after all. Women's greatest dangers seem to originate with mates, and potential mates. So, here they are, browsing potential mates, and they have to give a name that is easily traceable? For us guys, it may not be so physically dangerous, but it's still a quagmire. Tell the chick EVERYTHING about yourself, and she decides she doesn't like you. Oh-oh - she's gonna drag you through the mud on every forum in the world. People from Bangladesh to Timbuktu, to Rio de Janeiro are going to know that she thinks you're a perv, creepy, a pedo, or whatever the hell she decides to say about you. That will look good at your next job interview!!
Of course, people should put 2 and 2 together, and understand that sharing personal information on ANY platform can be dangerous. Facebook, Tinder, or whatever else - just don't share that intimate personal information.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @09:42AM
But you blahblah, nothing wrong, nothing hide...
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @09:50AM (7 children)
I spent about a year on there with a photoless profile to try and see if there was anyone worthwhile (having previously used craigslist, which for a few years in the middle actually worked quite well. The early years could have worked too, but I was a virgin and thought women cared more about relationships than money and sex. Hint: only the naive, crazy religious, cowed by their parents, 'i want to be a stay at home mom and already have kids', 'i need a baby now!', and 'through with their promiscuity phase' women are interested in that.)
As far as OkCupid is concerned, it was either people who had migrated there FROM craigslist, usually after years of not finding someone. People from facebook using it like tindr so their facebook friends wouldn't find out who they were studding/sluttin it up with, and serious feminist whackjobs who seemed to have a normal profile until you messaged them.
Needless to say, between my experiences, plus those of people I knew using actual social media to meet people to date, I think the whole thing is a failure. On the other hand it has mostly poisoned irl interactions as well, and unless you are one of those ACTUAL promiscuous/predator pretty boys who hits on everyone, the people you actually find interesting are likely to either rebuke you trying to hang out as friends, rebuke you when you tell them you're interested, or keep you around as their token beta friend while they are off sluttin it with guys who will buy them things.
And people wonder why so many guys are becoming misogynists, or asexual gamma males for their feminist matriarchy (then doing terrible things behind the scenes, like all those gamegate people we were been hearing about.)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @09:52AM (1 child)
They also all wanted you to already be successful, have your own place, a car, etc even when they themselves had none of that.
Also a third to half or more of them had drug, alcohol, or criminal problems, on both platforms.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 26 2017, @02:59PM
Unemployment marketplace is like that too. "We'd like an upper class Ivy league grad genius with decades of proven experience... that or a really cheap H1B". "And what do you bring to the table" "Well we offer lower class salary with minimal bennies and a work environment right out of a 1800s sweatshop both in physical qualities and lack of respect to our employees" "cool sign me up"
Now if both sides are lying and playing poker with each other this makes a quasi-stable employment marketplace, but a marketplace full of lies can't be stable efficient or free.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @12:01PM (1 child)
Just an FYI - men have been misogynists for millennia. Yes, it sucks when some looker on the internet wants you to meet specific criteria in order to exchange physical contact. But they can meet plenty of people who don't meet those criteria in real life.
And just between us girls, using a photoless profile makes you look like (pun intended) someone who can't be trusted because you must be cheating on your significant other or you wouldn't be hiding your face.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @04:49AM
Proof or it didn't happen. Men have been pappy to virgin Mary and other forms of women for a millenia, and have been dying to protect women for more than a millenia. And guess what men have been calling other men misogynist for more than a millenia too.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday December 25 2017, @02:37PM
There is a significant sample bias to users of online dating sites. Of course people on a site for casual hookups are interested in casually hooking up. Of course people on a platform segregated from the rest of their life are going to exhibit more anti-social behaviors like gold-digging or man-hating.
Have you tried dating sites that are more explicitly advertised for long-term connections? The ones you have to pay for? I can’t speak from experience, but I’d expect a different experience.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @07:37PM
Protip 1: operating without a picture is red flag material to any woman with an ounce of sense. It's easy to guess that you mostly were interacting with, shall we say, substandard examples.
Protip 2: subscribing to the thoroughly debunked alpha/beta paradigm is also red flag. Your misogyny is visibly bursting through in other ways, too, so it's no surprise that even the losers were reluctant to keep interacting with you.
The failure is yours. Own it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @08:45PM
The people who would use these types of websites and/or surrender their personal information to them are fools anyway. Including you, apparently. Do you use Facebook too?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @06:49PM (1 child)
That's possible if you meet someone IRL too, isn't it?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 25 2017, @07:17PM
Possible, but a little less likely. You have to actually get past introductions before she can learn your online identity, IRL. Online, once she learns your real name, she can stalk you, just like male sexual predators can stalk their victims.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 26 2017, @01:48AM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 26 2017, @01:51AM (2 children)
(Posting fromm downtown Tallinn, as always, with nothing -- yet -- to fear from GEOIP.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 26 2017, @02:11AM (1 child)
The ISP knows where I live, of course. And, the people who run the site (staff) knows what my IP is. But, users don't know what my IP is. Unless I publish my IP, the stalker doesn't know where I am. Or, the site staff publishes my IP. Or, the stalker hacks the site. So, it all depends on who "we" is.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 26 2017, @09:08AM
Which proves nothing, but if user agent sniffing shows that the user from that address has the same platform preferences as the ones you've expressed, that would be a reasonable confirmation.
Almost everyone leaks way more information than they think.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Monday December 25 2017, @10:08AM
Tinder is the same company, it's called IAC. So are Match.Com and Plenty of Fish. So are many, many other cyber sites. Very foolish to join, they can't be trusted. Because the company is run by the SAD & PATHETIC alt-left billionaire Barry Diller. Who also runs Fox Broadcasting. He's smart about business but very disloyal. This guy said that if I became president, he would leave America. Or join the resistance. He hates me and he hates America. It is, frankly, disgusting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @12:39PM (7 children)
I'll post my real name the day they require posted anatomical information to be real.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @12:44PM (5 children)
Based on your comment we all already know your real name is "Richard".
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday December 25 2017, @01:50PM (4 children)
Richard Small?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by Spamalope on Monday December 25 2017, @03:59PM (3 children)
Shouldn't that be Richard Little?
My GF's housemate listss her age as 10 or more years younger than she actually is, and complains about dates being upset about the catfishing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @02:30AM (1 child)
10 years, 10 lbs, 10 inches.... meh, close enough for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @11:55AM
10 pounds is a rounding error against the hambeasts you pick up on dating sites.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 26 2017, @02:48PM
Corporate advertorial dying legacy media
The truth you'll only hear on non-real name internet media
As for the multi-profile people, thats just primate dominance in action, corporations are the superior lifeform and when they do A/B website testing on addictive clickbait content its some holy act of goodness and motherhood and apple pie, but when mere humans do it, A/B testing is unmasked as scummy.
The site has quite an uphill battle ahead. Its perfectly analogous to an erotic sci fi fanfic site suddenly deciding to change all content to wikipedia style purely factual non-fiction about the physics of thermodynamics. Its not gonna be smooth.
Another rather interesting dynamic is in the long run most people repeat the party line to each other that long term relationships require honesty but as per the catfishing the reality is most of the internet sites and internet site users are just trying to get a good cheap fuck tonight and honesty is not necessarily advantageous for adventurous one night stands. A good analogy here is you can't purchase a successful gay bar from the previous owners, unilaterally declare it to be a straight bar, and expect the same packed crowds of straights the next night; or possibly ever, because if every patron is gay because every other patron is gay then one bartender saying "nah not so much" isn't going to work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @11:27PM
I know, right? I have the same problem too. It can be so hard sometimes to find a ladyboy when neither of the two usual choices capture the combination of anatomy I have a fetish for.
I also can't figure out why ladies get so pissy when I ask them what's in their pants and then interrogate them about their medical history and capacity for childbirth in the first few messages. :-(
Bwahaha! I'd love to see some of your chat logs!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by meustrus on Monday December 25 2017, @02:28PM
Under Common Law, which all (former) British colonies are subject to, you can assume a new name any time you like. As long as you are using it, it’s your “legal” name. The only hiccup these days is when you want your government records to match something other than what’s on your birth certificate.
Why do more and more web services insist on a narrower definition of “legal” name? There are good reasons after all for using an assumed name. Many of these reasons that have been used as arguments in favor of internet screen names - primarily safety - are not new inventions but have been legally-protected rights going back over 500 years.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @03:21PM
Where?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25 2017, @06:32PM
I loved OKCupid because they let me set up multiple profiles. I could list different interests, different sexual preferences, show different pictures, etc. based on whom I was trying to attract.
They sent me a couple of e-mails saying that my profiles would be deleted unless I updated them to use my real name. No thanks, employers and family members don't need to see my sexual preferences; that stuff is private, and I would like to keep it that way.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday December 25 2017, @09:12PM (1 child)
and when they locked me out of my account for not using a "real name" they said I had to enter my name, and then upload one of these documents (Social security card, Passport, State ID or Drivers License) or two of these (Utility bill, School ID, Phone bill, Vehicle registration) to prove that I was telling the truth this time. They "promise" to delete it after you upload it to their servers.
Needless to say, I have not logged on since, though I have given thought to photoshopping my screenname (among other edits) onto my drivers' license just to log on and grab all of the poetry I used to post there. C'est la vie.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday December 26 2017, @02:51PM
Always interesting to compare FB's real names weirdness to claims that voter ID laws are immoral and you shouldn't be expected to carry a drivers license when you drive yourself to a voting place, and so forth. Tells you whats really important to the powers that be.