Culture

Did OKCupid’s Experiments Increase The Likelihood Of Rape?

70 Comments

Imagine you go on a date with a girl from OKCupid only to discover on first meeting that she is a short-haired feminist. Your face contorts into disgust, and you ask why she didn’t have a single short-haired picture on her profile, or mention her aggressive political views. “What are you talking about?!” she replies. “I’ve got two pictures with short hair, and a link to my tumblr. You’re the one who didn’t say anything about your height or how obsessed you are with weight lifting.”

“My heights listed and there’s a whole paragraph on how much I love my gym,” you reply. You each pull out your phones and load your profiles, only to discover that the profile you built and the profile your potential match was shown are radically different.

This is precisely the situation many OKCupid users might have found themselves during the online dating websites recent experiments:

The company removed text from users’ profiles, hid people’s photos, and even told some users they were exceptionally good for each other when in fact they were in fact an awful match.

Why did OKCupid deliberately lie to it’s users about their matches?

The company admittedly performed these experiments just to see what would happen.

Just to see what would happen.

Feminist critics have often said that consent is not possible if one party withholds important information and wildly misrepresents themselves. In this case, both the man and woman might represent themselves honestly on their profiles and OKCupid withhold, hide, or change the information the other person actually received. If OKCupid withholds information, and tells “some users they were exceptionally good for each other when in fact they were in fact an awful match” has OKCupid muddled consent and caused rape?

This isn’t an empty accusation. Imagine if I did what OKCupid did on an individual level. Imagine if I made made up a false identity, told my date I agreed with her on questions she considered important in a match when I really didn’t, and somehow masked my appearance. She might think we are perfect for each other and give her consent on a false basis. Then, right as my penis was gliding into her vagina, I tear off my mask and say “Actually, I don’t agree with any of those questions, and this isn’t even what I actually look like.” Her eyes go wide and she asks me why I lied. I shrug. “Just to see what would happen.” Do you think she’d withdraw her consent or accuse me of rape?

OKCupid did that on a mass scale.

Did OKCupid Put Unsuspecting Users On Dates With Rapists?

OKCupid has tried to minimize the damage of their experiments by saying that “the worst thing could have happened is people send a few more messages, and maybe you went on a date you didn’t like.” However, as one critics notes, “going on ‘a date you didn’t like’ isn’t a frivolous thing.” It involves real world travel, expenses, an hour or so of time, and a significant emotional impact.

When I read an user’s OKCupid profile, I scan for red flags. One in four women take medication for a diagnosed mental illness. I would not consent to a date with a girl who showed signs of mental illness. If you replace “maybe you went on date you didn’t like” with “maybe you went on date with someone with a diagnosed mental illness” the situation becomes more grave.

Plus, if you add to that rape statistics and sexual assault as a potential outcome, OKCupid’s experiment becomes even more dangerous. One of OKCupid’s match questions is “Does no always mean no?” Most women I know rate this question fairly high, because they don’t want to wind up on a date with someone who will rape them. If OKCupid changed users answers to the question “does no always mean no?” and put unsuspecting women on dates with men who might rape them, is OKCupid an accomplice to rape?

Terms of Service Is Not An Excuse For Rape

OKCupid will probably respond that their terms of service allow them to do whatever they want. First, most terms of service are already ethically and legally questionable. Second, terms of service do not apply to sexual consent. Sexual consent must be explicit and can be withdrawn at any point. If sexual consent worked like terms of service, I could put some text on the door of my house that said, “by entering these premises, you agree to butt-stuff” and then force anal on anyone who entered my home.

OKCupid is the middleman in men and women’s sexual relationships. If I put on my profile that I’m married, or have an STD, or don’t believe “no means no,” OKCupid hides that information, and a woman has sex with me under false pretenses, who is liable in that situation? To the best of my knowledge, I disclosed that information. Could the woman hold OKCupid legally responsible? This is new legal territory created by the internet.

OKCupid prides itself on being a liberal company. They previously changed their homepage to attack Modzilla CEO Brendan Eich’s stance on gay marriage. You’d think they would understand the basics of consent. However, like many tech companies they love data more than consent. I don’t know if anyone who went on an OKCupid date based on false information given during the companies experiments could have lawsuit against them, but someone should at least try. You know, just to see what would happen.

Read More: How Women Train Men To Rape

70 thoughts on “Did OKCupid’s Experiments Increase The Likelihood Of Rape?”

  1. This article seems to be somewhat onboard with the whole “rape culture” hysteria/fictitious garbage.

    1. I read it differently – as making fun of the whole “If she regrets it, it is rape” notion.
      If a slut has sex with a man so fast that she doesn’t have the chance to find out anything personal about him before hand, including whether he is different than stated in his profile, that is on her. But of course feminists would call it “Rape by deception” or somesuch.

    3. OKCupid plays by feminist rules, or at least they say they do. It’s clearly a platform by feminists for feminists, and this sort of behavior wasn’t very feminist of them.

    4. Author has basically used liberal feminist values as a weapon against liberal-feminist OkCupid.
      In order to attack his argument, they would basically have to admit that their own mindset is pure bullshit.
      It’s brilliant, if you think about it.

      1. I didn’t really pick that up, initially; but I can certainly see that. That’s more so an underlying point, however extremely well-put.

      2. Feminists are more than comfortable enough with hypocrisy to attack this without admitting any flaws in their own position. You underestimate them.
        Theyre not men. They dont feel the need to make sense, or to have principles, or to maintain a consistent stance on an issue.

    5. I thought it did a great example of using the feminist mindset and rationalization against feminists (and their false rape culture).
      Rape does exist (no doubting it)…it’s just become so ridiculous today because any woman for any reason can claim it (and the police will gladly take the man away for it – regardless of any evidence at the time).
      Equality – you have to love it.

      1. Vicious gang banging is equal to a whistle on the street, in their eyes. That’s the only equality they know.

  2. I’m sorry, I missed the part where someone actually got raped. What an awful article.

    1. Unfortunately, I have to concur. He’s straining out gnats with this one.

    2. I think it is an odd blend of satire and honesty. While no one wants to go on a date with a total zero in their book, having sex with someone before realizing they are a different person than portrayed is laughable. The blend hops back and forth so often that it is hard to pick up on what this article really is.

  3. “Feminist critics have often said that consent is not possible if one party withholds important information and wildly misrepresents themselves.”
    So I go on a date with a girl and we consensually fuck that night. I wake up in the morning, see what she looks like without a push up bra, heels, pounds of makeup, fake contacts, etc. Should I cry rape because she wildly misrepresented herself?
    What a bunch of bullshit. If a girl willingly opens her legs its not rape. There is no gray area on the matter. This is how we know there really is no rape culture: they have to keep expanding the definition.

    1. Good point….and if we’re truly going for equality then why does only the woman have to give consent?
      It’s another example of women only wanting equality when it only benefits them (i.e. equal work for pay).

      1. Both parties have to give consent, however feminism has sought to define consent as something that women give because men are supposed to be the petitioners (which obviously is not always the case). You are quite right in spotlighting this issue. I believe far more attention needs to be given to consent as a negotiation based on mutuality rather than as a feminist control supply / demand issue.
        Consent is feminism’s greatest strength and weakness, and that’s why it polices it in a way that doesn’t actually protect women, but simply makes it increasingly difficult for consent to be obtained

      2. I believe that you mean equal pay for work. It doesn’t matter to women if the work is equal or not. Only the pay has to be equal or better.

    2. The idea of “Rape culture” is just another political weapon Feminists use to gain power and attack men. Dont expect it to be internally consistent, or to make sense, because it doesn’t need to be if no one with significant influence will ever openly attack the idea for fear of being labelled pro-rape. And certainly don’t expect ‘rape culture’ to ever be able to be applied to benefit a man. Everyone knows men cant be raped (cause Feminists tell us so).
      Feminists will tell any lie they can get away with, no matter how ridiculous, if they believe it will benefit them. Time to just call this out as the baseless, manipulative tactic that it is, rather than continue with this pretense that Feminists actually care about ‘rape’ for any reason other than as a tool with which to bludgeon men.

        1. Rape culture “theory”. A very generous description 🙂
          They wont go near this data for a number of reasons, because black men dont have power that they want to appropriate, because noticing things like this could be described as ‘racist’ which is higher on the scale of bullshit oppression than ‘sexist’, and because it isnt their goal to stop rape, so the facts (which are necessary to effectively address a problem) just aren’t important.

    3. You are correct factually. Legally however the notion of “rape” is solely at the discretion of the female and the male can be accountable years later. Even if she shoved his cock in her as fast as possible and screamed “yes, yes, fuck me!” loud enough to put the neighborhood on alert.
      That’s the sorry ass state we’re in now.

    4. No, you shouldn’t yell “rape”, you should yell “I’ve been tricked into screwing one ugly bimbo”

  4. What the fuck is this article? It just sounds like your supporting this bullshit theory of “misprepresentation equals rape”.

    2. Then read it again and put it in the context of holding a company accountable to bullshit laws that are already on the books. One does not have to support, say, Prohibition in the year 1929 in order to note that a specific company is marketing alcohol and seems to be exempt from the general enforcement of Prohibition, and then question the circumstances that allow the exemption.

  6. yeah- the one in four women on mental health meds thing would have shocked me just a few years ago. Ever since I spent two months living with someone who had more highs and lows than a roller coaster and would sometimes wake up crying for no reason, I just assume they are all on meds.

  7. This sounds like the Saul Alinksy tactic where you hold your enemy to his own rules. If we’re going to require men to get consent under certain circumstances, why not tech companies?

  8. OKCupid is where you go to find mostly fat women who try to cover it up with leg tattoos.

      1. I’m in Seattle and it’s ground zero for:
        Fat legs with short shorts and flip flops – but the leg tattoos make up for all that, right? (roll eyes)
        Red/purplish colored hair.
        Thick torsos and man jaws.
        Subarus and yellow labs. (that’s good, because when someone takes their gasoline and they got nowhere to go at least they have something to eat)

        1. One of my former assistants works for a non-profit (that was very important to her) in Seattle. I see you’ve met her as well!

    2. True. The last time I went on there I saw this chicks profile and it was atrocious. She wasn’t fat but she was ugly.
      Interests: Dying her hair, feminism
      Things I couldn’t live without: Friends, hair dye
      I spend a lot of time thinking about: The patriarchy
      I was like wow what a fucking keeper.

      1. Brutal. I’d rather have my car break down and walk 2 miles in the dark than deal with a hag like that.

      2. Some timid creature with low T and few options would probably sign up just for some warmth on his knob. If she was hot she might have been a good hate fuck.

  9. > Just to see what would happen.
    Not really. They were trying to see if their matching algorithm was garbage. They didn’t force anyone to meet, but checked how long their conversations lasted. They found that a true high match actually did make a difference, regardless of what they were told their match was.
    I actually really like the OKCupid blog. While I wouldn’t call them “red pill” they do post some great information that completely contradicts the mainstream. They pretty much prove that everyone is superficial on their website, and post funny shit such as the correlation between women who “like the taste of beer,” which is code-word for being DTF. There is the occasional pander article, such as “the case for older women.” Still, Rudder is a refreshing change from the mainstream PC bullcrap. Heartiste cited a graph in Rudder’s new book which proved that men prefer women in their early 20s, while showing females do not obsess about age. He’s not red pill, but I wouldn’t consider him an enemy either.

    1. I do think it’s interesting to go through the data to see just how much it correlates with the many things discussed on ROK.
      Again, a woman is never going to say that she is looking for a red pill type of man (or the man we consider red pill, anyways). Her profile or her answers to questions will always be that nice, “walk the line”, acceptable to society bullshit answer that everyone will agree on…..meanwhile back at the ranch (lol).

  11. I think I know where the author was trying to go with this one, but it failed. It ends up looking like you support the “consent” rules for sex, including apparently – according to feminists – the need to divulge every bit of information about yourself to a woman before begging her to fuck.

    1. No, not so much. The feminist idea of consent is codified into law as it stands right now. Bringing up the points he does, he’s illustrating the very real conflict between a leftist company’s doing something “just to see what would happen” and a leftist law which stands in opposition to the experiment. He’s pitting two snarling totalitarian types against each other. In no way does that mean that he’s for or against anything from a legal standpoint.

    2. The consent issue developed more or less in tandem with the growing vibrancy of a post-racist politcal regime. It’s been developed to frighten mild mannered men into compliance with insanity and to ignore the actual story of rape these days.
      http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/gang-rape-is-it-a-race-issue-1711381.html
      Confusing awkward sex with a jackrolling gangbang is essentially an Orwellian method of obfuscating the low intensity race war conducted by migrants.

  12. Except OKCupid’s statistics blog is one of the most interesting blogs on the internet. I love that they do this shit, they’ve got a team of people who make GREAT use of the HUGE amount of raw data they get on their website on a daily basis. They make all kinds of interesting discoveries which (surprise surprise!) correlate near-perfectly with red pill ideas.

  13. I see the article as the author taking a tongue-in-cheek poke at the twats at OKCupid for doing something that could theoretically land their ass in hot water. It was a pretty pointless and shitty thing for them to do. If I had a profile that said “I like thin feminine chicks” and got set up with Garganto, bitch queen extraordinaire, I might think I’d been raped…

    1. Agree. I thought it was a great exercise in pointing out the hypocrisy that exists.
      A man – must have the consent of the woman before sex (no equality right there). OKCupid just pulled a similar stunt (no consent to changes) but it’s deemed “ok” – just to see what would happen.

    2. When Facebook did their recent experiment there was an outcry, but when OKStupid does it no one seems to give a shit.

  14. Damn did rok get hacked? Last place i would expect bullshit rape definition to get thrown around. I guess i’m a serial rapist i always lie to these hoes.

  15. Are OK cupid really this stupid. If someone was found to be hurt by a person that was misrepresented they could open themselves up to a world of law suits.

  16. Yea it was stupid for OKC to do this but I ALWAYS ask for confirming pics via text before I meet a chick so its the person’s fault for believing the profile pics anyway.

  17. Didn’t an israeli woman once successfully sue a palestinian man who bedded her by pretending to be an israeli? (Now its the israelis destroying palestinian tunnels but that’s another issue).
    Re. OK Cupid hope everyone boycotts the whole company and it collapses amidst a torrent of litigation

    1. Nope. What happened in that incident.was an Arab man raped a mentally retarded Israeli girl. He coerced her out of her house by posing as a Jew. Since she was too mentally disabled to testify effectively and the family was religious and stonewalling, the prosecutor went with the more easy to prove charge that he took her out of her house under false pretenses.
      When Palywood told this story the fact that the girl was retarded and that it was rape (real forcible rape, not date rape or she regrets it later) was of course omitted.

      1. ok, but in that case “Palywood” is guilty of some very partial reporting: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/07/21/israel.rape.by.deception/
        http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10717186
        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/7901025/Palestinian-jailed-for-rape-after-claiming-to-be-Jewish.html
        The BBC is generally regarded as left wing, but until the recent bombardments I wouldn’t consider the others to be anti-israeli. All three sources describe the sex as consensual. If the girl was ‘retarded’ does this mean ‘a bit slow’ or a bit vulnerable (which could be applied to a lot of people) or has she been assessed as not having capacity to consent to sex (which is not only Q related). The issue of rape by deception is hugely controversial – as the argument made in one of the articles indicates in theory if you tell a girl you love her in order to obtain sex that could be seen as rape since it involves deception.
        Maybe there is more to it than was reported in the above but it is simply unbelievable that there could be that level of bias amongst all three sources

        1. The BBC is a multicultural and multiracial boondoggle. And the producers are either Jews or Queers.

      2. I’ve heard iterations of the story. Who cares? Maybe the two sides will wipe each other out?

  18. How does being “liberal” equate to understanding the concept of consent? Last check they *never* ask me for my consent when they rape me financially and nail me to the ground with their totalitarian laws and regulations.

  19. rape1 [reyp] noun
    1.
    When a female regrets having sexual intercourse with a male she met.
    2.
    any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person.

  20. I think what OK Cupid did is not well OK. They might be legally correct that their terms of service would allow such an “experiment”, but morally they are clearly in the wrong. The purpose of a dating website is to have enough transparency that both parties have enough information about each other to explicitly agree to an in-person meeting. Denying that to your users is just plain wrong. I don’t know what hypothesis OK Cupid was trying to test, but if it was “two random people meet under the pretext of it being the potential to enter into some sort of relationship and with the pretext of the meeting to be just that things like looks or profiles don’t matter” then it was a bad one to test and they should be ashamed of themselves.
    Also, there is no such thing as “rape by deception”. Men and women can misrepresent themselves as much as they like to attempt to gain the objective of sexual intercourse. I can lie and say that I am a banker with fat stacks of cash and if she spreads her legs wide because of this and it is not true she cannot (at least legally) cry rape. The same goes with women who cake on make up, put on Spanx and push up bras, and lie about the number of guys they sucked off. Feminists would love to have the “rape by deception” card in their hand and by current practice of application of rape laws they already sort of do. But, at least for now, the law does not recognize it.

  21. To be fair, you should know that anybody with a tumblr account should not be associated with.

  24. Initially I was horrified by the pure, unadulterated idiocy on display in the comments here…but then I realized what site I was on, and it all made sense. Blatant, sociopathic misogyny is kind of the calling card around here, isn’t it?
    I honestly don’t know how you people function in the real world on a daily basis. Or how you would function, if you ventured out of your parents’ basement and actually tried to interact with a real, live woman. No wonder you hate them so much. We all hate things that scare the living hell out of us.

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