Rules and Rule Breakers of OkCupid

The official rules and guidelines for OkCupid can be found under the FAQ section of the website. There is a privacy policy section that describes security, rules about sharing information with other parties, etc… Most of this covers an individual user’s privacy rights and the privacy of a profile, IP address, cookies, etc… The other main rules section of OkCupid is the “Terms and Conditions” section which covers copyright laws, terms of use and other rules and regulations for using the site.

okcupid privacy issues
okcupid terms of agreement

There are no actual state or federal laws mentioned on the site however it is written that users are subject to federal and local laws. Also, it mentions specifically that foreign users should obey internet rules and regulations as specified by their country.

Violations of OkCupid rules

Adult Users Only

This Website is not intended for children under 18 years of age. If you are under 18, you are not authorized to use this Website and will not be afforded access to any features of this Website that allow for you to provide information to us or to share information with other users of this Website.

The difficulty in finding people who violate the 18 and over age rule is that there’s no way for me to verify if someone is younger than 18. Madison describes in his article on Social Software and Governance some of the legal issues surrounding computer technology. He suggests that “Some of the difficult contemporary legal issues surrounding computer technology is best understood as problems of trying to identify informal groups and their patterns.” (Madison 157) Since people can easily lie about their age, post younger pictures of themselves, etc… It’s hard to identify the so called underage users. It’s also important to note that for OkCupid in particular underage users aren’t united per se. I believe groups of underage users (such as high school friends) might join the site at the suggestion of their other friends, but it’s not like these users necessarily seek out the company of other members who are under 18 years of age.

Underaged user?

Although I found several users who appeared to be underage, the one I was most sure of claimed that she was only 17 years old when she filled out her profile. Pepsi 637 wrote that she was 17 in her profile, but I believe that now she’s 18 years old since she’s been a member for almost 2 years. Here is a link to her profile: Pepsi637's profile.

I did not see any immediate reactions to her claim. It’s possible that she was lying and she was actually over 18 when she joined. Since she’s been a member since May of 2007, I’m guessing that the administrators didn’t notice or haven’t bothered to take any sort of action.

One Person Per Profile

You agree your profile will represent only you. If you are in a relationship: congratulations! You and your partner should maintain separate profiles and link to each other.

April and Chris

After reading that there can only be one person per profile, I tried to find examples of people that violated this rule. First I tried searching for keywords like “We” or “Our” but those were deemed to generic by the search engine. I thought to myself, “What keyword would help me to find people who would exploit this rule?” Then I came up with “threesome” which yielded several results. It didn’t take me long to find a couple using one profile, “aprilandchris21.” It was pretty obvious considering that both of their names were in the profile. There were other couples that advertised for “threesomes” however most of the couples had separate profiles.
April and Chris, a couple with only one profile

Unique and Bona Fide Profile

You agree to create only one unique profile and one person per profile. In addition, in order to maintain the integrity of the Website, by joining, you agree that your use of the Website shall be for bona fide relationship-seeking purposes (for example, you may not use the Website solely to compile a report of compatible singles in your area, or to write a school research paper). From time to time, we may create test profiles in order to monitor the operation of our services.

It's me

Ok, so one user who violates this rule is PillowEatsBear, ie. myself. I created a profile for my project in ICS691 class and not because I was seeking a bona fide relationship. Interestingly enough there’s an explicit rule that you should not use this site to write a school paper. There’s no way for me to prove that someone joined a site to write a paper so I only have myself as an example. Here’s a link to the profile of PillowEatsBear:

PillowEatsBear: Extreme Rulebreaker

Best Course of Action for the user that claimed to be 17

For pepsi637 who claimed she was 17 in her profile, I don’t think that OkCupid should take any course of action. It appears as though she violated the rule in the past by signing up as an 18 year old when she was actually 17. However, since time has passed I don’t think that she should be punished now because she is of legal age. One of the problems with age is that it’s very difficult to verify. For all we know she (if she is really a she) could be a 35 year old posing as a 17 year old posing as an 18 year old. OkCupid could take action against anyone who lies about their age, but then there’s a lot of people who do so. A quick search for the 85-99 year olds will show people who appear significantly younger in their profile pictures. I know of several people who post that they’re 99 years old because they don’t want to be targeted by people searching for a specific age bracket. If OkCupid started banning people who lied about their age, I think there would be an uproar.

Best Course of Action for One Person per Profile

Personally I don’t think this rule is a huge deal in practice, but I understand that OkCupid doesn’t want multiple people sharing a profile to be a widespread practice. I think the best course of action is to inform AprilandChris21 that Chris (I think that April is the one that operates the profile) needs to get his own profile. He can just sign up for a generic profile and problem solved. On the other hand there’s also no solid proof that two people have used that profile. It seems like April operates the profile on behalf of her husband since they’re interested in casual sex encounters with another woman.

Best Course of Action for the Horrible User that joined OkCupid to write a research paper

Assuming that somehow OkCupid finds out that I joined in order to write my final paper for ICS691 I would say that I deserved to be banned for life…. Or possibly no course of action should be taken. I think that if I was messaging people simply to gather data then maybe I should receive a warning because I’m not using the website to form relationships with other users. However I don’t think that OkCupid moderators have the right to ban a user simply because he uses the site in ways that aren’t intended. I think the only reason should be if my actions have harmful repercussions on others or if I cause other users to have a negative experience on OkCupid.

Just browsing the forums, I’ve seen several examples of users who create negative experiences with others by getting into flame wars. What’s worse about OkCupid as opposed to some other forum is that some of these people met in real life (for example they went on a date) and so they have some credibility when they attack or insult other users. For example Melody_Melody in the image below wrote a negative review about her experience with user AntonioE.

Melody_Melody

Curiously enough, the responses to her post were mixed. Some people offered sympathy while others said that she should've known better. I'm not defending the behavior of AntonioE, but I feel that it isn't in good taste to insult another person in a forum on a dating website after going on a few dates with that person.

There are also examples of users that post IM conversations or emails from other users. Most of them show other users in negative light.

Not so great conversation

When users make derogatory remarks and site the behavior of other users in a public forum I consider those comments to fall under Gazan’s category of interpersonally exploitive behavior as he mentions in his paper on Rogue Users. I think members can report malicious forum behavior to moderators, but I feel there should be some sort of repercussion when users slander other users on the forum.

I’ve noticed that in the forums there are rants about failed dates, but many don’t mention the names of other users. Although it’s not mentioned, I think maintaining user privacy is one of the unspoken rules of OkCupid. In most cases users don’t share names when ranting about failed dates even though I found a few examples of people who do.

However the article by Kollock and Smith mentioned that “In every successful community that they studied, the monitoring and sanctioning of people’s behavior was undertaken by community member’s themselves rather than external authorities.” So maybe reporting bad behavior of other members is a way of informal control that helps make OkCupid successful. I’ve noticed that sometimes people will start threads about banning a certain user. In this way they inform other users of bad behavior and discourage it.

Advocating a ban in the forum

However this is not to say that moderators don’t serve a function. It seems like some users have been banned as many highly controversial forum postings have Inactive Users who posted there. I’m guessing they were either removed by moderators or they deactivated their accounts. Kollock and Smith say that people will cooperate with the rules provided that they feel others are operating under the same rules as well and not getting away with any negative behavior. “That is, many people are contingent cooperators, willing to cooperate as long as most others do. Thus, monitoring and sanctioning serves the important function of providing information about other persons' actions.”

Overall I would say that OkCupid doesn’t seem to have a lot of regulation by moderators. Users tend to self moderate and users tend to make public any rude behavior on the part of other users. When a user posts a IM conversation it causes embarrassment to the other user and discourages him or her from derogatory comments. There’s also the possibility that people write fake IM conversations or emails, but I would think that this isn’t common. Many users violate OKCupid’s user policies (Including a certain paper writing delinquent) but those specific policies are difficult to enforce due to the difficulty of ascertaining user information in an online community. It’s clear that there’s also unwritten rules of conduct that aren’t to be found on the site including stealing people’s pictures, posting fake pictures/profiles, harassing other users, etc…

Definition of Online Identity

An online identity is a persona that a user can take on in an online social community. Individual identities are recognized by profile names which are pseudonyms that a user can create to reflect that persona. It may or may not contain information about a user’s real life identity. Some online identities also comprise of an avatar (an image) which the user can choose and alter. In instances of a 3-D environment, online identities come with customizable characters and other attributes. Online identities offer a large degree of personalization for a user. The attributes of an online identity (gender, age, etc…) don’t need to be the same as those of the user. One user can have different online identities in different online social communities. An online identity can reflect a user’s actual identity, or it may be different.

For OkCupid, an online identity consists of a user’s profile name, pictures, quiz answers, and all the other attributes that a person can reveal by filling out his or her profile. Unique aspects of a user’s identity are a user’s answers to the profile such as what are 3 adjectives that describe you? Other things to fill out on your profile include: A self summary, what you’re doing with your life, what you’re good at, what people first notice about you, your favorite books, movies, music and food, six things you can never do without, things you spend a lot of time thinking about, what you do on a typical Friday night, something private you’re willing to admit, and reasons for people to message you. Other profile details include where you live, how old you are, your relationship status (single, married, etc…), how often you drink, smoke or do drugs, languages you speak, pets, education, ethnicity, height, income and astrological sign. Although people are encouraged to give answers that correspond to their real life attributes, there don’t appear to be any features on the site that discourage lying. Users are judged on how they fill in their profile and what choices they make. Someone who doesn’t fill out a profile is less likely to be contacted and trusted. Another interesting aspect of a user’s online identity is the %match, friend and enemy that are displayed for a user to see. For any individual user, that user can see a match%, friend% and enemy%. The higher the percentage the better romantic match, friend match, or enemy match between two people. A user can only see his or her match with another user, and not any corresponding match, friend or enemy % between other users. This information is gathered by answering user generated questions on a rating system. Users who have similar tastes or values will have higher friend or match percentages. Users who have differing answers to issues that they deem important will probably have higher enemy percentages.

Online identity is also comprised of any additional information created by the user such as journal entries, and other online content. Links to other social networking sites like myspace, or even links to other sites that interest the user are examples of signals that other users can pick up on to identity a particular user’s online identity.

Donath in her article on signals in social supernets wrote that users represent themselves with a profile, a list of links to other users, and comments from other users. OkCupid doesn’t have much linking between profiles. For example BJ and I have profiles but I can’t list him as a friend like I could in CouchSurfing. There is no way to also record any sort of interaction while in couch surfing you can list if you had coffee with a person, etc… It is possible to respond to his comments in a forum I think and to have an actual interaction, but it takes some digging for people to know this. I believe this is because users don’t want to have a trail of friendship on a “dating” website. I think it’s possible to put links to other users in your profile but it’s rarely done. Other users can also suggest an edit to your profile, but it doesn’t mean that they’re your friends.

Information in an OkCupid profile is “easily faked” as Doan puts it, but there are some repercussions if your expectation is to meet in real life. If a user’s intention is to find potential dating partners, then lying on a profile is one way to lessen your chances of getting a second date. Doan’s analysis of information as signals fits in nicely with OkCupid. All of the information in the profile is basically a signal in which others can judge an individual. Although the intention of the site is to post truthful information, this is not necessarily true. I’ve seen user’s post pictures of celebrities in their profile (unless famous Japanese models have their own OkCupid profile and lie about living in Hawaii…). Since there aren’t many links to other users, these individual signals in the profile are what others users primarily rely on to judge a user.

Informal Scenarios

Joe Shmo is a 20 year old, heterosexual college student at UH Manoa that joins OkCupid in hopes of meeting some “cute” girls to date. He picks warriorfan69 as his username, creates a password and fills in an email address. He checks his email account and receives a confirmation email link from OkCupid. He clicks on that link to access his profile. He fills the information section of his profile as accurately as he can for the most part. He decides to list himself as 2 inches taller than in real life and also list that he makes $40,000 a year even though he only makes $10,000 at his part time job. He uploads three pictures of himself to the site. He then decides to answer some of OkCupid’s match questions. After answering 100 of them, he decides that he is ready to find a match. He goes to the search menu and looks for a woman aged 18-21 with a photo that is located within 20 miles of him. He wants the results displayed by match% so the women who are most compatible with him (according to OkCupid’s algorithm) get displayed first. He clicks on this first profile, sweetgurl4u. He decides not to message her because he doesn’t care for her photos (ie. he doesn’t think she’s pretty enough ). He skims through her profile and admires her taste in music. He realizes that he forgot to but a few bands in his favorite music section and goes back to edit his profile. He then looks at the next profile according to match, destiny90. He thinks the girl is cute from her pictures and her tastes are similar to his. He decides to message her to say that he’s also a fan of warrior football and ask if she has attended any games this past year. He skims though a few other profiles but decides that none of them suit his interest. He logs off.

An OkCupid tests says that you're a mathematical thinker

Pyneth Leou is a 26 year old who joined OkCupid last month because her awesome boyfriend told her that OkCupid has fun tests that she can take if she’s ever bored. She logs in with her username and password. She clicks on the second tab tests, skims through them, and clicks on the 4 variable IQ test. She takes the test and finds out that she’s Mathematical. Being bored, she clicks on the explore tab of OkCupid which brings up a list of other options including journal, forum and FAQ. She clicks on journal and sees some recent journal entries of various users. She reads a few of the entries. She logs off.

How are online identities shaped and expressed through online interactions in the OkCupid communities?

A sample match question

There are several types of indirect interactions on OkCupid that influence the way online identities are shaped. One example is a user creating a match question. A user can create a match question which may be accepted into OkCupid’s question bank. A user who wishes to find people who match him or her will answer random match questions created by other users. In this way one user who creates a question won’t know every user who answers that question and that user’s responses. The users who answer the question won’t interact with the creator of the question. However, both the creator of the question and the people who answer the question help to make OkCupid more efficient in terms of matching up users for dating or friendship. This shows up in your profile which is part of your online identity.

A journal entry on OkCupid

Another way of establishing an online identity is to display information about yourself. A user is given many opportunities to express his or her own individuality by filling out profile information about a user’s interests, hobbies, background, etc… There’s also a feature of writing an online journal. This provides a periodic account of a user’s writing samples, thoughts, ideas, etc… Other users can read a user’s information and learn about that user. This may encourage or discourage other users from contacting that person.

Other profiles can affect how you form your profile

A user will also shape his or her profile based on how other people write their profiles. In order to make a successful profile (if your interest is to get dates) one needs to craft one’s profile. Reading the profile’s of other people can help encourage this, and there are some features of other people’s profiles that one might use to make one’s profile more interesting. Joe Shmo altered his profile when he realized that he forgot to list a few of his favorite bands. He listed the first 10 that came to mind but then after reading another user’s profile he remembered some of the other bands that he liked.

Interaction via forum on OkCupid


Users can also interact directly through the forums on OkCupid. A user can start a thread or comment on another thread. These threads are organized by subject and date. The amount of user posts are also recorded in a user’s profile. The number of posts are a rough measure of a user’s activity within the community. Although based on my observations most people don’t use the forum or post many messages, I can see how forum activity helps to establish identity. Like Answerbag, responding to posts of other users helps to build a sense of trust and community between you and those users.