Justin S.

First a quick history for the youngsters: OKCupid has been around for years and emerged from another site called SparkMatch. In 2011, the large media conglomerate IAC bought OKCupid and it completely went downhill. Here's why you shouldn't support it.

SparkMatch was a bit wild and lax on enforcement of rules, but it was fun. It had journals, quizzes, blogs, an IM, and event invitations--it was a community where people hung out for hours, not just a meat market. All these features went away after the buyout and there was an expose showing that the new owners mine user data. The "compatibility" questions are still there, but don't be fooled: they're basically a long-term psychology experiment used for marketing. That IAC company? They own more than 150 brands and it's written in the site rules that OKCupid can share whatever data it wants with the rest of its umbrella. That's right: if you answer questions about sex, drugs, or rock and roll, hundreds of brands might have that information.

It gets worse. To be fair, let's ignore the stuff beyond OKCupid's control. After all, every dating site has scammers, spammers, bots and trolls. But the admins are now your worst enemies. Here's a choice quote from their TOS: "[We] reserve the right to determine... what constitutes harassment or mischief... and may partially or completely deny service to any infringing party." Just legal jargon to protect themselves, right? Wrong. If you Google "OKCupid complaints," you'll find hundreds of stories of people getting banned for no reason whatsoever. Many of them were new to the site or had never said anything remotely offensive to anybody. They lost their profile content and all their conversations: several of these folks were invalids or had no realistic chance of finding romance offline. In many cases they clicked a brand new profile and it disappeared from the site just a few seconds later. Suspicious, isn't it?

The only thing worse than this new era of draconian enforcement is the methods behind it. First your messages will get throttled. You won't even know you did anything wrong; you'll just notice you aren't getting mail after a while. Then if you log out (or don't, and the admins force a logout) you'll see a message saying "Technical problems--try again later." That's right: they'll lie to you just because they can, getting you to waste more time on something that has no expected resolution. This is truly the definition of heartless. If you catch on and email them, or figure out their blacklist method (hint: browser fingerprinting) they'll delete your account altogether and say you were harassing people instead of talking to you like a human being. And--here's the question of the day. Let's say that somehow you are the world's biggest jerk, and your online arguments aren't just simple misunderstandings. Since when is that grounds for account deletion? Isn't that why there's a Block button, so users can resolve their own disagreements? When people argue in real life, they don't get thrown in jail for it.

This happens in such alarmingly large numbers that there are many theories as to why: the site admins only want users who answer questions so they can mine their data, or that they're booting certain demographics to encourage some weird diverse liberal haven. Long story short, it's heartless and it's unfair. Paid users have even been terminated this way, having to argue back and forth just to recoup their membership costs. The icing on the cake is that IAC owns most every free dating venue by now, including Plenty of Fish and Tinder. The difference between those and OKCupid? Honest communication and fair treatment of users, not deceptive or sadistic admins who treat members like something on the bottom of their shoes. Don't let the funky, slangy welcome messages fool you if you're new to the site. OKCupid is a shell of what it was years ago. It's not "laid back" and its moderators will kick you to the curb, without justifiable cause. If you must date for free, do it somewhere else. Anywhere else.