Christian Rudder
Appearances
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Oh, yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yes, just all the way down the line.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Exactly, like kind of an important...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
extra point on that is like so if you ask women like part of signing up for okcupid and tinder all these things like kind of what is the age range that you're into also right so the app can kind of filter and show you stuff so if you ask women they give you the very sensible answer if you're 30 you're maybe up open to 28 year old guys to 35 year old guys whatever it is some range right and men actually do the same kind of thing they sort of they take their age and they subtract a few years and they add a few years they're like all right cool i'm good with this band
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Well, I really appreciate y'all inviting me on. I was like, I was telling Lindsay when she let me in. At first I was like, is this a scam? Am I going to get mugged if I show up to this thing? Wait, why? Because I was just like, no, not for, I didn't think it was real.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
So both men and women answer that question more or less the same way, like, what age are you into, if you ask them that. But then if you look at who they actually go out and message, like you were saying, like, for women, well, they actually know themselves better. They're more honest with themselves. They're more honest with the app. Like, you know, if you're 25, you message 25-year-olds.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
If you're a 30-year-old, you message 30-year-olds. But men, yeah, like we were just saying, like, it's all 20-year-olds, even for 50-year-old dudes. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I mean, I do think there's something to your point about There's like some enablement of guys going after 20-year-old girls or liking them. It's like fine if you're 40 and you're dating a 25-year-old. I mean, sort of. And I can see why that wouldn't be the case if you flipped the genders. And you can't know everything about love.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And I know we're not talking exactly about love here, but you can't know everything about that. And like the data and therefore like the algorithms that are sort of grinding it all up. Like, they just ultimately don't know you as well as you know yourself.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Just looking back on where the world is now and where it was in 2015 when I left OkCupid, like, we actually had a kind of, like, machine learning program to try to improve our algorithm and try to find people even more perfect matches that we actually ended up shutting down because we felt like in our tests, like...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
no matter how much work we put into improving the algorithm, like the ultimate arbiter was always the person who was going on the date or sending the message or whatever. And we stopped trying to guess what was going to make people into pebbles or to use your metaphor, like,
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Because people change so much and there's so many weird things about people like how they laugh or the way they carry themselves or like a look in their eye that you just can't get to through a computer, at least yet. And so, yeah, we just kind of, we always tried to be aware of what we couldn't know, I guess, if that makes sense.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And I know I'm kind of ranging from your initial question, but like I do think it's interesting what people go and do in these sort of bite-sized units of like just clicking on someone and yeah, guys click on 20-year-olds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're hotter, I guess. And women don't do that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I mean, if I were to start a new dating app like today, you would have to use some kind of AI. But again, I don't think I would try to make the perfect match, have ChatGPT figure out exactly the right person for me in the world. Because I just think that's like a losing game. Yeah. I mean, we've all been set up by friends that think, oh my God, Jenny's perfect for you. You got to meet her.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And you sit down and you're just like, ugh, or whatever. Or maybe she hates you. Who knows? I think the AI component would be better served where the app can have a conversation with you to get to know you better so that it can let you control more of your own experience rather than making the algorithm stronger. I guess it makes your voice in the algorithm stronger. Does that make sense?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
It's just, it has been a while since I've done like any media. And I was like, you know, it was just very extremely flattering.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
That's what I'd like to see happen. Because I think... Kind of getting back to what we were saying a second ago, with the Tinders and Bumbles of the world, the algorithm is all-powerful. It's just like, to use your potato chip example, if you think of Tinders like an infinite can of Pringles, you're just taking one off the top and you sit and just eat it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Right, exactly. And it just does all the work. It's the silo, right? But I think if you can make the algorithm... make you, your voice and your thoughts and what you really want more subtle and more powerful within the mix of how it's showing you people. I think that would be really cool. Almost like a life coach. Like if people could put up with that, I think it'd be pretty cool.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And what prompted that? I'm curious. I mean... And you almost have much, much, much, much, especially you, such a thick skin. Like, I just was just like, I just can't deal with Twitter and like all of this stuff, just like people talking at you and about, it just bothered me. So I was like, you know what? I'm good. Okay.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Tech and dating. I mean, I do doubt, probably like most people that have used these apps, whether it's healthy to have that infinite can or just know that if I don't like this person or choose not to talk to this person in front of me, well, there's always somebody else. And you can just go through.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
That, I definitely can admit, that might not be healthy psychologically over the 10 years of doing that or something, right? It'd be very hard to settle down with someone if... At least theoretically, there's always a possibility that there's someone better. I also doubt there's going to be a significant improvement in... an algorithm that's going to be better than people's personal tastes.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
As you guys all know, there's just style and all different kinds of things about a person that you just can't reduce and hopefully never can reduce to some radio buttons or whatever it is on a phone.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
The one thing I like and I'm proud of even still, I mean, 10 years of distance between me and working in the industry is like, I love that dating apps, even for all their flaws and as frustrated as people get with them now,
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
they're trying to create something in the real world, you know, like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, the goal of all of those things always, it's just to get you to use TikTok more, right? Or to eventually to make more money or whatever. Yeah. Like, yeah, keep you digital. Thank you. Twitter wants to keep your, or X wants to keep you there, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Arguing with someone if that's how it goes, but whatever. Um, Whereas Tinder, even the shallowest possible experience, the goal isn't, they don't want you, the people sitting in the office working on the app, they don't want you to sit there and just swipe infinitely. That doesn't really get them anywhere either.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
They want you to go out and find someone that you like, you know, and you go home with them or have a relationship with them or whatever it is. And I love that about it. Like, I think that's something that I'm proud of, that it's created confidence. you know, a lot of frustration and a lot of, like, heartbreak and a lot of, I'm sure, very douchey behavior out there in the world.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
But it's also created families and couples and all of these things. And, like, obviously, I'm not saying any of these things are perfect. They're frustrating. And people have always hated dating and being single. And people have always hated dating apps. They hated OKCupid at the time. We used to, like, the complaints would just, like, pile up, you know?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Just like they hate Tinder or they hate Bumble now, you know? It's like that's a common permanent thread, I think, of the thing. But... It's cool that it does create something actual, real in the world.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah. The peace for sure.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, for sure.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, it's hard to make, like, almost any decision you make feels like settling.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And I think that's, like, you know, yeah, they're all, like, Grindr, Bumble… Tinder, which is owned by Match, which also owns OkCupid and tons of other things. Yeah, they're all public companies. IEC, which at that time owned Match and Tinder before it was spun off into a public company, bought OkCupid in 2011. They were great partners. I really liked everyone there.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
But definitely the timbre changed overnight of, you know, how did you do yesterday? Yes. How did you do this week? What's the earnings, baby? Oh, yeah. But it comes down to the day, like, information's coming in real time about how much money you're making. So I do, yeah, I think for there to be a healthier dating app, I think it would have to be privately held. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And that guy, theoretical guy, would also probably be disgusted by a lib or whatever. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I mean, I think that's actually a really good insight into maybe why current... The current leaders are on the decline because they just don't really gather much of that information at all. Yeah, you can put it in your profile, I guess. But like, at least as far as I know, you can't search by politics, just for example. Hinge, I think you can, is one of the few.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And Hinge, I think by no coincidence, is kind of ascendant now. It's past Bumble to be the number two. Kind of out of really from nothing, like 2019, the app was tiny and it's just grown. And so I think leaning more into that Hinge-style model of learning more, Yeah, you would have to gather more information. Mm-hmm. ask people questions, have them slow down.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Like I remember when we were trying to compete with Tinder at OkCupid, like it was tough because we tried to ask all these complex things like, you know, how religious are you? It's like a pretty complicated question. And also there's some religious people that don't care if their partner is religious.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, exactly, right. And so neither of you, both of you are okay with the other way, right? And some people are very religious and need the other person to meet them there, right? And you just have to start gathering that information.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And then segmenting your matches, you know, or maybe you find someone who's MAGA and is okay with someone who isn't, you know, for example, you know, people are unpredictable in some ways.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Sure, sure, exactly. And that's very well said. But I think, I guess... That's where computers can kind of do a lot of work that a normal human being couldn't do, where it's like, you can gather all this information, your political affiliation, you can also gather how much that matters to you, how engaged you are politically. And then behind the scenes...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
the server or the algorithm can learn what actually makes a difference, you know, and then act on that. But unless you have that, you know, even in the kind of like primitive days of 2014 or whatever, we did tons of experiments and tests and we're always sort of honing our match algorithm until we decided we had it to where the best that we could get it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Oh, gosh. So we started OkCupid in 2003, which is obviously so old for the internet. And it actually had its origins, we all worked at SparkNotes, the study guide site before, and we had a little part of SparkNotes called SparkMatch.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
But you have to take in that information to make that even possible. And you might end up with unexpected predictors of relationship success or at least conversational success, which is all these apps can really manage or measure. But there are predictors, like you just said. How strongly you feel about politics does, it turns out, matter. But if the app doesn't know that question...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
then it can't use it. And so I think that's what you've lost in the sort of swiping model now that Hinge is bringing back a little of. And I think at some point, another app will figure out a way to make that sort of palatable to a busy person on a phone today to learn more about them and then figure out what is going to matter in a relationship that person is going to have.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, it makes complete sense, actually.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Okay, yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, it's like a worldview thing.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, that's what computers are perfect for.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
which was just like, cause we were like spark notes is for kids who aren't doing well in school or like high school, college, like what else can we do to keep them occupied on our website? And so it was just, you know, you look at, you fill out a profile, almost like a bio type of thing, you know, old school and you can just browse human beings instead of like content on the internet.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Sounds like you and your husband both know yourselves really well too, which is important. But I think just, again, working on our theoretical dating app here, what you could do is you ask people to do essentially that same ranking that you just described. Kindness, religion, whatever it is. People can order little tiles just for our mental model.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
But then, over the course of maybe continuing to use the app, you can ask... There's questions you can ask about family, for example, that will help us understand how important family actually is. How much time do you spend doing this or whatever? How often do you talk to your mom?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Exactly. Theoretically. You could ask these sort of components of that value, right? And kind of get... Insofar as you can approximate the observed, like the real truth behind whatever this person is saying. Because most people probably will say family or whatever because they think of themselves as a good person. And generally that's kind of how society works, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And then you can kind of have the sort of true value ranking underneath the hood. And then you'd also have a third measure. And now you'd know how well that person knows themselves too. You'd have what they say their values are. what their kind of inferred values are, and then how well those two things match. It would be an interesting way to understand somebody.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
attracted more matches and more people messaging for the most part it was like a gentle curve in a way and then when the picture blew up all of a sudden the attractive people got way more interest yeah they get like more leverage on the pixels so to speak I mean it's definitely affected it I think in a lot of ways focus on photos on dating apps for sure is the negative thing like we've said a couple times here there's so much more to a person than I don't know just their face like a headshot basically right
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
At the same time, we've discovered we actually tried to turn the pictures off of OkCupid for a day just to see what would happen. You turned the pictures off? Off, like totally off. This was like 2013 maybe, really as an experiment. Shut them all down, all the thumbnails, everything went away. And as you'd expect, the messaging environment was actually a lot healthier.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And that's like, In 1999, that was something that just didn't exist, right? And SparkNotes was super popular. It actually crashed because we didn't know what we were doing. And so we kind of like bookmarked that in our minds. And then when we left SparkNotes, we decided to relaunch OKCupid, or launch OKCupid, which is basically just like the same thing with a different name.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Definitely attractiveness wasn't a component because you couldn't tell what the person looked like that you were trying to talk to. At the same time, people hated it. And we got so much feedback that day. We knew we were going to turn them back on, but people were just freaking out. Even though we explained it wasn't broken, we were doing this on purpose.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And I just, people are visual and they kind of have, yeah, they have to have the photo. So it's like, you kind of got to meet them. You have to meet them. Like a dating app can only meet people where they are, right? Like we can't force people. We actually tried another adventure into this world. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
we tried to launch, this was, this was what we tried to launch a blind dating app, like where we would take a photo and we would scramble it digitally. Right. This is so stupid in retrospect, but, but like, you know, we thought that you could have a scrambled photo and you, people could browse and, you know, you could, you would learn a lot more about people and you could set it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
It was, it was very slightly pretender. So it was like a little bit more immediate. You could see this scrambled photo and somebody, and maybe even go see them that night, meet them that night. It was a total bomb. Like,
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
you had like what 10,000 people I think who tried it yeah we had a quarter million downloads and it was like 10,000 dates or something like that it just was terrible and yeah people just don't They're just not up for it, you know?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was like the lights coming on at last call or whatever, where everyone's like, oh, oh, oh.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Exactly. No, it was, you would see...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And it was just, you know, a place to message and find other people, which in 2003... you couldn't really do online. I used to try to find someone I knew in high school or something in 2002 or 2003 and just couldn't do it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Right, a clean mind. Yeah. I mean, that might work. Something that gets very hard is when the app tries to do something, tries to change people's behavior. And actually, we got a lot of criticism or commentary, I guess I'd say, about this in the wake of publishing the racial data that we were talking about at the very beginning.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And be like, well, why can't you guys do more to make, again, Asian men more attractive to white women or whatever it is, you know? And the fact is, there's very little you can do to like... move people because first of all, they've had whatever, however many years of their life or however many hours scrolling through Instagram, super hard to undo that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And also if you don't deliver to people what at least they think they want, they're just going to leave. It's not like you have to use a dating app or Tinder or whatever. You just do something else. And so, like, if you're showing some guy's been on Instagram hardcore and is looking for that look, and you're like, hey, man, check this out. This is better. However you want to frame that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
This is different. Which you may also find attractive. I think you'll really like her. Some people might be up for that kind of thing, but a lot of dudes are just going to be like, with all the girls in here are ugly, I'm out. You know what I mean? And, like, it's hard. It's very hard to... You kind of have to let the users drive what you give them, which can be bad.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Obviously, you're reinforcing some negative shit that way, right? But otherwise, you just end up with a situation where people are gone.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Oh, I think that's definitely true.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
But it's like almost in unpredictable ways. Like I think – I don't know any of the founders of say Twitter or Facebook. But I think if you had asked them in 2006 or whatever, is Facebook going to make people really angry and is it going to become the world's like greatest propaganda tool of all time? Mark Zuckerberg probably would have been like, what are you talking about? I don't want that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I just want to like have – he probably genuinely wanted friends to meet friends or whatever or make money, you know, and be powerful, which a lot of people are like that. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
apps definitely change the world so I definitely wouldn't say that they change behavior but there has to be some component of them that is delivering what what those people want yeah they like amplify the crap that you already bring to the table culturally we already are like it's you know don't go anywhere because we got more what now after this
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I definitely try to live more by intuition and just... Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I think just getting back to this like perfect love algorithm or whatever, like I just, I genuinely think that's impossible to create a computer program that's going to predict with any real defensible set of certainty, like...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Who person A is, which of all the person Bs out there, who A is going to love, you know? I still don't think it's possible. And I think there's just a lot more to life. I mean, hopefully for, you know, maybe for not that much longer, but like than like a phone or whatever, you know, and the internet for sure. And so I just, I really try to...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Honestly, I am one of those tech people who try to stay away from all of that stuff. I like the ability of data to tell stories. I was actually just working with my child on an assignment about the Beatles evolution as songwriters. And we have Hard Day's Night from 64, Sgt. Pepper 67, Abbey Road 69. And you can actually go through and see in the data of the songs how...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
how they've grown, how they grew as songwriters and just looking at the complexity of the instrumentation and the chord changes and you can actually quantify. It was like a little mini dataclism. It was fun to do. So I do enjoy that stuff.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
But back to one of your points, like I think you can be overly certain about a lot of things if you're just looking at numbers because numbers aren't very subtle, right? They're just sort of facts that can be easily compared and you can decide which one is bigger or better or whatever it is.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
But so little in life can actually be quantified down to a number, like outside of the world of sports, right? You know, you can try and you can pretend that like a 9.3 really captures how attractive someone is. But we all know that's not really true, right? Like two 9.3s, there's going to be a different opinion from every person that sees these two theoretically identical people, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
So I just, yeah, I think that's, I also try to stay away from that, from data for that sense of the false sense of certainty about things. Okay.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like chat. Like IRC. Exactly. AOL Messenger. Exactly.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
You know, and I guess there was like that period, 2009, 2010, where data seemed revelatory. And this is pre-Cambridge Analytica and the whole kind of engineering of the first Trump candidacy and the big news and all of that stuff. And it was like, it sounds corny, it was like a hopeful period, I guess, for the internet. You know, there was like Airbnb. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Uber, you mean I can just get a car and I don't have to like wait 20 minutes? You know what I mean? Like that whole vibe, especially in New York, it's just different. Yeah. So we had all this data. We thought it was really interesting about what people thought was attractive, about how different races would interact on our website or our app. And we kind of didn't have anything to lose either.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
We were just like, all right, let's just do this. Facebook is a billion-dollar, whatever, trillion-dollar company maybe now. They obviously have a lot to lose, and they're heavily scrutinized. Yeah. In 2010, we were sort of under the radar. Online dating wasn't even remotely as cool as it is now. And obviously, it's not even that cool. So it was like mostly weird, even in 2010, you know.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And so we figured it would just be, it would be interesting. It was like the perfect like cocktail party conversation, you know. And yeah, I guess it was just like...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
it was like a view into people that was just only coming into existence, you know, and the internet obviously had been around for a while, but like there weren't websites that did the kinds of things that we were doing until 2010 or whatever. And so, um, you couldn't have learned these things in 1999, uh, even though the internet existed then.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And like, we just thought it was cool and we could find out what people thought was hot and talk about it and maybe make fun of it a Yeah, I don't know. It's weird, though, to look back because it's totally the door completely closed. Yeah. Basically right after Dataclism came out. And that was one blind spot in the book where I was thinking about this on the way over here.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
The entire tone of the book is like how interesting data is, how great it is, how it could lead to these different understandings of couples, of people, of systems, whatever. But, you know, come 2015, 2016, I was completely ignorant of the fact that data could be used It always had a marketing component for Facebook or whatever.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
They use their data to sell ads to people, but I never thought it could be used to sell ideas or sell a worldview en masse to people as it was in 2014, 15, 16 by Cambridge Analytica and Steve Bannon and... It still to this day is going on. Yeah, now it's full on. Right, exactly.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And so it just never occurred to me that you could have these macro political changes, for example, through data and through these algorithms that could be manipulated in that way. So in some ways, maybe it's good that these companies are locking their stuff up because then nobody else can go... I don't know if I would want Facebook to publish all of their data because then people could go...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Oh, that's interesting. Manipulate more people. That's interesting.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, which you can then go spin or whatever.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
It does. In a way. And it helps you be real with yourself too, right? Which is like always good.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
No, it's on her foot. This is insane.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I was going to say, do you find that useful? That just seems anxiety-inducing.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Why is it not 100?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
That's a great question. And that's something I think most people don't really, they don't understand how, how the, the backend of these things works. Cause like also we have to think about the person that we're like their experience too, right? Like the person that we're showing you. Yeah, exactly. So,
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
One of the very first things we learned about having a dating site is that there's this thing we call the focus problem. So guys just want to see the hottest women, right? And so if you just go by what the guys are sort of telling you they want, they want to see the highest rated women and just a giant stack or grid or whatever it is.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
But if you go and do that and you kind of try to meet their need without any other consideration... Well, what happens? Those women get tons of messages from tons of randos. Their inbox explodes. It feels gross. And they leave. And then now you're left with, if you just showed all the 10s, now you're left with 9s and 8s and so forth. And you end up in this death spiral.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Because also the guys don't get any messages back. Hmm. So you have to kind of look at it as a pair of people always, not just, what are we doing for Trevor today? It's like, what are we doing for Trevor and this person and Trevor and this person?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, you have to think of it like that because otherwise, you know, we could show you the N hottest women in the database, but... that's not going to be good for you ultimately. And it's definitely not going to be good for them if we do it for everybody, right? And I think most apps do this at this point too. We would do sort of like a hotness sort of color.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
So if you're an eight or whatever, like this picture, just on the picture, right? This would be one of the We would show you nines, eights, and sevens, with maybe a few tens and maybe some fives and whatever, just to really reduce people.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
That way, they're seeing someone like themselves, you're seeing people like yourself, and that's the optimal sort of band for there actually being a productive conversation between the two of you. And then we would also throw in information, like the kind of classic matching stuff of how important is religion to you or how important is politics or whatever, those kinds of things.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
That would be maybe... A third would be the questions about the two of you. A third would be this attractiveness matching. And then we would throw in a healthy dose of just like randomness. You can't just give people what they want because your app will explode. You'll end up with this focus problem thing where you're just showing everybody. You know, women like seeing hot people too.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And you'd have the same problem sort of in reverse. So you've got to be careful and manage your stack of profiles if you're doing it that way.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
That just introduces the logistical problem of trying to figure out who you're messaging, right? Okay.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I know. I'm always intrigued by that. I think it's a mistake, yeah. I guess it's like you're trying to flex that you have friends, which is kind of like the reverse of what you're really trying to do. You know, I think in general, my advice would be something that we've talked about already. And it's just like, you really are, you just need that one vote.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
You're running for office and you just need one vote. So... Being yourself, it's super corny, but it's also true. Kind of accepting the fact that maybe you're going to get a lot of no's out there and being okay with that. Because I think if you start engineering your profile to increase the number of likes or whatever yeses that you get, it is going to be more noise.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Because you're going to have, you are ultimately only going to find one person, right? Okay. What does it avail you to have 100 people messaging you at the time? 99, that's just 99 more people eventually you're going to have to kind of like get to know with, right? And so I would just say really bring out the things that make you unique. I mean, this is all like grandmother stuff.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I mean, like, you know. Yeah, but grandmothers were right. Yeah, sure.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
What is that wisdom of the ages that I think is a real thing? Even my wife's parents are from an arranged marriage. And they're super happy, as are all of their siblings. And I think there is something to that shared worldview. And having that system was designed to bring together people of a common...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
sociological context right and they knew that that was what really matters right and I think they're right and anyway to get back to your question like I think doing the things that make you unique foreground those things don't try to like bury the lead so to speak and don't leave it for that second or third message
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I think be willing to take more risks, I'd say, especially for people who tend to get a lot of messages. If you think someone's kind of cute, but maybe they're not normally your type, go for it more. Because I think ultimately that stuff is so unpredictable, especially people's digital presentations of themselves.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
But the opposite is true too, right? I'm sure there's a lot of people that are presented way more lamely than they would be in real life.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah. So I guess anyway, doing it to a few things, I think... Put as much of yourself out there as you're comfortable doing, like your authentic self. Take more risks with the people that you say yes to, or at least engage with. And be willing to accept that the process generally sucks. It's not necessarily the app's fault. It's just how being single and trying to date is, right? And that it...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Part of it is going to be lame or boring or terrible or awkward or worse maybe. And it's just how it goes. And you can't kind of give up. And again, I think dating apps are very, very far from perfect. And there's tons of very great ways to meet people that you're really going to – I didn't meet my wife on a dating app.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
So I'm not trying to shill for these things, but I think if you're going to be in that game, so to speak. Which people are, whether we like it or not. It's just like being in the world of, it's like having a phone now. You can't not have a phone. You can't, yeah. And so I guess if you're going to be in that game, try to de-gamify it as much as you can. Don't sit and try to play numbers.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I know a lot of guys will just be like, well, I swipe right on everybody because nobody writes me back. So I'm just kind of like, you know, spray and pray type of deal. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
It should. I doubt it does because I think... I just don't think the algorithm behind a Tinder or a Bumble, they put that kind of work into it to make that happen. And that's no slight against those companies. I think they just had different priorities.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I think in that sort of hack developed after I left OkCupid and after OkCupid was a thing of just basically just like power swiping right on everybody and just seeing what happens. But definitely it should. I mean, kind of to our point earlier where you were saying like, if you have...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
spent an hour on the app and you liked one person that should be very powerful I think it should yeah I agree as opposed to liking a thousand or whatever but I doubt that actually gets in there but it should that's another good tweak for a dating app we've given you like we've like workshopped his next business if you can make it better for everyone make it better for everyone Christian thank you so much thank you for joining us thank you for not you know thinking it was a scam thank you you see you put yourself out there you thought it was a risk and you took a chance
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Okay, that's it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, for sure.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, you had to put in some time.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Right, it's an interesting thing to watch happen because it's definitely the case that In kind of OkCupid's heyday. And just for, I guess, background, you filled out a profile, you write about your favorite books, you write about, I don't know, what do you want out of life? Just, I don't know, whatever, how you describe yourself, what you're looking for. And then there's photos.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And then there were also match questions where it could be things like, do you want to have kids or... how do you feel about abortion rights? And including also crazy things like what kind of humor you might like or whatever. And everything's sort of compacted down to just the photo with Tinder and Bumble. And I think the online dating industry is kind of hurting. And I think part of it is that
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
that you've lost so much. Yeah, it's compressed. Yeah, it made it like this quick hit, you know, and people can go through and look through tons of hot people and have these like pinging and all of this stuff. But it's delivering probably worse matches or something now. Mm-hmm. So it's an interesting topic of conversation with my friends, you know, who helped me start OkCupid.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
If the time is right to try to do something else and kind of read like telescope it all back out again, where you actually ask people to do more and say more about themselves and just like a cool selfie or whatever.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I mean, first of all, online dating is way more popular than it ever was. Yeah. No, but I'm saying actually. I know, I just don't want to sound like a hater. No, no, no.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Hateration is a great word. Don't, don't, don't. That's the best new verb I've heard in a long time. You know, I would give it like a C minus, I guess. I think with points for being more popular, which is, there is something inherently good about that. Like more people are using it. It meets more people's needs to some degree, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
But I feel like there's a lot of people that are very dissatisfied. And if you go look at like the monthly active user numbers, like Tinder was at I think 13 million in 2019. And this is like eight now, which is like a massive drop off, you know, that's like kind of Facebook levels of sort of becoming a dinosaur. And that's like, it's just interesting.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
It's a weird thing because there's definitely just as many single people as there ever were. And it's not like there's a plan B. The other apps are not really absorbing those missing, say 5 million people. Like the industry is just shrinking overall. Whereas you have, if you look at say Facebook and it's declined, then you had Instagram to sort of replace it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
You have TikTok and like social media is as strong as ever.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, they just change where they're going. But here people are, when they change what they're doing, they're just like, I'm out. I give up. Yeah, or whatever. I'm just going to meet people at work or like in real life, which is, you know, or through TikTok.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Right.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Or how they want to think that they think. Exactly.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah. And that's very nice to hear because, you know, like publishing that stuff, it feels dicey to be talking about race in a public way. A white dude. It's not like I have any firsthand experience of any of this stuff. And we just decided to put it out there in the world. And we did get feedback from people that were like very grateful that we were just helping maybe put an...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Not a name, but maybe a number to their experience of like, you know, am I... Whatever, my friends are having a different kind of experience than I am on your app. And this helps me understand why. Because it's nothing with me.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
It's like this... It's the people who come to the app that bring all of their prejudices or just like this kind of sociological baking that goes on for your entire life about what's attractive and what you should want. And... Yeah, those were my favorite things to work on, for sure. Like looking at how different racial groups message each other, how they rate each other.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
So like swipe left, swipe right. What's interesting is it's like that phenomenon, for example, of... black women getting fewer messages than, say, Asian or white women. It's much less a thing outside the United States when you look at the data from other places like the UK.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Yeah, exactly.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
And just for your readers' context, or listeners' context, I think it's probably like... 50%, I think, or 60% in the US, the ratio would be of like contacts, I'd say, from black women to white women.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
I mean, obviously I have skin in that game, so to speak. It's like I did so much work with it myself. But I do think so because there's no real incentive to lie to the app itself. You want to find somebody that you're actually going to be attracted to. So there's no pose. Like on Twitter or whatever, you can say these things. You can kind of take these very strident stances.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
You can make your opinions out to be something maybe a little different than what they really are in practice. Whereas on a dating app, it doesn't really do you any good to... I don't know, just for example, pretend that you're really into Asian men if you're not. Because what happens when you do that?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]
Well, now you're on a date with a guy that you're not maybe that into and it makes the app work less well for you. Right. So we always felt very good about our data integrity just compared to the other things that people go and do on the internet where everyone's a dog or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I do think dating apps provide an incredible window into people's preferences.