There was a post on HN once by a former OkCupid person who, as I read it took a more nuanced view of: the market moved to cellphones and that kind of long form entry (or reading) isn't viable on a few-inch screen with point and grunt input.

Beyond and insider sharing the view, I find it compelling because it didn't require anyone to have been an idiot. I've certainly seen other effects that look like the widespread usage of cellphones dumbing down the internet in disappointing ways. ... and it explains why someone doesn't just recreate the magic that OkCupid had: they can't. For OkCupid to exist the public needs widespread access to a communications tool suitable for sending things more nuanced than dick pics.

I think what also people miss - is that by OkCupid requiring long form essays. the demographic would tend to be educated college folks - quirky gals studying humanities, chemistry etc.

so you literally have a crowd of people who like reading, and are critical thinkers etc & most likely to be high earners too.

but like every thing - the power of the lowest common denominator rules ie endless swiping on who you think is hot.

this doesn't end with apps -- with forums gone -- you can hardly find places online where civilized discourse happens.

now everything is just for the 'gram. or to go viral on tiktok.

Competition is supposed to give us choice. Instead, when one competitor discovers a cheap trick, the rest have to follow suit to stay alive, or at least believe they do. Hence there are a half dozen dating apps that all offer the same fucking swipe right garbage. OKCupid was pretty good, before the ubiquity of smartphones.

In case of dating apps, the issue is that match.com owns all of them.

The cheap trick is to buy your competitors

smartphones aren't the problem, it's that the same company owns all of them and has an incentive to milk their customers.

match.com doesn't own the local bar, and that's why it's probably a better way to get laid

OkCupid was great in the early 2010s when you used it mainly on a website and before it was bought and enshittified by the Match group just like all other dating sites.

It seems like it would be easy to recreate that magic -- it's just a website after all -- but getting the requisite network effects would be pretty much impossible. And if by some miracle you did succeed, Match group would just buy it and ruin it.

> sad examples of MBAs destroying an app

you should go get an MBA, it's the closest thing you'll ever find to surrounding yourself with more interesting OKCupid-from-back-in-the-day characters than you can possibly date through in 2 years!

Meaning, if you don't think MBAs understand OKCupid, they do. But they also understand match.com