Name: Dataclysm
ISBN: 9780385347396

Dataclysm

An irreverent, provocative, and visually fascinating look at what our online lives reveal about who we really are--and how this deluge of data will transform the science of human behavior. Big Data is used to spy on us, hire and fire us, and sell us things we don't need. In Dataclysm, Christian Rudder puts this flood of information to an entirely different use: understanding human nature. Drawing on terabytes of data from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, OkCupid, and many other sites, Rudder examines the terrain of human experience. He charts the rise and fall of America's most reviled word through Google Search, examines the new dynamics of collaborative rage on Twitter, and traces human migration over time, showing how groups of people move from certain small towns to the same big cities across the globe. And he grapples with the challenge of maintaining privacy in a world where these explorations are possible. Audacious, entertaining, and illuminating, Dataclysm is a portrait of our essential selves--and a first look at a revolution in the making.

What Hacker News says

ccakesApr 2025

If you’ve never stumbled across the older OkCupid blog posts or Christian Rudder’s book (Dataclysm[1]) then I can’t recommend them enough. Super interesting content delivered by a smart and engaging writer

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21480734-dataclysm

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subjectsigmaOct 2023

Fine, I will spell it out for you.

> My take is that 99% of the men on there are immature man children whose life is a mess.

This is a completely ridiculous take. You sound like an asshole saying this. Have you met 99% of men using dating apps?

> was able to date a different attractive women every night if I wanted to

Statistically you are in the 90th percentile of attractiveness for men or you are lying. Either way your experience is highly atypical.

> If you want a good partner you have to be one. An app can’t do it for you.

This is a truism that doesn’t address or refute the many stated problems with dating apps.

> the quality of my dating experience depends entirely on me.

This is also a truism and completely moronic. I guess non-white people and disabled people, etc. who have a statistically more difficult time finding a partner on dating apps should just stop being so unattractive!

> Women actually have a worse time on these apps then men

We already discussed but this is irrelevant as to whether the experience is good for men.

> because despite lots of matches the guys all have serious issues they aren’t willing to admit or work on

What do you define as “lots of matches”? Because statistically the lower 50th percentile of men get like one or two matches a week, who are often below their standards of attractiveness. They surely aren’t dating “attractive women every night”.

TL;DR go read Dataclysm by Christian Rudder as well as many other studies and criticisms of dating apps because you are delusional about how dating apps work

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MonkeyMalarkyOct 2022

If you liked this article I recommend the book Dataclysm by the same author.

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nelsondevOct 2022

Christian Rudder, the author of this article and many other great posts on the OKCupid blog, wrote a book with a lot of the same insights repackaged.

https://www.amazon.com/Dataclysm-Christian-Rudder-audiobook/...

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filolegDec 2021

Good news is that one of the OKCupid cofounders (the one who wrote those original data science blog posts) ended up writing a great book called Dataclysm[0] that expands on top of that earlier research + tons of completely unrelated and interesting research and analysis. It is really well written, the writer definitely has his way with words, and his analysis is very careful and reasonable. I heavily recommend.

Back to the original point I was trying to make, in the chapter of the book on that topic (as opposed to his earlier data science blog posts), he uses not only OKCupid data, but Tinder and other dating apps as well. I remember there were a few small outliers, but in general that trend from the original data science blog posts still stands. Oh, and he also explicitly compares his old analysis vs. his present one. Definitely an interesting topic, and the book, luckily, applies similar rigor to a bunch of other topics completely unrelated to dating dynamics.

0. https://www.amazon.com/Dataclysm-Identity-What-Online-Offlin...

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nonameiguessAug 2021

I haven't been on OkCupid in a long time. I think they first started publishing these data mining studies in maybe 2006? A lot of the old blog posts were purged after the Match purchase. I'm sure someone saved them off or they might still be on the wayback archive, but I don't even remember what the url for the blog was at this point and I doubt it's still even public. Your best bet at this point is probably just to read Dataclysm, the book Rudder ended up writing about all of his findings.

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