The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder [VIDEO]

Summary

Podcast Summary: What Now? with Trevor Noah – "The Perfect Algorithm for Finding Love? with Christian Rudder"

Release Date: May 22, 2025

In this enlightening episode of "What Now? with Trevor Noah," produced by Spotify Studios, Trevor Noah engages in a deep and thought-provoking conversation with Christian Rudder, co-founder of the groundbreaking online dating platform, OkCupid. Joined by moderator Christiana, the discussion navigates the evolution of online dating, the intricate role of data and algorithms in matchmaking, and the broader societal implications of technology on human relationships.

---

1. The Birth of OkCupid and the Early Internet Era

[03:36 – 06:38]

Christian Rudder kicks off the conversation by tracing the origins of OkCupid, which debuted in 2003. Initially a part of SparkNotes as "Spark Match," OkCupid emerged as one of the first platforms to allow users to create detailed profiles, emphasizing written bios and comprehensive match questions. This approach was revolutionary compared to the simplistic chat rooms and basic interactions of the early 2000s.
Notable Quote:
Christian Rudder: “We started OkCupid in 2003 with the vision of creating a space where people could message and find meaningful connections, something that wasn’t really possible online at the time.”

---

2. Data-Driven Insights into Dating Preferences

[15:08 – 17:35]

Christian delves into the invaluable data collected by OkCupid, revealing significant insights into user behavior, particularly concerning racial and age preferences. One of the standout findings was that "black women and Asian men were among the least matched groups," highlighting underlying societal biases that permeate online dating. This data not only provided clarity for users but also sparked broader societal discussions about race and attraction.
Notable Quote:
Christian Rudder: “Data shows that on a dating app, if you're a black woman, you might be getting fewer messages than your white counterparts.”

---

3. The Swiping Phenomenon and Its Impact on Relationships

[10:53 – 18:39]

The conversation shifts to the rise of swiping-based apps like Tinder and Bumble, which prioritize quick visual judgments over meaningful profile engagement. Christian criticizes this model, suggesting it leads to superficial interactions and poorer match quality. He argues that this efficiency-driven approach to love undermines the complex, nuanced nature of human relationships.
Notable Quote:
Christian Rudder: “It’s transforming love into an efficiency problem, but love isn't efficient.”

---

4. Experiments with Photo Minimization on Dating Apps

[43:29 – 46:16]

Christian recounts OkCupid’s bold experiments to reduce the emphasis on photographs. In one instance, they removed profile pictures for a day, resulting in healthier messaging interactions devoid of superficial attractiveness judgments. However, user backlash was swift, underscoring the innate human tendency to rely on visual cues in dating. Another experiment involved scrambling photos in a blind dating format, which failed to gain traction as users were uncomfortable with the lack of visual information.
Notable Quote:
Christian Rudder: “People are visual, and they kind of have to have the photo. So you kind of got to meet them.”

---

5. The Limitations and Potential of Algorithmic Matchmaking

[24:37 – 25:56]

Discussing advancements in AI and machine learning, Christian expresses skepticism about fully algorithmic matchmaking. He emphasizes that while algorithms can process vast amounts of data, they cannot capture the nuanced human emotions and spontaneous chemistry essential for lasting relationships. Christian asserts that “creating an algorithm that can predict who person A will love among person Bs with certainty is impossible,” highlighting the limitations of data-driven approaches in capturing the essence of human connections.

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6. The Ethical Quandaries of Data Usage in Tech

[54:34 – 59:51]

The dialogue shifts to the ethical implications of data usage, drawing parallels to the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal. Christian warns about the potential for data manipulation and privacy invasions, underscoring the delicate balance between leveraging data for better matchmaking and safeguarding user trust and integrity.
Notable Quote:
Christian Rudder: “Data can be a double-edged sword, offering insights but also enabling exploitation.”

---

7. Future Directions: Enhancing Dating Apps for Authentic Connections

[62:04 – 70:56]

Christian offers visionary ideas for the future of dating apps, advocating for platforms that prioritize authentic self-expression over superficial metrics. He envisions algorithms that facilitate deeper understanding by focusing on shared values and personal growth rather than mere physical attractiveness. Additionally, he stresses the importance of user control, suggesting that empowering users to guide the matching process can lead to more meaningful and lasting connections.
Notable Quote:
Christian Rudder: “If you can make the algorithm make your voice in the algorithm stronger, that's what I'd like to see happen.”

---

8. Practical Advice for Dating App Users

[65:40 – 70:56]

Towards the end of the episode, Christian shares actionable tips for maximizing the dating app experience:

• Be Authentic: Present your true self rather than an exaggerated or curated version. Highlight unique aspects that make you stand out.

• Avoid Group Photos: Single photos are preferable to avoid confusion about who you are and to make reaching out easier.

• Engage Meaningfully: Instead of swiping indiscriminately, focus on engaging with profiles that genuinely interest you.

• Manage Expectations: Understand that not every interaction will lead to a connection and handle rejections gracefully.

Notable Quote:
Christian Rudder: “Bring out the things that make you unique... be willing to take more risks, especially for people who are not normally your type.”

---

Concluding Thoughts

[71:03 – 71:49]

As the episode draws to a close, Trevor thanks Christian for his invaluable insights into the mechanics and psychology of online dating. The conversation underscores the ongoing struggle to balance technological advancements with the inherently unpredictable nature of human relationships, leaving listeners with a deeper understanding of the complexities involved in finding love in the digital age.

Notable Quote:
Christian Rudder: “Dating apps are very, very far from perfect. But if you're going to be in that game, try to de-gamify it as much as you can.”

---

This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of online dating's evolution, the pivotal role of data in shaping our romantic lives, and the potential pathways for creating more authentic and meaningful connections through technology. Whether you're a frequent user of dating apps or simply curious about their impact on society, Christian Rudder's insights provide a valuable perspective on navigating love in the digital era.

Transcript

[Trevor Noah]

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[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you think that like 40 something year old men are more attractive than 20 something year old men?

[Christiana]

I was going to say something. I don't want to say what I'm going to say.

[Trevor Noah]

Not say what you're going to say.

[Christiana]

How tall is he when he stands on his wallet?

[Trevor Noah]

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[Christiana]

I was saying to Trevor before you got here that, like, the OkCupid marriage success rate is, like, higher than the Tinder.

[Trevor Noah]

You must say it when we're recording.

[Christiana]

We are recording.

[Trevor Noah]

We're rolling.

[Christian Rudder]

No, we're waiting for this thing.

[Christiana]

Oh, no. Thought we were rolling.

[Trevor Noah]

We are saying this.

[Christiana]

Okay, so we are.

[Christian Rudder]

Well, I really appreciate y' all inviting me on. It was like I was telling Lindsay when she let me on at first, I was like, is this a scam? Am I going to get mugged if I show up to this thing?

[Trevor Noah]

Like, wait, why would I?

[Christian Rudder]

Because I was just like, no, not for. I didn't think it was real.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, help me understand why you said. Because in my head, I go, christiana, this is. Oh, this is the other thing that you said right before you walked in, Christian, was. We were going to. You are probably not credited for a shit ton of the work that has given us insight into things that we previously didn't have insight into.

[Christian Rudder]

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.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, well.

[Christiana]

Which we noticed. Cause we're like, he's been quiet for the last 10 years.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah. I mean, just, like, try to lay very low.

[Christiana]

And what prompted that? I'm curious.

[Christian Rudder]

I mean, y' all must 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 all of the stuff. Just, like, people talking at you and about it just bothered me. So I was just like, you know what? I'm good.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, well, you know what? We should jump into that. But I just want to set the scene a little bit for people who aren't familiar with you. I think there are a bunch of people who won't be familiar with you.

[Christian Rudder]

Of course. Yeah, for sure.

[Trevor Noah]

But then there are a ton of people who should be not just familiar with you, but almost grateful to you.

[Christiana]

Super grateful.

[Trevor Noah]

Because they are probably in a relationship or they are married, or they could even be the product of the work that you've created. Do you know what I mean? So just so I don't butcher it, like, you know, you're one of the people who basically started OkCupid.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah. For sure.

[Trevor Noah]

So help me break this down like you, because we live in such an app age now.

[Christian Rudder]

Of course.

[Trevor Noah]

Take us, take us back a little bit. What was OkCupid when you started it? And like, what was this world?

[Christian Rudder]

Oh, gosh. So we started OkCupid in 2003 and it had its. Which is obviously like so old for the Internet. And it actually had its original origins. We all worked at SparkNotes, the study guide site before, and we had a little part of SparkNotes called Spark Match, which was just like. Because we were like, SparkNotes 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. 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. And it was just a place to message and find other people, which in 2003 you couldn't really do online. I used to try to, like, find someone I knew in high school or something in 2002 or three and just couldn't do it.

[Trevor Noah]

I didn't. I didn't dare do that because when I was using the Internet around that time, first of all, we had dial up.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, sure.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, the whole, like, like that whole thing. Yeah, yeah. Like your computer was fighting everything to get into this place called Internet.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So I didn't search for anyone. I would go to one web page if I was lucky and just stay there. And then the closest I came to it was like, chats. Yeah, you know, just like chat.

[Christian Rudder]

Like irc. Exactly.

[Christiana]

AOL Messenger.

[Christian Rudder]

Exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. We didn't really have. I think we had irc. Like, it was the lightest chat clients that you could imagine because the computers were so. They were so basic.

[Christian Rudder]

Of course.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, they're so basic. But that's. That's part of the reason I wanted to talk to you specifically and I wanted to have you on is because, you know, we're in 2025. We are living in a world where everyone feels like they're Inundated by everything. And most of it seems to be digital.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, so our politics, our matchmaking, our work, finding our working, you know, if it's not from the office, our connecting, our talking to our parents, kids, our everything is in this world. And I thought, who better to have this conversation with than somebody who was sort of like, at the genesis of it all and in many ways, one of, like, the forefathers of the thing that we're now in, you know, like, I always wish you could actually go and get, like, Benjamin Franklin and all of those people.

[Christian Rudder]

No.

[Trevor Noah]

Just to actually yell at them. Yes. But you know why? You know why? Because everyone has ideas of what they would want or what they would say. Well, the founding fathers never intended the founding father, if you look at their writing. But it would be so great to sit with them and go, hey, did you intend this?

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Like, okay, look at the world now and tell me what you intend. And in a way, I feel like you're one of the founding fathers of the way the Internet has connected people, you know, so maybe we start with this because, Christiana, you were saying something interesting. Just before Christian got here, you were talking about OkCupid and the matches in particular.

[Christiana]

Oh, I was saying that. Now, looking at it compared to maybe, like, the tinders and the bumbles and on the grinders and, you know, the swiping, like, those type of things, OkCupid kind of had, like, this analog feature in this digital world because you had to write about yourself.

[Christian Rudder]

You had to write about yourself, what.

[Christiana]

Your music you were into, your interest, what's your favorite books. I mean, do people even read books now? You go to ChatGPT, you're like, no, but it's just like, you know, it was. You had to be really intentional and thoughtful and creative, and it showed so much about yourself by creating that profile. And I think a lot about my space, like MySpace and stuff like that. And then. Then somebody would have to come and read about you. It wasn't like, you know, it's different when you go on tv. Yeah.

[Christian Rudder]

You had to put in some time.

[Christiana]

It's like retweets and thoughts. But someone would have to sit down and really, pictures were a thing, but you'd have to read about this person and then make your decision.

[Christian Rudder]

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. And then there were also match questions where it could be things like, do you want to have kids? Or, you know, how do you feel about abortion rights? Or. And including also crazy things like what kind of humor you might like or whatever. And everything sort of like compacted down to just the photo with Tinder and Bumble. And I think, you know, the online dating industry is kind of hurting, and I think part of it is that. That you've lost so much.

[Christiana]

It's compressed.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah. It made it like this quick hit and people can go through and look through tons of hot people and have these pinging and all of this stuff, but it's delivering probably worse matches or something now. So it's an interesting topic of conversation with my friends who helped me start OkCupid. If the time is right to try to do something else and kind of telescope it all back out again, where you actually ask people to do more and say more about themselves than just a cool selfie or whatever.

[Trevor Noah]

If you were giving. Giving Dating Today a grade, like online dating today, where would you grade it? What do you think we're at right now?

[Christian Rudder]

I mean, first of all, online dating is way more popular than it ever was when.

[Trevor Noah]

No, but I'm saying.

[Christian Rudder]

I know. I just don't want to sound like a hater.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no, no. Cristiano's got the haters.

[Christiana]

Let me tell you something. Biggest hater in the world. So if you want to become a.

[Christian Rudder]

Hater, you have a tag team.

[Christiana]

Lots of hateration in this dancer.

[Christian Rudder]

So hateration is a great word.

[Christiana]

Don't, don't, don't, don't.

[Christian Rudder]

Best new VE in a long time. You know, I would give it like a C minus, I guess. I think with. 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. But I feel like there's a lot of people that are very dissatisfied. And if you go look at like the. The. The monthly active user numbers, like Tinder was at, I think 13 million in 2019. And is it like 8 now? Which is like a massive drop off, you know, that's like kind of Facebook levels of sort of becoming a dinosaur.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Christian Rudder]

And that's like. It's just interesting. 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. You have TikTok. And, like, social media is as strong as ever.

[Christiana]

Yeah. People are migrating to.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, they just. 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.

[Christiana]

I give up.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah. Or whatever. I'm just going to meet people at work or, like, in real life, which is, you know, or through TikTok.

[Christiana]

Or not meeting people at all.

[Christian Rudder]

Right.

[Christiana]

Or not speak about, like, a lot of my friends who. Every one of my close girlfriends who's single, I get a text, I'm quitting the apps.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah.

[Christiana]

I'm quitting the apps. And it's not like they're meeting people in real life because you go out and the men are swiping.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Christiana]

You know what I mean? So it's just like, a lot of people just surrender to be like, maybe I won't meet somebody. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So speaking from personal experience, as someone who's used the apps. Right. I'm young, Cristiano. Not like you married people. I'm young. As someone who's used the apps, I'll tell you what I think it is. I think oftentimes we'll make it seem like it's this nefarious thing that people do. Oh, people can just swipe. People can just. But I think in a way, it's a byproduct of the culture that we live in. It's in the same way that Amazon makes people shop more, because you can shop more. In the same way that, like, anything that allows you to do something more will make you do it more. Right. So once they made bigger bags of potato chips, people ate more potato chips.

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

It's just like what we're going to do as people. The same thing goes for the dating apps, and it's that you aren't in this thing because you're an asshole. Most people are using it because they're searching for something. They're looking for this magical love story that they've all been told about. And now someone said, hey, here's an app to help you find it. Here's the app that you're looking for. Right. And so what you do is you then start to swipe. And in a weird way, I think a lot of people experience this. They go, if I do it more, I'm more likely to get to my end goal, you know, put in the work. So you can't, like, swipe three people. What, you've only swiped three people? No, there could be more. Keep on going. Keep on going. And I think what it creates is a world where we've applied efficiency to something that isn't efficient. Love isn't efficient.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Connections aren't efficient. You know, when I think of every solid friendship that I have in my life, like, where I love the people dearly, it was a gradual game of attrition, you know, like rocks bumping into each other in, like, a tumbler. And slowly, over time, we became pebbles in each other's lives. But there was no, like, instant. And all of a sudden, we're there, you know, and I actually, you know, I'm shocked that. You're shocked that we wanted to have you on. No, because I'll tell you why. You took data that really no one had taken before, and you didn't just. You didn't just look at the data. You synthesized it. And I. You know, in your book Data Criticism, you wrote something really poignant for me, and you said, and I'll paraphrase it, so forgive me if I. If I butcher it, but essentially what you were saying was you were going, for a long time in society, we've relied on how people feel, how they think and how they feel. So you do a survey. How do you feel about a woman president? People will tell you how they feel, or they'll tell you how they want you to think they feel or how.

[Christian Rudder]

They want to think that they feel.

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly, exactly. But then data shows you what they feel. You know, data doesn't show you like, people go like, oh, I'm a healthy eater. I eat this many meals a week, or I eat this much ice cream. No, the data actually shows you what people do or don't eat and what they actually do or don't do. And so I think, you know, when we look at, like, what you did with data, Christiana said it so beautifully. Before you came, she said. She said, this is the man who's responsible for so many of the studies that have revealed the world to us in ways that we didn't previously know.

[Christiana]

In particular, your work around racial preferences and dating.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Christiana]

Which was so illuminating to black women, and it sparked so much discourse.

[Trevor Noah]

It really has.

[Christiana]

He talked about how black women and Asian men were, like, the least matched, and you were digging into that And I don't want to paraphrase you wrongly, but you talk about, like, we can't take racism out. There's no way of algorithmically gaming that. That the site just revealed how people really felt in ways that were. Maybe some people felt before, like some black women felt like, maybe I'm unlucky in love. Asian men felt, you know, I'm being overlooked in ways. And you showed the data that proved that that was true.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, and that's very nice to hear, because 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 very grateful that we were just helping. Maybe put not a name but maybe a number to their experience of, like, my. 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. It's the people who come to the app that bring all of their prejudices or just 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. Looking at how different racial groups message each other, how they rate each other. So swipe left, swipe right. What's interesting is it's like that phenomenon on, 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 U.K. yeah, the.

[Trevor Noah]

U.K. was like 98%, I think, if I remember correctly, they were getting 98% of the messages and then in other parts they were getting like 97 point something percent.

[Christian Rudder]

Right. And just for your readers or listeners context, like, I think it's probably, probably like 50%, I think, or 60% in the U.S. the ratio would be of, like, contacts, I'd say, from a black woman to a white woman.

[Trevor Noah]

Would you say that dating websites are the most honest space of data that tells us where society actually is?

[Christian Rudder]

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 it's it you. There's no pose, you know, you like, on Twitter or whatever. You can say these things. You can kind of take these very strident stances. You can make your opinions out to be something maybe a little different than what they really are in practice. Whereas, like 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? 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.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Christian Rudder]

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, you know, everyone's a dog or whatever.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Christian Rudder]

You know. Yeah. I don't. I don't know. I do think dating apps provide an incredible window into the thing I found illuminating was age.

[Christiana]

Oh, yeah, Your work on age, how men. It was like 20 year olds.

[Christian Rudder]

Yes. Just all the way down the line.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, first of all, I don't like how you said that in like an accusatory way.

[Christiana]

I think I said it.

[Trevor Noah]

Your inflection.

[Christiana]

No, your inflection went accusatory. I'm trying to be less judgmental.

[Trevor Noah]

Your eyebrows, to me, like 20 year olds.

[Christiana]

I know, because it's like women with age. I don't want to get this wrong, but it was just like women, age corresponded with their age.

[Christian Rudder]

Sure.

[Christiana]

So they're like 25. They're into 25 year olds if they're 30.

[Christian Rudder]

Exactly.

[Christiana]

It goes with time. Men, it didn't matter what age.

[Christian Rudder]

Right.

[Christiana]

The average age was 20. In terms of.

[Christian Rudder]

Exactly. Like, kind of an important 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 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. 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 or more honest with the app. Like, you know, if you're 25, you message 25 year olds. If you're a 30 year old, you message 30 year olds. But men. Yeah, like, like we were just saying, like, it's all 20 year olds, even for 50 year old dudes.

[Trevor Noah]

You've had to work so much with data, you know, and there's something you do in the book, and I'd love to know if you still have these opinions. Like, you're very honest about acknowledging the limitations that data has, because data can only tell us what has happened, but we don't necessarily know why the thing has or hasn't happened. Right. And I think at one point you even talk about it, like the compounding effect, I think that you speak about, like where you go, everything that you're measuring is within the context of something else, you know, so if you say, I think the analogy you gave is like, if you stand at the corner of like 5th Avenue in New York, 5th Avenue and like 50 something or 60th street, and you say, what do people in New York look like? You'll say, oh, they're all pretty slim and wealthy and they all a lot of Louis Vuitton. And that's New Yorkers.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And it's like, no, but that's where you were measuring from. And so in interpreting where you measure from or in understanding where you measure from, you come to realize the limitations of the information that you have. Right. And so let's, let's jump into this example because I racked my brain thinking about this, first of all, because I defend men fiercely. I defend men fiercely because I know where Cristiano's gonna go with this. And I was like, I have to, I have to fight for my brethren. Right? Men dem need me. Right. So here's what I was intrigued by. And it's. I mean, jokes aside, in terms of defending.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Does the data tell us that men think 20 year old women are the most attractive and women generally date in and around their age range or they find the men around their age more attractive? Or is the data telling us that society doesn't allow for a woman to date like whatever age man she wants? It seems to me there's a possibility that a woman to exactly what you said, don't just know themselves better, but know the world better? And I can only say this from personal experience with the women in my life, like friends, they go like, I can't date a 20 year old man. What will people say? What will my friends say? I don't wanna come up with a 20, 25 year old guy. I'm 40, I'm rolling up with like this little toy. Even the word toy boy. Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm rolling up with toy boy, one of my sugar mama. And what does he know about the world? And what is he going to help me with my kids. He's one of my kids. And there's all these other frames, but do you get what I'm saying?

[Christian Rudder]

I mean, I do think there's something to your point about there's some enablement of guys going after 20 year old girls or liking them. It's 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. And I know we're not talking exactly about love here, but you can't know everything about that. And like these, 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. Just looking back on where the world is now and where it was when 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, no matter how much work we put into improving the algorithm, 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, because people don't change so much and there's so many weird things about people like how they laugh or the way they carry themselves or 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. And I know I'm kind of ranging from your initial question, but like I do think it's, 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, they're hotter, I guess. And women don't do that because you.

[Christiana]

Were doing all of this machine learning stuff pre the AI Advancements we have now, which are like, kind of mind blowing and terrifying, and that's a different conversation. How do you think now, using the technology we have now, do you think you guys could have different results? How can the algorithm be game to us in ways that aren't expected?

[Christian Rudder]

I mean, if I were to start a new dating app, like today, you have to use some kind of AI. But again, I don't think I would try to make, you know, the perfect match, have, you know, chat, GPT, figure out exactly the right person for me in the world. Because I just think that's like a losing game. Like, 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 and, you know, you sit down and you're just like, or whatever and. Or maybe she hates you, you know, who knows? I think the AI component would be better served where, like, the app can, like, 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? 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 Tinder as an infinite can of Pringles, you're just taking one off the top and.

[Trevor Noah]

You sit and just once you pop, you can't stop.

[Christian Rudder]

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.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, I think it'd be pretty cool.

[Trevor Noah]

We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break. This episode is brought to you by Zendesk, introducing the next generation of AI agents built to deliver resolutions for everyone. With an easy setup that can be completed in minutes, not months, Zendesk AI agents resolve 30% of interactions instantly, quickly giving your customers what they need. Loved by over 10,000 companies, Zendesk AI makes service teams more efficient, businesses run better and your customers happier. That's the Zendesk AI effect. Find out [e-mail] this episode is Brought to you by Tools and Weapons, the podcast hosted by Microsoft's Vice chair and president, Brad Smith. Across three exclusive conversations celebrating the company's 50th anniversary, Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Satya Nadella share the stories, dreams and drive that fueled a digital revolution. And they explain why they think it may be at its most exciting point yet. For these and more conversations with government, business, and cultural leaders. Search Tools and Weapons. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, you know, in a lot of the stuff you do, whether it's your writing or whether it's your work, and even speaking to you now, you have a very human quality to you that I don't necessarily associate with a lot of people in the world of tech. Right.

[Christian Rudder]

Well, thank you.

[Trevor Noah]

No, but I noticed this even in your writing, your writing is full of doubt. Your writing is full of, like, assuming that you don't know what's going to happen, assuming that you don't have the answer, assuming that the thing could be. It seems like you are cut from a different cloth because now we live in a world where tech tells us they know everything. You know what I mean? Like, when you talk to Sam Altman, we had an episode with him on the podcast, Sam. I did not see even a hint of doubt. He was like, AGI, baby, we're getting artificial general intelligence. It's gonna make the world better. No more cancer, no more poverty. We're doing it. And I was just like, wait, so.

[Christian Rudder]

You'Re on the flip side?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. No, really, he just has that. You. You approach that differently. You have, like, a doubt. So I'd love to know, like, what doubts do you have about tech in dating?

[Christiana]

Wow.

[Christian Rudder]

Well, tech in dating, I mean, I do doubt probably, like most people that have used these apps, whether it's, like, 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 like that. I definitely can admit that might not be healthy psychologically over the 10 years of doing that or something. 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. 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. 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 they're trying to create something in the real world, like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok. The goal of all of those things always is just to get you to use TikTok more. Right. Eventually to make more money or whatever.

[Christiana]

Digital.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, like, yeah. Keep you digital. Thank you. Twitter wants to keep you, or X wants to keep you there. Right. Arguing with someone, if that's how it goes. But whatever. 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. 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. I think that's something that I'm proud of, that it's created a lot of frustration and a lot of heartbreak and a lot of, I'm sure, very douchey behavior out there in the world. But it's also created families and couples and all of these things. And 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. Used to the complaints would just pile up. Just like they hate Tinder or they hate Bumble. Now that's a common, permanent threat, I think, of the thing. But it's cool that it does create something actual real in the world.

[Trevor Noah]

So I think that makes a lot of sense. Like, I think people hate dating and they'll hate dating apps because for the most part, as humans, we hate searching, but we love finding. Yeah, but we don't realize that finding is the conclusion of searching.

[Christian Rudder]

And the rejection component is obviously pretty heavy, too.

[Trevor Noah]

Our little monkey brains love to finish a task, so we love to know we got to the end of something. You know, it was a book. You know, there's that feeling, and you may not even realize you feel it, but when you get to the last page of a book, there's a strange sense of relief and completion and peace that comes with it.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, the peace for sure.

[Trevor Noah]

It has ended. Watch a TV show and see how you feel when they write. To be continued. You don't live. If we're honest about it, you don't live. You, like, go into the world just a little. A little, like, left on edge, you know, you don't have the same. It's the same reason I feel like we have funerals.

[Christiana]

Yeah. They're like the finishing of.

[Trevor Noah]

Can I tell you? Like, I remember when it was. When it was my grandmother's funeral. I remember thinking my whole life, I was like, funerals are stupid. The person's dead. Why are we going anywhere with them? They're dead. Let's just carry on with our lives. And it was only when I. When I. Cause I didn't get to go, because during COVID but during my grandmother's funeral that I realized what a funeral really is for. It's the closure. It's like the final confirmation that this person is, in fact, no longer with us. And you're gonna see them go away to be no longer with us.

[Christian Rudder]

Right, Right.

[Trevor Noah]

So when you're on a dating app, and to your point, there's three more, right?

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Who would stop looking? Why would you stop looking? What kind of person would you be that you stopped? Whereas before, it was like, who are you dating? Oh, I'm dating Christiana.

[Christian Rudder]

Why?

[Trevor Noah]

She's the only girl in the village. We're done. We're done. There's only five girls in the village, and four of them are married. All right, Christiana, let's do this thing. And then the village got a little bit bigger, and it got a little. But now we've made it infinite as well. And so I wonder, like.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, it's hard to make. Like, almost any decision you make feels like settling.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Christian Rudder]

Right?

[Trevor Noah]

Yes. But I wonder, if you were to start a dating app, can you make a healthy dating app in a world that demands that the apps make as much money as they do? Because everything's about the money now. Right.

[Christian Rudder]

And I think that's, like, you know. Yeah, they're all like, Grindr, Bumble, Tinder, which is all owned by Match, which also owns OkCupid and tons of other things. Like, yeah, they're all public companies. And 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. But definitely the timbre changed overnight of, you know, how did you do yesterday?

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Christian Rudder]

How did you do this week?

[Trevor Noah]

What's the earnings, baby?

[Christian Rudder]

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.

[Christiana]

I actually on this new, this thought experiment we're doing with a new dating app. Right. How does that look in this time where I think politically people are so polarized because like 10 years ago, if a woman goes on a date with a guy and he says he's a Republican, it means very different things. In like a post Roe v. Wade.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Christiana]

Red hat universe, you sit across from a guy and he says he's a Republican in the red pill of you're like.

[Christian Rudder]

Right. And they. That guy. Theoretical guy would also probably be disgusted by a lib or whatever.

[Christiana]

Yeah. How does that even look in this like where people really wear their politics now in ways that I think can be quite cumbersome to just even families don't even want to get along, let alone strangers.

[Christian Rudder]

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.

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Hinge, I think you can is one of the few.

[Christian Rudder]

And hinge, I think by no coincidence is kind of ascendant now. It's past.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. They actually are doing better than number.

[Christian Rudder]

Two kind of out of really from nothing like 2019. That 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, ask people questions, have them slow down. 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? Is like a pretty complicated question. And also there's some religious people that don't care if their partner is religious. And there's something.

[Christiana]

I'm married to an atheist and I'm Christian.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, exactly. Right. And so. 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 and then segmenting your matches. Or maybe you find someone who's MAGA and is okay with someone who isn't. For example, people are unpredictable in some.

[Trevor Noah]

Ways, there's a part of your work that speaks to how we don't actually know what's good for us. And a lot of research has shown us that humans are terrible predictors of the future. We generally are. But in some of your work, when you looked at some of the data, there's a part of the book that I remember that I really, really loved, and it said you found in the data it was less important whether or not a Republican was dating a Republican or a Democrat was dating a Democrat. What was more important was whether or not both people agreed on whether or not they should be engaged in politics.

[Christian Rudder]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

And that became a greater determining factor for whether or not those people would actually get along. And I thought that was a beautiful insight into, like, how we see these things. Like you just said now, oh, I'm with an atheist, and it is with a Christian. I would argue what will happen over time. Whether he likes it or not is your husband Louis is going to be. There's gonna be spirituality that comes into his life whether he likes it or not.

[Christiana]

I mean, my youngest daughter is always like, Jesus, like Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[Trevor Noah]

But what I mean is, like.

[Christian Rudder]

Like you, you.

[Trevor Noah]

I. I have yet to see a world where people are not affected by the people around them. Yeah, they rub off on you.

[Christiana]

Yeah. He's made me more rash, like, interested in reason. And there you go. What I would contribute to a witch. Now, I might. I say, you know, it's just, you know, I just have a stomach virus. No one has cursed me. So, yeah, I think.

[Trevor Noah]

But, yeah. And so, like, when. When I look at that, I look at that work that you did there, right. And I see the data, I almost go, how much should we trust what we think connects us to people and what separates us? Because it seems like from the work you were doing, the data show that that wasn't true. Republicans and Democrats actually could make a really good couple, but it was the fact that they thought that they couldn't that made them not be able to.

[Christian Rudder]

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, the server or the algorithm can learn what actually makes a difference and then act on that. But unless you have that, even in the kind of primitive days of 2014 or whatever. We did tons of experiments and tests and were always sort of honing our match algorithm until we decided we had it to where the best that we could get it. But you have to take in that information to make that even possible. And you might end up with unexpected sort of 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 turn out? It turns out matter, but if the app doesn't know that question, 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, a relationship that person is going to have.

[Christiana]

Yeah, because.

[Christian Rudder]

Does that make sense?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it makes sense, actually.

[Christiana]

And this is where maybe algorithms could be quite useful. Like, maybe because of like the culture I grew up in. I realized that like, personalities don't really matter when it comes to relationships. It's always been about like the values you have and how you rank them.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah.

[Christiana]

So like.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, it's like a worldview thing.

[Christiana]

Yeah. If you value like imagine it's family kindness.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, damn, I like this. So it's like if we both value money, number one.

[Christiana]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Money, we're more likely to get along.

[Christiana]

It's not just the value are. There's a matching values and how we rank them. Because often, like I thought my cultural background, I saw that marriages that didn't work, it was the ranking of those values was a complete mismatch. So maybe the man only cared about money.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah.

[Christiana]

And the woman cared about family. Right. But she also cares about money. But maybe money was like number five and it was his number one. So I always find couples, you know, like, they're like opposites attract. I'm like, what are their values? How do they rank them? If there's a matching in the rank of those values, that's a couple that's gonna last for a long time. And I think what the algorithm can do is figure out.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, that's what like computers.

[Christiana]

What are the values? What does Trevor value? What does this imaginary person, how do they rank them? Let's cause a match. And the reason arranged marriages, I think, were so successful back in the day is because you're in this very insular world. You're likely to have the same values because you're raising similar environments. But now in this world where it's like, we're so global and cosmopolitan, we're porous, we're being influenced by different things just on our phone. And I think what an algorithm can.

[Christian Rudder]

Then do is like bring it back.

[Christiana]

Is bring, do that work for you. Because there's a thing I asked my husband before we got married, like, what do you value? He's like, oh, you know, family, kindness, community. And I was like, okay, so in those things, like, what do you feel most strongly about? And when I passed that out, we matched. Even though, like, again, I'm not sure about dinosaurs. And this man is like very, very historical and science based, right? But, but ultimately, like, we both value family, community and kindness, and we will hold ourselves and a sense of duty. So he's just like, I'm always like, you're my best friend. He's like, you're not my best friend, you're my wife. I can get rid of friends. I can't get rid of a wife. And I'm like, from a background where duty is, I'm the eldest daughter, I take that duty so seriously.

[Christian Rudder]

Sounds like you and your husband both know yourselves really well too, which is important. But I think like just again, working on our theoretical dating app here, like 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 own mental model. But then over the course of maybe continuing to use the app, you can ask, like 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?

[Christiana]

Would you let your mother in law move in with you?

[Christian Rudder]

Theoretically, you could ask these like 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's 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? And then you could 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.

[Trevor Noah]

How much do you think, for lack of a better term, the focus on pictures and the sort of, like, display of ourselves, how much do you think that that has negatively affected our ability to partner up with people? Because I know in the early stages of OkCupid, the picture was really tiny.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, that's tiny.

[Trevor Noah]

It was a tiny, tiny picture. And you found that while people who were, let's say, quote unquote, better looking 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.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, they get more leverage on the pixel, 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 a 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. 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.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, they turned the pictures off?

[Christian Rudder]

Like, totally off? Yeah. This was like 2013 maybe. Really, as an experiment, just shut them all down, all the thumbnails, everything went away. And as you'd expect, the messaging environment was actually a lot healthier. 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. 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.

[Trevor Noah]

You have to meet them.

[Christian Rudder]

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. Like, we tried to launch. This was. This was. 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, like, you know, we thought that you could have a scrambled photo and you people could browse and, you know, you would learn a lot more about people and you could set. 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.

[Trevor Noah]

Like, you had like, what, 10,000 people, I think, who tried it.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, yeah. We had a quarter million downloads and it was like 10,000 dates or something, right? Yeah, it just was terrible. And, yeah, people just don't. They're just not up for it, you know?

[Trevor Noah]

But what I liked about the learnings was this. This. This is probably one of my favorite things to discover from the data. You turned off the pictures, right? People. There was like a dip for a moment. People just didn't message anyone. Then at some point, it became normal. It was like almost at the same rates of messaging. And then people actually started exchanging numbers and people started hooking up and et cetera. And this is only in like a space of, I don't know, 24, 48 hours or something. It's a tiny amount of time. But then all the people who didn't exchange numbers and didn't agree to hook up once the pictures came back on, they just ghosted each other.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like the lights coming on at last call or whatever, where everyone's.

[Trevor Noah]

Like, oh, yeah, yeah, that was my favorite story.

[Christian Rudder]

I was like, wait, what exactly? No, it was. You would see conversations that at least based on the data, you would expect to keep going or whatever. And it was just a total dead stop.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Picture came on and people were like, oh, my God.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah.

[Christiana]

And this leads me. See, I love this imaginary app we're making. Right? Because when I was on the apps, long before I've been married, like, I don't know, seven, eight years now, I remember thinking, feeling that the men being on Instagram was really shaping how they thought women should look in real life.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, definitely.

[Christian Rudder]

Sure.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Christiana]

Does that make sense?

[Trevor Noah]

Definitely.

[Christiana]

Because also men are seeing more hot people than they've ever seen before. Women too. Like, I look at, I'm like, she's gorgeous. You're just scrolling. All these beautiful people. And I think it changed dating because it was just like, I can actually there's physically somebody that's fine tuned to what I precisely want. And I definitely, you know, Gia, who was on the show, who wrote Instagram Face, talked about, like, the proliferation of this beauty standard on Instagram, changing what women did in real life with their bodies and their faces to match this beauty standard. And I'm interested in, about this app, could we game the algorithm in a way that plays to countering that? Countering the fact that, like, depending on how much time A man spends on Instagram, right?

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, this is interesting.

[Christiana]

Man. Or even a woman's use of certain sites informing how they behave. Cause, you know, I know all the apps talk to each other and they're spying on us. No, you, you never did that.

[Trevor Noah]

Of course.

[Christiana]

But, like, then create this machine learning, algorithmic thing that can shape a man preferences in a way that nudge him in the right direction, accounting for that. Or if it's a man that is not on Instagram at all, you're like, oh, you haven't been destroyed.

[Christian Rudder]

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 the very beginning 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. And the fact is, there's very little you can do to move people because first of all, they've had however many years of their life or however many hours scrolling through Instagram, super hard to undo that. And also, if you don't deliver to people what at least they think they want, they're just gonna 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 it.

[Christiana]

Yeah, this is different.

[Christian Rudder]

This is different. I think you'll really like her. Some people might be up for that kind of thing, but a lot of dudes are just gonna be like, with all the girls in here 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. Obviously, you're reinforcing some negative shit that way. Right. But otherwise you just end up with a situation where people are gone.

[Christiana]

That's so interesting to me because I've always felt, and the public discussion is that these apps are changing our behavior.

[Christian Rudder]

Oh, I think that's definitely true.

[Christiana]

And they can.

[Christian Rudder]

That's definitely true.

[Christiana]

It's making you angrier, it's making you argue more. It's showing you this stuff, but it's.

[Christian Rudder]

Like almost in unpredictable ways. 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 greatest propaganda tool of all time? Mark Zuckerberg probably would have been like, what are you talking about? I don't want that. I just want to have. He probably genuinely wanted friends to meet friends or whatever or make money and be powerful, which a lot of people are like that. 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 those people want. Yeah, they like amplify the crap that you already bring to the table.

[Christiana]

We already are like, it's, you know.

[Trevor Noah]

Don'T go anywhere because we got more what now? After this this episode is brought to you by Brooklinen. We're coming up on summer and those super hot days are starting to sneak in there when an unexpected hot day crops up. I am so grateful for my Brooklinen sheets. They're breathable and lightweight but still have some comforting heft to them. You know what I mean? You want to feel like the sheets are hugging you but not suffocating you. And during the season transition I have my down comforter paired with linen sheets and quilts. That way I can kind of mix it up and I can match it up depending on the temperature and my vibe for the night. You can also shop award winners and fan faves in store or online at brooklinen.com that's B R O O K L I N E N.com and use Trevor the code Trevor for 15% off your online order of $100 or more. That's brooklinen.com use promo code Trevor for 15% off this episode is brought to you by Petsmart. There are few things in life better left to the experts and pet grooming is definitely one of them. Thankfully, at Pet Smart, there's a service for every kind of pet parent short on time. Their quick wash walk in service includes a professional bath and blow dry for just $29.95, helping you skip the mess at home. Looking for the full works? PetSmart's full service grooming includes everything from nail trims and ear cleaning to seasonal add ons that'll have your pet feeling like they just left a luxury spa. And during yappy hour weekdays from 2 to 6pm you can get $5 off walk in services like nail trims, brushing and more. So if you're looking for grooming without the hassle. Visit services.petsmart.com grooming to book your pet's appointment today. As a data expert, I'd love to know how much you allow the data to influence how you then move in the world.

[Christian Rudder]

You know, I definitely try to live more by intuition and just.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Christian Rudder]

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 who person A is. Which of all the person Bs out there, who A is going to love? You know, I just 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. 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 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 a little mini dataclassm. It was fun to do. So I do enjoy that stuff. But. But back to one of your points. 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. They're just facts that can be easily compared and you can decide which one is bigger or better or whatever it is. But so little in life can actually be quantified down to a number. Outside of the world of sports, you can try and you can pretend that a 9.3 really captures how attractive someone is. We all know that's not really true to 9.3 is there's going to be a different opinion from every person that sees these two theoretically identical people. Right. So I just. Yeah, I think that's. I also try to stay away from data for that sense of the false sense of certainty about things too.

[Trevor Noah]

What do you think it was that you got from the data that made you want to share the data with the world? Because that's something I found anomalous. One because it had never been done before. And then two, because it hasn't been done since.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, it was a weird time.

[Trevor Noah]

It's interesting to me that you had all of this data that told so many truths and you put it out. It's arguably, like, one of the biggest studies on dating, on relationships, on race, on gender, on age. Way bigger than any Gallup or Pew research. Cause those are like a few hundred people. Thousand people, if you're lucky.

[Christiana]

Oh, that's accurate. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And this is. And this is like. That's what I mean. But, like, what made you put it out? Because, you know, Facebook guards it with their lives. Until they're testifying in front of Congress, they don't tell us any of their data. You know, we only find out they knew that Instagram was bad for young girls when they're in trouble.

[Christiana]

Do you know who else tells us the truth?

[Trevor Noah]

Who?

[Christiana]

Pornhub.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, pornhub does.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, they do do that.

[Trevor Noah]

They'll tell you.

[Christiana]

People in Nigeria are searching for this.

[Trevor Noah]

This is actually what you said.

[Christiana]

Blue people are the same. They all, like, you know, they're into the same thing. That's the only other place we get that.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but what do you think it was, like, what were you hoping to achieve by revealing something that has been kept secret for so long?

[Christian Rudder]

You know? And I guess there was, like, that period, 2009, 2010, where their data seemed revelatory, and this is pre Cambridge Analytica and the whole kind of engineering of the first Trump candidacy and the fake news and all of that stuff. And there was just. It was like. Sounds corny. It was like a hopeful period, I guess, for the Internet. You know, there was like, Airbnb. Yeah, Uber. You mean, I can just get a car, I don't have to, like, wait 20 minutes? You know what I mean? Like, that whole vibe, especially in New York, was just different. And so we had all this data. We thought it was really interesting about how. What people thought was attractive, about how different races would interact on our website or our app. And, you know, we kind of didn't have anything to lose either. Like, we were just like, all right, let's just do this. Like, Facebook is a billion dollar, whatever, trillion dollar company maybe now they obviously have a lot to lose and they're heavily scrutinized. And 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. 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, it was. It was. I guess it was just like. It was like a view into people that was just only coming into existence. You know, 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 you couldn't have learned these things in 1999, even though the Internet existed then. And 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 little bit and make fun of ourselves. Yeah, I don't know. It's weird, though, to look back because it's totally. The door completely closed, basically right after datacolosm came out. And that was one blind spot in the book where I was thinking about this on the way over here. The entire tone of the book is, like, how interesting data is, how great it is, how. 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. You all. They use their data to sell ads to people. But I never thought it could be used to, like, sell ideas or sell, like, a worldview, like, en masse to people as it was in 2014, 15, 16, by the way, like Cambridge Analytica and Steve Bannon. And it's still, to this day is going on.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Now it's full on.

[Christian Rudder]

Right, Exactly. And so, like, 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, you know, and I. 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. Publish all of their data, because then people could go, oh, that's interesting. Manipulate more people.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, that's interesting. Because you think when we know the data behind something, we're then more able to go in and manipulate those weak points.

[Christian Rudder]

Right, exactly. Yeah. Which you can then go spin or whatever.

[Christiana]

What I did love about your book is, for me, you're reading the data and stuff. It made me think about how we can interrogate our choices. Like, because the data is like this truth serum telling us things about ourselves that we deny. It made me think about when I look at my screen Time use on my iPhone. And when it's just like, just shows me the hours, you know, like you have the colors and the bl. You're like, I spent that much time on Instagram. You see it, it shows you yourself. It does in a way.

[Christian Rudder]

And it helps you be real with yourself too. Right. Which is like always good.

[Christiana]

And I think culturally we can be quite delusional. Like every side is very high minded right now. Every side has got it right. But what data just says, well, this is what you say in. Is that what you're actually doing? And it leaves you to just interrogate your choices, whether you change or not. I still think that's the.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, I mean the first step to change is going to be to do the interrogation. Right. So yeah, like I'm the same way too. I'll Whatever screen time. You're like, God damn it. And then you go and do the same thing. But at least it's there. At least you understand what's going on.

[Christiana]

It's undeniable.

[Christian Rudder]

You can't like argue with your phone. Right? Exactly. So yeah, I like that part about it.

[Trevor Noah]

One part of it is deniable. I have a qualm with them. If you have your phone open on like CarPlay or if you. It counts it as screen time, but it's not screen time. Oh yeah. So let's say you're navigating, it counts that as screen time. And for me, that's not what I mean by screen time. I don't want you to tell me. Trevor, you used your phone for four hours today. Yeah, I drove for four hours. Now I'm sitting there depressed because I think. Cause no, that's the other side of data that we have to be careful of.

[Christian Rudder]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

I think of how many people data has made them. 10,000 steps. That's not true. It's not a real thing. Yes, walk and better. It's better to walk more than to walk less. Eight glasses. Where's the date? It's not the data. Do you get what I'm saying?

[Christiana]

Well, it's the dark side of it. I have a little baby and we use a monitor, which I won't promote the company because they didn't give it to me for free. But basically it tells me her heart rate, her oxygen saturation tells me how long she. She sleeps for.

[Trevor Noah]

Yo. What?

[Christiana]

Yeah, oxygen.

[Christian Rudder]

Is it like a pad that she.

[Christiana]

No, no, it's on her foot.

[Trevor Noah]

This is insane.

[Christiana]

Yeah, oxygen saturation. It tells me if she's having wiggly sleep. It tells me if she's having, like, restless sleep. It tells me when she's in deep sleep. And this is like the dark side of data.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, I was gonna say. Do you find that useful? That just seems.

[Christiana]

I'm always worried my babies are gonna die. So I like. Trevor knows me. I'm like a hypochondriac. So I like going into this thing. But I remember before I had that with my first son, if I wanted to know if he had a good night's sleep, I was obviously there. A. But I look at him, I'd be like, oh, he seems a bit cranky now. My immediate instincts is like, let me go into this app. Because sometimes they'll tell me she's wiggly on the app and I'll go upstairs. Whereas I would probably just leave her to be wiggly. Wake up. She made me cry a bit and go back to sleep. Like, that's probably what would have happened.

[Trevor Noah]

In my mother's time.

[Christiana]

But now I have this app that I'm looking at, oh, my God, she's got 98% oxygen saturation, which is perfect. Why is it not 100? Now I have this information that is actually.

[Christian Rudder]

No, it can be confusing.

[Christiana]

Yeah, it's confusing. It's actually making me more paranoid. And I think from a. That's how this hyper data world can, like, be quite dark for.

[Trevor Noah]

I would actually love to know. So when you're designing an app.

[Christian Rudder]

App.

[Trevor Noah]

We're all users. Most people have used a dating app. How do you find the balance between putting the person in front of us who you think we should see versus putting the person in front of us that we want to see?

[Christian Rudder]

That's a great question. And that's something I think most people don't really. They don't understand how the back end of these things works. Because also we have to think about the person that we're like, their experience too, Right? The woman that they're showing you. Yeah, exactly. 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 in just a giant stack or grid or whatever it is. 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 tens now you're left with nines and eights and so forth. And you end up in this death spiral because also the guys don't get any messages back. 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?

[Trevor Noah]

Everyone is in relation to another person.

[Christian Rudder]

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 collar. So if you're an eight or whatever.

[Trevor Noah]

Like this is picture just on the picture. Right.

[Christian Rudder]

This would be one of the components. We would show you nines, eights and sevens with maybe a few tens and maybe some fives and whatevers just to really reduce people 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. 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 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 women like seeing hot people too. 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.

[Trevor Noah]

I've always been interested by how the data shows us that most people grade other people's attractiveness by where they think their attractiveness is. It's funny, just generally like every. Because everyone will. And again, we live in a world where, depending on how people say it, some people will be crude and just like, assholes about it.

[Christian Rudder]

Sure, sure.

[Trevor Noah]

Then some people be, like, overly sort of fake about it. No, I. I don't even see whether someone. To be honest with you, until I know them. I don't. Whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever. But for the most part, when you just look at the data and the honesty, get it away from what people tell you. There is generally that ban.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Where people go, oh no, I'm out of their league and they're out of my league. So. Okay, let me ask you then a few things before we let you go. Is like, you are on the back end of this. Everyone is trying, I assume everyone's trying to find their fairytale, their story, their journey, whatever it may be.

[Christian Rudder]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

What are some of the tips that you would give somebody who is on a dating app to try and maximize the experience. Not maximize their hookups. Not maximize, you know, but just.

[Christian Rudder]

Just something real.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, something real. Where you go like, oh, hey, you know, this thing you. So let's start with like the picture.

[Christian Rudder]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

Is it better for somebody to have a Photoshop picture? Is it better for them to have a group picture, a sunset picture, a silhouette picture? Let's start with that. Just like the most basic.

[Christian Rudder]

Definitely wouldn't do group. That just introduces the logistical problem of trying to figure out who you're messaging. Right.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay. Some people love the group one.

[Christian Rudder]

I know.

[Trevor Noah]

I always think it's a mistake.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah. I guess you're trying to flex that you have friends, which is kind of like the reverse of what you're really trying to do. 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. You're running for office and you just need one vote. So being yourself is 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 because you're going to have. You are ultimately only going to find one person. Right. So what does it avail you to have a hundred 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. I mean, like, you know, well, grandmothers were right.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, there's a lot of way grandmothers were right.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

It's nice to actually see a grandma meets up with dates.

[Christian Rudder]

Exactly where is that?

[Trevor Noah]

Like, yeah, where does grandma mesh with.

[Christian Rudder]

Tech of the ages that I Think is a real thing with. Even my wife's parents are from an arranged marriage and you know, they're super happy, as are all of their siblings. And you know, I think there is something to that shared worldview. And having that system was designed to bring together people of a common sociological context. Right. And they knew that that was what really matters. Right. And I think they're right. Anyway, to get back to your question, I think doing the things that make you unique, foreground those things. Don't try to bury the lead, so to speak, and don't leave it for that second or third message. 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 is so different than what they are actually like when they're sitting in front of you.

[Trevor Noah]

Many fish have been catted.

[Christian Rudder]

Yes, exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

There's that too.

[Christian Rudder]

But the opposite is true too. Right. Where I'm sure there's a lot of people that are presenting way more lamely than they would be in real life.

[Christiana]

The first time I met my husband, because we met on Twitter and like kind of clicked his profile. But then when I saw him walk, I was like, oh my God, he's hot.

[Trevor Noah]

Always better, always better.

[Christiana]

He doesn't like his pictures. He's like. It was like a headshot that you have for licking kind of thing. And then I was always a good looking man. I should have dressed up more, but you know what I mean. So it's just like, it's so interesting that you say that.

[Christian Rudder]

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. Right. And that part of it is gonna 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, like, 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 gonna. I didn't meet my wife on a dating app up. 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.

[Trevor Noah]

Which people are, whether you like it or not, it's just like being in the world. It's like having a phone now. You can't not have a phone.

[Christian Rudder]

You can't.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Christian Rudder]

And so, like, just, 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. Like, 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, you know, just. Just like, wait.

[Trevor Noah]

Actually, actually on that point, does that change anything in how the app actually sees you? That's something I've always wanted to know. So for those people who are swiping on everything.

[Christian Rudder]

Yeah, that's a great question. 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, I think. And 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 spent an hour on the app and you liked one person, that should be very powerful.

[Trevor Noah]

I think it should.

[Christian Rudder]

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 dating apps 2 or 3.0.

[Christiana]

We've, like workshopped his business.

[Trevor Noah]

If we. If you can make it better for everyone, make it better for everyone. Christian, thank you so much.

[Christian Rudder]

Thank you for joining us.

[Trevor Noah]

Thank you for not, you know, thinking it was a scam. Thank you. You see, you put yourself out there.

[Christian Rudder]

You thought.

[Trevor Noah]

You thought it was a risk and.

[Christiana]

You took a chance.

[Christian Rudder]

Oh, I had a great time.

[Christiana]

You guys are amazing.

[Trevor Noah]

And if you regret it afterwards, that's fine.

[Christiana]

Great first day.

[Trevor Noah]

What now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jodi Avigan. Our senior producer is Jess Hackel. Claire Slaughter is our producer. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannis Brown. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of what Now?

[Christiana]

Sam.