FabSwingers.com forum: The logistics of "swipe" forum games and how to improve them

By *asterMeliodas OP Man
11 weeks ago

Near Keith

At most given times, there will be at least one "Fab Tinder/swipe" topic on the go. The format itself is fun, but it's let down somewhat by its predictability of outcome.

In all the threads I've seen playing this game, the reply, with very few exceptions, can be determined in advance:

Almost anyone commenting on a couple will swipe right. Almost anyone commenting on a woman will swipe right. Almost anyone commenting on a man will swipe left.

This will often be compounded by men commenting just before someone who categorically isn't looking for a single man on their profile.

Before I continue with this, I'd just like to make it unambiguously, abundantly clear that *this is not a complaint thread*. There is nothing wrong with this; people can say yes or no to absolutely anyone they want for absolutely any reason. I am not trying to fix something that's broken here, because there is no break to fix.

However, there is an argument to be made that since forum games are supposed to be to an extent unpredictable and fun, having a format where 90% of the outcome can be determined in advance kind of defeats the purpose of doing it in the first place. So I wanted to do a thought experiment: could you come up with any change to the format that would increase its inclusivity and unpredictable nature while maintaining the ability to have ultimate say in who you approve/reject?

The only thing I've thought of so far is a stipulation that any response to a given poster requires that you have that poster's type of account in the kinds you're looking for on the site as a whole. They could still obviously swipe left if they're not interested, but it would cut down on the number of cases where you're a left simply because you're automatically filtered out of the "looking for" of the person who happens to post after you (which is antithetical to the idea of emulating Tinder, since you never look at accounts on Tinder for a gender you're not interested in). The main problem there is that it vastly limits who can participate, so the thread would probably just die.

It could be that there's simply no way to do that, which is fine. And this is probably the geekiest thread Fab has ever had, but I'll make no apologies for being me and part of that is grabbing on to a random thought and seeing how far it goes. :P

And again, just in case there is any residual risk of misunderstanding here: this is not a complaint thread. I have no issue with the game as it currently is, and everyone seems to enjoy it regardless of how it turns out. This is nothing more than a discussion of an observation I've made about it.