
So You’re Not Desirable - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/opinion/sunday/so-youre-not-desirable.html
======
Udo
The article makes a good case for "when they get to know you, some of them
will fall for you."

When I was still young and at least somewhat cute, I remarked to a friend how
depressing it was that women always go for rich and arrogant men. My friend's
reply absolutely changed my perspective on this: by choosing socially well-
accepted and successful men they actually place a lot more emphasis on the
inner values than males do. In a very real sense, women love you for who you
are (=rich and successful) as opposed to what you look like (=a characteristic
you can't do much about).

Contrast that with male perception, if you think a girl is attractive,
everything she says suddenly sounds meaningful and important. Of course the
article is correct, once you actually get to know people, this changes. But
for getting the foot in the door so to speak, attractiveness and an aura of
importance respectively are probably still the most important vectors.

I just want to mention for completeness' sake, and only because it would be
taboo to express this in a magazine article: if you're really unhappy with the
dating rat race, and it's genuinely not realistic for you to improve your
chances by optimizing these superficials, it _is_ possible to just opt out of
everything. I know it's controversial and for some reason it upsets a lot of
people when I tell them that I just stopped. Contrary to popular belief, this
mating thing is not something which you _absolutely must accomplish_. I've
crossed to this other side, and it's really really peaceful here. ;)

~~~
Dewie
Being rich is an inner value? I have the impression that how much being rich
has to do with your own will is still not decided. If anything, social
mobility has been shown to be very overrated in recent years. And then one can
ask, how much did that one person striking millions have to do with ingenuity,
and how much was it just being at the right place and time (lucking out)?

One could say that, 'in a very real sense, men love you for who you are (how
is how you look not part of "who you are"?) and not for auxiliary things that
have nothing to do with you as a person, such as money'. It's all just
semantic quibbling, anyway.

~~~
Udo
_> Being rich is an inner value?_

Being successful is, and being rich is one of the markers for success. I had
problems with this view as well until it was explained to me from a woman's
perspective. The operating assumption being, as I said earlier, that men and
women use different heuristics to do preliminary mate filtering. By and large,
you get through the filter by being beautiful as a woman, and by projecting
success as a man. The argument goes that beauty has absolutely nothing to do
with inner values, while success does (false positives not withstanding).

Then again, there might be a huge cultural component to this. I come from
Germany, which has the most unapologetically darwinistic dating scene I ever
experienced. German girls are by and large no-nonsense, goal-oriented, and not
prone to poetic whimsy.

 _> One could say that, 'in a very real sense, men love you for who you are
(how is how you look not part of "who you are"?)_

Hey, the darker part of my epiphany story is actually up to that conversation
I had believed finding a mate was about finding a partner that matches your
inner essence, finding someone who recognizes the "real you". So I had
dismissed both success and beauty as meaningless, because they tell you
nothing about that essence. Again, I was very young at that point and had a
lot of misconceptions.

~~~
nailer
There's no 'moral' right or wrong either way - both are biological indicators.

Women often look for men who can provide for their children, and who are
capable of producing sexually successful offspring. In violent climates,
physically strong men are valued more than financially strong men as that's
what's required to protect offspring.

Men often look for women who are fertile and healthy.

In both cases, market value is simply a partner who's capable of carrying on
one's genes.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Man when I realized that people were really (subconsiously) seeking some
biological imperative based on child survival from superficial materialistic
characteristics instead of a best friend type to spend their life with in a
mate it really messed up my head about the dating game. But you got to do what
you got to do.

~~~
Udo
You're not the only one. When I was young I thought the whole thing was
primarily about soulmates and less about the actual mating...

------
te_platt
I remember during my first year at college looking through a friend's high
school yearbook remarking on some of the girls I thought were cute but he
didn't. He made comments that didn't have to do with their physical appearance
- like "she was mean" or "she was rude". When he looked through my yearbook
the same thing happened, we just switched sides. I thought it was interesting
how knowing the person actually changed the assessment of how physically
attractive someone was. Not overwhelmingly so but definitely enough to notice.

~~~
sevilo
now that you mentioned it.. I remember a psychology course I took in college
just a while ago mentioned that, female's evaluation of attractiveness is
greatly affected by knowing the person's financial state/personality/social
status etc. While male's evaluation of attractiveness is less affected by
other factors. Not sure how true this theory is..

~~~
Noxchi
It is true, and it's caused for evolutionary reasons.

When people have sex, the woman is in a much more dangerous place than a man.

Having a baby for a woman is very costly. She needs someone to protect her
while it happens and to help raise the child.

The cost for a man is very low. He only needs a couple minutes to do his part
in making a baby, then he can leave at any time.

So with that in mind, lets say the scenario is like this:

If a man impregnates a woman and he stays, the chance the baby survives to
reproduction is 90%.

If a man impregnates a woman and he leaves, the chance the baby survives to
reproduction is 10%.

So with those statistics, the man is actually in a very advantageous position.

As long as he impregnates 10 or more women in his lifetime, he is ahead than
if he had stayed with the same woman for all his life.

Of course, the more healthy the woman, the more likely the baby is to survive
even if he leaves. Beauty = healthy in evolutionary terms. If the woman is
pretty, maybe she can even get another guy to raise his kids for him! So men
seek beauty primarily.

So for a man it is genetically superior to impregnate multiple women (which
generally means not staying too close to any of them).

A female on the other hand, can only have children a few times in her life.
And she only gets a few shots at it.

If the man leaves, her shot is very likely to end up in failure.

So the woman needs to be very picky about who she has children with. She needs
to judge his character, to see if he will stay with her and raise the child.
And defend her, fight off aggression, etc..

So to a woman, character is more important than beauty, because that's what
determines if her genes survive or not.

Erotic fiction is a billion dollar industry and the vast majority of buyers
are women. Manly man stories = porn for women.

~~~
_random_
"Having a baby for a woman is very costly. She needs someone to protect her
while it happens and to help raise the child."

UK has a generous protection for single mother and it completely messed up
traditional marriage institution.

~~~
lclarkmichalek
And thank god it did. I'd rather live in a world with more single mothers and
fewer dysfunctional/abusive/generally suboptimal relationships.

~~~
_random_
I should have said "changed" instead of "messed up", but sometimes it does
feel like one big sociological experiment.

------
greggman
I'm not sure how this is helpful. I've known I'm personally more attracted to
personality than looks. That's not the problem.

The problem is it's hard (at least for me) to get the opportunity to be around
members of the opposite sex long enough for them to see my "uniqueness"

Personal examples. My last job of 5 years had 100 people on my floor only 2 of
which were women. My friends are generally all geeks who have no women friends
to include in our activities.

I'm not whining. Only pointing out that telling me it's okay because my
uniqueness will win over my consensus desirability is not helpful because no
one gets the chance to learn my uniqueness

~~~
edanm
Firstly, this is a problem I'm not sure is very common - I'm guessing most
people _do_ hang out around members of the opposite sex, at work, with
friends, etc.

Second, for your specific situation - you say you have a problem. But it's a
very solvable one. Find places to hang out with members of the opposite sex.
This can be anything from going to specific classes that have women in them
and that you also enjoy (e.g. drawing? Pottery? I don't know, depends what you
like).

You can also actively try to befriend people who hang out with women.

~~~
berdario
I used to think the same, then I tried to actually get into environments with
a more balanced gender ratio, and I realized that actually I was not faring
any better than before. Apparently I have low desirability and have few unique
appeals/provoke low unique reactions.

At the end, it's inevitable: even if just by mere chance, someone _has_ to be
in the lower 5% of people who get the least successful interactions with the
other gender.

(Anyhow, his problem seems very common to me, but obviously my POW is skewed,
since I got to know most of my friends in one of these place with unbalanced
gender ratio in the first place)

~~~
edanm
Someone has to be in the lower 5%, it's true. But it doesn't have to be you or
the parent.

It's absolutely true that the skills to make yourself seem more desirable are
"learnable" skills. They also happen to correlate pretty highly with plenty of
other important skills, like making better friendships in general, succeeding
more in business, succeeding more in other spheres of life, etc.

That's because most of the things you need to improve to be more desirable is:
a) make yourself actually more desirable, usually by doing interesting
things/etc., and b) make yourself a better marketer, who knows how to actually
_show_ that you're more desirable, in a way that doesn't turn people off.

I really recommend you and anyone else who has trouble "attracting" the
opposite sex, read any of the Pick Up Artist material that's out there. Don't
fall too in love with the "world of PUA", and don't take it too seriously, but
do read it and practice it. It will _really_ improve your life, and not just
in dating.

------
rjknight
I feel that this could have been stated much more simply:

1) There are personal attributes which are easily observable (mostly physical,
also charismatic and possibly social status). This is basically what we can
know about a person from appearance alone.

2) There are personal attributes which are less easily observable, and these
include temperament, interests, response to various situations, behaviour
outside of group situations. To know these things requires much greater time
interacting with a person, possibly in smaller groups or one-on-one.

People's tastes in #1 are mostly uniform. Someone rated highly for #1 by one
person is likely to be rated highly by any other person. The same is
emphatically not true of #2, where ratings vary wildly.

As exposure to #2 increases, it increases in importance over #1. Let's say
that #2 constitutes 80% of your overall "rating" of a person, and you really
like them so they're a 9 despite scoring only a 5 on the initial assessment.
Their total score is 8.2. Someone who scores a 10 for #1 but a 4 for #2 scores
6.2. These numbers might be off and they might vary between people but I think
it's a pretty simple idea.

Most people are taking this as a suggestion about their own attractiveness,
but the flip-side argument is possibly even more important - the person you're
most likely to be really attracted to isn't necessarily the person who scores
most highly on #1, and if you're using #1 as a filter then you're ruling good
people out.

------
hypron
>In a related study of approximately 350 heterosexual individuals, we
collected these same measures in networks of opposite-sex friends,
acquaintances and partners. Among these well-acquainted individuals, consensus
on measures of mate value was nearly zero. These are the people who know what
authors you like, what you wore for Halloween six years ago and what obscure
movie you will quote the next time you all get together. But they cannot agree
on your mate value. Over the years, it has evaporated before their eyes.

I'm curious if this is the cause of the so-called "friend zone". A guy and a
girl meet and become friends. After getting to know each other, the guy still
thinks the girl has mate value, whereas the girl doesn't think the guy has
mate value.

~~~
Blackthorn
What's wrong with the friend zone? See:
[http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2615](http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2615)

(This is a snarky way of saying that friendship is its own reward.)

~~~
peteretep
Nothing inherently wrong with it, in the same way there's nothing inherently
wrong with a relationship based entirely on casual sex with no attendant
intimacy or commitment.

In both cases, though, in practice, you're likely to find one side is getting
exactly what they want out of the relationship, where the other is holding out
for more.

------
spindritf
_if you do not have a high mate value, take heart. All you need is for others
to have the patience to get to know you_

Or increase your mate value. In traits like conscientiousness or intelligence
40-60% of variance is genetic. There is no reason to think that somehow
charisma is a weird outlier with which you're stuck. She thinks anyone can act
much more charismatically
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMu_md_5PQ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMu_md_5PQ4)
Feels a little newagey but otherwise completely reasonable.

It's the same with meeting people. You probably live in a large city with
millions of them. Even with strict selection there are at least a few
thousands of potential mates. Why wait until you end up in a small group with
one of them?

It also means that you have as many attempts as you want. Blowing out with one
person will not haunt you through that social group forever.

This is one of those articles that is supposed to make people feel good about
themselves, and maybe it does, but at the cost of bringing counter-productive
advice.

------
personlurking
I spent my teens and 20s working hard on my uniqueness out of a feeling that I
was different. I forced myself to like anything that was out of the ordinary
(this manifested itself in attaching myself to any concepts, interests, and
preferences that were non-American). I allowed my search to be different to
overtake me, making me a bit of a vagabond, more interested in exploration
than in work (discovery-oriented rather than goal-oriented).

Liking interesting things can act as a repellent because it becomes so much
harder to find others who have worked a lot on their interestingness or who
can appreciate your differences, knowledge and tastes.

Now in my 30s, I've let it go (due to a realization that I don't need to try
so hard) and it feels as if a lot of it just disappeared. Like a great meal, I
loved it while I was eating it but afterwards there's just an empty plate and
the memory of the meal.

~~~
JacksonGariety
Hey, could I chat with you be email? My address is on my HN profile.

~~~
enimodas
You have to put your email address in the about section, the email field is
for "Please put a valid address in the email field, or we won't be able to
send you a new password if you forget yours. Your address is only visible to
you and us. Crawlers and other users can't see it."

~~~
JacksonGariety
updated

------
socrates1998
I usually disagree with papers like these but this one is a little more
accurate to real life.

The concept of "value" in dating is absurd. Everyone judges value differently.
Being attracted to another person has so many variables it can't bit factored
in.

Are there some "universal traits" that make people physically attractive? Yes,
but that doesn't mean the dating world is a hierarchy with the beautiful
people at the top.

And having a super beautiful girlfriend isn't always great. I know models who
are insanely insecure about their bodies and are just a pain to be around
because they are constantly worried about how they look.

I think I generally date cute girls, but I once dated a that was definitely
physically more attractive than most of the rest. She would get tons of
attention when we went out. Guys would constantly check her out or give me
"Great job man!" looks and comments. I knew she was constantly getting invited
to social events, parties and probably dates as well.

This amount of attention can really be unhealthy to a relationship. If she is
constantly being tempted by tons of guys and opportunities every day, then its
just a matter of time when she starts to think, "You know he is nice, but that
other guy was really cute."

And thats really how it ended. She just stopped returning my texts and phone
calls one day, so I am pretty sure she just moved on to something else. It
wasn't too bad for me, she had a lot of flaws even though she was gorgeous.

------
bambax
There is a blog post on OKCupid that discusses the same concepts:

> _the more men as a group disagree about a woman 's look, the more they end
> up liking her_

[http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-mathematics-of-
beauty/](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-mathematics-of-beauty/)

If everyone agree you're ugly, that's bad. But if some people lilke you a lot
and some people dislike you a lot, that's much better than if everyone agree
you're "okay", or "cute".

However, the OP has a rather floating concept of uniqueness that they seem to
conflate with intimacy or friendship; of course once you become friends with
someone they're unique to you, but that doesn't mean much about their
"uniqueness" as a property of their being.

------
31reasons
>>All you need is for others to have the patience to get to know you, and a
more level playing field should follow.

And a different career than engineering, so you can find more time and
possibility of meeting possible mates at work.

~~~
rdtsc
Online social networks, clubs, special interest group meetups, churches, gym,
community classes are other places.

Mixing work and dating is often a recipe for disaster.

~~~
alex_doom
I thought it worked out great for GitHub...

------
kyberias
I find it hard to grasp the concept of charisma. Its definition seems to be
vague and highly subjective. It was mentioned in this article like it was
something very specific. My pet peeve I guess.

------
streetpickup
> One recent study of a representative sample of adolescents found that only 6
> percent reported that they and their partners formed a romantic relationship
> soon after meeting.

> It seems most likely that it is the consensually desirable people who pull
> off the rare feat of quickly leveraging an initial positive impression into
> romance, while a vast majority of us get to know our romantic partners
> slowly, gradually, over time.

I think anyone can learn how to do this.

~~~
htns
And the trick is called "lowering standards". While attractive people surely
have everything easier, I suspect the difference the study found is due to men
seeking different things from "short" and long relationships.

------
enraged_camel
What this article seems to be saying is that uniqueness has a multiplier
effect on attractiveness. You can have a "base attractiveness" of 5 out of 10,
but the more unique you are, the higher (and lower) you will appear to various
people as they get to know you better.

------
bambax
The existence of ugly people is proof that their ugly parents did mate.

~~~
danieltillett
Just like average people can have an exceptionally beautiful or intelligent
child so can average people have ugly or dumb kids - any multigene trait will
be like this.

------
galfarragem
The smartest blog I know to understand relationships. A must read:

[http://www.therationalmale.com](http://www.therationalmale.com)

------
jedrek
A 100+ comment thread about relationships without the use of the word
"companionship" once. Wow.

------
lsv1
I thought this article was about not being desirable in the job market for
some terrible fact or harsh truth. Instead I was greeted with a fluffy
article. I'm question the value of this article on HN.

------
sizzle
anyone ever been in this situation? what was the outcome like?

------
FD3SA
The most interesting aspect of the modern mating paradigm is the opportunity
costs associated with mate-seeking behavior, and the impacts on successful
societies.

Most primate societies are focused on mating and survival, without much
surplus effort remaining for any other tasks. Humans, by virtue of technology
and social engineering, have gained a rare ability to dedicate an incredible
amount of time to creating heretofore unfathomable works of the imagination
such as science, engineering, art, music and literature.

Though many believe this was natural progression, there still exist a few
human societies that are effectively hunter gatherers, and expend little
energy in advancing their societies technologically. The trillion dollar
question is this: what role do mating paradigms play in determining societal
structure?

My own hypothesis, and one shared by a surprising number of old scholars, is
that mating paradigms are a fundamental determinant of societal structure.

There is a very strong correlation in history between societies that practised
very strict mating policies and those that are considered successful. In fact,
it seems increasingly likely that the purpose of strict religious practices
was to tightly control the mating marketplace in order to prevent the
devastating opportunity costs associated with a no holds barred mating market.

As such, I'm interested where the increasingly liberal sexual marketplace will
lead societies. Men who spend too much of their time creating wonderful works
of art, but fail to reproduce, will be unsuccessful in the long run. Many born
in this day and age believe modern civilization has always existed, and will
always continue. However, as many countries around the world demonstrate,
advanced civilization is an extremely unstable equilibrium. A perturbation of
even one pillar can have disastrous, irreversible consequences.

We live in interesting times.

~~~
htns
I agree with the second half of your post, but hunter-gatherer was an
unfortunate choice of words. Societies tend to "evolve" due to scarcity
induced by population density, as the first steps of the technology tree
simply aren't that enticing when nature still provides plenty. Arguably we see
the same thing with fossil fuels today.

What I'm saying is that I'm not so sure reaching a higher population is
hindered by a liberal approach to sex (pre-contraception).

------
Dewie
Romance is funny. On one hand, people believe in some intrinsic uniqueness in
people that make a few of them destined to be their "soul mate". This is
purely a matter of being-who-you-are, which can't be measured as objectively
good or bad, but is perfect for the few that are your destined "soul mates"
(some people won't call it 'soul mate' or have such a mystical aura around it,
but may believe in the same thing just as well).

On the other hand, people believe that people can be objectively measured and
that they can be assigned a dating market 'value'. Then people have to assess
their own value in order to be realistic about who they can date, lest they
(gasp) overshoot and try to be with someone who is _out of their league_.

These two viewpoints are polar opposites. Yet it seems that people seem to
either concern themselves with one or the other, at some point in time.

There is nothing like this league-stuff for friendships (perhaps except for in
high school) or any other human relationships. Why? Perhaps it's because of
the seemingly almost universally accepted concept of monogamy.

~~~
dTal
>There is nothing like this league-stuff for friendships

There is, and it's the same league: social status. It's just not as rigid
because we typically have multiple friends, so the effect of one lower status
friend is diluted. In general though, we try to maximise the average status of
our friends (or at least try and match our own self-perceived status) just as
with our mates.

~~~
Dewie
OK then, people are terrible through-and-through. Good way to end my day on
that note.

------
hellbreakslose
I seriously don't like this article...

Why should we try and scientificaly explain the only things that keeps us
human? Then come out with a pattern and become robots?

Also in the other hand of the article, my attractivness is medium to low, and
I don't attract women easily (my looks are ok, but I got that weird mindset
that drives them away). I've had a relationship with a woman that was hot 9/10
very very smart studied in ivy league with scolarship and she was very
attractive to the point that we had guys coming after her when we were going
out... My life experiences proves that article jibberish ...

------
jamesaguilar
I definitely know some unique folks, and that does really seem to work for
them in romantic settings. Like those other qualities -- wealth,
attractiveness, power -- only a few can be the "most" unique. Maybe it's
cynical, but I guess that most people aren't that exceptional, and _that 's
OK_.

~~~
harmegido
I think you missed the meaning of what the author was calling uniqueness. From
my reading of the article, I took it to mean that each person likes potential
mates in a unique way, but that this only comes out after a little while.

For example, if you asked a group of men to rate women they did not know on a
scale of 1-10, you would get largely the same answers from all of them about
each particular female. However, since each of these men is "unique," if you
asked them that same question after they had just all spent 3 months together
(the men and women), the numbers will now be more muddled.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Hrm. I would guess that effect tends to result from people associating
generally with other folks in the same social tier. Like, to side step wealth
entirely, let's say you're someone who values physical fitness. You will
generally hang out with other folks who value physical fitness. When asked to
rate the people around you of the gender you're attracted to, you'll reply by
finding the differentiating features, and going from there. But, since you've
self-selected your social circle, they'll all tend to have values that you
find important. (The undergraduate studies the author speaks of are limiting
for the same reason.) So when you've selected people in whom you are
relatively more interested, you'll magnify the importance of the unique things
about them that you like, but those unique things aren't exactly what made the
two of you compatible in the first place.

Put another way, I'd be surprised if this finding still held true if you took
a a random hundred people from the general populace and put them in a dome. I
predict you'd see "mate value" very clearly delineated in the pairings up that
resulted.

I'm not arguing that uniqueness isn't a factor. Maybe I am just nitpicking
here -- it's unclear whether the author intended to convey that uniqueness was
one factor among many, or an overriding factor. If the former, then my posts
here have probably not been useful, but if the latter, I doubt it.

