If you're single, you could reverse engineer this to have a higher chance of getting a date. Look for attractive girls who have pictures with all the attributes that get poor responses, and it should lead to less competition and better odds for you.
Maybe I read too much Roissy, but my first reaction to this idea was that competition-avoidance is more of a beta trait than an alpha one, so while your suggestion may be useful, it might be a good idea to bring some game along anyway. But if you had game to bring, then why would you have to pick off stragglers around the herd's periphery in the first place?
I had a life changing experience at age 22. A manic crazy group of Peruvian girls brought me home from a nightclub to their party. Okay, we had a nice night, but in the morning - seeing the girls without their hair, makeup, looking hungover - it's like, wow, highly sexualized doesn't mean beautiful. It just means highly sexualized, which comes from a lot of work on her part. But as you saw in the Okcupid article, highly sexualized draws men's attention - "flirty face", the Myspace pose, etc.
But getting one of those flirty, sexualized girls doesn't mean higher quality! It just means you got a girl who put work into appearing highly sexualized, which if anything, is the sign of maybe a fun fling but not a quality girlfriend.
Me, I stopped looking for that, and started looking more for just decent quality skin, a walk with some energy in it, awareness in her eyes, and so on. You can always teach a girl how to dress and make herself up to your tastes, which I did for my last serious girlfriend who was getting her PhD in physics. Too much jeans and sneakers when I met her, lots of skirts and dresses and leather boots and heels when I moved out of the USA.
But I like a lot of other things that most men don't - I prefer taller women, and I prefer women who are built strong with good musculature, athletes, and girls with wider hips and shoulders. It always amazes me when I meet a girl who is an athlete and she's getting so much less attention from men than a girl who is on the alcohol + cigarettes + no food diet.
But I digress, quality is quality, and if you can find quality with less competition, that's absolutely worth going and getting. Going for a girl who is equal or lower quality but more highly chased doesn't make your life better, it's headache for (at best) ego-gratification, at worst a waste of time.
>You can always teach a girl how to dress and make herself up to your tastes,
Well, you know, just as long as she doesn't have a mind of her own.
I honestly find discussion about dating on HN a bit disturbing. I mean, would you be comfortable with a girl that you wanted to date reading this post? Speculating on her "quality" as if she was a horse.
> Well, you know, just as long as she doesn't have a mind of her own.
You read into it too much mate - girlfriends have dressed me to their taste too, encouraging more casual, or more formal, or more scarves, or whatever. It's normal for a romantic partner to encourage and refine their partner's style of dress and aesthetics, and it's usually done willingly by flexible people.
Now, if a girl wrote, "I prefer to find a guy who is quality that other women might overlook, I reckon you can always teach a man how to dress better" would you have batted an eyelid? I doubt it.
> I mean, would you be comfortable with a girl that you wanted to date reading this post?
Yes.
> Speculating on her "quality" as if she was a horse.
No. It's okay to have standards. This isn't kindergarten where everyone is special.
> It's normal for a romantic partner to encourage and refine their partner's style of dress and aesthetics, and it's usually done willingly by flexible people.
Yes, that's why you stated it as basically "you can always change the girl to fit your tastes." Nothing about your statement implied (or stated, for that matter) any kind of mutual understanding or flexibility - just your ability to change a girl to your liking.
> Now, if a girl wrote, "I prefer to find a guy who is quality that other women might overlook, I reckon you can always teach a man how to dress better" would you have batted an eyelid? I doubt it.
Yes, and I bet most here would. Most independent people (which I believe many entrepreneurs are) dislike being told what to do. Even the tone of your statement shows a bit of bitterness at your belief that it's ok for a woman to "change" her man and not the other way around.
> Now, if a girl wrote, "I prefer to find a guy who is quality that other women might overlook, I reckon you can always teach a man how to dress better" would you have batted an eyelid? I doubt it.
I dunno whether my girl friend thought that before/after meeting me but she has definitely influenced my dressing habits over time and plays a big role when I am buying new clothes or deciding what to wear to a party/occasion. And I don't really mind that and the same is true for her, I do get a say on what she wears.
Look, I'm not some lunatic who's saying that all women are equally attractive, or that partners never influence each other's dress. It's the tone of your post that I object to, but I can see this is lost on you. I doubt it will be lost on women that you date, though.
> No. It's ok to have standards.
Some standards are ok, some aren't. I'm not objecting to your having standards, just the particular standards that you appear to have.
Usually if someone slings mud, I'll just hang it up and call it the end of a discussion. But I think you're probably well-intentioned and a good person so I'll respond. Let's look at two statements here:
> It's the tone of your post that I object to, but I can see this is lost on you.
Your meaning wasn't lost on me. Earlier, you asked me, "Would you be okay with a girl you liked reading that?" And my answer is yes. Yes, I am not afraid to speak candidly to people in my life, women included. I usually have this exact same conversation with girls in my life - last night I was at Shilin Night Market with my new girlfriend here in Taipei, who is an athlete, and I told her that I think the Taiwanese men who want small, hyper-skinny, unathletic girls are crazy, and that I think those girls look very elegant, but are worse lovers and are less likely to give you strong children. This is completely not politically correct, but it's also honestly how I feel. And so if I speak on the topic, I wind up speaking candidly.
I understand occasionally someone will get upset, though it's clearly not the intention to upset people. Dating and sex and love is a very personal topic and can quite upset people by getting at them on an identity level.
So what's the answer? To speak in platitudes and generalities? There's no way to speak up candidly about dating, sex, love, men, and women without upsetting someone. You can't do it. So your choices are never speak up, or always say fuzzy things with many caveats in the most polite way - and never get your point across. I speak honestly. Hopefully my anecdote that started this thread will be of some value to people here, which is why I comment.
> I doubt it will be lost on women that you date, though.
Actually, you're right, but not in the way you mean. I've had some wonderful relationships in my life. I've probably been far more blessed than I deserve to be - but if you want to talk about relative social lives, sex lives, and dating lives, I'm happy to go there as you brought it up. We could compare and contrast, if you like, how your politically correct pseudo-chivalry is working vs. my slightly more gritty candidness. I would never have thought to bring such a thing up, it seems rather impolite, but I'll go there if you'd like to.
> I'm not objecting to your having standards, just the particular standards that you appear to have.
Snark aside, the great thing about being human is that you get to set your own standards. Mine work for me. Maybe you don't care so much about the things I care about? Totally okay! If you're happy with where you're at, and I'm happy where I'm at, life goes on.
If, however, you want to imply that political correctness and not being candid and having some sort of "acceptable standards" or some such will make you more effective at life or happier - well, this is where I must speak up and disagree.
No, I think you're probably a good person, and a thoughtful person, so I don't take any offense here. But I would encourage you to think - really think - about whether it's okay and acceptable for people to speak about what they truly want and go for out of life, even if it's not normally the most polite, even if it risks offending someone sensitive. Your answers might be different than mine - but mine came from a lot of life lessons, and my way generally serves me pretty well. Loosening off political correctness and sensitivity might do the same for you or others.
You seem to think that I am against people being candid, but I'm not. Don't assume that everyone secretly thinks what you think but is afraid to say so. I'm perfectly candid, I just don't share your views.
>Snark aside, the great thing about being human is that you get to set your own standards
And the great thing about writing about your standards on a public forum is that you get to hear other people's opinions on them, right?
>We could compare and contrast, if you like, how your politically correct pseudo-chivalry is working vs. my slightly more gritty candidness.
Actually I'm gay, so I'm afraid we can't compare our vaginal insemination success rates. But maybe we can lock horns? Or compare penis size? FWIW I do ok with other guys (and I generally allow them to dress themselves).
But if you just want to boast about your love/sex life, please don't feel that you need my cooperation. This is an open forum, after all.
lionhearted is not a troll. What he is saying it is actually resonated with what I think/do also.
BTW. My friends and I use the same term too. "Quality Woman": Is a girl/woman that is well educated, cute, nice, not with a huge self sense of entitlement, and a good personality.
Basically a woman that has her shit together, not bitchy, and is cute at the same time.
So instead of having a whole paragraph to describe her, just saying 'quality', and my friend will understand it immediately.
They are actually pretty rare in the US, especially single.
I don't know why, but European girls seem to be a lot balanced in general.
Maybe saying she is a great girl will be less offensive to few people? But whatever, life is short, so I am not going to live myself to appease everybody.
Being from the UK, and having travelled Europe, the women aren't any different in any appreciable way. The only main difference between an 'American' girl and any other is the lower educational standard in the US. [Ed: However, with a smaller percentile of highly educated males, this shouldn't really be a major problem for the vast majority of people.]
I would also give a caveat, in continental Europe it's a more acceptable social norm for women to groom less. I'm not necessarily talking about the underarms (I've actually seen this less in Europe than I have elsewhere), but facial and leg hair. This can get bad with more southern-European where hair colour tends to be darker.
I groom my facial hair, and if I need to I groom my body hair (I have a mildly hairy back, which I personally dislike so it gets shaved) too. So I personally believe it's common courtesy for a woman to do it too.
>They are actually pretty rare in the US, especially single.
I think this is exactly the kind of attitude that some of us object to. Basically, a bunch of guys sitting around passing judgment on all the women in the world, concluding that hardly any of them are worthy of their (presumably much sought-after) affections.
For me, your explanation of what is meant by "quality" basically pushes all the buttons that the OP did.
"lionhearted is not a troll. What he is saying it is actually resonated with what I think/do also."
A troll is as troll does. And this isn't about whether the two of you share some weird notion of "quality" in women. If you do, take it off line. This sexist claptrap doesn't belong on HN.
"I prefer taller women, and I prefer women who are built strong with good musculature, athletes, and girls with wider hips and shoulders."
Does anybody care a damn what someone's sexual preferences are like?
This is borderline locker room conversation - discussion of "long thin athletic" women, sexual history paraded as "education" for other readers, challenges to other people to compare their sexual lives with his (e.g:- "if you want to talk about relative social lives, sex lives, and dating lives, I'm happy to go there . We could compare and contrast, if you like, how your politically correct pseudo-chivalry is working vs. my slightly more gritty candidness")
Gritty candidness my foot! This sounds like juvenile frat boy crap to me.
It doesn't matter whether you have the same tastes.
I just happen to think such crudity should be kept off HN. If I am in the minority, so be it. Nothing prevents the lot of you from forming a private mailing list and exchanging vapid theories of "quality women".
Or are you saying your sexual fantasies and theories are of "intellectual interest to hackers"?
I am more disturbed by your accusation of the (grand)parent being sexist than by the contents of their posts. You kinda sound like someone who would accuse people of being "sexist" because they use the word "mankind" instead of "humankind".
Fun fact: Did you know that the word "man" was originally sex-neutral? The generic term was co-opted for the specifically male sense centuries ago and the original masculine term mostly disappeared.
So, fight sexism by using "man" in the gender neutral sense! Reclaim the language!
(If you're wondering, the old terms were something like wer and wyf, prefixed to the generic "man". The latter obviously relates to "wife" and the compound wyfman shifted into the modern "woman". The compound werman disappeared, while the prefix remains only in terms like "werewolf", which is thus literally "man-wolf" in the distinctly masculine sense.)
> Well, you know, just as long as she doesn't have a mind of her own.
Zing! Nicely said.
> I honestly find discussion about dating on HN a bit disturbing.
Huh? Why? It's of interest to hackers, and I find it quite an interesting thread.
> I mean, would you be comfortable with a girl that you wanted to date reading this post? Speculating on her "quality" as if she was a horse.
Yes, by all means, let's PRETEND that when it comes to software engineers there's such a thing as quality, and when it comes to cofounders there's such a thing as quality, and when it comes to friends there's such a thing as quality, but OH, NO, NO, there's no such thing as quality in women - because every single woman on the planet is equally perfect, and it would be SO politically incorrect to say that one woman is cuter, funnier, more intelligent, more loyal, sexier, or tolerant of weekly board game night.
It would be nice if you could exercise some minimal charity in interpretation. Of course I'm not saying that all women are equally attractive -- who would say such a thing? My reaction is to the tone of the comments, which seem to indicate a minimal interest in women as people as opposed to "mates". It's the obsession with casting everything in terms of genes and gene "quality", because some people apparently can't bear to make even the most important decisions in their lives on grounds that are actually personal or emotional. Pop evolutionary psychology (which is about a scientific as astrology, frankly) is not going to make you happy or find you a partner. I think a lot of nerds like to cast dating in these pseudoscientific terms because they are basically terrified of things like people, feelings, desires and emotions -- the things that actually matter when you are dating.
> Huh? Why?
I mean that I find the content of the actual discussions disturbing, not the mere idea of discussing this subject on HN.
I think you're misunderstanding what he meant. At least, it seems that what you got out of what he said isn't what I did. When he said 'quality', I didn't think he was talking about people as "mates" or as gene quality or some such. I took 'quality' to mean exactly what you want it to mean - attractiveness, how much fun they are to be around, etc etc. Basically, whatever you would look for in a 'significant other' - certainly not just gene quality or whatever.
As for the tone, it is a bit unusual, I guess. Our crowd - hackers, programmers, engineers, nerds, whatever you want to call them - does tend to like abstracting things away, trying to model life that goes on around us in a precise and systematic way. The tone is due just to that.
Don't you think that "quality" is an odd word to use for that? I make no apologies for responding to the connotations of a word in context as well as its literal meaning.
I suppose it is important to note that we're talking about the subjective quality of the person. You're lying if you can't look at someone and tell me whether they appear to meet your personal criteria for physical quality.
My suspicion is that there is a correlation between self-esteem and ones comfort with the word "quality" when applied to people. I know that anyone whose judgment I respect would view me as a "quality person", so I have no problem with the term. If I was insecure and didn't think of myself as a person of quality, then I might have an issue with the concept.
Do you honestly think I am arguing against the banal and obvious truth that some people are more attractive than other people? I'm not going to rehearse my point all over again, but please, give me some credit...
> I know that anyone whose judgment I respect would view me as a "quality person"
But then, presumably you wouldn't respect their judgment if they didn't :)
Well, I don't agree with that. You should respect the judgment of people who think that you're a bad person if they seem to have generally good judgment in other areas. Basically, this is the jester's point in Twelfth Night: "I'm better because of my enemies and worse because of my friends."
Of course you do--the idea of all people being equal is pretty strongly ingrained in our society, so the idea of some people being fundamentally higher or lower quality is difficult to accept.
I don't find it difficult to accept myself. Sure, some people are better at some things than other people. Some people are hot and some people are ugly. If you think that you're some kind of intellectual rebel because you've noticed these obvious truths, then I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but none of this has anything to do with what I was saying.
>the idea of all people being equal is pretty strongly ingrained in our society,
The idea that all people have equal rights is deeply ingrained, but I've never met anyone who actually thought that everyone was equal in a dumb, literal sense; that's just a straw man.
"Sure, some people are better at some things than other people. Some people are hot and some people are ugly."
No, I meant even more literally--the idea that some people are fundamentally higher or lower quality, that some people have more worth as a human being than others.
That is (a) false and (b) has nothing to do with the point at hand (the OP has "good skin" as one of his indicators of quality -- he's clearly not talking about quality in a deep sense, unless you think that having good skin makes you worth more as a human being!).
Why not? It might make you worth a little more as a human being, all other things kept equal. Wouldn't the perfect human have good skin?
Seriously though, the reason describing people as being "high quality" or "low quality" sounds jarring is because on a very fundamental level, it sounds like we're judging people, and judging people is taboo.
>Why not? It might make you worth a little more as a human being, all other things kept equ
No, it wouldn't make you worth any more. To make this more concrete, are you seriously suggesting that given the choice between saving the life of someone with bad skin and saving the life of an otherwise identical person with good skin, you could cite skin quality as your justification for choosing to save the one over the other? Clearly, the dilemma in this case would be just as acute as in a case where you had a choice between saving one or other of two precisely equal people -- it would be grotesque to suggest that skin quality could act as a tie-breaker in such cases.
I suppose it might look from your perspective as if there is some kind of weird "taboo" on judging people, but really it's just that you're doing it wrong. People aren't valued according to a weighted sum of their qualities and virtues. (Of course, you can weight their qualities if you like, and you can sum the results if you want to, but the result will serve only as a measure of your callousness.)
"No, it wouldn't make you worth any more. To make this more concrete, are you seriously suggesting that given the choice between saving the life of someone with bad skin and saving the life of an otherwise identical person with good skin, you could cite skin quality as your justification for choosing to save the one over the other?"
Having to choose between any two people in that situation would be difficult. This is getting rather far afield, though.
"I suppose it might look from your perspective as if there is some kind of weird "taboo" on judging people, but really it's just that you're doing it wrong. People aren't valued according to a weighted sum of their qualities and virtues."
If you haven't noticed a massive taboo against judging people, either we live in very different cultures or you haven't been paying very close attention. Would you suggest a better way of judging people?
No it isn't. It's directly addressing your claim that good skin makes a person worth more. If you really believed that, you would not find your choice in that situation to be difficult at all.
I think that your claim is just hard-headed posing. You don't really believe any such thing, but for some reason you seem to think that you ought to believe it, or that professing to believe it makes you sound objective and rational. It doesn't; it makes you sound crazy.
>If you haven't noticed a massive taboo against judging people, either we live in very different cultures or you haven't been paying very close attention.
The taboo is on judging people in the same way that we judge products, services and merchandise. And quite right too -- there should be a taboo on doing that.
"your claim that good skin makes a person worth more"
It was a passing thought, not a claim. Pay it no more attention.
"The taboo is on judging people in the same way that we judge products, services and merchandise. And quite right too -- there should be a taboo on doing that."
No, it extends further than that. Even judging people on moral grounds is condemned as "judgmental".
>It was a passing thought, not a claim. Pay it no more attention.
Ok, so then I direct you to what I was saying originally:
"the OP has 'good skin' as one of his indicators of quality -- he's clearly not talking about quality in a deep sense, unless you think that having good skin makes you worth more as a human being!"
If you've changed your mind on the issue of good skin adding to a person's worth, then perhaps you'll now agree with me on this point.
>No, it extends further than that. Even judging people on moral grounds is condemned as "judgmental".
Not in my experience. I hear people judging others all the time without being called out on it.
People are ontologically equal, we all have the same fundamental ability to make free moral decisions, which is what makes us human.
However, people are not equal in the gifts they've been given.
But, I agree with your fundamental point. True relationships aren't based on our external qualities, but on the soul. Today's evolutionary stupidity completely blinds many to deeper relationships.
Maybe you've misread the post he's responding to? 'fun to be around' did not figure, it starts out with clothes, make-up, hair, looking 'sexualized' and after a self-congratulatory bit about imposing his idea of style on some woman, it goes right to the cattle market to outline the preferences in walk, skin, hips, musculature, shoulders and diet. That tone is not 'nerd', it's 'obliviously misogynist clod'.
Did I say that? It really makes discussion a lot more interesting if you reply (however indignantly) to something that was actually said rather than something that merely makes you indignant.
I might if they didn't display any appreciation of the flower's beauty, yes.
However, I'm not sure if this is a very good analogy. I don't think many people here have anything more than a passing interest in the evolutionary biology of mate selection. It seems to function more as an excuse to avoid talking about dating in more personal terms.
Hmm...if I were a botanist, I think I'd get a bit weary of always having to interrupt a high-bandwidth dialogue with a peer to insert sufficient fawning to appease those who might otherwise judge us for the things we did not say.
About the merits of the analogy: professional versus passing interest is not really relevant. The salient point is that anything can be discussed on multiple, distinct levels of abstraction, and speaking of it on one level of abstraction does not invalidate or denigrate another level. Have you read Douglas Hofstadter's classic Godel, Escher, Bach? I recommend it highly.
His point is the important thing about people is themselves, not their qualities. If the relationship is based on "quality" and not on love, he (and myself) thinks it is missing something much more deeper.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Yes, there are multiple levels of abstraction. Yes, from the fact that someone hasn't said X, you cannot infer with 100% certainty that they do not believe X. I doubt anyone could disagree with these banal statements, but they don't have anything to do with this discussion.
>Have you read Douglas Hofstadter's classic Godel, Escher, Bach?
Obviously, I am not arguing that people should try to find bad, unsuitable partners, but that ought to be clear if you actually read my post. (Or alternatively, if you just proceed under the assumption that I have a more-or-less functional brain.) If you read the OP's post, you'll see that his sentiments went quite some way beyond "find a good woman".
Of course people want partners with certain attributes. But the way that gets discussed on this site is often pretty creepy. People are talking as if they're making a purchase ("high quality merchandise") rather than finding someone to love.
> You can always teach a girl how to dress and make herself up to your tastes, which I did for my last serious girlfriend who was getting her PhD in physics. Too much jeans and sneakers when I met her, lots of skirts and dresses and leather boots and heels when I moved out of the USA.
>>"You can always teach a girl how to dress and make herself up to your tastes"
You can't always. Sometimes they might not agree to your tastes. For example, they might have their own tastes. Some people even like girls that have their own tastes.
I agree with the general spirit of what you're saying, but I disagree with a few tacit assumptions: that you can automatically equate highly-sought-after with lower quality, that quality women are more forgiving of beta traits, and that quality women don't know their sexual market value.
Hey mate - I actually went to your profile to look for an email to write you. This other comment you made was so subtly funny I laughed quite a bit when I saw it:
"Hmm...if I were a botanist, I think I'd get a bit weary of always having to interrupt a high-bandwidth dialogue with a peer to insert sufficient fawning to appease those who might otherwise judge us for the things we did not say."
I was going to drop you a line to let you know I laughed out loud, and to ask if you got the botanist reference from Feynman, which summed things up incredibly well for me the first time I read it.
> I agree with the general spirit of what you're saying, but I disagree with a few tacit assumptions: that you can automatically equate highly-sought-after with lower quality,
Ah, you're right, I was a little unclear on that. I guess I could more accurately like this - some things that are desirable to men don't indicate quality. Obviously some other things do too. The key is finding out which are actually well suited for you - just because a woman is desirable to most men doesn't make her a higher quality gal for you. (What's with the guy who doesn't like the word "quality" by the way? Maybe he's from somewhere else, I just got introduced to a fellow with my friend saying, "This is so-and-so, he's a really high quality guy, I think you guys are going to get along great.)
> that quality women are more forgiving of beta traits,
Disagree. Hmm, how shall I put this.
I don't believe in the alpha/beta dichotomy. Well, there's some truth in it, but among my friends, we actually jokingly talk about "alpha male types" who are kind of loud, and crass, and things. I have read Roissy though, and think he's hilarious once you get over the initial shock and rawness of the guy. But alpha/beta I don't so much agree with.
For me, I usually think of things as strong/average/weak, where strength is of character, internal strength so to speak. So you could be strong (of character) in an area, or average, or weak. On that notion, I don't believe that quality women are more forgiving of weakness - just the opposite actually.
> and that quality women don't know their sexual market value.
This is the most thought provoking part of your comment for me. And I had to think about it for a minute, and you know what? I really think girls who aren't extroverted and sexualized are often less confident than they should be about their prospects, and due to men's ignorance and short sightedness, they do get less attention than they objectively ought to get. Really, I don't think extroversion and hyper-sociality and sexualization makes a girl a better long term companion for most men. But it's interesting to think about either way, cheers for the discussion.
> For me, I usually think of things as strong/average/weak, where strength is of character, internal strength so to speak. So you could be strong (of character) in an area, or average, or weak. On that notion, I don't believe that quality women are more forgiving of weakness - just the opposite actually.
Could you elaborate on this? I find a woman to be higher 'quality' if she is forgiving of weakness. But maybe I'm just interpreting the words 'strong/weak' in the wrong way. Perhaps you meant to say that 'quality' women value integrity. In that case I would agree with you.
I don't believe in the alpha/beta dichotomy. Well, there's some truth in it, but among my friends, we actually jokingly talk about "alpha male types" who are kind of loud, and crass, and things. [snip]
For me, I usually think of things as strong/average/weak, where strength is of character, internal strength so to speak.
External assertiveness and internal strength usually go together, and when it comes to attraction, women don't seem to actively distinguish between them. They're attracted to cockiness. They do, however, notice when somebody points out that the two things aren't in sync. Make a cocky guy look like a fool, and you've turned his cockiness into a negative. Wit is the key.
However, wit and foolishness are in the eye of the beholder. Your wit might turn one woman's head and mystify the rest. You can adapt your wit to your audience to a certain extent, but it's more realistic to focus on an audience that is capable of appreciating you. You're never going to undermine a stereotypical sexy worthless asshole in the eyes of a sexy worthless bimbo; they're made for each other, and everybody else should just get out of the way.
Yes, I must have yanked that from the documentary about Feynman called "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out", which I saw when it first aired as an episode of NOVA in the 80s. I just looked it up because I haven't seen it since, and it's one of the first thing he mentions:
I have what I call the "running shoe filter". If she doesn't wear running shoes, it's very unlikely that I will be interested. But I agree with every other point you make.
> it might be a good idea to bring some game along
Like a wild boar or some venison? Really? Do chicks dig that?
Seriously, though, it depends if you're talking marriage or sex. Most guys will use any tactic for sex. I've never used one of these sites, so I'm just speculating. (I met my wife the old fashioned way - in person.)
I didn't know the Roissy blog. Thanks to pointing it out (though I try not to be what he advocates, I can see his point - and very often wonder why I bother :P ).
So, this post is lots of fun, and I want to encourage folks to do more blogging where they take a bunch of data, graph it up, and test hypotheses with it. Science is great!
On the other hand, though I rarely cite Zed Shaw, I have a special fondness for the theme of his classic article "Programmers Need to Learn Statistics or I Will Kill Them All":
... and I used to review journal articles, so I can't resist nitpicking by pointing out that some of these conclusions are a lot more dubious than others. For example, this sentence:
For women, a smile isn’t strictly better: she actually gets the most messages by flirting directly into the camera...
Appears to be based on the difference between 9.1 new monthly contacts and 9.3 new monthly contacts in each category. Is that statistically significant? I rather doubt it. The correct conclusion here is almost certainly "making a flirty face is not significantly more effective than smiling, and you have to be sure to do it into the camera or the result will be a disaster, so smiling might be the more reliable tactic."
Of course, if you really want to start picking nits you can bring up the need for some kind of multifactor analysis to correct for the fact that certain kinds of pictures are probably correlated with certain kinds of personalities. But that would go beyond what I understand. And it's not actually necessary to try for a Ph.D. every time you throw up a graph or two.
Good fun! Publish more raw data and we can turn this into an great statistics problem set.
It's worth noting in this context that the poster, Christian, is probably OkCupid co-founder Christian Rudder, who has a math degree from Harvard. So I'd guess the results are pretty solid, though I agree it would be nice to see the raw data as well.
"Is that statistically significant? I rather doubt it."
Well do the maths then? Since you read the Zed Shaw essay, you are now an expert on statistics, no?
Sorry to be cynical, but not ALL statistics out there has to be bad. I am too lazy to do the maths right now, but since you seem concerned, it seems fair to ask you to do it before complaining. For one thing, I think they have a fairly large sample, so maybe the 0.2 difference is significant after all (as I said I am too lazy to do the maths myself atm).
So I need to get ripped like Jesus, then take a shirtless self-picture while petting my cat, playing the guitar and not-smiling at something off-camera.
Recycling is not reasonable where I live ( even if I want local trash pickup I have to pay a company that isn't the city), but throwing out and recycling should be synonomous where recycling is popular or common.
I doubt it. What you're doing informs your body language (and vice-versa); I'm sure one of the reasons girls like muscle shots is because the guys in the pictures look like they're showing off their muscles, and guys with their pets look like guys hanging out with their pets. That is--if you took the pets or the washboard abs out of the picture, the face or other aspects would still convey that information.
I'm talking about the subtle changes in demeanor and facial expression: the way you carry yourself differently when you start your day by looking in the mirror and thinking, "I am a sexy man-beast, and the day is my prey." If you started with a blah photograph, photoshopping in the other disparate elements wouldn't change those subtle cues that you're giving off (or not giving off) in the real picture.
I know you probably asked this mostly facetiously, but this felt like a good rant opportunity anyway. :-)
Edit: Though, this subsequently makes me wonder what kind of mixed signals would be sent by a guy who is actually attempting to show off his hot bod, pet a cat, strum a guitar and brood simultaneously.
Intrigued that the 'MySpace pose' is both the most widely known and most effective strategy for women, even though it's often ridiculed.
Did the population of MySpace naturally evolve the optimal strategy for socializing, without anyone consciously realizing it? In an established social network, do the best strategy and the most common strategy gradually coincide?
A Myspace pose is also a good indicator that a girl is fun (meaning interested in sex) and doesn't demand much taste or sophistication. I've been on way too many dates with women who turned out to be wine snobs, music snobs, fashion snobs, literature snobs, or even TV snobs, who lost interest as soon as they realized I didn't meet their particular snob standards. People who are committed to being "better than" in any way would never post something as cliché and tasteless as a Myspace pose. Honestly, for the long term I'm looking for someone whose snob standards are sufficiently aligned with mine, but sometimes it's nice to go out with someone with no standards. (Actually, they have standards, but they're the kind of standards that can be applied before agreeing to a date.)
I wonder if it's much like the advice for guys in The Game - it's the best way to attract the attention of the opposite sex, if you don't care what sort of person's attention you're attracting.
The data also showed that MySpace shots were among the least likely to result in actual conversation. It could be that guys see the much-ridiculed MySpace shot, figure the girl has low self-esteem and would be an easy lay, and then message her with a "hey u sexy". Then they either hookup or she never speaks to him again.
I believe people quickly know what works and what does not, even without directly being aware of it. If a woman wears a new type of lipstick, the signs that it is working or it is not working are very subtle, but over a few days, she will understand that it's not working. She will then change to one that works a little bit better, and when she tries one (recommended by a friend) she will see other subtle signs it works.
It's the same with profile pics - the girls cycle through many different pictures and there are subtle vs not so subtle signs that a picture works better than some other one.
To be introduced to that particular style, one has to see it somewhere, and as it becomes widespread, you get to see it more and the chances of you trying out increase.
I wonder how much of the MySpace shot effect is due to age. I'm guessing that those who take the MySpace shot would more likely be younger and in a generation which finds online social networks second nature.
For those interested in more information derived from data mining online dating data sets, you'll find Andrew Fiore's work at Berkeley and MIT interesting - see the Papers section on this site:
ISTM there's a strong risk here of mixing different people with different agendas. If some people are trolling for casual relationships, it's likely they're evaluating profiles in a different way than those who are looking for something more. Also, those looking for casual hookups are likely to be more active users, so over-represented in the "success" metrics.
in general, okcupid is known more for casual hookups and flings than finding a serious marriage partner, so i think the results are pretty insightful for their target demographic
I don't think that's really true - most of my friends who have used it were looking for potentially long-term relationships. Most of them have also complained about how hard it is to find long-term partners on OKCupid. So I think it's more likely that OKCupid is used to find long-term relationships, but it's successful at casual flings. (Which makes perfect sense, since long term relationships take a long time and a lot of effort, so naturally you'll see fewer of them.)
They act like the photo is all that decides if someone will make contact or not. Is it possible that people that don't look into the camera also haven't put much time into the rest of their profiles, thus lower contact rate?
I do love that they publish this info so openly and in such a readable format.
They do talk about controlling for profile quality.
This isn't the first stats post from OkCupid, they do this every few months approaching a different aspect of the profile. There are previous entries about race, religion, contents of the first message, and so on.
Not to mention the wild assumption of cause-and-effect.
It seems to me that it's just as likely to be true if I say that "someone having other qualities that get them more contacts is more likely to do X in their picture".
Why are all of the x-axises drawn at different points on the y-axis? The x-axis for "The Effect of a Woman's Facial Attitude" is just below 8.7, but for "The Effect of a Man's Facial Attitude" it's at just below 0.6. And in both diagrams which are supposedly comparing the same thing the y-axis represents different information (i.e. "women met per contact" vs "new contacts monthly")
I also find the style of graph misleading. It makes it look like the the numbers that go below the drawn x-axis are negative y-values, but they're not. They are just positive values that are less than where they chose to draw the axis.
It's the same with "Popular Female Photo Contexts." The x-axis is drawn at just below 9 contacts made monthly and all graph values that are less than that are drawn in grey (instead of color) which further misleads to the viewer/reader into thinking, at glance, that the values are negative. Which doesn't necessarily make sense (you can't have negative contacts per month), but why not just start the x-axis at y=0 and be done with it? The relative sizes of the numbers would be the same.
The most interesting things I found in the article had to be the "doing something interesting". To get a date you need to have a conversation and having something interesting makes that easier. This makes a lot of sense after the fact, but not something I had thought about before.
For example a photo of yourself with a NES controller in your hand playing Mario 3. While I would have thought this would be a very 'bad' photo it might actually be very good because it is an easy fun (happy childhood memory for both sexes of a certain age) topic to start with.
I thought the "having animals" numbers were pretty interesting too; it looks like having a pet in the picture may lead to a fairly sizable increase in contact rates.
Precisely. This is nothing new. Go to a park with a dog or a guitar (that you can play, of course). See what happens versus going there to just take a walk.
I wonder if blog posts like this noticeably affect the trends on the site. (e.g. will okcupid see a higher proportion of photos w/pets in the near future?)
Also, the idea of applying results like these seems suboptimal. If you didn't post a shirtless photo or your cropped Rover out of your shot, then that is a hint about your personality and your priorities. Perhaps tweaking your photos will get a higher conversion rate but a lower quality of conversions.
I don't like the way these people restrict the axes on their charts to make their data look more significant than it is (e.g. http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/four_myths/women_smiling.png). I seem to recall that they did this in earlier posts too.
good point, but if they are trying to show a relative (percentage) difference, then their restricted axes make sense, right? perhaps they should be labeled with percentage differences as well as absolute diffs
For example, people who are more interesting, approachable and extroverted just happen to make more eye contact, not the other way around. Or girls who are more outgoing, open and easy-going are willing to expose a bit more and simply go with the 'myspace cleavage shot'
Yeah but on a dating site you don't see how interesting/approachable/extroverted somebody is, you just see if they make eye contact in their picture or not. Even if you are very introverted, you could still create a photograph looking into the camera or showing cleavage (if you are a girl).
You could, but would it have any effect? I'd like to see okcupid doing some controlled experiments and see if stuff like changing the photo to look into the camera works or if people don't look into the camera for another reason that correlates negatively with attraction.
The aspect of "signalling" how biological animals act a certain way to show abilities (i.e. stick out chest for masculinity) is interesting because there is so much room for cheating. I wonder if we are hard wired in a sense to only signal the truth or if there is a arms race going on between the cheaters and the evaluaters.
Not too much mystery when somebody is looking off-camera while taking a webcam shot... he's looking at the screen to click "take picture"! But don't tell the ladies or they'll stop emailing me.
Yes--thankfully, my identity doesn't hinge on whether or not I'm looking at the camera or smiling, so there's nothing "pretend" about me composing my self-portraits one way or the other in respect to those.
