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The Typical Man Disgusts the Typical Woman
- watwut 2y agoMaaaan, I am so happy that I live in completely different circles. I do not mean to say that any guy can get a partner easily. I mean to say that I do not see any of that mutual anger and hate this article writes about. Maybe because they think less in abstract "leagues" and sometimes discuss stuff like "compatibility".
- Ancapistani 2y agoI often have this thought. I'm a 40-year-old man, and started dating my wife when we were 14. As a result, I've never so much as installed a dating app. All of my (very limited) experience with them is a result of sitting with friends while they went through their feed.
- let_me_post_0 2y agoI studied at an engineering college with a disproportionate amount of men, and I saw a lot of these ugly social dynamics. I think you are just blind to it all because things work out for you.
- watwut 2y agoDid those women found men in general "disgusting" as article claims? I did not seen that specifically. I do not know how exactly they would rate the men around, but disgust is very strong negative emotion waaay beyond "not attractive" or "not my type". As I read the article, I would NOT ever want to date or go out with a guy that talks like that. Overwhelming majority of men I met were not like the author of this article. And I believe that it is not the case of them just hiding it. Plus, they tend to use more logic in their reasoning. Nice example is the sentence of "the typical man pesters you" ... the typical men are not actually pestering. Some men are occasionally pestering and annoying. The typical average guy around is perfectly fine to be around regardless of whether they currently have attraction for me or not. Or "The problem is that almost all women think they’re out of his league.". What I certainly don't do is to put myself into a hierarchy, then men into hierarchy and then trying to find visual equal. Look, I am getting ick about whoever wrote this article, but not because they would look badly or because they hygiene would be bad. It is just that as I am reading the article, some red flag in my brain is blinking and telling me "steer away, you do not want that in your home".
- wakawaka28 2y agoI've been in the author's shoes and your comment reminds me of how people would blame me for my own social failures, often with bizarre rationales. It's obvious that the author is not happy with his social life. Nobody wants to be around a bitter person. But his problems are real and caused mainly by him not being accepted by others, almost certainly because of his looks. And he need not look worse than the average man or worse than the women he is pursuing to get a lot of rejection either. It sucks but unfortunately just being aware of this doesn't fix anything. You can always try to look better, but looking better than 90% of guys is not in the cards for most. At least being aware of it as a guy can help you avoid overthinking and to break free of the white lies people say to avoid telling you basic stuff like maybe you need to do <insert uncomfortable thing> or maybe you're just one of the unlucky ones.
- watwut 2y ago> But his problems are real and caused mainly by him not being accepted by others, almost certainly because of his looks. That is not obvious at all. First, there is nothing in the article that would suggest there is an issue with his look. Second, I have no idea how author looks like and as I wrote, reading made red flags in my head blink. This guy wont listen to what I actually say and wont be interested in me as a person. I would be a plaything for him, but he would get offended if I reciprocated the attitude. Dangerous to risk one night stand and no go for relationship. To be honest, he gives off Elliot Roger vibes - not the violent part but the way he thinks. > And he need not look worse than the average man or worse than the women he is pursuing to get a lot of rejection either. There is more to that. He also needs ability to guess which woman will one night stand with him and just do not do that thing. He is not looking for long term relationship, that part is clear. But he is not honest with himself about this either. Like I said, I just do not think in hierarchies like that. This is a projection. And exactly the kind of guy who will get angry when he sees what he considers visually uneven couple and see it as huge unfairness no matter which one of the two he looks down at. > to break free of the white lies people say to avoid telling you basic stuff like maybe you need to do The author is not breaking off anything. The write up is internally inconsistent (He seems to claim that average men is disgustingly unhygienic but actually issue is women care about looks too much and don't care about character? Which one is it?). The data he has do not even measure disgust, but I guess he thinks 6% of women are disgusting and projects that on women who rated men low in attractiveness.
- Etheryte 2y agoThe title is highly misleading, a better summary would be that a typical female OkCupid user doesn't like a typical male OkCupid user. Adding this addendum makes it pretty clear that this data is far from generalizable in any meaningful way. Dating sites and apps cater to certain types of people and there aren't any real takeaways here outside of that.
- RHSeeger 2y agoActually, it specifically calls out > The OkCupid results are far from unique. But the graphs are stark enough to inspire mutual anger. Presumably they're using the OKCupid graphs because the very illustrative of topic being discussed.
- Etheryte 2y agoThis doesn't really say anything useful. It definitely doesn't link or reference any source that's more reliable than trust me bro. It's also ambiguous, they could just as well mean it's the same on other dating sites and apps. There's no way to tell, because the whole article is a big nothing-burger.
- bitshiftfaced 2y ago> Adding this addendum makes it pretty clear that this data is far from generalizable in any meaningful way. Why? We have real world data and can use inductive reasoning to estimate what the "typical woman" thinks of the "typical man." You're right to point out that this has flaws, but that doesn't mean it's not meaningful. If nothing else, it's a far better estimate than just guessing. That is, unless you have some other evidence that points in another direction.
- Etheryte 2y agoA narrow self selected subset of the population, people who use dating sites and apps, doesn't tell you anything about the population as a whole. The selection is not uniform, you could observe literally any result on the wider population. Imagine you have a banking app for the ultra rich. Would you be able to infer anything about the general population from the spending habits of your users? No, because they're not indicative of the population as a whole. The case is the same here.
- 23B1 2y agoSocial science is pseudoscientific enough without drawing conclusions from okcupid data. (fwiw the author Bryan Caplan is an economist and should know better)
- watwut 2y agoI would point out that this article was not written by social scientist.
- mingus88 2y agoDataclysm by Christian Rudder might be interesting to compare here. That’s a “big data” approach to OK Cupids data circa 2014. Notably I wonder how much things have changed in the past decade, as that data predated the concepts of incels and manospheres.
- 23B1 2y ago"Men are different than women" predated even that, hah!
- not_the_fda 2y agoAs my father always said. "Son, if you can't be handsome, be handy." Handy doesn't come across in dating apps, so you need to get out there and show your strengths.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoThat's likely quoted from Red Green, a 90s TV show where the titular character always says that phrase while making absurd contraptions out of duct tape. (For example, converting a car to use gull wing doors, using only duct tape.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvgS2numBo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvgS2numBo0
- cr125rider 2y agoThe show that is a guide for life!? Oh yeah!
- let_me_post_0 2y agoAlthough I like the quote I do not think it is good advice for the younger generations. No early 20s to early 30s girl is going to settle for a guy just because he is "handy". It takes much more than that. It is also not fun being with someone who is not into you physically.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoI actually disagree. If you are only a moderately attractive girl, and want children especially in this economy, a handy guy is the only way that's going to happen regardless of his perceived handsomeness. As long as he's not a stereotypical Reddit neckbeard, he'll probably be fine. > It is also not fun being with someone who is not into you physically. I don't actually believe this. Our prime of physical attraction only lasts 20 years give or take; but is then followed by another ~40 years of very limited attraction no matter who you are. Even for the healthiest and most attractive, it is completely inevitable that there will be a time without physical attraction.
- 2y ago
- tsimionescu 2y ago> The data reveal an ugly truth that we all need to face. While there are several ways to capture this ugly truth, my favorite is just: The typical man disgusts the typical woman. This is the wrong conclusion to draw from this data, given its source. The right conclusion is, at best, "The typical OKCupid male user disgusts the typical OKCupid female user". Men and women use dating apps for different reasons and in different mindsets, and many refuse to use them entirely.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoWhile having some merit, I think it's worth remembering that most dating websites have disproportionately high numbers of men. OkCupid, in this very example, has 50% more men than women on the platform (1.5 women for every man). On other platforms like Tinder, it's much more drastic with 75% of users being men (3 women for every man). There's also the secondary benefits of being on the platform. It's no secret that women get far more validation, offers, and interest for being on dating platforms than men do. For women, just being on a dating platform can provide self-validation, even if there is no interest in selecting a partner at all.
- tsimionescu 2y agoNot that relevant, but you've got the numbers backward - 50% more men means there's 1.5 men for every woman; 75% of users being men means 3 men for every woman.
- let_me_post_0 2y agoI am starting to think that part of the reason we have a reproduction crisis is because both genders find the bottom 80% of the opposite gender physically unappealing.
- CuriouslyC 2y agoI imagine if I was an ugly man, I'd probably think really hard about the hassle of finding and dating a woman on my level versus just staying home and watching porn of super hot babes. Why spend the time and energy finding and going on dates when the sex is less rewarding than a fantasy that takes zero effort? Obviously actual relationships are valuable, but dating apps tend to cater to hook up culture, and for people with friends sex is usually more urgently missing in their life than some degree of companionship. A lot of incels are actually more tilted by the feeling of being worthless/unattractive/unvalidated than the lack of companionship.
- delichon 2y agoMale gametes are biologically and socially far less scarce than female gametes. If you operationally define physical attractiveness in terms of willingness to risk forming zygotes the result is distinctly asymmetrical across sexes, because the consequent investment is distinctly asymmetrical.
- CuriouslyC 2y ago[flagged]
- let_me_post_0 2y agoI find this a bit naive. Girls sleep around because they want to sleep around.
- pfannkuchen 2y agoSo I know the meme explanation for this where women are unreasonably picky or something by nature, and that does make some sense in the context of sexed (in the sense of gendered) game theory. But is it possible that modern lifestyle (diet, inactivity, etc) simply disrupts male sexual signaling more than it disrupts female sexual signaling? That would be a simpler explanation, in a way, and it seems plausible.
- happytoexplain 2y agoI always feel really bad when I see these two bar charts, because the way women rate men is how I thought everybody rates each other. I find the statistically average woman (and man) explicitly unattractive. I always assumed it was some combination of the modern person's astronomically high exposure to images of beautiful people, as well as, like you say, an actual degradation in people's looks caused by modern health issues. But apparently I am unusual? And it's not like I need people to be attractive to like them - I'm just talking about sexual attractiveness. Also, I think I'm pretty average-looking on par, below-average nowadays, so I don't think my standards for others are being inflated by my self-perception.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoThis was actually one of the arguments against pornography. Only the top 1% will become a successful porn actor; and even then, it's well known that by the time they hit 22-24, they're probably done - even if, objectively, they are still in the top 5% most attractive people on earth. This warps men's perception of women in both selecting a wife; and in assessing the beauty of their wife in the long run especially after children. It warps women meanwhile in viewing themselves as less attractive, or viewing the 80th percentile of women as though it were the 40th percentile. Comparison is the thief of joy; especially when human beings are involved.
- RHSeeger 2y ago> This warps men's perception of women in both selecting a wife; and in assessing the beauty of their wife in the long run especially after children. Which is a bit ironic given that the charts seem to show that men are assessing women reasonable, while women are suffering from exactly the problem of unreasonable expectations that the quote describes.
- amriksohata 2y agoThats because men look for a pretty woman and therefore have photos/a womans looks to go on Tinder, whilst women look for connection. So the only information they have on these apps is their looks. Whilst women have no information on connection.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoRemember chatting with random strangers on IRC and slowly peel their personality? Those were the days.
- wakawaka28 2y agoThe looks/character criteria difference is just a stereotype. Women base their decisions on appearances just as much as men in general, except for the ones that prefer money over good looks. The dating app Tinder was the first one to have swiping, and the first mainstream one promoting hookups (out of town hookups too), and it advertised to women first. This must have been seen by someone in the know as what women want (or else, it was an attempt at social engineering).
- throwawayxslf 2y ago[flagged]
- zingababba 2y ago[flagged]
- dave333 2y agoAttractiveness may be the wrong question. Women tend to prefer "bad boys" who may protect them better from other males. Some women also respond sexually to stressful or painful situations that they wouldn't normally seek.
- OutOfHere 2y agoAnyone can in principle own and use a weapon. It doesn't take that much to be bad. And if you act bad enough, you end up in prison. For the most part, the intelligent man prevents problems that devolve into unnecessary altercations for the bad boy.
- dave333 2y agoIn civilization yes. But these were not the conditions under which human evolution happened. It's about having the judgement and balls to take a risk like bluffing in poker. Also it's not the size of the dog in the fight its the size of the fight in the dog.