9 ms·

So You’re Not Desirable

255 points by wallflower 12y ago

jamesaguilar 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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.
hypron 12y ago
>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.
- hangonhn 12y ago
  I always hated the term "friend zone" because I think it's really as simple as you have just described. One person likes the other and the feeling isn't reciprocated. It's unrequited love. The friendship part makes things more painful and complicated but I don't think it has any bearing on why the person isn't attracted to the other.
  - rdtsc 12y ago
    Exactly. I think the "friend zone" concept reflects the cultural idea that a person (mostly woman) can be persuaded to fall in love with someone if that someone just tries hard enough. It kind of reflect the idea of women as passive objects that have to be "conquered" or "persuaded" by feats of courage, strength, show of wealth or humor. So now it is the fault of the pursuer for not working hard enough or "screwing up" an initial encounter protocol and being pushed into the "friend zone". Which is like a terribly deep gravity well that the will require a tremendous amount of energy to get out of.
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te_platt 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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..
  - hkmurakami 12y ago
    Those male qualities are factors that answer the question, "how well can you protect me?" Our evolutionary instincts die hard :(
  - davedx 12y ago
    It's even more complex with women. Their perception of male attractiveness is also tied into where they are in their menstrual cycle. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16848141 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16848141
    - RodericDay 12y ago
      Always good to keep in mind when this kinda "evo-psych" stuff is brought up: http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2010/06/30/mr-10-09/ http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2010/06/30/mr-10-09/
      - Dewie 12y ago
streetpickup 12y ago
> 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 12y ago
  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.
31reasons 12y ago
>>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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    I thought it worked out great for GitHub...
- mjmahone17 12y ago
  Alternatively, work for a company that has a good gender balance, or, if you absolutely can't find that on the engineering side, where you interact with non-engineers. Though the better alternative is to have a life outside of work. Do yoga. Go for group hikes. Go to non-tech meetups, or street fairs, or concerts. Join a dance class. If you really, really need tech to solve all your problems, use Grouper to get a chance to grab drinks with strangers, while still hanging out with your own friends.
  - dubfan 12y ago
    I've never been to yoga but it sounds like a bad place to meet women. Women wearing form-fitting clothing posing in revealing ways tend to be self-conscious about how they can be sexualized and objectified.
    - borplk 12y ago
      Especially if you are not handsome enough you are immediately thrown into the "creepy rapist" bucket.
    - 12y ago
greggman 12y ago
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
- luckychild305 12y ago
  I can genuinely recommend you to read 'the game'. Don't get deterred by what people might tell you about it, especially people who have not ready it. It was eye opening to me that it's in your complete control to show people (not only girls, really anybody) your uniqueness, and that you can literally meet dozens of people every week and must not rely on office environment or random coincidence.
  - curiouslurker 12y ago
    "The Game" is only useful in making one realize that attracting women is a learnable skill. I was a big fan for a time but now realize much of what it recommends is like snake oil. I recommend going through David Deangelo's later material (2009+) and also Michael The Wizard. Deangelo's early work made it into "The Game" but even he realized with years of experience that there is a better way (Of course he made tens of millions from selling courses on material he now admits was wrong!)
    - Fr0styMatt 12y ago
      Any specific recommendations for DeAngelo's later stuff? I too was big into that whole PUA/game thing in a former life (more theory than practice though) and came to much the same realizations about it, particularly after listening to many of Barry Kirkey's radio shows (the very early ones) where he gave you the non-exaggerated, non-glorified view of what it was like to live in that house. FWIW I also have a similar problem to the OP. Other things in life I'm sorting out right now but taking up classes again and going to meetups are on my radar for the near future.
enraged_camel 12y ago
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.
socrates1998 12y ago
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.
hellbreakslose 12y ago
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 ...
spindritf 12y ago
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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  Hey, could I chat with you be email? My address is on my HN profile.
  - enimodas 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      updated
bambax 12y ago
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.
rjknight 12y ago
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.
Dewie 12y ago
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 12y ago
  >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 12y ago
    OK then, people are terrible through-and-through. Good way to end my day on that note.
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bambax 12y ago
The existence of ugly people is proof that their ugly parents did mate.
- danieltillett 12y ago
  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.
Udo 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    > 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.
lsv1 12y ago
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.
kyberias 12y ago
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.
FD3SA 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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).
sizzle 12y ago
anyone ever been in this situation? what was the outcome like?
galfarragem 12y ago
The smartest blog I know to understand relationships. A must read: http://www.therationalmale.com http://www.therationalmale.com
jedrek 12y ago
A 100+ comment thread about relationships without the use of the word "companionship" once. Wow.

255 points by wallflower 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.

hypron 12y ago

>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.

hangonhn 12y ago
I always hated the term "friend zone" because I think it's really as simple as you have just described. One person likes the other and the feeling isn't reciprocated. It's unrequited love. The friendship part makes things more painful and complicated but I don't think it has any bearing on why the person isn't attracted to the other.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  Exactly. I think the "friend zone" concept reflects the cultural idea that a person (mostly woman) can be persuaded to fall in love with someone if that someone just tries hard enough. It kind of reflect the idea of women as passive objects that have to be "conquered" or "persuaded" by feats of courage, strength, show of wealth or humor. So now it is the fault of the pursuer for not working hard enough or "screwing up" an initial encounter protocol and being pushed into the "friend zone". Which is like a terribly deep gravity well that the will require a tremendous amount of energy to get out of.
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te_platt 12y ago

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 12y ago
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..
- hkmurakami 12y ago
  Those male qualities are factors that answer the question, "how well can you protect me?" Our evolutionary instincts die hard :(
- davedx 12y ago
  It's even more complex with women. Their perception of male attractiveness is also tied into where they are in their menstrual cycle. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16848141 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16848141
  - RodericDay 12y ago
    Always good to keep in mind when this kinda "evo-psych" stuff is brought up: http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2010/06/30/mr-10-09/ http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2010/06/30/mr-10-09/
    - Dewie 12y ago

streetpickup 12y ago

> 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 12y ago
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.

31reasons 12y ago

>>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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  I thought it worked out great for GitHub...
mjmahone17 12y ago
Alternatively, work for a company that has a good gender balance, or, if you absolutely can't find that on the engineering side, where you interact with non-engineers. Though the better alternative is to have a life outside of work. Do yoga. Go for group hikes. Go to non-tech meetups, or street fairs, or concerts. Join a dance class. If you really, really need tech to solve all your problems, use Grouper to get a chance to grab drinks with strangers, while still hanging out with your own friends.
- dubfan 12y ago
  I've never been to yoga but it sounds like a bad place to meet women. Women wearing form-fitting clothing posing in revealing ways tend to be self-conscious about how they can be sexualized and objectified.
  - borplk 12y ago
    Especially if you are not handsome enough you are immediately thrown into the "creepy rapist" bucket.
  - 12y ago

greggman 12y ago

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

luckychild305 12y ago
I can genuinely recommend you to read 'the game'. Don't get deterred by what people might tell you about it, especially people who have not ready it. It was eye opening to me that it's in your complete control to show people (not only girls, really anybody) your uniqueness, and that you can literally meet dozens of people every week and must not rely on office environment or random coincidence.
- curiouslurker 12y ago
  "The Game" is only useful in making one realize that attracting women is a learnable skill. I was a big fan for a time but now realize much of what it recommends is like snake oil. I recommend going through David Deangelo's later material (2009+) and also Michael The Wizard. Deangelo's early work made it into "The Game" but even he realized with years of experience that there is a better way (Of course he made tens of millions from selling courses on material he now admits was wrong!)
  - Fr0styMatt 12y ago
    Any specific recommendations for DeAngelo's later stuff? I too was big into that whole PUA/game thing in a former life (more theory than practice though) and came to much the same realizations about it, particularly after listening to many of Barry Kirkey's radio shows (the very early ones) where he gave you the non-exaggerated, non-glorified view of what it was like to live in that house. FWIW I also have a similar problem to the OP. Other things in life I'm sorting out right now but taking up classes again and going to meetups are on my radar for the near future.

enraged_camel 12y ago

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.

socrates1998 12y ago

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.

hellbreakslose 12y ago

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 ...

spindritf 12y ago

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 12y ago

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 12y ago
Hey, could I chat with you be email? My address is on my HN profile.
- enimodas 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    updated

bambax 12y ago

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.

rjknight 12y ago

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.

Dewie 12y ago

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 12y ago
>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 12y ago
  OK then, people are terrible through-and-through. Good way to end my day on that note.

deleted 12y ago

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bambax 12y ago

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

danieltillett 12y ago
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.

Udo 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  > 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.

lsv1 12y ago

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.

kyberias 12y ago

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.

FD3SA 12y ago

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 12y ago
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).

sizzle 12y ago

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

galfarragem 12y ago

The smartest blog I know to understand relationships. A must read: http://www.therationalmale.com http://www.therationalmale.com

jedrek 12y ago

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