The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures
blog.okcupid.com
blog.okcupid.com
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.
"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.
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.
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:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srSbAazoOr8
I totally agree that Roissy (and especially his followers) take the linear dominance hierarchy all wrong.
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.
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.
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.
> Huh? Why?
I mean that I find the content of the actual discussions disturbing, not the mere idea of discussing this subject on HN.
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.
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.
> 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 :)
Indeed, but that's the point, isn't it?
>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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
>Have you read Douglas Hofstadter's classic Godel, Escher, Bach?
Yes, I've read it. Thanks for the recommendation.
Ooo, that's a good idea.
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 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.
> 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.
> 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.
(Who is voting this guy's blatherings about his sex life up? On HN!! Looks like some kind of voting ring)
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.
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"?
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.)
Who's the troll now? This discussion is clearly related to the article.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
> Well, you know, just as long as she doesn't have a mind of her own.
Dressing well and all is a skill worth learning. A mind of your own doesn't hurt. A lot of women seem to appreciate feedback and ideas.
* I Got In At 2 With A 10 And Woke Up At 10 With A 2
* I Haven't Gone To Bed With Any Ugly Women But I've Sure Woke Up With A Few.
* She's Looking Better After Every Beer.
* Her Teeth Was Stained, But Her Heart Were Pure.
* I Just Bought A Car From A Guy That Stole My Girl, But The Car Don't Run So I Figure We're Even.
OK, that last one doesn't apply, but it made me giggle.
References:
* http://www.connectingsingles.com/forum_0_109216_1/top_10_cou...
* http://www.funnyandjokes.com/top-country-and-western-songs-o...
http://www.funnyandjokes.com/top-country-and-western-songs-o...
Her next boyfriend thanks you. :-)
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.
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.
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.)
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":
http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html
... 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.
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).
See you soon, ladies!
they connote which bin to place the item in..
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.
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?
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.
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.
That made me chuckle. Yes, that's _exactly_ what she is wondering!
So, most likely there are fewer suitable long term partners left in the dating pool on any successful site.
I do love that they publish this info so openly and in such a readable format.
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".
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.
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.
That's because some people make forced smiles. The Asian lady on the left might look a lot better with a more subtle smile.
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.
Having an animal tells a female the male is responsible and cares for others??
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.
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'
Either way, a fascinating data analysis!
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.
"Your Race Affects Whether People Write You Back", "Rape Fantasies and Hygiene By State" etc.