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>You can always teach a girl how to dress and make herself up to your tastes,

Well, you know, just as long as she doesn't have a mind of her own.

I honestly find discussion about dating on HN a bit disturbing. I mean, would you be comfortable with a girl that you wanted to date reading this post? Speculating on her "quality" as if she was a horse.

> Well, you know, just as long as she doesn't have a mind of her own.

Zing! Nicely said.

> I honestly find discussion about dating on HN a bit disturbing.

Huh? Why? It's of interest to hackers, and I find it quite an interesting thread.

> I mean, would you be comfortable with a girl that you wanted to date reading this post? Speculating on her "quality" as if she was a horse.

Yes, by all means, let's PRETEND that when it comes to software engineers there's such a thing as quality, and when it comes to cofounders there's such a thing as quality, and when it comes to friends there's such a thing as quality, but OH, NO, NO, there's no such thing as quality in women - because every single woman on the planet is equally perfect, and it would be SO politically incorrect to say that one woman is cuter, funnier, more intelligent, more loyal, sexier, or tolerant of weekly board game night.

It would be nice if you could exercise some minimal charity in interpretation. Of course I'm not saying that all women are equally attractive -- who would say such a thing? My reaction is to the tone of the comments, which seem to indicate a minimal interest in women as people as opposed to "mates". It's the obsession with casting everything in terms of genes and gene "quality", because some people apparently can't bear to make even the most important decisions in their lives on grounds that are actually personal or emotional. Pop evolutionary psychology (which is about a scientific as astrology, frankly) is not going to make you happy or find you a partner. I think a lot of nerds like to cast dating in these pseudoscientific terms because they are basically terrified of things like people, feelings, desires and emotions -- the things that actually matter when you are dating.

> Huh? Why?

I mean that I find the content of the actual discussions disturbing, not the mere idea of discussing this subject on HN.

I think you're misunderstanding what he meant. At least, it seems that what you got out of what he said isn't what I did. When he said 'quality', I didn't think he was talking about people as "mates" or as gene quality or some such. I took 'quality' to mean exactly what you want it to mean - attractiveness, how much fun they are to be around, etc etc. Basically, whatever you would look for in a 'significant other' - certainly not just gene quality or whatever.

As for the tone, it is a bit unusual, I guess. Our crowd - hackers, programmers, engineers, nerds, whatever you want to call them - does tend to like abstracting things away, trying to model life that goes on around us in a precise and systematic way. The tone is due just to that.

Don't you think that "quality" is an odd word to use for that? I make no apologies for responding to the connotations of a word in context as well as its literal meaning.

Eh, not really. You can talk about quality of conversation, quality of life, quality of friendship. Why not quality of people?

I find the phrase "quality of people" pretty jarring. YMMV, I suppose.

I suppose it is important to note that we're talking about the subjective quality of the person. You're lying if you can't look at someone and tell me whether they appear to meet your personal criteria for physical quality.

My suspicion is that there is a correlation between self-esteem and ones comfort with the word "quality" when applied to people. I know that anyone whose judgment I respect would view me as a "quality person", so I have no problem with the term. If I was insecure and didn't think of myself as a person of quality, then I might have an issue with the concept.

Do you honestly think I am arguing against the banal and obvious truth that some people are more attractive than other people? I'm not going to rehearse my point all over again, but please, give me some credit...

> I know that anyone whose judgment I respect would view me as a "quality person"

But then, presumably you wouldn't respect their judgment if they didn't :)

> But then, presumably you wouldn't respect their judgment if they didn't :)

Indeed, but that's the point, isn't it?

Well, I don't agree with that. You should respect the judgment of people who think that you're a bad person if they seem to have generally good judgment in other areas. Basically, this is the jester's point in Twelfth Night: "I'm better because of my enemies and worse because of my friends."

Of course you do--the idea of all people being equal is pretty strongly ingrained in our society, so the idea of some people being fundamentally higher or lower quality is difficult to accept.

I don't find it difficult to accept myself. Sure, some people are better at some things than other people. Some people are hot and some people are ugly. If you think that you're some kind of intellectual rebel because you've noticed these obvious truths, then I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but none of this has anything to do with what I was saying.

>the idea of all people being equal is pretty strongly ingrained in our society,

The idea that all people have equal rights is deeply ingrained, but I've never met anyone who actually thought that everyone was equal in a dumb, literal sense; that's just a straw man.

"Sure, some people are better at some things than other people. Some people are hot and some people are ugly."

No, I meant even more literally--the idea that some people are fundamentally higher or lower quality, that some people have more worth as a human being than others.

That is (a) false and (b) has nothing to do with the point at hand (the OP has "good skin" as one of his indicators of quality -- he's clearly not talking about quality in a deep sense, unless you think that having good skin makes you worth more as a human being!).

Why not? It might make you worth a little more as a human being, all other things kept equal. Wouldn't the perfect human have good skin?

Seriously though, the reason describing people as being "high quality" or "low quality" sounds jarring is because on a very fundamental level, it sounds like we're judging people, and judging people is taboo.

>Why not? It might make you worth a little more as a human being, all other things kept equ

No, it wouldn't make you worth any more. To make this more concrete, are you seriously suggesting that given the choice between saving the life of someone with bad skin and saving the life of an otherwise identical person with good skin, you could cite skin quality as your justification for choosing to save the one over the other? Clearly, the dilemma in this case would be just as acute as in a case where you had a choice between saving one or other of two precisely equal people -- it would be grotesque to suggest that skin quality could act as a tie-breaker in such cases.

I suppose it might look from your perspective as if there is some kind of weird "taboo" on judging people, but really it's just that you're doing it wrong. People aren't valued according to a weighted sum of their qualities and virtues. (Of course, you can weight their qualities if you like, and you can sum the results if you want to, but the result will serve only as a measure of your callousness.)

"No, it wouldn't make you worth any more. To make this more concrete, are you seriously suggesting that given the choice between saving the life of someone with bad skin and saving the life of an otherwise identical person with good skin, you could cite skin quality as your justification for choosing to save the one over the other?"

Having to choose between any two people in that situation would be difficult. This is getting rather far afield, though.

"I suppose it might look from your perspective as if there is some kind of weird "taboo" on judging people, but really it's just that you're doing it wrong. People aren't valued according to a weighted sum of their qualities and virtues."

If you haven't noticed a massive taboo against judging people, either we live in very different cultures or you haven't been paying very close attention. Would you suggest a better way of judging people?

>This is getting rather far afield, though.

No it isn't. It's directly addressing your claim that good skin makes a person worth more. If you really believed that, you would not find your choice in that situation to be difficult at all.

I think that your claim is just hard-headed posing. You don't really believe any such thing, but for some reason you seem to think that you ought to believe it, or that professing to believe it makes you sound objective and rational. It doesn't; it makes you sound crazy.

>If you haven't noticed a massive taboo against judging people, either we live in very different cultures or you haven't been paying very close attention.

The taboo is on judging people in the same way that we judge products, services and merchandise. And quite right too -- there should be a taboo on doing that.

"your claim that good skin makes a person worth more"

It was a passing thought, not a claim. Pay it no more attention.

"The taboo is on judging people in the same way that we judge products, services and merchandise. And quite right too -- there should be a taboo on doing that."

No, it extends further than that. Even judging people on moral grounds is condemned as "judgmental".

>It was a passing thought, not a claim. Pay it no more attention.

Ok, so then I direct you to what I was saying originally:

"the OP has 'good skin' as one of his indicators of quality -- he's clearly not talking about quality in a deep sense, unless you think that having good skin makes you worth more as a human being!"

If you've changed your mind on the issue of good skin adding to a person's worth, then perhaps you'll now agree with me on this point.

>No, it extends further than that. Even judging people on moral grounds is condemned as "judgmental".

Not in my experience. I hear people judging others all the time without being called out on it.

People are ontologically equal, we all have the same fundamental ability to make free moral decisions, which is what makes us human.

However, people are not equal in the gifts they've been given.

But, I agree with your fundamental point. True relationships aren't based on our external qualities, but on the soul. Today's evolutionary stupidity completely blinds many to deeper relationships.

Maybe you've misread the post he's responding to? 'fun to be around' did not figure, it starts out with clothes, make-up, hair, looking 'sexualized' and after a self-congratulatory bit about imposing his idea of style on some woman, it goes right to the cattle market to outline the preferences in walk, skin, hips, musculature, shoulders and diet. That tone is not 'nerd', it's 'obliviously misogynist clod'.

To have strong feelings about what you want in a partner makes you misogynist?! This is too much.

Did I say that? It really makes discussion a lot more interesting if you reply (however indignantly) to something that was actually said rather than something that merely makes you indignant.

Would you also assume that botanists - upon hearing them discuss microsporangia, nectary, and calyx - are unable to also find beauty in a flower?

I might if they didn't display any appreciation of the flower's beauty, yes.

However, I'm not sure if this is a very good analogy. I don't think many people here have anything more than a passing interest in the evolutionary biology of mate selection. It seems to function more as an excuse to avoid talking about dating in more personal terms.

Hmm...if I were a botanist, I think I'd get a bit weary of always having to interrupt a high-bandwidth dialogue with a peer to insert sufficient fawning to appease those who might otherwise judge us for the things we did not say.

About the merits of the analogy: professional versus passing interest is not really relevant. The salient point is that anything can be discussed on multiple, distinct levels of abstraction, and speaking of it on one level of abstraction does not invalidate or denigrate another level. Have you read Douglas Hofstadter's classic Godel, Escher, Bach? I recommend it highly.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Yes, there are multiple levels of abstraction. Yes, from the fact that someone hasn't said X, you cannot infer with 100% certainty that they do not believe X. I doubt anyone could disagree with these banal statements, but they don't have anything to do with this discussion.

>Have you read Douglas Hofstadter's classic Godel, Escher, Bach?

Yes, I've read it. Thanks for the recommendation.

His point is the important thing about people is themselves, not their qualities. If the relationship is based on "quality" and not on love, he (and myself) thinks it is missing something much more deeper.

> tolerant of weekly board game night.

Ooo, that's a good idea.

They talk the same way about us...and I suspect "not being a hypocrite" is another trait of a "quality" woman!

Actually, I think this particular genre of talk (particularly the influences from pop evolutionary psychology) is pretty much limited to male nerds.

"find a good man" is a classic saying and means the same thing as high quality.

Obviously, I am not arguing that people should try to find bad, unsuitable partners, but that ought to be clear if you actually read my post. (Or alternatively, if you just proceed under the assumption that I have a more-or-less functional brain.) If you read the OP's post, you'll see that his sentiments went quite some way beyond "find a good woman".

Of course people want partners with certain attributes. But the way that gets discussed on this site is often pretty creepy. People are talking as if they're making a purchase ("high quality merchandise") rather than finding someone to love.

> Well, you know, just as long as she doesn't have a mind of her own.

You read into it too much mate - girlfriends have dressed me to their taste too, encouraging more casual, or more formal, or more scarves, or whatever. It's normal for a romantic partner to encourage and refine their partner's style of dress and aesthetics, and it's usually done willingly by flexible people.

Now, if a girl wrote, "I prefer to find a guy who is quality that other women might overlook, I reckon you can always teach a man how to dress better" would you have batted an eyelid? I doubt it.

> I mean, would you be comfortable with a girl that you wanted to date reading this post?

Yes.

> Speculating on her "quality" as if she was a horse.

No. It's okay to have standards. This isn't kindergarten where everyone is special.

Look, I'm not some lunatic who's saying that all women are equally attractive, or that partners never influence each other's dress. It's the tone of your post that I object to, but I can see this is lost on you. I doubt it will be lost on women that you date, though.

> No. It's ok to have standards.

Some standards are ok, some aren't. I'm not objecting to your having standards, just the particular standards that you appear to have.

Usually if someone slings mud, I'll just hang it up and call it the end of a discussion. But I think you're probably well-intentioned and a good person so I'll respond. Let's look at two statements here:

> It's the tone of your post that I object to, but I can see this is lost on you.

Your meaning wasn't lost on me. Earlier, you asked me, "Would you be okay with a girl you liked reading that?" And my answer is yes. Yes, I am not afraid to speak candidly to people in my life, women included. I usually have this exact same conversation with girls in my life - last night I was at Shilin Night Market with my new girlfriend here in Taipei, who is an athlete, and I told her that I think the Taiwanese men who want small, hyper-skinny, unathletic girls are crazy, and that I think those girls look very elegant, but are worse lovers and are less likely to give you strong children. This is completely not politically correct, but it's also honestly how I feel. And so if I speak on the topic, I wind up speaking candidly.

I understand occasionally someone will get upset, though it's clearly not the intention to upset people. Dating and sex and love is a very personal topic and can quite upset people by getting at them on an identity level.

So what's the answer? To speak in platitudes and generalities? There's no way to speak up candidly about dating, sex, love, men, and women without upsetting someone. You can't do it. So your choices are never speak up, or always say fuzzy things with many caveats in the most polite way - and never get your point across. I speak honestly. Hopefully my anecdote that started this thread will be of some value to people here, which is why I comment.

> I doubt it will be lost on women that you date, though.

Actually, you're right, but not in the way you mean. I've had some wonderful relationships in my life. I've probably been far more blessed than I deserve to be - but if you want to talk about relative social lives, sex lives, and dating lives, I'm happy to go there as you brought it up. We could compare and contrast, if you like, how your politically correct pseudo-chivalry is working vs. my slightly more gritty candidness. I would never have thought to bring such a thing up, it seems rather impolite, but I'll go there if you'd like to.

> I'm not objecting to your having standards, just the particular standards that you appear to have.

Snark aside, the great thing about being human is that you get to set your own standards. Mine work for me. Maybe you don't care so much about the things I care about? Totally okay! If you're happy with where you're at, and I'm happy where I'm at, life goes on.

If, however, you want to imply that political correctness and not being candid and having some sort of "acceptable standards" or some such will make you more effective at life or happier - well, this is where I must speak up and disagree.

No, I think you're probably a good person, and a thoughtful person, so I don't take any offense here. But I would encourage you to think - really think - about whether it's okay and acceptable for people to speak about what they truly want and go for out of life, even if it's not normally the most polite, even if it risks offending someone sensitive. Your answers might be different than mine - but mine came from a lot of life lessons, and my way generally serves me pretty well. Loosening off political correctness and sensitivity might do the same for you or others.

Don't feed the troll.

(Who is voting this guy's blatherings about his sex life up? On HN!! Looks like some kind of voting ring)

lionhearted is not a troll. What he is saying it is actually resonated with what I think/do also.

BTW. My friends and I use the same term too. "Quality Woman": Is a girl/woman that is well educated, cute, nice, not with a huge self sense of entitlement, and a good personality.

Basically a woman that has her shit together, not bitchy, and is cute at the same time.

So instead of having a whole paragraph to describe her, just saying 'quality', and my friend will understand it immediately.

They are actually pretty rare in the US, especially single.

I don't know why, but European girls seem to be a lot balanced in general.

Maybe saying she is a great girl will be less offensive to few people? But whatever, life is short, so I am not going to live myself to appease everybody.

"lionhearted is not a troll. What he is saying it is actually resonated with what I think/do also."

A troll is as troll does. And this isn't about whether the two of you share some weird notion of "quality" in women. If you do, take it off line. This sexist claptrap doesn't belong on HN.

"I prefer taller women, and I prefer women who are built strong with good musculature, athletes, and girls with wider hips and shoulders."

Does anybody care a damn what someone's sexual preferences are like?

This is borderline locker room conversation - discussion of "long thin athletic" women, sexual history paraded as "education" for other readers, challenges to other people to compare their sexual lives with his (e.g:- "if you want to talk about relative social lives, sex lives, and dating lives, I'm happy to go there . We could compare and contrast, if you like, how your politically correct pseudo-chivalry is working vs. my slightly more gritty candidness")

Gritty candidness my foot! This sounds like juvenile frat boy crap to me.

It doesn't matter whether you have the same tastes.

I just happen to think such crudity should be kept off HN. If I am in the minority, so be it. Nothing prevents the lot of you from forming a private mailing list and exchanging vapid theories of "quality women".

Or are you saying your sexual fantasies and theories are of "intellectual interest to hackers"?

I am more disturbed by your accusation of the (grand)parent being sexist than by the contents of their posts. You kinda sound like someone who would accuse people of being "sexist" because they use the word "mankind" instead of "humankind".

Fun fact: Did you know that the word "man" was originally sex-neutral? The generic term was co-opted for the specifically male sense centuries ago and the original masculine term mostly disappeared.

So, fight sexism by using "man" in the gender neutral sense! Reclaim the language!

(If you're wondering, the old terms were something like wer and wyf, prefixed to the generic "man". The latter obviously relates to "wife" and the compound wyfman shifted into the modern "woman". The compound werman disappeared, while the prefix remains only in terms like "werewolf", which is thus literally "man-wolf" in the distinctly masculine sense.)

"Does anybody care a damn what someone's sexual preferences are like?"

Who's the troll now? This discussion is clearly related to the article.

>They are actually pretty rare in the US, especially single.

I think this is exactly the kind of attitude that some of us object to. Basically, a bunch of guys sitting around passing judgment on all the women in the world, concluding that hardly any of them are worthy of their (presumably much sought-after) affections.

For me, your explanation of what is meant by "quality" basically pushes all the buttons that the OP did.

Being from the UK, and having travelled Europe, the women aren't any different in any appreciable way. The only main difference between an 'American' girl and any other is the lower educational standard in the US. [Ed: However, with a smaller percentile of highly educated males, this shouldn't really be a major problem for the vast majority of people.]

I would also give a caveat, in continental Europe it's a more acceptable social norm for women to groom less. I'm not necessarily talking about the underarms (I've actually seen this less in Europe than I have elsewhere), but facial and leg hair. This can get bad with more southern-European where hair colour tends to be darker.

I groom my facial hair, and if I need to I groom my body hair (I have a mildly hairy back, which I personally dislike so it gets shaved) too. So I personally believe it's common courtesy for a woman to do it too.

I don't see how that's a troll. Seems like an intelligent comment to me.

You seem to think that I am against people being candid, but I'm not. Don't assume that everyone secretly thinks what you think but is afraid to say so. I'm perfectly candid, I just don't share your views.

>Snark aside, the great thing about being human is that you get to set your own standards

And the great thing about writing about your standards on a public forum is that you get to hear other people's opinions on them, right?

>We could compare and contrast, if you like, how your politically correct pseudo-chivalry is working vs. my slightly more gritty candidness.

Actually I'm gay, so I'm afraid we can't compare our vaginal insemination success rates. But maybe we can lock horns? Or compare penis size? FWIW I do ok with other guys (and I generally allow them to dress themselves).

But if you just want to boast about your love/sex life, please don't feel that you need my cooperation. This is an open forum, after all.

Be warned, it's possible to be a little too candid, as I found out recently. Or, at least don't let her mom find out about your candid comments.

> It's normal for a romantic partner to encourage and refine their partner's style of dress and aesthetics, and it's usually done willingly by flexible people.

Yes, that's why you stated it as basically "you can always change the girl to fit your tastes." Nothing about your statement implied (or stated, for that matter) any kind of mutual understanding or flexibility - just your ability to change a girl to your liking.

> Now, if a girl wrote, "I prefer to find a guy who is quality that other women might overlook, I reckon you can always teach a man how to dress better" would you have batted an eyelid? I doubt it.

Yes, and I bet most here would. Most independent people (which I believe many entrepreneurs are) dislike being told what to do. Even the tone of your statement shows a bit of bitterness at your belief that it's ok for a woman to "change" her man and not the other way around.

> Now, if a girl wrote, "I prefer to find a guy who is quality that other women might overlook, I reckon you can always teach a man how to dress better" would you have batted an eyelid? I doubt it.

I dunno whether my girl friend thought that before/after meeting me but she has definitely influenced my dressing habits over time and plays a big role when I am buying new clothes or deciding what to wear to a party/occasion. And I don't really mind that and the same is true for her, I do get a say on what she wears.

>> You can always teach a girl how to dress and make herself up to your tastes,

> Well, you know, just as long as she doesn't have a mind of her own.

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.

Your life changing experience reminded me of a couple Country & Western songs...

* 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...

There's a typo in the 2nd link. It should be:

http://www.funnyandjokes.com/top-country-and-western-songs-o...

> 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.

Her next boyfriend thanks you. :-)

>>"You can always teach a girl how to dress and make herself up to your tastes"

You can't always. Sometimes they might not agree to your tastes. For example, they might have their own tastes. Some people even like girls that have their own tastes.

I agree with the general spirit of what you're saying, but I disagree with a few tacit assumptions: that you can automatically equate highly-sought-after with lower quality, that quality women are more forgiving of beta traits, and that quality women don't know their sexual market value.

Hey mate - I actually went to your profile to look for an email to write you. This other comment you made was so subtly funny I laughed quite a bit when I saw it:

"Hmm...if I were a botanist, I think I'd get a bit weary of always having to interrupt a high-bandwidth dialogue with a peer to insert sufficient fawning to appease those who might otherwise judge us for the things we did not say."

I was going to drop you a line to let you know I laughed out loud, and to ask if you got the botanist reference from Feynman, which summed things up incredibly well for me the first time I read it.

> I agree with the general spirit of what you're saying, but I disagree with a few tacit assumptions: that you can automatically equate highly-sought-after with lower quality,

Ah, you're right, I was a little unclear on that. I guess I could more accurately like this - some things that are desirable to men don't indicate quality. Obviously some other things do too. The key is finding out which are actually well suited for you - just because a woman is desirable to most men doesn't make her a higher quality gal for you. (What's with the guy who doesn't like the word "quality" by the way? Maybe he's from somewhere else, I just got introduced to a fellow with my friend saying, "This is so-and-so, he's a really high quality guy, I think you guys are going to get along great.)

> that quality women are more forgiving of beta traits,

Disagree. Hmm, how shall I put this.

I don't believe in the alpha/beta dichotomy. Well, there's some truth in it, but among my friends, we actually jokingly talk about "alpha male types" who are kind of loud, and crass, and things. I have read Roissy though, and think he's hilarious once you get over the initial shock and rawness of the guy. But alpha/beta I don't so much agree with.

For me, I usually think of things as strong/average/weak, where strength is of character, internal strength so to speak. So you could be strong (of character) in an area, or average, or weak. On that notion, I don't believe that quality women are more forgiving of weakness - just the opposite actually.

> and that quality women don't know their sexual market value.

This is the most thought provoking part of your comment for me. And I had to think about it for a minute, and you know what? I really think girls who aren't extroverted and sexualized are often less confident than they should be about their prospects, and due to men's ignorance and short sightedness, they do get less attention than they objectively ought to get. Really, I don't think extroversion and hyper-sociality and sexualization makes a girl a better long term companion for most men. But it's interesting to think about either way, cheers for the discussion.

> For me, I usually think of things as strong/average/weak, where strength is of character, internal strength so to speak. So you could be strong (of character) in an area, or average, or weak. On that notion, I don't believe that quality women are more forgiving of weakness - just the opposite actually.

Could you elaborate on this? I find a woman to be higher 'quality' if she is forgiving of weakness. But maybe I'm just interpreting the words 'strong/weak' in the wrong way. Perhaps you meant to say that 'quality' women value integrity. In that case I would agree with you.

Thank 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.

I don't believe in the alpha/beta dichotomy. Well, there's some truth in it, but among my friends, we actually jokingly talk about "alpha male types" who are kind of loud, and crass, and things. [snip] For me, I usually think of things as strong/average/weak, where strength is of character, internal strength so to speak.

External assertiveness and internal strength usually go together, and when it comes to attraction, women don't seem to actively distinguish between them. They're attracted to cockiness. They do, however, notice when somebody points out that the two things aren't in sync. Make a cocky guy look like a fool, and you've turned his cockiness into a negative. Wit is the key.

However, wit and foolishness are in the eye of the beholder. Your wit might turn one woman's head and mystify the rest. You can adapt your wit to your audience to a certain extent, but it's more realistic to focus on an audience that is capable of appreciating you. You're never going to undermine a stereotypical sexy worthless asshole in the eyes of a sexy worthless bimbo; they're made for each other, and everybody else should just get out of the way.

> Too much jeans and sneakers when I met her

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.