The Hot Girl Effect and Networking
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In the same way, the chance of us having a nice chat with the CEO of Goldman is fair, but the chance of him maintaining contact with us and being a friend or mentor is pretty low. You don't have the money to hang with him, you don't have the opportunities to share with him and so on.
So you can get a date with the top model if you're brave. You can get a coffee with the CEO if you're brave. But I doubt that anything long term will develop, unless you have true value to offer.
And people evaluate their actual value and see that it probably is not enough to make it worth their while approaching this person.
An example that I'm sure many here can identify with: How many of you have emailed Paul Graham asking him for feedback on your app or whatever? Some brave ones likely have, but how many realistically expect a relationship to develop out of that?
Cost: Awkwardness, potential for embarrassing rejection.
Benefit: Possible relationship, either short-term or long-term, with the subject of your admiration.
So in my mind, if you can get over the fear of rejection, there's no reason not to at least try. Coffee with a CEO is better than nothing, and may potentially be useful down the road. (Can I have a job? Remember when we had coffee that one time?) Likewise, a date with a beautiful model, even one, is better than eating ramen alone. Well, usually. :)
Also, while I agree with what you said about having "true value to offer", there are many types of value. When developing a relationship with someone like a CEO, you may not be able to offer them direct monetary value, but you might be able to give technical insight, an outsider's point of view or a perspective from a different industry, or even just a like-minded person to talk about basketball with.
My advice is to look hard for the value you can offer. Knowledge that you may take for granted is often quite valuable to others, or at least interesting enough for them to keep you around and ask your opinion.
A related point: if you know someone big/important is going to be at the event you're attending and you want to meet this person for whatever reason, it's well worth researching him/her beforehand so you can ask an intelligent question that shows you've done some homework and are not just out for yourself.
Be interesting, be memorable, do not be desperate (never attractive). And don't wear out your welcome, especially if you know other people are hovering (so they can make their own move on cool person) or if cool person clearly wants to duck out/away.
This chance to prepare, btw, is a key difference between meeting a big shot and hitting on a hot woman you happen to see at a bar.
Only the ones that are willing to fail repeatedly are the ones who deserve to win. What I'm trying to imply here that taking risks while maximizing your odds is also a skill.
A super hot woman (or GS executive) both appreciate confidence and candor. They don't want to be treated as "different" - to return to that hot woman - she doesn't want to be treated as special. Looking into mirror is enough to get her depressed. She wants to feel ordinary, to be appreciated for being a woman or at least not a freak.
This relationship gets me zero, zilch, practical benefits.
It's fluke that I know him. Would I expend a lot of effort to get ten relationships with similarly well-connected people? No, because it would rather insincere and would get me ten times as much practical benefits (ten time zeros). The people who I happen to meet and are cool people, I'll be friends with. The stunningly beautiful ballerinas I've chatted with are nice also but not the best material for personal relationships...
In other words, the glory of knowing COOs and dating models also over-rated. And if the models are feeling truly neglected, I'm sure they won't have a problem introducing themselves to cute guys at bars if they want "glory".
More seriously, you might not have realized any huge benefits from this relationship with your founder friend, but that doesn't mean there aren't some significant potential benefits to your relationship.
Say you just happened to have a wonderful new product that your friend's company could use. A short chat with your founder friend about this product could be worth quite a lot.
Likewise, if you needed or wanted some advice from him, the advice of a founder could be worth a lot, as could any introductions to his peers that he might be willing to make.
Just think about it a bit, and I'm sure you could come up with dozens of other potential benefits.
Of course, such a relationship shouldn't be one-sided. There's a great book called "One Phone Call Away" by Jeffrey Meshel, who's main point is that the best way to network is to help people without expecting anything in return. Highly recommended.
As far as the poor pretty girl that needs to hit on guys. Unfortunately it doesn't work this way. Its got a lot to do with guy's and girl's insecurities.
1. Hot woman hitting on a guy - The natural reaction of the said guy is "It's a trap!". 2. Having to hit on guys is awful for this woman - since less pretty girls don't need to do it. Which starts spinning up in a persons mind that you must be some sort of freak since a) mend don't hit on you and b) when you try to hit on men they run away ("It's a trap!").
Oh and the glory thing is just a parable for success.
Would you like to have coffee some time next week?
I'm in the SF Bay area and my email is on my profile (for now).
Would Tuesday or Friday work best for you?
As for hot women, it depends on what you want. For a real life example, let's say I am married and have no intentions of cheating on my wife. So I will certainly chat with a hot woman, maybe even flirt with her, but I'll certainly not put a lot of effort into pursuing her as I have no interest in sexual relations with her.
> the chance of us having a nice chat with the CEO of
> Goldman is fair, but the chance of him maintaining
> contact with us and being a friend or mentor is pretty
> low
> You don't have the money to hang with him, you don't
> have the opportunities to share with him and so on.
Six months later, I'm into training, and interviewing at another firm. The place I'm interviewing at has several people who are nuts about triathlon.
The job's great, but that aside, so is the new interest. I did Olympic distance this year, signed up for half ironman in 2011. I still swap emails with the guy.
Some people with lots of money don't care about it. If they do, they'll filter you and save you the hassle. People who are capable of helping you are the most likely to be interested in helping you. You're their canvas.
Still, you might be psyching yourself out. In your original post you wrote 'hot top model' whereas the original article wrote 'hot girl'. Not the same thing.
Enjoy the moment. Talk to the hot girl or boy; introduce yourself to the celebrity or CEO, or VC or whatever floats your boat. But don't talk yourself out of it because of what you imagine could happen.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Same as in business - the bigger the jackpot, less chance of hitting it. Picking up hot girls and doing risky business need a lot of self-esteem. Difference is, in business you often have a lot to lose, while being rejected by a girl doesn't really hurt much.
I think the people who actually succeed in going out of their league, or the ones who do have that long term relationship with the CEO, are the ones who have the confidence that they do have some value to offer. And by definition, these people are more likely to take the risk - because there's something legitimate backing it up. Not saying that every confident person who approaches the GS CFO will develop a long term relationship. But the ones who actually attempt are probably going to be the same people who have the confidence in themselves to build a long term relationship - and believe they can offer some real value.
I'd take a date with a model or a coffee with a CEO any day of the week. I don't care if the long term outlook is zero, it's worth it just for the experience.
So I think if you honestly approach someone as a human being, who knows where it could lead.
If you approach them playing "just a human being" when actually you want to talk business and money, then you better be prepared for the other person to switch to "business mode" as well and yes, then they WILL evaluate you. Because after all then it was just all about business to begin with, wasnt it?
There's no legitimate excuse not to try to associate with higher value people, you can only go up.
Nope! This is non-evidence. Successful people who are arrogant and antisocial are by nature less likely to run into you, so you should expect your observed pool of people-you-know to be heavily skewed towards the friendliest people.
A similar phenomenon occurs in social network rankings: For any given person with a reasonable number of Facebook friends, their friends will be, on average, more popular than the original person (popularity defined by number of friends). Almost everyone is one of the least popular people in their own social network.
Is there a name for this phenomenon? Or supplemental reading material?
I have no mathematical proof; this is merely what I intuit.
When a girl starts to become a hot babe then tons of guys hit on her -- its annoying and time consuming to ward off losers so she develops a "bitch shield". This defense mechanism tells guys that she is too good for them and not to bother, from this point on only the cocky guys approach who are not intimidated by the "bitch shield" (these guys look like assholes to "nice guys") - then the "nice guys" whine about how they can't get any girls. As lowlife as the PUA guides are, I still found them informative.
With practice he could certainly toughen up with regard to that but I think that by doing so he would inevitably have shut out part of his heart. Getting rejected by a woman is hard for a man. H-a-r-d. It might very well be that once he successfully hits on a woman he finds interesting, he might have a hard time softening down to something resembling an emotional human being capable of falling into love and a loving relationship.
His assignment was to go to a bar (or any sort of similar place) and get rejected by ten women. That is, between that session and his next (the span of a week I believe), his goal was to get shot down by ten women in a social situation. Not necessarily crash and burn, but some kind of rejection.
After a while, you realize rejection isn't really that bad - it's the fear of rejection that's the big problem. Once you can get over that, you're going to be doing a lot better.
How long ago was this? The therapist was probably ahead of his time!
the beauty of that is that if you fail at that goal, it means you didn't get rejected!
There's another bit of bitter irony about this situation. After you become "hard" enough to attract a girl who was previously out of your league, it's not in your best interest to grow "soft" again. On the contrary, it makes the girl likely to leave you, because she didn't sign up for your weaknesses when she entered the relationship :-) Yeah, some girls will be okay with that, but in my experience they are rare.
I think the same kind of thing holds true for attractive ideas as well: For ideas with killer potential, people tend to say "Oh, somebody surely must have implemented it, is looking into it", etc.) and not to push on. Until someone either ignorant of the idealand layout or too dogged to care takes it on and becomes successful. The history of the Valley has many examples of this pattern.
* There's an obviously good idea, people have tried it and "proved" that it cannot be done. Then somebody ignorant of this fact goes ahead and does it anyway. A famous example of this is Spencer Silver of 3M inventing the adhesive for the Post-It notes. He is quoted to say "If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
* There's a good idea, others have implemented it with modest success. Then somebody comes along and blows it out of the water. Best example I can think of for this is the iPod. MP3 players were common before Apple, so it wasn't a new idea. Yet, they re-invented it in so many ways. Another example is, of course, Google, going against established search portals when they came about.
The legendary Kenny "R2D2" Baker at a convention I attended looked dreadfully alone; nobody even wanted to go up and ask for his autograph.
At the same convention there was a massive guy dressed like a Klingon warrior. He actually looked a little uncertain until I came up and regaled him with a couple of Klingon words. Then we got into some curse warfare and he was in his element. Yes, I speak Klingon as well.
I can cite many such examples, usually of some TV or movie celeb attending a convention and looking so bored, sitting there on his own. Dirk Benedict. Erik Menyuk. Michael Dorn. Many others.
On a personal note, I befriended a power broker several years ago while discussing art. We had a lot to talk about. Now years later we still talk & email fairly regularly & grab lunch when in the same town.
Stop thinking of people as who they are or what they represent, just treat them like normal folks & you'll be surprised who you might befriend.
There is a truth, and two fallacies in the article. The truth is that the hot girl effect exists. Fallacies: #1 - It is automatically desirable to talk to the hot girl and the CEO, more so than to other people. It may be, it may not be, who knows. This is an implicit assumption in the article. #2 - That you therefore have to make an effort to talk to these people.
All three really are about the Ego and its trying to justify its existence by making itself important. Talking to hot girl / CEO - Ego gratification. Getting shot down - blow to the Ego. Fear of getting shot down - fear of the Ego losing its importance. If you looked at your own Ego as an entity all of its own, it is literally the fear of death.
Now with the hot girl situation you have two possible outcomes: Talk to hot girl; or avoid it. Both means you lose and both mean the ego wins. In talking to her, you "made" it and can feel proud; in avoiding, you've avoided being shot down and also "made" it. It's a lose-lose situation.
The best reaction that I know is to observe the ego forces within yourself - independent of your action.
Any time you feel superior, or inferior, to any other person, it's just the Ego talking. You can't stop this but you can observe it, realize it is so, and thereby overcome it. Personally when I have these moments I then just relax within myself and do what I like. I am happier and I am also meeting more interesting people.
"Stop thinking of people as who they are or what they represent" - exactly.
Which leaves the theory behind this interaction up for grabs :)
A. "she's out of my league and wouldn't be interested."
B. "she is that hot, she probably gets hit on all the time and is therefore probably snooty / bitchy towards strange guys."
C. "she can have any guy she wants, so surely she's dating some bigshot executive with a rolls-royce and a private jet... no point in little ole me going over and talking to her."
D. "etc."
Not saying that all guys do this, or that all guys do it in all situations, but there is something plausible about this.
So in hindsight I think the most important skill is to cut losses early. Or as one womanizing friend told me - the skill is not to convince a girl who doesn't want to to sleep with you - that's not gonna happen; the skill is to spot those that are looking for sex tonight.
I think it depends. I've dated girls that I think would be considered 'hot' and have talked to them about this exact subject. Many were not hit on very often or they were only hit on by the kind of guys that they would never date. The I'm god's gift sort of guy (think Jersey Shore TV show ugh).
And no, having some drunk guy yell across the bar he wants to marry them is not getting hit on. Hit on would be a guy coming up and trying to have a real conversation.
From a guys standpoint rejection is hard no matter how confident a guy might be. Even if a guy wants to hit on the hottest girl he finds, he may opt for one less externally hot in order to lessen the chance of rejection. Said guy may not even realize he's making this selection.
That compulsion increases with however hot they are, though it tends to jump dramatically when they are at a certain level of beauty, normally a level where no matter the circumstance they are usually always considered beautiful by anyone around.
However, I know of a different version. If (as a guy) you are seen to date a hot girl, then the chances of you dating other hot girls goes up. They want to know what you've got.
I'm guessing this applies to VC as well.
Just two days ago, I sit in an outdoors bar, all alone, and order a beer. Now the other rule is that if you're all by yourself, nobody will approach you because you might be weird. Two hot girls sit down on the next table. And every time I look over, one of them gives me the biggest "please come over to talk to me right NOW" smile I have ever seen. As I am waiting for my wife. No regrets of course - I love my wife. But I am wondering: Where WERE you girls when I was single?
As a married man, you're now domesticated. Imagine going to the park and seeing a golden retriever. You might pat this dog on the head, or play with him, because you know he's been trained well and sociable. But if you go camping and see a wolf, you'd do well to steer clear.
In a lot of cases, the woman flirts with a married guy b/c exactly BECAUSE she knew you wouldn't react. Same theory for why some women are great friends with gay guys.
That doesn't mean people always hit on those of equal attractiveness alone. If you have more money than the girl, then she can have more prettiness. But if she's way ahead on looks, you better be way ahead on money or something or it isn't an equal relationship.
What does this add up to? Simply: the edge of the bell curve is always lonely.
I thought this post was going to be about something different altogether, so I wrote it myself:
http://blog.shrewple.com/post/2520650113/the-real-hot-girl-e...
And I encountered the phenomenon IRL a good few years back at a convention, where I had a really nice conversation with an actress who played a major role in a prominent SF series. Apparently, I was one of a few people who'd even just stopped to ask her how she was enjoying the show: everyone else was either staff, stewards or fanbois who only wanted her autograph, photo or both.
I got to sit with her and her retinue later that night in the hotel restaurant: a dinner date I'll never forget.
The Hot Girl effect is pretty real. And if you can get past that barrier of your own fears to approach the unapproachable, yet retain your humility as you do so, the rewards can often be awesome and memorable.
You can easily spam out messages to all the hot girls and "rejection" is really a non-reply. Meaning that "rejection" is invisible.
In real life rejection means a "walk of shame" away from the girl, probably while your friends are watching, probably while they're laughing at you. OkCupid incorporates none of that.
If a really hot girl sends me a message on okcupid, I will probably ignore it. Why? Because 9/10 it's a spammer.
While the graph does generally bare you out, one can see a few small turns on the OKcupid graph that might be a ghost of the "hot girl effect" - the most attractive female senders get more responses from guy of average appearance than from guys considered least the attractive...
You could also argue that when someone's already on OkCupid, they're already motivated to seek out someone and don't necessarily feel intimidated concerning who. This might be different than real life. But it might not be...
Basically, you may not want to talk to anyone who's so shallow that fame is a really big deal to them.
Guys who are obsessed with dating hot girls are really just obsessed with how others perceive them, which makes them lame to be around. Same with social climbers.
The argument I've heard is that it's more effective to sell someone on you or your product being appealing yet practical rather than convincing them that you or your product are the hottest thing on the planet (but there's always the "expensive decoy product" mentioned in the link yesterday).
This is generalization too, of course, but it seems reasonable.
So instead of "targeting" people, I'd just hang out at the right places and get to know folks in general.