> The reality is that being a SWE or related is a massive net negative to your "SMV".

Its not, but buying into the belief that it is is.

More than 90% of dating advice is overfitting. It’s high stakes and there is plenty of signal to glean, but once you know the basics of the situation the rest is up to chance. Which means if you’re being picky (and I think to should be if you can) success can take a while. In the meantime you could end up desperately pulling apart facts like a conspiracy theorist. The best advice, at least for people that aren’t super lucky, is to stop trying, do the obvious things (be healthy, happy, financially comfortable) and live a life that puts you in contact with women.

> The consensus? He has tons of "red flags" for basically being "billy the beta" who won't excite the women who would come into contact with him. Hardly anyone is surprised that he can't get dates. Quoting one of the top comments: "his persona reads to be like a human representation of mashed potatoes with no seasoning, bland. "

There's a couple people in that thread who used the term "beta" but I wouldn't call it the consensus. There's some calling him "boring", but there's also a bunch of ladies saying "maybe if I were single", and a bunch more saying "wanting kids is a dealbreaker".

And in any case things seem to have worked out for him: "This profile was published in August 2022; I'm no longer single, but wanted to leave it up since it was an important document for me." (https://colah.github.io/personal/dating/)

> The reality is that being a SWE or related is a massive net negative to your "SMV". We software people trade our game for our money. It's sad but it is what it is. I blame the widespread normalization of "nerds" being bullied by "jocks" in TV from the 1980s on. The cultural damage this has done is unreal.

I don't think this is true at all.

> Seriously - the most unrealistic thing about the movie "wargames" is the idea that a kid who looked like that doing a bunch of command line shit would have a girl who looked like that interested in him (and his computer!).

Matthew Broderick ended up marrying Sarah Jessica Parker.