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coochie's avatar

Anecdotally, I’m a young guy with a recessed jaw and I haven’t really struggled to date, at least not more than my more physically attractive friends (taller, more muscular, etc). I’ve only really began dating in earnest (through match-group owned apps) 2 years ago and have been on dates with 14 people, 2 of which led to a sexual encounter and/or relationship. I keep my expectations realistic, and tend to chase people in my league (but sometimes I aim too low, and am not attracted to the other party). In my experience:

1. Your own perception of attraction doesn’t necessarily reflect how likely someone more/less attractive is going to see you - Of the 14 people I’ve seen for a first date , 6 people ended seeing me for a second date. Surprisingly, the women I found more attractive were more likely to see me for a 2nd date, and the women that I thought were less attractive would end up ghosting me/fading out. Admittedly, I “try” harder when I’m on a date with someone I find more attractive, and so there usually is more chemistry as a result.

2. Related to the 2nd point, personal taste matters - women have said they liked my face, despite it looking less masculine, and you can compensate for lack of facial attractiveness by using other attributes - growing out hair (someone said they were attracted to my hair!) and developing my wardrobe have helped me immensely. In many speed dating scenarios, even people in the least attractive quartile have gotten a match. This means you don’t have to rely on attraction growing or looks not mattering - it’s possible for people to genuinely desire you as an unattractive person

3. It’s all in your head - sometimes I’ll take a peak at r/amiugly and many people are attractive, but will mention how they’ve never had any dating success. When I click on their profile, oftentimes I’ll see a post on r/autism, r/anxiety, or an another subreddit related to mental illness, and it immediately makes sense. The normie advice is true - you have to go out, ask people out, and deal with rejection. Only 14% of my dates have become anything substantial. Sometimes I have left a date feeling like I killed it only to receive a “Hi! I think we’d be better off as friends” text, or even worse, no text at all. I credit my relative success due to the fact that I’m fairly extroverted, fine with traditional dating norms, and been able to identify and improve on weaknesses and get better. If you are mentally ill or disabled, this can be hard, and so then people blame their looks on what’s the doing of their mind.

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Midnight's avatar

I just want to say that this comment was so helpful. I’m a short guy who believed he was so unattractive and I had issues/trauma that made me very fearful of women especially in a romantic context. I’ve made a ton of progress on those issues to the point where now I’ve gotten really attractive girls to at least go on one date with me. I’ll have a great time and it seems the feeling is mutual and then they’ll disappear which was extremely disappointing.

However your breakdown of the numbers makes this make way more sense. There’s nothing wrong with me per se, it’s just most dates will not make it past the first one for most guys. It still sucks when it’s someone you like but it’s so helpful to know that this is something lots of guys of varying levels of attractiveness go through.

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Truly Evil Bill's avatar

Sorry to hear that, but these women just weren't attracted to you. They have a lot of options and so can afford to be picky. It's good that you haven't given up though as a lot of men give up entirely if a date goes badly.

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Eden's avatar

They just weren't attracted.

Where do you take them on dates?

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Black Pilled Paki's avatar

It’s because you have other physical features (not character/personality bs) that compensate for jaw imperfection. You must have good eyes, forehead shape, harmonious features, etc.

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Eden's avatar

If you have to ask people out, you've lost. Most guys I know have never even approached a woman as they know it'll be a guaranteed rejection.

Others gave up after women told them that there waa no "spark/connection" following a first date as they realised they had no hope.

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coochie's avatar

Many of my woman friends have been attracted to a dude, made it easy for the guy to get their number, but they still won't "put out" if the guy doesn't formally ask them out on a date. Even if the bar is lower for guys they're initially attracted to, many women still expect a level of courting, and can quickly lose interest if there is none. Have seen it before.

As for the 1st date thing, you have to accept the odds, especially if you're going on a first date with someone who's effectively a stranger (met on an app for instance). Most first dates will not become 2nd dates. Most 2nd dates don't become relationships. I'm sure there's a date number where you cross the Rubicon (5th date? idk), but your performance in early dates (1-3 dates) does not determine your self-worth. I have acted the same way throughout all my dates. Sometimes this has led to me getting sexually active on the 1st date. Sometimes this has led to the "I think we'd be better off as friends" text. Do you see the wide variance in outcomes? Different women will feel different things towards you, so not over-calculating the opinion of one person is crucial. It's all a numbers game.

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Eden's avatar

When you say a "date", what type of date are they expecting?

The best way is to read the interactions into whether or not they're attracted to you so you can prevent wasting time.

I much prefer the apps. I do very well on them, thankfully. I've never approached a woman though as I know it'll be a guaranteed rejection.

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coochie's avatar

A date in a public place, e.g. k-pot, boba, or another public gathering. Doesn't have to be fancy or anything. Just something above "let's hang out at my place".

I agree, but I don't necessarily just mean cold-approach! I'm also talking about warm approaches with women you may be acquaintances with, and may have had multiple interactions with to "feel the vibe"

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Black Pilled Paki's avatar

No. Everything matters. Face, eyes, skull shape, jaw, facial thirds, height, frame, etc.

You can have some flaws and still be overall physically attractive if you’re strong in other areas. If you’re weak in most areas, you’re likely to be physically unattractive

Physical attractiveness is a sum of many parts.

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Crimson's avatar

Incels are just pornified bachelors. Who think they’re ”celibate”. Yeah, right fellas.

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Eden's avatar

They are. No woman wants them.

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Crimson's avatar

They are clearly inveterate porn-watchers. That’s what I meant. They are not, in fact, celibate.

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AboveandBelow's avatar

My dude I'm sorry but you seem autistic and you're basically arguing against a silly meme to the point where you're strawmanning hard a position that no serious person, incel or not, would hold

>Is Inceldom Really Determined by a Few Millimeters of Bone?

No, it is determined mainly by looks and one of them might be having a recessed chin among many others.

It's almost as if you couldn't make a distinction between a meme based on lookism and the broader aspect of lookism.

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The Nuance Pill's avatar

Did you see me literally argue against the concept that a few mms of bone is determinant of incel status? No; I just used this popular meme to introduce the topic, as it represents the general idea that you put forward that it is basically fully determined by looks. As shown here however, physical attractiveness has at most a small correlation with sexual experience. Is your position that despite being a weak predictor, it's the strongest single predictor, or what? Funny you bring up autism, something which when measured continuously is a stronger predictor than attractiveness.

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AboveandBelow's avatar

>as shown here however, physical attractiveness has at most a small correlation with sexual experience

lol

so physical attractiveness in humans, let's say, a dismorphic trait, such as height or shoulder to hip ratio, isn't correlated in the slightest with sex at an earlier age or more sexual partners, let alone reproductive success?

Why would you lie to yourself or others like that, I wonder.

Isn't it funny that height and SHP is based on your bone length and this is determined by your genes.

Isn't it also funny that autism which has a strong genetic component hinders your chances to form friendships, have a relationship, and as a result, increases your chances of you turning out sexless, and not just that, it increases suicidality as a result of being an incel and unwanted everywhere you go? I don't know of any autistic person or any person at all who chose to have suicidal thoughts, do you?

And who would choose to be autistic? Nobody. Because of the implications we know, it negatively affects your life so deeply that you end up being suicidal.

Almost as not being physically attractive as a result of being short and bald which is predetermined by your genes.

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The Nuance Pill's avatar

'so physical attractiveness in humans, let's say, a dismorphic trait, such as height or shoulder to hip ratio, isn't correlated in the slightest with sex at an earlier age or more sexual partners, let alone reproductive success?'

There is an abundance of data on height which all points to it having little to no effect on any of these outcomes, yes. Polygenic scores for height have no association with men's fertility for instance:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9463317/

Your personal incredulity isn't an argument.

'Isn't it also funny that autism which has a strong genetic component hinders your chances to form friendships, have a relationship, and as a result, increases your chances of you turning out sexless, and not just that, it increases suicidality as a result of being an incel and unwanted everywhere you go?'

Not sure who you're arguing against here. Is your assumption that because I don't think that physical morphology has strong effects on sexual outcomes I must reject the importance of genes altogether? I have an entire article dedicated to the adverse effects of autism, you are preaching to the wrong person. If anything, you should try and convince more incels of this.

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AboveandBelow's avatar

'Polygenic scores for height have no association with men's fertility for instance'

Lol and yet polygenic scores for height are linked to reproductive success in terms of mating success and the number of children. Which means taller men tend to have more reproductive success, not necessarily due to increased "fertility", but because they are more attractive to potential partners

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10164-011-0274-0

"As predicted, facially more attractive and taller men were more likely to engage in marriage. In turn, married men had higher reproductive success than single men. Even when men’s marital status was considered, facially more attractive men had higher reproductive success than their less attractive counterparts. This supports the importance of physical attractiveness in sexual selection in modern humans."

Why are you even doing this, man? Like, are you getting paid for bullshitting to people. Who on earth is gonna be so deluded to believe that someone who is tall and handsome is not gonna have the ability to get laid more often and even reproduce if he wanted to as opposed to someone that's short and ugly.

And lookism goes beyond dating and reproductive success

It affects every area of your life, from the income you earn, the school or college life you had, and even if your parents gave you more love, attention, and affection as a kid. Lol even the personality you develop is dependent in how you look, or do you think there's no correlation between extroversion and physical attractiveness?

being attractive is the cue to being extroverted even if the person isn't really extroverted, you already know the halo effect, because your perception of someone is based on their looks and this happens in milliseconds.

But well, keep lying to others, telling them that your genes don't determine your dating life or reproductive success or how much others find you sexually attractive lol

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The Nuance Pill's avatar

Fertility refers to number of children here, actually. The UK biobank data also shows no effect of polygenic height scores on having reproduced. You have no idea what you're talking about. Study after study finds no effect of height on men's reproductive success. At most there is a quadratic effect whereby very short and tall men have fewer children.

The study you linked is no exception:

Only marital status and facial attractiveness were significantly associated with men’s reproductive success (b = 0.55 and 0.10, t (494) = 14.95 and 2.71, P < 0.001 and 0.007, respectively).

Effect sizes matter, as well. The effect of facial attractiveness was trivial at 0.1, far below what your reductive narrative would predict, and that's not even mentioning the conflicting data finding no effect.

'Why are you even doing this, man?'

Why am I actually looking at the objective data instead of regurgitating memes like an NPC? Simple, because I care about the truth, and am sick of seeing stupid reductive BS that isn't supported by evidence.

'or do you think there's no correlation between extroversion and physical attractiveness?'

It is essentially zero, yes. I've also done an article covering this meme. Extraversion has a greater effect even in a regression model including physical traits as covariates. There is also virtually no association between attractiveness and depression, social anxiety, etc.

'But well, keep lying to others, telling them that your genes don't determine your dating life or reproductive success or how much others find you sexually attractive lol'

Genes doesn't refer solely to physical morphology. I could just as easily say you don't believe in genes when it comes to the mind since you believe it's purely determined by social inputs which are in turn determined by physical morphology.

I could try and explain why physical traits don't have large effects on these outcomes, but I'm not sure I have the patience right now. If you respond again and it's not respectful it's being promptly deleted. Cheers.

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The Nuance Pill's avatar

Yeah I didn't think so. Not letting a disingenuous hypocrite accuse me of being the same.

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Apr 12
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AboveandBelow's avatar

>autism doesn't affect dating success because "gEnEs", but because such condition undermines the ability to socialize

and your ability to socialize comes from the ether then? lol

Are you saying the structure and function and development of an autistic person’s brain isn’t determined by his genes?

The brain of an autistic person who we know for a fact doesn’t function in a way considered typical within a given society, are you saying it’s not a result of his genes? And that the opposite isn’t true? lol

We know Neurotipicality is genetic as well as Autism.

If it’s not your GENES affecting your dating success then what is it?

>lack of ability to socialize

In this case, an autistic personality which, again, is determined by your genes.

That comes from being autistic which is genetic. So yes, genes determined your lack of dating success.

This doesn’t matter, of course, if you are a female. They don’t struggle getting in a relationship like their male counterparts, so not being neurotypical doesn’t affect females in the same negative way that it does to autistic males.

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Apr 12
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AboveandBelow's avatar

> it's not genes what make or break dating success but basic social skills.

okay let's see if you can follow simple logic

autism, which we know is genetic, negatively impacts social skills which leads to awkwardness and problems during social interactions which in turn makes it hard for autistic people to form relationships and have a romantic partners and reproduce.

the origin of this condition is in your genes. Do you get that? it's not that hard to understand that autistic individuals were predetermined to STRUGGLE in this facet of life from their conception.

Where do this difficulty with developing social skills like the rest come from if not autism which is linked to inherited genetic mutations lol

so basically, it's your genes

It's your genes.

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Apr 12
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AboveandBelow's avatar

> it's not "genes" the main factor that conditions dating success, it's social skills.

🤣🤣🤣

genes are the main factor not just when it comes to autistic individuals

but every other individual

also I find it funny you keep spouting lies about social skills when one of my best friends is an aspie who used to poop his pants in class and cut himself and yet when we go out he always has women approaching him because he is tall and white.

No social skills needed when you're good looking because women are superficial creatures.

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Sufeitzy's avatar

The “chincel” myth. Worthless comparisons, to be honest, because the variables people see in the images have little to do with the facial characteristics you call out.

A study was done some time back at Stanford and replicated gradually with failure, whether neural networks could be trained to distinguish images of gay and straight men, lesbians and straight women in yearbooks. Certainly! It wasn’t even hard apparently, and the search was on for the genetic source look.

Turns out what the classifiers were keying on is grooming, hairstyles, makeup, glasses, and so on, like most of us do. The worst thing most schlubs have (the two images synthetic or real are of schlubs) is poorly maintained shoes. It’s the easiest tell that someone is a crappy lay. If you can’t take care of your shoes how are you going to take care of my orgasm.

Next comes the shirt frame. It’s roughly a third of what you see for a whole person, and these looked like they found something at Aardvark’s Odd Ark for a whole $0.79 to wear, clearly personal grooming is not high on the list. If you can’t recognize and take care of your own needs, are you going to take care of mine? If you can’t take minimal effort to create something which doesn’t make my eyes hurt, something I can’t unsee, why shouldn’t I run away?

Paris Hilton is a fairly unattractive woman, her facial characteristics are just sad, but god can she groom, with wildly overcompensating effort, but there it is. Luis Guzmán, a face only a mother could love, and flawless snappy, effortless grooming. And then there’s

Timothée Chalmet, fairly poor “chincel” rating but by god that man is groomed within an inch of his life - I don’t think polyester has ever touched his skin, or it would have left a hideous mark; heart-shaped “feminine” face ( see c.f. Johnny Depp, Elvis, Byron) but the guy ooo,ooo,ooozes careless effortless flawless grooming even when he wears a burlap bag. Straight men get tears just thinking of lays lost to that face and gawky body. He is a “transcel” - a transcendent celebrity who can get laid more than any Chad Stonedbro will ever in a lifetime. He is “The One” this year.

For instance the two pictures you show are both men with poor grooming - that hideous shirt - that useless hair - those plucked boy-band eyebrows. Both resemble bisexual serial killers straight out of a Lifetime movie “Stalker Killers I Have Known and Loved”, Thursday at 7pm (repeat, 2019)

You don’t even have to see more than a millimeter at the bottom of the image.

The collar is the entire story.

“Chincel”, “Transcel” are trademark Me use with attribution 😈

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Eden's avatar

I know so many guys who don't even try and approach/talk to women or date because they feel they're not good-looking enough and women have unrealistic physical standards for men. It's certainly becoming harder for more men.

A lot of these guys gave up after being told by women following first dates that there was no "spark/connection" and this seems to have obliterated all hope they had. It's kind of sad.

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Yosef's avatar

Breckenridge’s law says no.

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Feb 24
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Black Pilled Paki's avatar

Socioeconomic status has zero correlation with how early or how much women have sex.

The correlation is also becoming weaker for men

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guy's avatar

I wonder why it's now becoming weaker for men.

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Black Pilled Paki's avatar

Because post social media and dating app explosion, men’s looks are everything. A good looking tall broke unemployed guy will have 100x more options than an average looking medium height financially stable and successful one.

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Jake's avatar

For your first point, about half of the studies cited here seem to have been done on convenience samples of undergrads, who would presumably be flattened with respect to both actual SES and in the salience of SES (there’s only so much you can do to flaunt your wealth if everyone’s living in dorms). And the undergrad subset doesn’t seem have significantly different results than those done on the general population, though ironically I am too lazy to rigorously compare the correlations found in each set.

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