Unfortunately this response is divorced from reality.
I have observed many 20-something women swiping through Tinder and the #1 cause for a man’s profile to be rejected is his attractiveness simply being average or below average. Have you ever tried online dating on platforms such as Tinder?
You're greatly underestimating the effect of good photos. As a bi guy, I've seen my share of both men's and women's dating profiles. The general trend: most profiles are terrible. Of the decent ones, women tend to have good photos, but shitty/non-existent bios, and the men tend to have good bios but bad photos. Only a small fraction of people combine both to make really compelling profiles.
So for men, the biggest improvement they can make is take more photos of yourself in hope for some good ones and maybe get some professional photos taken. What constitutes a good photo? In descending order of importance: 1) they want to be flattering. You'd think this would be obvious, but far too many profiles have photos that actively highlight negative features of their subject. If your hairline is failing, have photos with hats on. If you've got a beer belly, don't have side-facing photos. Etc. 2) They should suggest that you do fun things, and are thus likely to bring a potential date to such fun things. Nature shot, beach shot, interesting place shot. If you have some interesting hobby, maybe an action shot of you woodcutting/flying a model plane/intricately painting plastic figures. 3) Since this is a forum for tech workers, you probably have more discretionary income than average. *Subtly* demonstrate that.
Ultimately, what it boils down to is that everyone knows your profile pictures are going to be your absolute best photos of yourself, carefully crafted to make you look your best, overselling reality substantially. If you put bad pictures in your profile, people will STILL ASSUME THAT, and thus assume you look even worse.
I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual. And the guys they do think are attractive are often just their particular brand of 'cute' average guy who to my eyes as a non-attracted-to-men person don't look that much different than the previous 10 guys they swiped left on.
> I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual
The OkCupid data confirmed this is false. Top 20% of men receive the vast majority of female attention.
The inverse of that is that the majority of women think that 80% of men are mostly unattractive or at least unattractive to them. This is about as far as you can get from just trying to sweep the stats aside with a "highly individual" comment.
The even bigger takeaway from OKCupid's stats, IMO, was the fact that divisive profiles performed better than generally okay ones. People were more likely to actually engage with a match they found attractive, but other people didn't.
There are broad patterns of agreement but individual differences also. The faces most people will find attractive can be identified, but you can't select a face everyone will find attractive.
I would follow some accounts like She Rates Dogs and Ask Aubry to see some of what women are up against on dating apps. Every woman on those apps has an experience like you'll find on those feeds of their own, and as a man on those apps, it helps to understand the experience they're used to, and are expecting could happen again at any moment.
Men do the same thing. That’s literally why the swipe style of dating apps was created; to quickly judge if you are interested or not mainly in appearance. That’s why the OPs first point was about good photos and presentation.
This is correct, to an extent. But all the good presentation and clever bio-writing in the world will not save you if you are a typical 5/10 male on Tinder.
It’s more that not doing those things can be problematic for attractive people who would otherwise get matches.
The average woman does way more to take care of herself than the average man. I'm betting if most/a substantial portion of women didn't wash themselves, for example, that that would become another cutoff pretty quickly. Or if women didn't shave regularly/were showing stubble everywhere. Or if they routinely showed up with rat's nest hair.
(Most women who don't do basic things are depressed to the point they aren't on dating apps, so you wouldn't have an opportunity to swipe on them.)
One reason I'm glad I'm gay is that so many men just reek or don't perform basic hygiene.
That's false. Out of the seven characteristics of attractiveness, only one is under locus of control, the rest are genetically determined and exceedingly hard to change.
> The environment happens to you after your genes do.
So what? This correction changes nothing, the discussion is about control.
A man who wants to improve his attractiveness in terms of body height, skin colour or sensitivity of the scalp against 5α-DHT expressing follicle miniaturisation can't achieve shit by changing his environment.
Sure, but then say "it's too late to change it". Which I agree with! But being overly pop-scientific leads to, you know, eugenics.
If your hair is thinning that's less of a problem than you think. It looks bad if you look like you're intentionally ignoring it, but lean into it and you're fine.
I have observed many 20-something women swiping through Tinder and the #1 cause for a man’s profile to be rejected is his attractiveness simply being average or below average. Have you ever tried online dating on platforms such as Tinder?