I always found this interesting, not because of the idea itself, but because they chose specific heights as cutoffs. It was particularly common to see women pick 6' as their cutoff. Many of these women were significantly shorter than 6', even if they wore heels.

If you're 5'4" (say), can you really tell the difference between 5'10" and 6'? Are those two inches actually a dealbreaker? Walking past men on the street, can you actually filter out all men under 6' accurately and precisely? It seems extremely unlikely that anyone could do that unless they were quite close to 6' themselves.

And yet it's trivial to filter out every guy under 6' on a site like OkCupid. The site provides built-in functionality to do so. I'm willing to bet a significant percentage of women stating they require a height of 6' or higher would often be willing in real life to date men much shorter than that, because they probably don't even know what 6' precisely looks like.

It's also been convincingly demonstrated that men on dating sites inflate their height by 2 full inches on average. Suppose you don't really know what 6' precisely looks like and go on a date with a 5'10" guy claiming to be 6'. You may not realize he's not actually 6' and believe the claim from his profile. From here on out, your idea of dating "6'" men becomes reinforced based on faulty data.

I measured her and she was 5'7" and she still was able to book modeling jobs with strict requirements under her adjusted height

People liked the proportions and her long legs

Maybe some future society won't but the phenotype wins now

Just another anecdote about how lying and perception aren't exactly mysterious ways of getting ahead

Hooking up stats are rather clear: around 80% of women have sex with around 20% of men. That's why an average looking guy on PoF/CL/Tinder/OkCupid has very little chance compared to real life.

This imbalance is actually caused by the guys. Your average guy will throw himself at almost any woman. You join a site, you go through profiles, you message the ones you like. You can easily message 100 girls and get 1 reply. Why? Because every other average guy is doing the same. So an average girl gets 100 messages a day, and there's no way she's replying to all of them - she will pick the top 5-10, and will talk to them.

If your face isn't good looking, don't worry. You can compensate with other things. Hit the gym, girls LOVE fit bodies, even though most of them you tell you they want someone funny/smart/interesting. Don't believe the words, believe the actions. When I started gaining muscle, women started paying attention. Other things that help are: confidence, ability to speak calmly and confidently, dressing better than average, treating women as humans, not as princesses.

If you want to meet lots of women IRL, pick up an activity with mostly women, like dance, yoga.

To learn more, read about hypergamy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy

TLDR: All women seek higher status males, inevitably leading to the highest status males reproducing with more females.

Being a multimillionaire is not 'higher status' when it comes to meeting women (unless you make it to the hundred-millionaire state')

Being a founder or a corporate exec is not 'higher status' when it comes to meeting women (unless you are C-suite at a fortune-500)

While I think this sounds very true, do you have a reference?

It completely matches the experience in the city I live in, and I'd love to be able to quote it to people.

OKCupid has some research, but they don't record actual sex encounters. They have stats like "As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium".

Before I was married, I found dates online all the time. 99% of the women I dated had issues or were too picky. I didn't end up finding my wife until I joined some local meetup groups and met her IRL.

Ignoring these opportunities in favour of having a computer mediated interaction where they are able to choose precisely what they are interested in... does fit the definition of "picky". Most people probably have their own personal reasons for it, but that doesn't make it less of a fit for the dictionary definition of picky.

Even OP has admitted that they were easily getting many dates online yet still they had to reject a lot of people (I assume?). And (again assumedly) that is not picky [cause they had "issues"], while somebody not picking whoever from a small pool is.

And that's all without going into how the cohort of people doing the approaching can be skewed in an unfavorable way, the scariness and increased risk of accepting a date in person etc.

I don't want into arguments about definitions. My point is, for the average computer literate person, going on the Internet is the expected rational choice. Or perhaps more widely, that the Internet meme of "women have it easier, there's something wrong with ones that can't find a suitable date" is based on rather troubling judgments.

From what I heard, nobody gets anything serious started in clubs. Bars are probably better but, quite honestly, I don't feel safe going to a bar by myself late in the evening.

Some things are worth being picky about and just dealing with up front. If you can choose from 100 people why not eliminate the ones who don't share your religion, for example.

Of course I'm someone who married the person who couldn't be more different in politics, personality and background - 17 years ago and going strong. So naturally my perspective here is biased - on the basis of criteria I thought were important to me at that age, I have no doubt I never would have considered her if I saw her profile and went by he facts and figures.

This seems rather vague and subjective...

The answer (for me) has is almost always "yes" and so the question becomes how did they do it? What failing of mine should I repair?

I don't think attractiveness matters past initiating the first date in a cold relationship. Who knows, is it because I've gotten older? Getting to know someone makes their face so dynamic and expressive. Every human face is pretty once you get to know it that way. Perhaps that is why it's easier to date people we're already friends with: we already know how pretty and interesting they are, what more could one want?

Any criteria that reduces the number of choices is good for women as it makes their lives easier.

"Well, if I meet someone online he has to be as good as possible right? They are so many men here."

I would say no, and in fact even having a preference for something like skin complexion isn't enough to make one racist. What is racist is stating the preference in terms of race and categorically denying that one would ever be attractive to a person of <race> or <skin complexion> or whatever. I think it would be pretty ugly to say that you would never date a short person, regardless of any implications for one's ideas about race, too. Like, it's different to say "i find tall people attractive" versus "i find short people unattractive".

Personal preferences aside, the way society signals which physical features are desirable and undesirable is racist. This is largely commercialized and driven by marketing departments these days but it is rooted in all sorts of institutions that govern the desirability and undesirability of certain bodies. So, as an individual, signaling one's preferences can feed into this structural power that decides who is pretty and who is not. Individual preferences are almost certainly partly influenced by messages society sends us and it's important to keep that in mind.

It is fine, there is nothing wrong with it, as you should do whatever you want with your romantic life, but it is racist as you are excluding a group of people from your dating pool just because of their race.

I think this whole idea of race should be put down, euthanised. I like to mock it by comparing people to dog breeds. We don't call the English Pointer and the Miniature Shar Pei different races, but they have distinctly stronger difference than English compared Chinese people.

In an effort to reclaim my preferences I can often be hearding saying things like "I don't mean to sound racists, but could you pass the salt" at the dinner table.

Considering Asian as a property of unattractiveness is racist. Even if you are an Asian yourself.

"Asian" is not an indicator of unattractiveness; "male Asian", on average, is.