Give the man a break. He’s displaying his social skills by calling attention to his physical and stylistic transformation in a way that nods at plausible deniability. This is how you do this. Get hot and wear clothes that show you care about clothes is part of self-presentation. Becoming more attractive leads to better social skills almost automatically. People treat you better and you become more confident and both feed on each other.

The cold hard truth that I realized I long time ago is what I call the “two strikes rule”. When you are short (as am I), you already have two strikes against you in society.

You can’t be “short and” - short and broke, short and mean, short and shy, short and fat (which I was until I was 18).

Not denying your experience in any way, just want to remark: I heard (and felt) similar takes regarding a lot of "negative" properties from a lot of different people. Height, weight, race, gender, hair color, stutters, country of origin and even really specific stuff like big ears.

Might be helpful to consider that most people feel like they have two strikes against them already (some of them being more right in their assumption maybe).

I am a short male in my mid twenties and I am also getting to the same conclusion. If you're short, you need to work harder. There is no chance you can be unfit, fat or awekward. You will be screwed. But honestly, sometimes I feel like it's a good blessing. It pushes you to improve many aspects of your life. You want to be successful in your career, you want to work harder, you want to excercise like there is no tomorrow, you want to read more, you want to be more social, etc. It pushes you to become a better person. But the height deficiency is always there and it's an unfortunate tragic event and a very hard truth to swallow. Life is unfair.

I feel for short guys. Apparently it's ok for women to put "swipe right if over 6ft" on dating apps. I doubt I'd get much success with "swipe right if over 36D and you can deep throat"

I've noticed the best dancer in a club is a short guy. Tall guys can just coast, but a bit of time in the gym definitely helps.

As a tall guy, I've always assumed that there is a reason most good male dancers I can think of are average height or shorter. Tall people just don't have the right body proportions and/or fluidity of movement. There's just something that looks gangly and weird when tall guys are dancing.

Maybe that's just what I tell myself to feel better.

So, I normally stick very hard to tech topics on HN, but this (dance and tall folks) is so close to heart I have to chime in:

Have faith! Don't feel bad, lankiness while dancing is just "the emergent property" of what happens when a tall person is learning. Short dancers (of whom the 2 of the best footwork-heads in my old crew were) have their own pathologies to get over, it's not all free lunch, they just look differently when they do. And similarly, as they improve, they can gain a really distinctive style of crisp, clean, fast, small motions. HOWEVER, tall dancers aren't precluded from mastering styles that works with our body either, it just, tall as for short, takes practice. Have a link to one of my favorites, Kapela [0]. I can only hope it inspires others like it does me :) (Going to go do my footwork practice now, in fact, as talking about this got me excited.)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoBveCfGCZk

Two of the best dancers on the planet are 6'4" twins that go by Les Twins.

I'd actually suggest it's easier to be a good dancer if you're tall and lanky because the movement of your limbs is more apparent.

> It pushes you to become a better person

I'm sure this is true, I've noticed a lot of the best football playing kids in my son's circles are short, and often immigrants.

> There is no chance you can be unfit, fat or awekward

This is just as true if you're tall. You don't get away with being fat or awkward if you're tall. The only thing is that, ceteris paribus, it's more desirable. It doesn't really cancel any other shortcoming.

Not with that attitude my friend.

“Attitude” doesn’t make a difference. It makes no sense for anyone to bury their head in the sand and ignore reality. I took action early on.

- I’ve been in above average shape for most of my adult life - I’m in my late 40s

- I spent a 10+ year stint as a part time fitness instructor. Then life got crazy

- By BigTech standards my compensation is meh. But I work remotely for BigTech in a mid cost of living area

- I’ve been happily married for a decade.

No woman has ever said “you know what? I really want a short overweight broke introvert. It’s what I’ve always dreamed of”.

What people say is not important, obviously no-one will say that, but in practice nobody cares how tall Mick Jagger is, or Gabe in The Office.

Mick Jagger - famous, rich, talented.

Gabe from the office - famous, rich, talented.

You kind of just proved my point.

I’m by no means an incel. But things might have turned out differently if I did have the “third strike”.

My wife of 10 years would and has been with me through thick and thin and I’m 100% confident that she will be no matter what. But I doubt she would have given a 36 year old (at the time) the time of day if I had been 5 foot 5, 350 pounds, flipping burgers at McDonalds and yelling at her “hey shawty, give me dem digits”.

And before the woke police chastise me for picking on “urban Black culture”, not only are “some of my best friends Black”, so are my parents and all of my family.

> 36 year old (at the time) the time of day if I had been 5 foot 5, 350 pounds, flipping burgers at McDonalds and yelling at her “hey shawty, give me dem digits”.

Are you arguing then that she'd have swooned over all that but 6ft tall? Sounds like a real catch.

I am not talking about you, just saying that if you're charismatic height is not relevant, any tinder girl that says she only dates tall guys will forget that if a short rock star shows up.

No idea why you'd say Gabe is famous rich and talented. I'm talking about the character, he's none of those things. No girl would ever look at him, tall or not.

Napoleon was short. He did alright.

Napoleon was not actually short. He was around 169cm which was a little above the average French man of the period.

He also wasn’t dumb, broke, or an introvert…

> Napoleon was routinely bullied by his peers for his accent, birthplace, short stature, mannerisms and inability to speak French quickly. Bonaparte became reserved and melancholy, applying himself to reading.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon

should he have designed a social graph? /s

i think his demenaour is selfdescribing