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?
It’s more that not doing those things can be problematic for attractive people who would otherwise get matches.
(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.
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 data shows men might rate women's attractiveness charitably, but they only messaged the most attractive 5s.
But whom women messaged tells a different story. Women messaged more average-looking men and were less likely to message the most attractive men.
Examining messages is largely moot, because by the time two people have matched we've already filtered out a huge portion of potential partners.
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.
(For instance, it's easy to "change" if you're a burn victim. If you're going to be scientific, be specific.)
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.
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.
My first marriage ended with my wife divorcing me. We have 3 kids. On my Tinder profile I made it very clear I'm a dad. I'm not tall and not that handsome.
I'm a developer, so I don't meet that many single women in real life. Tinder was excellent. I met my current wife on Tinder, and still happily married years after our first Tinder date.
My wife is a relationship coach, and has great success with women. But the men are just uncoachable. They are not able to find a relationship, and still know better when an actual women tries to tell them what women want. Crazy.
Pretty grand generalization. Sometimes it feels like a coach advices you impossible, mutually contradictory or equivalent of jumping off a cliff. I guess it could be hard to find a matching coach.
When it comes to dating apps, everyone I know falls into one of two categories:
The first group invests time into generating a good profile. They put the effort into getting get photos of themselves and presenting the photos properly. They write a good bio, avoiding the tired tropes ("love food and travel"), and they iterate on their bio based on responses. They go out on dates with an open mind and are willing to give people a chance.
The second group grabs random, unflattering pictures of themselves and throw them into the app without much consideration. They do things like use group photos where it's hard to even tell whose profile you're viewing. They grab a lot of silly or exaggerated pictures that make them look immature or present an image that doesn't match their personality. They write a short bio with useless tropes copied from other profiles. They make up their minds about people before even going on the first date.
The first group isn't finding their soulmate in the first month, but they do well. I've attended a double-digit number of weddings from people in this group. The second group is just relentlessly cynical and disappointed. I know a group of people, some of whom are classically attractive women, who have been doing online dating for years while complaining about the lack of good matches.
Online dating is a tool. Like any other tool, people get out of it what they put into it. You don't have to be in the top 10% of most attractive and successful people to match with others, but you do have to get over the cynicism and put in some effort.