Video summary
The podcast explores common misconceptions men hold regarding female attraction, beginning with a study on physical features using the internet meme character known as the Gigachad. This archetype represents an extremely dimorphic male face characterized by masculine traits such as a large chin and prominent brow ridge. While overwhelmingly rated as attractive by men within certain subcultures, women generally did not share this preference; although most found him unattractive, a significant minority still considered him appealing. The discussion highlights that research on facial attractiveness suggests averageness is often more desirable than extreme dimorphism, noting that while symmetry and moderate features are universally preferred, individual variation remains substantial. Even faces rated as highly unattractive by the general population can be found attractive by specific individuals, challenging the notion of a single universal standard for male beauty. Beyond physical appearance, the conversation addresses personality traits, specifically refuting the belief held in many "manosphere" circles that women are attracted to antisocial behaviors or the Dark Triad of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. Data indicates that while some aspects of these traits might correlate with mating success, particularly narcissism which often involves heightened attention to appearance, they do not predict general attractiveness in the way popular culture suggests. The host contrasts this internet wisdom with real-world examples like Seth Stevens DTZ, a former Google data scientist who used split-testing methods on his own appearance—deciding between beards and glasses—to optimize his look. Despite appearing as an unconventional "nerd," he successfully entered relationships because he leveraged specific traits that appealed to particular women, such as one partner's genuine love for nerdy individuals rather than a generic hyper-masculine ideal. The discussion further critiques the trajectory from pickup artist communities to incel disillusionment, arguing that this pipeline often leads men to feel inherently unlovable if their dating strategies fail or require them to adopt personas contrary to their authentic selves. Successful application of these "games" can create a disconnect where women are viewed as adversaries in a competition rather than genuine partners, fostering resentment when the scripted roles do not yield results. The host emphasizes that relying on unfalsifiable techniques like specific linguistic programming is disheartening and ineffective compared to authenticity. Instead of trying to force a one-dimensional mold toward hyper-masculinity or other universal traits that rarely exist in reality, men are encouraged to identify their genuine strengths—whether being an artsy musician, a funny storyteller, or another unique individual—and lean into those authentic qualities. Ultimately, the argument concludes that effective dating strategies involve adhering to undeniable rules of hygiene and presentation while simultaneously embracing one's true personality rather than masking it with artificial roles. This approach not only maximizes effectiveness in attracting compatible partners but also prevents individuals from feeling like frauds within their relationships. The transcript illustrates that attraction is highly subjective, varying significantly between individuals even when general consensus exists on broad categories like symmetry or averageness. By rejecting the idea of a monolithic standard for what women want and instead focusing on being someone specific who can be loved deeply by those with similar preferences, men can build more satisfying connections without sacrificing their integrity or resorting to manipulative tactics that ultimately undermine genuine intimacy.
Read the full video transcript
what do you think guys get wrong about
what women find
attractive okay so I I did a short uh
study survey on on the web about the
gigachad I took just one photo most
people I think will know the gigachad
this meme I think he's a very handsome
guy but importantly he's an extremely
dimorphic guy right his face is
extremely masculine big chin big uh brow
Ridge and everything so it's he has an
extremely dimorphic face and he's also
considered to be very handsome at least
in these kind of meme subcultures of the
black pill that's why he's called the
gigachad because he is kind of the
archetype of the most attractive man so
I ran this across a large sample of men
and women men overwhelmingly related or
rated him as attractive women didn't but
at the same time there was kind of you
know it wasn't a distribution where most
women uh I well I should say that differ
most women found him unattractive but
there were some women who found him
pretty attractive at the same time most
men thought he was attractive
so a lot of the time men kind of get
wrong what women like as far as the
physical features of men I wrote another
long article reviewing uh the research
in that on facial attractiveness and
specifically facial dimorphism masculine
facial features I think men think that
very very masculine facial features are
attractive to women uh usually it isn't
the very most dimorphic faces that are
the most attractive to women if you
think about a really dimorphic face it's
kind of like a gorilla in a sense uh but
it's probably not going to be the least
dimorphic face the least feminine
there's a lot of research on how
averageness is attractive and sometimes
when I say that people think what do you
mean how can an average face certainly
average is not attractive but average in
this case means features that are not
too extreme that are symmetrical that
are not too extreme so those are some
things that predict uh facial
attractiveness in in any sense for
personality and what I think men often
get wrong at least in kind of these
manosphere subcultures they tend to
think that women enjoy uh antisocial
Behavior they tend to think that women
are very very attracted to certain
antisocial traits which is typically not
the norm so if you look at something
like the dark Triad for example there is
research that indicates that the dark
Triad is attracted to women so the dark
Triad is this uh Triad of traits that
are antisocial psychopathy melanism and
narcissism so looking at those
individually uh some of those actually
predict attractiveness better than
others primarily narcissism and that
might be because people who are
narcissists pay more attention to their
own appearance and because their
behavior is very different it seems like
melanism doesn't actually predict this
kind of attractiveness not
attractiveness as far as physical
ratings nor mating success as well as
the other to do so those are certain
things to consider yeah it is
interesting about how the common health
held wisdom on the internet about what
it is that women want I had a Seth
Stevens dtz on the show who wrote
everybody lies and don't trust your gut
in don't trust your gut he did a
autistic data scientist's approach to
optimizing his personal appearance and
he split tested there's websites where
you can do this now but he actually uh
back-ended this back in the day um he
grew a beard put a photo of him with a
beard up should I get a beard should I
have glasses should I have my hair short
should I have my hair long should I wear
this should I wear that and he basically
split tested all of the different
iterations of his appearance down to I
should have a beard wear glasses blah
blah this particular like collection of
things uh and he is now by his own
admission in a relationship with a girl
that he's punching out of his league
with and the reason that that happened
he said and he has data to back this up
which is that you want to try and make
people love or hate the um sort of look
that you have going forward you don't
want to be everybody's just okay you
want to be some some people absolutely
go for you and this the same thing goes
for personality as well that he said his
girlfriend maybe even now fiance when
they before they even got together was
with her friends and talking about being
single and they said so what are you
into what are you into what are you into
and they turn to his future girlfriend
said what are you into and she says I
just love nerds I can't say what it is
about it I've just I have such a a soft
spot for nerds and that is the kind of
guy that I find the most sexy and sure
enough down the line comes Seth Stevens
dtz ex data scientist at Google and like
literally the guy that's just done a a
spreadsheet to work out how he should
look most attractive there you go
there's your there's your your your
nerdy guy um now certain corners of the
internet would say oh well you know
that's just her beat of bck on the way
to an alpha fox solution or whatever it
is I don't know it it seems to be
unlikely to me because a lot of the time
I've seen guys get into relationships
with girls who really love funny men or
really love artsy men or really love
athletic men or really love whatever
it's not all pointing in this sort of
unidimensional one directional way of up
and across toward hyper masculinity the
higher your testosterone you're always
going to win like there's certain
universals symmetrical face for instance
I've never heard anybody say you know
what it is I just love an unsymmetrical
face that's not something typically that
I've heard but there are far fewer
universalities than I think people would
find and when it comes to guys and
advice for guys in dat
I think becoming uh sticking to some of
the absolute un uh deniable rules and
then going okay what am I what am I
really really good at if you're really
really good at being the The Artsy guy
with a hanging earring that can play the
guitar like yo lean into being Mr guitar
player thing or if you're the super
funny guy you know Pete Davidson's the
Roo to guy whatever it might be you can
become more of what you are and that to
me seems like not only
the smartest route to go down in terms
of of being effective with women but
it's also the route down which you're
going to feel like less of a fraud and
this was something else that you've
brought up with which is this sort of um
pickup artist to incel pipeline that you
had tracked through some data I think
one of the reasons that a lot of guys
became disenchanted with the pickup
artist Community was that what they
realized even the ones that were
successful if you were successful at
pickup what it taught you was that the
role that you played was all that women
were attracted to and the further that
the role that you played was from the
person that you genuinely are you
realized oh my God I am so inherently
unlovable and deficient in myself
however women are this game to be played
they're this adversary to be won they're
this competitor that I'm supposed to
gain control over and if I play the game
right and use the correct series of
neural linguistic programming languages
I will be able to win this game uh and
for the people who did try pick up and
it didn't work either because they
weren't able to do it correctly or
because there was something about them
that meant that they couldn't get it to
work in no matter what they did um it
was also disenchanting to them too so
pickup to me seemed like a
unfalsifiable disheartening approach to
dating certainly certainly so what you
mentioned about attractiveness let me
comment on that and then go to the the
pickup because there those are two
interesting interesting topics so
a lot of research on facial
attractiveness up to this point has
looked at how much people agree on
attractive faces and when you look at
interrater correlations across a whole
group on attractiveness they seem really
really high you can get correlations
between like 0 6 and 0.9 for facial
attractiveness ratings which makes it
seem like oh man people really agree on
what an attractive face is and it's true
if you look at that metric if you look
within that metric if you run an ICC
correlation and you look at pair ratings
The correlation is much much lower it
can be about 02 to3 or something you're
gonna have to explain what you're
talking about here certainly so if you
take a big big group of people and you
have them rate a face and you look at
their
ratings then you'll get a correlation
that seems very very high like most
people agree on what an attractive face
is if you take two individual people out
of that group at random and you look at
their correlation and then you take two
more out of that group at random and you
look at their correlation and then you
compute that you'll say wow people don't
agree at all there's actually a lot of
variation on an attractive face there's
a good paper I think it's from 2016
maybe it's a little older by a
researcher named Honey cup and he plots
it out on a plot and he says okay so
here are all the actual faces and here's
the highest rating and the lowest rating
and almost every face regardless of how
attractive it was got a really high
rating and a really low rating I
recently ran a survey I have it up on
the website now I took faces from the
Chicago face database and I selected
these faces male and female faces to be
uh kind of below attractiveness and
about all of these faces got about 25%
of people that said okay that face is
good enough I would date it even though
they were all kind of unattractive faces
as far as pre- ratings rent the pre-
ratings highly correlated uh the ratings
that people gave the participants highly
correlated within each other and to
these pre- ratings so people all kind of
agreed on the attractiveness of these
spaces even across different questions
that I asked like how attractive are
these relative to the population how
attractive do you find them at the same
time if you go through all of these
faces every single one of these faces
had people that rated it like you know
aate scale one through seven seven most
attractive every single face had at
least someone who said it was a seven a
six a five so there is a great deal of
individual variation in attractive face
even if most people agree that a face is
unattractive there's still going to be a
pretty large cohort that says you know I
actually kind of like that face so that
would be maybe Seth the unconventional
dude that manages to bag atie cuz he's
exactly what she's looking for what's
happening people if you enjoyed that
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