Nornagest comments on How subjective is attractiveness? - Less Wrong

23 Post author: JonahSinick 13 January 2015 12:04AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (38)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Nornagest 14 January 2015 09:10:53PM *  3 points [-]

I haven't used OKCupid in a couple of years, but when I did, there were two paths to giving someone a star rating. You could look at their regular profile, usually including several pictures and a couple screens of text, and click a control at the top to rate it; or you could enter a quick matching system that'd show you up to three pictures and an abbreviated version of their profile text. (There were a lot of jokes about how no one reads the text, but I got the impression that most people at least skimmed it.) There was also a "My Best Face" feature that did look at individual pictures, but that used an up/down rating system rather than the star ratings, and context here suggests that we're talking about profiles. Not that any of that matters here, since everything I said in the grandparent depends only on the photos.

If you can't see subcultural signaling in the picture on the right, I don't know what to tell you. She's fairly clearly urban rather than rural, and at least middle-class but probably not upper-; she's communicating a specific type of sexuality; and she's likely into the alternative fashion scene in some way; there are other things she's saying but those are the most obvious ones. You could call it "hipster", but that's less kind and more general than what I have in mind. The picture on the left is far less culturally marked, although I could probably venture a couple of good guesses.

(Not my downvote, by the way.)