I don't know about Daniel_Burfoot but my interpretation would be that some jobs are cool and some aren't. Artists don't make much money, accountants do. One suspects artists have more attractive, and more interesting to them partners than accountants making equivalent money. Some fields are negatively cool to the average person, almost everyone dealing with computers, for example. But... Google, Facebook and making apps are cool. People can understand what you do.

Being truly excellent in any field is cool to most people, but how much cool your impressive achievement buys you will depend on the field. There was that cow of a Gawker intern who thought the ex-Magic: The Gathering world champion should have publicised this fact so she could have avoided going on a date with him, for example.

But you can confine your active mate search to people of whatever subculture you belong to. These people will after all tend to be simpatico with you. OTOH, most subcultures are quite gender segregated.

The Great Firewall defeated my attempts to find the Roissy/Heartiste link that said this first and better. David D. Friedman had a post at some stage on the subcultures bit. Please link in daughter comments.