This is a terrible, cynical, awful book. And much like Machiavelli's The Prince, it is basically 100% correct in its thesis. Hewlett came out of a WelThis is a terrible, cynical, awful book. And much like Machiavelli's The Prince, it is basically 100% correct in its thesis. Hewlett came out of a Welsh coalmining village to go through Cambridge, an econ PhD, then American academia, and then a pivot to thought leadership in talent development. Her big picture look is at the kinds of people who rise to the top of the political-economic sociopath factory that is American business, and especially women and minorities who are not rising to the top.
As much as we'd like to believe that the world is meritocratic and that good work speaks for itself, as you get higher up success is more and more defined by networks, and in particular the presence of a sponsor, a more senior leader who finds you opportunities, covers your mistakes, and sells you to their networks. In return, as a protege you make them look good, you do anything they ask, and you go above and beyond to demonstrate executive presence, and you deliver.
There are a few decent tips in this book, on avoiding perpetual lieutenant syndrome, saying 'yes' and doing caveats after, and the 2+1 rule, which is that you should have a primary sponsor as a manager (or maybe skip-level), a sponsor in an adjacent unit, and a third outside the organization entirely, in case things implode. Also, being a protege means regular check-ins, and balancing the reciprocal relationship.
As someone with a PhD who totally screwed up the networking part of the academic path, I've long said the only good plan for grad school is to find the professor in your vicinity with the biggest hat and make yourself a clone of them. This book offers some more details on how to do that.
[image] A bigger hat
You weren't all that attached to your principles, were you?...more
The thing about diet and exercise and weight loss is that they mostly don't work. Humans are immensely resistant to ongoing changes in body compositioThe thing about diet and exercise and weight loss is that they mostly don't work. Humans are immensely resistant to ongoing changes in body composition. Brewer, a psychiatrist, neurologist, and mindfulness coach, offers his summary of what might be a more successful program. The basic premise is that you have to break the habits of disordered eating and learn to listen to your body again. Modern snack foods are addictive, at the perfect triple point of sweet, salty, and fatty. Due to past experiences, we eat to deal with moods like depression, anxiety, and boredom. Obviously, you can't eat your way out of a bad mood.
[image] Processed food was literally designed for you to eat. Organic is just some crap they found on the ground.
There's a lot of neurojargon, like references to the orbitofrontal cortex, dopamine, and various memory systems, but the basic technique is mindfulness based. No one has enough discipline to simply override the urge the eat, especially not over the long term. What is possible is to recognize the patterns and moods that trigger compulsive eating and develop new habits. Techniques like mindful eating, using attention to savor food rather than shoveling it down, and RAIN (recognize, accept, investigate, nurture) on junk food cravings can help us relearn 'proper' experiences around eating an entire carne asada super burrito, or a pound of jellybeans. As we learn to take pleasure in healthier foods and remember that junk food comes with a price, better eating habits come naturally.
This book recommends a 21 day course of exercises. There's also an Eat Right Now app, which I found expensive ($100 a year), and a little intrusive with notifications. I can do mindfulness for free, ya know. I'll also say as a natural born hater, I am not doing a loving-kindness meditation. Finally, I just have some stress and boredom eating, which is likely amenable to this kind of intervention. If you have a diagnosed eating disorder, I'm not sure mindfulness is the right approach....more
Attachment theory is a popular categorization for why your relationships always seem to fail in the same way. Basically, depending on what happened duAttachment theory is a popular categorization for why your relationships always seem to fail in the same way. Basically, depending on what happened during your childhood, you'll fall into one of four attachment styles: secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant. Secure people are "healthy", able to mix vulnerability and self-sufficiency in equal measure. Everyone else keeps tripping over themselves in some way.
After a brief introduction, this book moves through a summary of basic mindful techniques. You know, when you feel big emotions, acknowledge them, step back, and don't let them drive your words and actions.
It's glossy, it's superficial, it's very Instagram (derogatory). I'm not saying it's wrong... I can see my own dismissive-avoidant traits and why I keep winding up with women with anxiety disorders, it just doesn't offer much beyond that....more
I picked this book up purely because one of my favorite phrases when writing my dissertation was "It's like climbing a mountain, but the mountain is yI picked this book up purely because one of my favorite phrases when writing my dissertation was "It's like climbing a mountain, but the mountain is yourself."
[image] Also, 'Death is certain. Passing is not'
This book is brief pop-psychology claptrap. Wiest identifies Resistance (see Pressfield's fantastic The War of Art for more) as a key barrier between the life you are leading, and the life you want to lead, but does not offer much about how to conquer resistance, how to know the difference between times when you should push forward and times you should draw back. The advice is to trust your instincts, not intrusive and misleading repetitive thoughts, but the end result is a kind of anodyne "BONG, you are now enlightened."...more
I've often said that if I were a data scientist with lax ethics designing an app to make people miserable, I'd make Tinder. Fortunately for all y'all,I've often said that if I were a data scientist with lax ethics designing an app to make people miserable, I'd make Tinder. Fortunately for all y'all, I'm a data scientist with decent ethics. But the swipe-judge-pay up model of modern data apps, where people are locked down to six pictures, a handful of generic prompts, and the whole thing is mediated via algorithmic secret sauce to maximize engagement and profit via swipe activity is deeply fucked up. Logan Ury is the Harvard-educated (...more
Orosz is a popular and serious technology influencer (do you read his substack?) and this book chronicles perhaps the most fraught move an engineer miOrosz is a popular and serious technology influencer (do you read his substack?) and this book chronicles perhaps the most fraught move an engineer might make, from individual contributor to staff+ engineer or engineering manager.
Whatever the exact title is, it's the shift from when you can be expected to go from the guy who is good at solving problems with code, to the guy who is good at knowing which problems to solve with code. A lot of the lessons boil down to "hey you, did you know that you're a person working with other people?", something which may seem obvious but which a lot of programmers need a reminder of.
On the positive side, this book is well-organized, with a checklist-friendly structure that'll help you avoid making obvious mistakes. On the less positive side, well, a lot of the advice seems obvious, and I'm not sure what specific insights I took away from it....more
The thing about getting BUFF and SWOLE is that there is a lot of bad advice out there, particularly from people trying to sell you something. Charles The thing about getting BUFF and SWOLE is that there is a lot of bad advice out there, particularly from people trying to sell you something. Charles Poliquin was one of the first scientific weight lifting coaches, and someone who worked with a number of notable athletes and bodybuilders.
On the plus side, the principles are pretty clear. Big multi-muscle movements, like the traditional squat, deadlift, and benchpress, are the foundations of strength, along with chinups and crunches on a prop which lets you start below horizontal. The core of strength development is time under muscular tension, which builds both muscle and nerve strength. But to get there, a program should mix high-weight low-rep sets and lower-weight high-rep sets. You should know what weight you can do a given movement at for 3, 8, and 15 reps, and do that. Varying grip and tempo is also key.
And the plus side is that while world-class performance requires a lot of dedication, most people can get very good results for reasonable time commitments, like about an hour in the gym three times a week, if they are focusing on good form and some systemic work.
Unfortunately, there is a lot that is a disorganized. Jargon, like eccentric and concentric movements, is not explained before being used in key tempo notation (varying speed of motion is another component of building strength). The chatty writing style and praise for/jabs at other figures in the bodybuilding makes for a better read, but "studies say" without footnotes or endnotes is disappointing. And my ebook copy is notably awful, just a blurry black and white scan of the print version which I was only able to read on my tablet....more
Languishing presents an interesting framework for mental wellness, brought down a kind of gloss over the realm struggles that people face in their livLanguishing presents an interesting framework for mental wellness, brought down a kind of gloss over the realm struggles that people face in their lives. Keyes is a professor of sociology who has focused his career on happiness and mental health not merely as the absence of diagnosable mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, etc, but as a positive quality in and of itself. The opposite of flourishing, of leading the good life, is languishing.
The first half of the book is devoted to alarming statistics about languishing, and how it is associated with worse outcomes across the lifespan, from teen suicide to broken marriages to listless careers and golden years cut prematurely short. There is some moderate crankiness about how anti-depressants don't really work (let's just say the biological underpinnings of mood are hard). Having thoroughly laid out the case for languishing as a problem, Keyes lays out his five "vitamins" for curing languishing.
Every day you should: * Learn something * Have a meaningful human connection * Seek spirituality * Find meaning in your labor * Play!
Cool.
Cool cool cool.
Okay, I firmly believe that all of the above are good ideas, but have you tried being alive in 2024? I'll get right on not languishing once I deal with some other things.
Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
Okay, so Mastery is an explanation of Zen principles bBefore enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
Okay, so Mastery is an explanation of Zen principles by a white dude for other white people. It is still a fairly interesting book, drawing on Leonard's long work in the 60s human potential movement, and specifically becoming a Aikido black belt, as well as an early life as a bomber pilot instructor in World War 2.
Most of us are okay at many things, few of us are genuine masters. Moderately skilled non-masters fall into one of three archetypes. Dabblers rush to try new things, enjoying the rush of new gear and new jargon and communities, but at the slightest friction retreat. Obsessives double down, always demanding results and increased performance while ignoring the toll of injuries until burnout. And hackers develop One Good Trip and stay in their comfortable spot without ever getting to the core of the activity. (I'm a hacker, for what it's worth).
Mastery is instead the focus on process over product, on finding the simple pleasure in focus and doing it right until you can do it perfectly. It is about the slow path and enjoying the plateau.
There are five keys to mastery (which I've stolen from another review. Hacker, remember :p)
Instruction-Get first rate instruction. The best instructor balances praise and correction, never scolds, and splits attention between beginners, experts, the gifted, and clods. Check their lineage and especially their students
Practice-This is the path. For how long? As long as you are alive. Every single day, with discipline and focus and joy.
Surrender-Learning involves certain indignities, you will not look good from the get-go. Surrendering means there are no experts, only learners. Expect to be clumsy and foolish
Intentionality-To avoid falling into a spineless fluffy practice, you need a clear vision of where you want to get to. Visualize your mastery, then enact it.
The Edge-This is where the master distances himself from the rest. There is tinge of craziness, the pursuit of the impossible, that distinguishes the master from the mere expert
What is also interesting is the forces that work against mastery. Consumerism, and the quick fix via distraction and the numbing pleasures of drugs and media are the obvious one, but their are more subtle foes of mastery as well. The demand for profits, for wins, for quick success erodes true mastery. A measure becomes both a goal and limit--why exceed what is required? And your life is part of a balanced, homeostatic system, and there will be resistance to changes in its patterns that manifests in innumerable ways as you pursue mastery.
This book is often inspiring, sometimes digressive, and definitely worth reading.
...more
I'm a nice guy. Not a Nice Guy, you know, that festering pile of insecurities and resentments, but I genuinely try to make myself pleasant and charminI'm a nice guy. Not a Nice Guy, you know, that festering pile of insecurities and resentments, but I genuinely try to make myself pleasant and charming. Also, I'll tell on myself here and admit that I'm still spectacularly unsuccessful with the ladies, to the extent that maybe I should just wear cargo shorts (comfy, practical), a fedora (stylish), and study the blade (cool).
[image] M'Lady
So assuming that you're sitting in front of an attractive woman, the book is basically a suggestion that you should make her feel your cock, both metaphorically and then literally. The concrete advice focuses on breathing exercises (fucking breathing exercises) and imposing the authentic strength of your character on her. In you're a pleasant, passive, somewhat scared guy, this can be hard, because women are socialized to not do any pursuing themselves, but what's the worst that can happen? You get rejected?
Okay, there is some other good advice there about focusing on all the sensual aspects of sex, relaxation to delay orgasm, and the proper way to pull on a woman's hair, but I guess I have to do more breathing exercises....more
Well, this one was interesting. Again, as someone who's had more than their fare share of crappy sex (ugh, telling on myself on the internet, again), Well, this one was interesting. Again, as someone who's had more than their fare share of crappy sex (ugh, telling on myself on the internet, again), the authors, cofounders of the Somatica sex-and-relationship coaching network, offer a take that better sex is mostly a matter of psychology, rather than mechanics or communication, though both those parts matter.
The two inwards directed parts are core desires, what really turns you on, and your hottest sex movie, the specific details of sexual fantasy you go to. Most people have at the surface at least, pretty standard core desires to feel wanted, to feel sexy, and perhaps a slight orientation towards leading or being pursued. Where this gets tricky is for people who have core desires that are a little more complex.
[image] Is forming a testudo with 40-50 of your closest friends the cure to loneliness?
Assuming that you can be honest with yourself about your core desires and hottest movie, the next step is sharing that with your partner and vice versa, and then finding a way to bridge the gaps. If you're both lucky, it'll be pretty easy and everybody does something they might not consider individually, but are happy to do when asked, to help both people have a great time.
The case studies of trickier cases were some of the better parts of the book, showcasing the creativity needed to save a relationship. One woman who had been punished for masturbating as a small child found that she needed to feel innocent as part of sex. A man's desire to explore group sex was a proxy for a core desire to be engulfed, and one that could be mostly satisfied by describing an imaginary orgy to his strictly monogamous wife....more
Lowndes is writing a more contemporary update of Dale Carnegie's classic How to Win Friends and Influence People , with more contemporary being a relaLowndes is writing a more contemporary update of Dale Carnegie's classic How to Win Friends and Influence People , with more contemporary being a relative term since this book is very 1990s, full of travel agents and desk phones and with nary a mention of that new-fangled internet thing, which is probably just for hopeless geeks.
While a lot of other reviews have criticized this book for being insincere, I disagree. While there are 92 tricks, they fall into three big categories. The first is that everyone appreciates sustained attention, which you can signal that you are giving through sustained eye contact, slow and large smiles, and noticing and recalling little details about a person. Give people a chance to shine, and they'll like you.
[image] Although I worry I'm coming across more like this
The second category is to be considerate of people's time and emotions. Make sure that this is actually a good time to talk and sympathize with people's difficulties. One "oh duh" moment is that if you need someone to do something for you, let them empty their mind of complaints and problems first, and frame your offer as a solution to a problem they have.
The third category is how to act high-status. According to Lowndes, Big Cats are assured and confident; little pusses are hurried and worried. Don't put others down, ever. Don't jump to business before the end of a meal. Wait a decent interval before calling in a favor, and leave it unspoken that this is a tit-for-tat favor. Remember celebrities are people too so don't over-intrude, and be appreciative of recent work. And if someone abuses your trust, don't call it out, just never give them a second chance.
I really should go back and do a more systematic summary....more
Useless psychological pablum from someone who has never really been an outsider.
[image] For pufferfish, motherly love means slathering babies in deadlyUseless psychological pablum from someone who has never really been an outsider.
[image] For pufferfish, motherly love means slathering babies in deadly toxins
Let me give you the straight dope, courtesy of Chairman Bruce.
“Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredible obscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred years, “Woo the muse of the odd.”
You may be a geek. You may have geek written all over you. You should aim to be one geek they'll never forget. Don't aim to be civilized. Don’t hope that straight people will keep you on as some sort of pet. To hell with them.
You should fully realize what society has made of you and take a terrible revenge. Get weird. Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly, thoroughly weird, and don't do it halfway. Put every ounce of horsepower you have behind it.
Don't become a well-rounded person. Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish.” ...more
Emotions are tricky. We learn how to handle, or not handle, emotions in our childhood, but what if your parents are abusive, neglectful, or simply busEmotions are tricky. We learn how to handle, or not handle, emotions in our childhood, but what if your parents are abusive, neglectful, or simply busy handling their own lives at key moments. This is the second book in Webb's Childhood Emotional Neglect framework, where Webb argues that a lot of the trouble that you experience right now is due to how you were raised, and that you can consciously shift this dynamic and find meaning in your own life.
A lot of this hits home, as someone with two very Type A, problem solving parents, who were not great at their own emotions. But I also wonder what the practical takeway is, aside from being more deliberative and drawing boundaries with bad parents who won't correct their behavior....more
I can't tell if Deida is brilliant or insane or insanely brilliant. Masculinity in general is in crisis, and between you, me, and everybody on the intI can't tell if Deida is brilliant or insane or insanely brilliant. Masculinity in general is in crisis, and between you, me, and everybody on the internet, my personal masculinity isn't doing so hot. Deida identifies this issue as a blockage in the flow of masculine energy associated with the rise of the counterculture in the 1960s and feminism as a social movement. And the basic fix is to get right with your masculine essence.
[image] "I do not avoid women. But I do deny them my essence."
In Deida's reading people of all genders have both masculine and feminine energies, which are available in various amounts. Men and women are of course legal, political, and social equals, but the private world of an intimate relationship, especially a physical heterosexual relationship, is only truly enacted in the interplay of energies between these two poles.
Assuming that you're a straight man (Deida notes he is writing mostly for straight men, though others can gain insights from this book), getting right with your masculine energy means getting clear about your purpose in life, finding strength in stillness, comfort with fear, and aligning and unblocking your natural impulses.
As this relates to women, to paraphrase, take women seriously but not literally. Feminine energy is about change, flow, and emotion. You can't capture it and hold it without killing it, but you can dive right in and ravish it, which is what women really want. They'll tempt you and distract you and place tests in your path, which you should read as indications of emotional insecurity rather than sincere desires. They don't want you to do what they ask, they want you to be strong enough to resist and impose your will on the situation.
So yeah, it's proto-Jorpian "Wimmenz are teh CHAOS DRAGON!" vibey stuff. But it's provocative, and what the hell, we're due for a vibe shift anyway....more
I'll admit that I'm skeptical of design thinking. I think Lee Vinsel's acerbic and brutally sourced essay Design Thinking is Kind of Like Syphilis — II'll admit that I'm skeptical of design thinking. I think Lee Vinsel's acerbic and brutally sourced essay Design Thinking is Kind of Like Syphilis — It’s Contagious and Rots Your Brains is basically spot on. The flaws that Vinsel identifies are primarily that design thinking is that's an outsider's perspective that attempts to solve complex sociotechnical problems with one weird trick, thereby obscuring actual solutions grounded in history, local capacity building, and true insight and effort.
But design thinking may offer actual insight on a problem that you yourself have, like a job that you hate. After all, no one knows you better than you know yourself, and as Burnett and Evans explain, we often get stuck on an idea of a 'career' that we chose with little real knowledge, a linear process pushed by our parents, college major, and then the need to keep bringing home a paycheck.
As an antidote, they advise a process of true self-discovery and rapid prototyping, starting with examining your values, the kinds of things in your life that make you feel energized or drained, and then rapid prototyping of ideas and informational interviews to skip the brutal and inefficient online application process and find work that values you as a person, and not just a cog in a machine. Chapters are short, readable, and have fantastically useful advice at the end....more
Works sucks. I know it, you know it, we all know it. But what if didn't have to be quite so bad.
[image] Dream job? Sorry, I don't dream of labor. --r/anWorks sucks. I know it, you know it, we all know it. But what if didn't have to be quite so bad.
[image] Dream job? Sorry, I don't dream of labor. --r/antiwork meme
A Job to Love is an introspection guide, full of prompts about how to examine activities you really enjoy, not just say you enjoy because you've been doing them for a while, or they're prestigious, or your parents expect you to. I've been lucky, in that all my jobs have been pretty easy and tolerable, with the exceptions of bad bosses and bureaucratic nonsense which is probably the same everywhere.
I really should go back and do the introspective bits in full now that I've read the entire book, but it just seemed like too much at the time....more
Models is some decent dating advice, with a garnish of pickup artist bullshit.
The basic thesis is that the details are different for everyone, in geneModels is some decent dating advice, with a garnish of pickup artist bullshit.
The basic thesis is that the details are different for everyone, in general we all want emotionally cohesive real relationships. Which if you're a man, means somewhat contradictorily, vulnerability. You have to be honest with yourself and other people, because only by being vulnerable can you demonstrate real strength and not merely brittle machismo. A second point is that you want to be polarizing, because you can't please everyone, so you want to get prospective dates to either like you or tell you to piss off so you don't waste your time. And the third point is to initiate action, because rejection happens and your anxiety about rejection is frankly the biggest barrier to getting laid.
The steps to not being an unfuckable mess are pretty simple. Hit the gym, get some new clothes and a haircut, develop at least one social hobby, and find a job you like. Then, having worked on yourself, start approaching women socially with a simple "Hello, I think you're cute. What's your name." and see where things go. This gets into the less good PUA part of the book, but, fact is you have to get out there to get dates, and rejection is part it. Just don't be insistent or overly weird. And for dates, movie dates are awful, dinner dates bad, try to plan three linked activities with plenty of time for talking, and make statements to keep the conversation going. Physical touch is key, starting with the hands and then moving towards more intimacy (which has some nasty contradictions with consent, but so it goes.)
Short, clear, and reasonably ethical, this is one dating advice book which holds up....more
I'm going to be blunt. I've spent my entire life having awful to bad sex, with occasional diversions into decent sex. There are a lot of reasons for tI'm going to be blunt. I've spent my entire life having awful to bad sex, with occasional diversions into decent sex. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the most basic is that I never asked any of my partners to do the things I wanted to do. The thesis of this book is that if you can get over the weird American-Protestant shame hang-ups around sex to think clearly about what you want and then ask other people to help, you can have good sex.
[image] My goodness, what an idea. Why didn't I think of that
Harris is a professional sex coach and intimacy educator, so her idea of good sex is pretty adventurous, with parties, multiple partners, and a lot of toys. But even if you're much much more vanilla, or only gradually looking to spice things up, this is a clear and easy book for working through your issues and getting to better sex....more
A few months ago out of a sense of boredom I hopped onto some of dating apps after a decade in a relationship. At first it went pretty well: the womenA few months ago out of a sense of boredom I hopped onto some of dating apps after a decade in a relationship. At first it went pretty well: the women I was seeing were genuine babes, and when I switched to guys to scope out the competition, well, heterosexual men are not sending their best. I'm not exactly 90s Nicolas Cage in real-life, but I'm better than those mopes. But I got about two connections for all my swiping, and the quality of the matches started going downhill. If computerized dating has always been a bit of a scam, even back to the Harvard-based mainframe era Operation Match, modern monetization apps are a quagmire of dark patterns. If I were a data scientist with questionable ethics (oh dang, I am), and I controlled the horizontal and vertical via the recommender system, I could do some messed up things to get desperate people to buy-in in the hopes of finding true love, never letting them find it, while providing just enough of a drip of hope to keep them swiping and spending.
Getting laid these days requires not just good l0oks, charm, and a little luck. It takes hacking your way through a hostile platform. Webb is writing about the ancient days of 2005, but the fundamentals are pretty similar. Having skimmed the reviews, a lot of the variance comes down to how much you like Webb herself, and frankly, she is just my type: an intelligent type-A neurotic Jewish woman with wide ranging interests and a few obsessions.
Webb is also nuttier than my grandma's ruggelach. She's the kind of person who when starting therapy creates a dossier of all the psychological trauma she's experienced, color coded by theme, charted by year and severity, and cross-referenced. A professional futurist and spreadsheet fanatic, she doesn't do things by halves, and after a series of absolutely awful dates, she decided to tackle this problem in a data-driven way.
Step one was to envision her ideal man, brainstorming a 70 item list of the things she wanted, and then distilling those down to 10 major and 25 minor area, along with a set of dealbreakers, all of which were given numerical point values, along with a personal promise not to go out with anyone who scored too low.
Step two was to get inside the user-experience of her ideal man via what we now call catfishing. She made 10 Jdate profiles of different versions of her tall, handsome, professional match, a variety of doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, and other professionals, and saw what kind of women messaged them. For ethical reasons and time, her interactions were minimal
Basically, the competition was a bunch of blond shiksas lying about their height; every single one of the roughly 100 women who bite her hooks was less than the American average height of 5' 4". The general vibe was a kind of Cameron Diaz girl next door, being fun and approachable without being too ambitious. Webb's current profile, with bad pictures and her insanely ambitious resume copied-pasted verbatim, looked both sad and crazy.
So, smash cut, Webb starts working out six days a week, gets a very expensive haircut, buys a whole new wardrobe, takes new photos, rewrites her profile to fit in 150 non-threatening words, and does the geek-to-glam transformation. Then she waits, chats, and meets her perfect doctor husband, and they get married and have kids and move to New York, where she runs a futurist consulting agency.
Now, Webb had a lot of advantages. She was 31, had enough spare time and cash to do a makeover, and is definitely in the top half for brains, personality, and looks (likely higher, but I'm going to draw some generous lines that more of us might fit into). And the relatively open data policies of dating websites circa 2005 made it easier for her to do her research. 18 years later, the whole field has changed, but it can still be hacked.
The biggest change is swipe-based matching. While online dating was never exactly about thoughtful analysis, these days it's entirely instinctual, decisions made in seconds. And in that very old mammalian part of our brain, guys go for looks and girls go for status. So you have to hack the other gender's swipe behavior with a visual story that communicates the right things.
And good swipes matter, because according to some reliable sources, Hinge, Tinder, and so on use a kind of collaborative filtering recommender system. Basically, you get shown people who are like the people who swiped on you, so if your profile is bad you slide down the slope from perfectly tanned people who divide their time between high profile professional life and extreme sports towards people with regrettable facial tattoos who can absolutely explain those parole violations and why their last three relationships ended in literal flames.
I really enjoyed this book, and it provided some solid background to what the other side saw. If your tastes diverge strongly from Webb's, you probably won't like it nearly as much. ...more
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