toxdox
5mo ago
I wouldn't necessarily in general, but at least for the accounts that I see, where they promote themselves as professionals in some domain (not necessarily tech), there does seem to be a pretty strong correlation between skill, creativity, credentials or output and their following counts. Then again, that is hard to say for sure, since it is not a random sample.
toxdox
5mo ago
Lately on twitter, I’ve been seeing accounts of quite attractive young women, who are network engineers or security specialist or similar. Most of them have somewhat high following counts in the +20k. There are a bunch of similarities between them. They often have pronounce in the bio and sell some sort of book or course on how to do, what they do. Looking at the technical content they put out, it seems like incredibly basic stuff, such as running a password cracker like Hydra or running WireShark. All their Github profiles are more or less empty with no contributions to speak of. They seem to do little or no code at all, but they all appear to have employment in tech companies of various sorts.
I have only ever had one course in security, so I don’t know much about the field, but it was almost exclusively writing exploits in Assembly and some C. We were only allowed to use some basic tools to hexdump a binary and such. I do realize that in the real world you would use all sorts of tools available to you, but still, I would expect somewhat heavier technical skills displayed.
So I’m sort of confused. What do they actually do in their jobs? They don’t seem to have skills that I thought were required for that type of work. Are they just DEI hires? Why do they have so many followers? Is it just tech guys simping over women? Is the algorithm pushing them for some reason? I basically never see any such men (or maybe it is just my stupid ass only noticing the attractive women).
Does someone here work in the field, who can enlighten me?
Some examples of the most prominent:
https://twitter.com/TracketPacer
https://twitter.com/notshenetworks
toxdox
9mo ago
What do you mean by hoarding books? Do you by as many as you can or do you select certain ones you believe will become hard or impossible to find in the future? Also why don't you trust electronic media? Wouldn't it be better to just buy hard drives and then download everything you can come by via torrents, libgen e.t.c. and figure out some sort of backup plan?
toxdox
10mo ago
There’s no real paradoxical fact here. I reject the premise that women find greying very attractive, especially young women. It’s more the case that women, even young women sometimes, can find men quite attractive in spite of greying.
I might be overestimating how attractive women find it. It is mostly based on the response I have received, even from women in their early to mid twenties.
traps along with deltoids are androgenic signals, dominance traits that girls love.
They could love some dominance traits and not others. I think women generally select for a partner that has the visual cues signaling a capacity for violence, but simultaneously isn't overly aggressive. Some traits might signal too much aggression.
men lacking in traps can look kind of weird
Counterpoint: Large traps creates the illusion of narrower shoulders, women put a lot more emphasis on broad shoulders, so the larger traps makes the body seem less attractive overall.
it’s important to note that it was conducted using just survey questions, with a stylized drawing of a man to identify muscles
Good point. They do call it a preliminary study calling for more research.
Good hair is a strong signal of sexual fitness, and baldness is selected against even if it's a largely benign condition.
But the question is why, though? I could be wrong, I don't think there is any evidence for bald men to have poorer health or being generally less capable compared to their unbald counterparts.
I don't think women like fully grey hair, but salt and pepper in an otherwise attractive man is mildly attractive. I don't think a young man can simply dye his hair grey and get anything out of it. Nor do I think that a middle aged man will significantly benefit from it either unless he's already hot.
I think you are right, that fully grey is probably not very attractive. And it might be the case that greying will make an already attractive man more attractive, but do nothing for a less attractive man.
This is not the case, and no end of studies have shown that younger doctors in their 30s-40s are better clinicians than their older counterparts who are ossified in their ways and not as abreast of new updates.
I think this will be true for almost any field, but in the case of clinicians, the confidence a patient has in their doctor is probably hard to account for, but could have a nonnegligible effect. Placebo and all that.
but if I do grey early-ish I won't really complain
I got my first grey hairs at age 20. I thought I would be fully grey before 30 and felt quite down over it for a while. I'm now in my early thirties and haven't gone fully grey, and since I'm blonde it hasn't been very noticeable. It is now at a point where people see it and comment on it, but considering I have multiple friends of the same age, who are balding, I feel lucky, that I have a full head of hair. And comments from women have been compliments, which is what prompted me to wonder about this.
Edit:
I am wrong. There does seem to be evidence that vertex balding is associated with higher risk of CHD and prostate cancer.
Something I’ve been pondering lately, is the seemingly paradoxical fact that women tend to find balding men quite unattractive while simultaneously finding greying very attractive.
Both are associated with aging and both are largely genetic, I believe, although balding more so, which might be part of the explanation.
The best I’ve been able to come up with, is that balding, since it is associated (and probably caused by) high levels of DHT, it can be an indicator of aggressiveness to the point where it is detrimental to the woman. Not that every balding man is aggressive, but I don’t think it is a coincidence, that some men will shave their head to seem more tough.
Women generally like other traits associated with higher levels of testosterone, but only up to a certain point, e.g. a study (which I can no longer seem to locate) found that especially large traps are found to be less attractive. These along with the deltoids have more androgen receptors, which makes them more susceptible to growth when testosterone is high.
These muscle groups are also good indicators of steroid use. The almost spherical shoulders some bodybuilders have are not achieved by hard work alone.
On the other hand, greying can happen from stress. I don’t think the exact mechanism is known, but I have a theory, that it is caused by the body’s ability to absorb micro nutrients being diminished during stress and the hair follicles not receiving enough of especially zinc and copper (pure speculation on my part). A man with greying hair has endured and survived stressful situations and his ability to do so is attractive.
It just seems strange, that two things that are somewhat closely related are perceived so differently. Also strange how the pattern with which they present are opposite with balding happening on top of the head and greying on the sides.
Edit: I belive this was the study I was thinking of:
Men’s Bodily Attractiveness: Muscles as Fitness Indicators. Notice the womens very low size preference of the trapezius in figure 1.
The references in Outlive lists it as being from the book "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War" by Gordon. You can find it on libgen. It appears to be an updated version of a study from the seventies by John and Sonja McKinlay. Maybe it is this study?
Is Outlive worth reading? I haven't gotten around to it, but I heard Attia say he didn't want himself be part of the book, but the publisher more or less forced him to. I'm a bit fed up with pop science books, but I would probably read this one at some point, if the personal anecdotes aren't egregious and platitudes about the importance of the subject matter are kept to a minimum.
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