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PaperclipPerfector  11hr ago (text post)   1794 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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If I were less lazy/busy, I'd insert the usual OkCupid stats blogs/archives from before they were bought and cucked. They showed that female attractiveness peaked at 18, but that was their minimum age cutoff, so I suspect the actual figure is even lower at around 16. Men also showed tolerance to wider age gaps as they got older. 30-year-old and 35-year-old men showed roughly the same willingness to approach 25-year-old women.

I believe Gwern has a copy. Someone please do this in the comments, thanks, :-*

Link (doesn't quite match your assertion)

As you can see, men tend to focus on the youngest women in their already skewed preference pool, and, what's more, they spend a significant amount of energy pursuing women even younger than their stated minimum. No matter what he's telling himself on his setting page, a 30-year-old man spends as much time messaging 18- and 19-year-olds as he does women his own age. On the other hand, women only a few years older are largely neglected.

A woman's desirability peaks at 21, which ironically enough is the age that men just begin their "prime"—i. e., become more desirable than average. Following that dotted line out, you can see that a woman of 31 is already "past her prime", while a man doesn't become so until 36. As we mentioned above, after age 26, a man has more potential matches than his female counterparts, which is a drastic reversal of the proportion in young adulthood, when women are much more sought-after. Because men's dating preferences skew so young, and women's are age-equitable, men peak later, and have a longer plateau of desirability, than women.

Thank you, that's the one. My internal betting market had strong odds in favor of you being the first to find the link, good to see I'm well-calibrated.

doesn't quite match your assertion

Hmm. It seems I was misremembering. I will weaken from saying that 18 (or my speculation of 16) being peak female attractiveness isn't supported by the graph.

I will note:

as you can see, men tend to focus on the youngest women in their already skewed preference pool, and, what's more, they spend athe median 30 year-old man spends as much time messaging teenage girls as he does women his own age significant amount of energy pursuing women even younger than their stated minimum. No matter what he's telling himself on his setting page, a 30 year-old man spends as much time messaging 18 and 19 year-olds as he does women his own age. On the other hand, women only a few years older are largely neglected.

I think this supports part of my argument: namely, that by setting an age minimum at 18, OKCupid obscures the fact that many/most men would happily approach younger women if they had the option. I suppose this is even less controversial, women don't magically go from being divorced of sexual value at 18 years - 1 Planck time to being hot when the clock strikes 12 on their 18th birthday.

Also look at the charts titled "The shape of the dating pool" and "how a person's attractiveness changes with time":

The latter shows that 18 year old women are about 75% as attractive as they are at their absolute peak at 21. They are roughly twice as attractive as they would be at 34. This strongly implies that women below 18 are more attractive than the majority of older women, the range restriction just doesn't allow us to measure this.

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