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Comment by Noumenon72 | Hacker News Reader

Do you mean you have a surgically repaired cleft lip that gives you a slight sneer, or are you telling us you have an up-to-the-nostril cleft lip and covering it up with Photoshop worked for you?

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Respectfully, I don’t want to talk about the topic of my cleft lip. It hurts to talk about it.

It’s hard enough bringing it up. I bring it up to give evidence to the fact that I am not a stereotypical good looking guy. Because I am not.

I feel we are bad at assessing our own attractiveness (unless you are exceptionally top-model like attractive). Most people who find you attractive will never tell you. This is particularly true for men as women are socialised to not be that overt about their romantic interests.

An additional truth is that straight women tend to be much less picky about physical appearance than straight men. Despite what many single men will tell you, their difficulty in finding a partner often has much more to do with their personality than their appearance.

That has been my experience as well. The nuanced exception: online dating. During a date looks don’t matter much but getting swiped right? Being photogenic really helps. Which is not the same thing as looks but it plays into it

Problem with online dating is that it's designed to make users act based on the profile pictures (mostly). You notice this because in most apps the first and most prominent detail of a profile is the picture.

Online dating is like online chats, people behave differently

Hence photoshop and photography skills by observing the tricks that models do

It is a problem indeed and I decided to get good at being photogenic - comparatively to how I am built/how I look

nah igor disagrees :)

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