There are things about the rise of the digital age that are really irritating: every song now sounds like it's sung by Stephen Hawking; your mom spends more time trying to figure out how to exit out of pop-ups than toasting your Pop-Tarts; people who talk to themselves in public on a Bluetooth are actually worse than people who just talk to themselves in public. Although my grandpa is terrified that young people don't have face-to-face conversations anymore and swears that life was a lot better when he had to walk 32 miles to school uphill (that number started at 1 the first time he told it) because you were forced to meet new people, the emergence of the internet was undoubtedly the dawn of a new era.
As much as we try to resist its allure, like a self-perpetuating tsunami, it will consume everything around us and we will eventually be engulfed by wave after wave of robot vaginas, near instantaneous communication, and cat memes—usually not in that order. A new world is emerging, in which the virtual simulation of life we believed the internet was, will become the new reality. So it's time you embrace the shared file system that is being created through social networking and adapt to use it the way all exceptional men do: to get laid.
10. If you're a man, never use happy emoticons.
Men, if you need a way to sexy-up your profile pic, steal somebody's baby and grab a Dirt Devil. Nothing could go wrong.A study from the University of British Columbia surveyed more than 1,000 adult participants, showing them pictures of the opposite sex simulating several different moods such as happy, sad, shameful, angry, Kristen Stewart, etc. What the study revealed was that women find men the least sexually attractive when they are smiling. Researchers theorized that this was because a smiling man appears more submissive or kind of like a Jehovah's Witness.
Men who appeared shameful were deemed more attractive, probably because it reflected social awareness, while brooding, confident men were rated as most sexually attractive. The science guys believed that women were more drawn to men who appeared as if they could protect and provide for them, because there are still parts of the female brain that don't know that we don't kill buffaloes with sticks anymore. The results were completely the opposite when men rated women, and interestingly enough, on the whole, men found women more attractive than vice versa, likely because women have vaginas and that's kind of neat.
9. Don't ever fucking use emoticons.
Self-explanatory.
8. Wear red in your profile picture.
For both women and men, when rated by the opposite sex, those who wear red are considered more attractive. In cultures all over the world that can be found in a simple Google search so I won't list them you lazy fucks, red is tied to high status. We are biologically predisposed to associating red with romance and power, which from an evolutionary perspective really just means boneability. Why does red cause a chemical frenzy? Sure, it sounds menstrual, but I'm pretty certain it just has something to do with how hot Adobe 9 is.
7. If you're a woman, dilate your pupils in your profile picture.
In the Middle Ages, Italian chicks hadn't yet immigrated in droves to the Eastern Seaboard of the United States so that their offspring could discover reality TV and quite possibly cause Hurricane Sandy. Instead, they were busy putting drops of Atropa belladonna, or Deadly Nightshade, into their eyes to dilate their pupils, because they knew that a little subtlety goes further than a spray-on tan.
Scientists found that when men are shown pictures of the same woman—one with regular-sized or constricted pupils and the other with dilated pupils—they find the picture with dilated pupils better looking, without being able to report why. Dilated pupils are basically a billboard for sexual arousal, so men have evolved into becoming X-men at sizing up those little black dots. Women, however, prefer men with medium-sized pupils (and dicks, I hope).
So does that mean you should be creepily staring into a woman's pupils to ascertain information into her arousal? No, cocknoggin, like I said, we already do this unconsciously, so not only would that be a waste of time, but you'd also look like a sexually-confused Kaa in that V-neck you're probably wearing.
6. If you're a man, hold a guitar in your profile picture.
As opposed as I am to giving any credit to virtually anyone who has ever brought out a guitar at a social function that wasn't a concert, I have to concede that even though that dude with a ponytail and shirt he stole from Al Borland may only be playing a C-D-G progression, he's probably getting some V-A-G.
French scientists took a break from wearing pointy shoes, and disparaging people who saw the movie before they read the book, to perform an actual experiment. Men approached women on the street holding a guitar, gym bag, or nothing at all. Women gave out their number 31% of the time when the man was holding a guitar, 14% when holding nothing, and just 9% when holding a gym bag because, well, French guys' idea of going to the gym is smoking cigarettes and not going to the gym.
On the contrary, another study refuted the theory that the same is true for women holding guitars. The researchers believe that a man holding a guitar is a signal to women that he's intellectually capable, while a woman holding a guitar likely advertises the same attribute, but men don't really care.
5. If you're a man, hold a happy baby and vacuum cleaner in your profile picture.
Women are more in-tuned to cues of prosocial behavior in the opposite sex. This is likely because in the perpetuation of one's genes that is the game of life, women have a lot more to sacrifice. They need to find a mate that can provide, will stick around and not knock up another chick until child-rearing has finished, and won't feed her kids to a T-Rex because it's crying while Game of Thrones is on and you can't conclusively validate that the Earth isn't 6,000 years old. Men, on the other hand, can maximize their genetic potential by merely plugging as many love holes as possible and hoping for the best. It must be said, of course, that women, having the most to lose, won't often allow entrance so easily, so men had to compensate by developing some paternal instincts. Women are ninjas at appraising men based on this parental intuitiveness.
Women find men more attractive if they are seen with a vacuum cleaner or holding a happy baby, and less attractive if they are ignoring a fussy baby. So men, if you need a way to sexy-up your profile pic, steal somebody's baby and grab a Dirt Devil. Nothing could go wrong.
4. Post pictures of yourself with other people, or have hot friends.
As pretty sharp animals, we learn a lot of information from our conspecifics (e.g. what "conspecific" means on Wikipedia). Rats use information gained from other members of the species to determine food safety, prairie dogs use it to escape danger, and the much higher-evolved humans capitalize on it to find out who is bangworthy. Women find men more attractive if they are shown in a picture with friends, a significant other, or have been smiled at by another woman. So if you can't find a willing woman off the street, an ex-girlfriend whose name I shouldn't use so we'll call her "Heather" because that's her real name and fuck her, or a few bros to pose with you in your profile pic, just steal some pictures off the internet.
Also, people with beautiful friends on Facebook are considered more appealing. Remember when I mentioned that internet file sharing thing? Well, you have unlimited access to sexy people you can create fake profiles for. Unless you're a college football player, it ALWAYS works.
3. Constantly post feel-good music and exercise video clips.
The misattribution of arousal is a much under-utilized concept in psychology by which our brains are manipulated because they love reinforcement, but are kind of shitty at determining where the reinforcing stimuli came from. Similarly, our brains are constantly constructing narratives that match our surroundings.
For example, if you take someone skydiving, that prompts a massive release of endorphins, manifesting itself as a "high." When you make it to the ground, what do they see? You. So their brain associates that "high" with you. This is called "context effects." In reality, you were just some schlub with a few hundred bucks, a wallet chain, and soiled pants.
2. Be funny if you're a guy, and LOL if you're a girl.
Guys, let's be honest with women here. We do not like funny chicks. We may say we do on our OKCupid profiles, or try to justify our ogling with faux-personality assessments, or even secretly long for a woman that we don't scare away with our sense of humor, but funny girls just aren't hot. Some girls won't understand this or will label me a misogynist, so let's delve a little deeper.
If we've established anything in this article, it's that women are extremely choosy when it comes to selecting a mate, and with good reason. Men, on the other hand, are much less scrupulous, and could even be considered shallow, with equally good reason. We are evolutionarily damned to seek out physically beautiful women. Perfect skin, 0.7 waist-to-hips ratio, adequate baby feeders, beautiful. Don't blame us, blame God (also Allah, Vishnu, Buddha, Giant Turtle from the Sea, Charles Darwin, etc).
In humor studies, women consistently rate funny guys as more sexually attractive, but the same isn't true when men assess women. Humor is considered a sign of intellectual fitness, which as we have discussed before, women care about and men don't. Men do, however, find women who think them funny a more apt mate. Men, women, if you don't agree with me, then please stop giving me so much evidence to work with.
1. Just be on Facebook.
As tragically incapable as those who write the scripts for ads really are (I'm talking about you, Vonage), they're always going to be successful. In fact, my mentioning of how bad the advertising for Vonage is totally defeats the purpose, because just by mentioning the name Vonage connected to any sentiment whatsoever makes you more likely to choose Vonage if you ever wanted to teleport back to '98 and have a landline. We like things we can recognize. It's called the "mere exposure effect," and it translates to attraction, as well.
There is a myriad of research that correlates the favorability of a face with familiarity, and even that repeat exposure increases the charm of a face. So, in the end, you could change your profile picture to one of a young, solemn Mario Lopez with dilated pupils, wearing red and holding a baby while vacuuming around his guitar, surrounded by friends, with a funny caption, or you could just say fuck-all and be yourself. Either way, you've wasted 10 minutes reading this.