Somehow as I've gotten older I've forgotten how to write. Maybe getting some of this r/okc related garbage onto the screen will get it out of my head.

Every once in a while there will be a discussion about "leagues" in dating, and to what extent they exist. Most people eventually agree that they sort-of-exist, with some people holding out insisting that they're super-real or super-unreal. And while it isn't earth-shattering I think there's a good way to think about why people interpret their experiences pretty differently here.

How general or specific is your attractiveness? To put a nerdy spin on it, let's say everyone in your relevant dating universe rank-ordered their prospects. So if people viewed you as generically above-average some people might rate you in the 50th percentile, other people in the 60th, a few in the 65th or 40th, and so on.

So what's your average score across the whole population, and what's your average only looking at the top 5% of scores? Obviously the second number will be higher, but how large is the gap? If the gap is small then your appeal is fairly general and the idea of there being dating "leagues" will seem quite natural to you. If the gap is large then your appeal is fairly specific and the idea of there being dating "leagues" will seem quite foreign.

For any socially disfavored characteristic -- race, weight, height, disability, some fraction of the population doesn't care that much. The result is that people from disfavored groups experience the existence of "leagues" to a lesser extent, particularly online, than the majority.

Why 5%? It's clearly an arbitrary number but it points to the obvious fact that while you just need one(-ish? depending) person at a time, if you are super-attractive to one in a million people this probably does not help you.

Blah blah blah ramble ramble ramble.