> With 660M users (in a country with 1.4 billion), "low desirability" has a pretty low threshold.
Research indicates that "low desirability" /is/ a pretty low threshold.[1]. While all of the reasons and possible societal factors are not well understood, the effects are. Women tend to find only the upper percentile of men in objective attractiveness to be attractive, while men are more uniformly distributed across the spectrum of what they find attractive when comparing between genders in heterosexual dating contexts.
The net result is that in male skewed geographies, it's actually possible that the majority of men may be considered undesirable. China has a massively unbalanced gender distribution, which clearly plays an effect here as well.
The article you link to was not published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal, or any journal, as far as I know, so I'd take its claims with a grain of salt.
However, even assuming it's accurate, it says:
"As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh. On the other hand, when it comes to actual messaging,
women shift their expectations only just slightly ahead of the curve, which is a healthier pattern than guys' pursuing the all-but-unattainable."
So even though the women rated most men as unattractive, they were actually more open to dating less attractive men than men were open to dating less attractive women.
> Research indicates that "low desirability" /is/ a pretty low threshold.
No. First, okcupid is hardly a legitimate and reliable source.
Second, their research provides no justification for your claim around a "low desirability" threshold.
It only show a strong skew in how women pick a number between 1 and 5.
> No. First, okcupid is hardly a legitimate and reliable source.
Contrary to this assertion, OKTrends has a long history of being considered a legitimate and reliable source, and has been at the forefront of sociology research in dating and relationships for over a decade. They have serious researchers on staff and they have multiple peer reviewed publications which are simplified for their blog.
> It only show a strong skew in how women pick a number between 1 and 5.
You clearly didn't read the article, as you are misunderstanding their methodology.
Research indicates that "low desirability" /is/ a pretty low threshold.[1]. While all of the reasons and possible societal factors are not well understood, the effects are. Women tend to find only the upper percentile of men in objective attractiveness to be attractive, while men are more uniformly distributed across the spectrum of what they find attractive when comparing between genders in heterosexual dating contexts.
The net result is that in male skewed geographies, it's actually possible that the majority of men may be considered undesirable. China has a massively unbalanced gender distribution, which clearly plays an effect here as well.
[1]: https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyo...