MetaFilter posts tagged with attraction

Metafilter: If I wanted a long, boring story with no point to it, I got my life

AceRock — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:41:50 -0800

When does making fun of yourself make you more attractive? Suppose, in an initial conversation, you say:

I hate this “to be continued” on TV. I was watching this show with a friend of mine the other day and I felt it was coming. We were into the story and when there was 5 minutes left you realize they can’t make it! There is no way to wrap it up in 5 minutes. The whole reason to watch a TV show is because it ends. If I wanted a long, boring story with no point to it, I got my life.

Would this make you seem more attractive? The answer, according to social scientists at the University of New Mexico, is that it works if your status is high enough (pdf). A example from one of the comments in the first link:

Conan O’Brien. This high-status host packs a one-two punch his fans, male and female alike, find irresistible: 1. Though he has made gentle spoofing of nerds and their culture a signature theme (as well as a charming embrace of old-timey, vaudeville, “snappy” wise-guy usages), he spoofs more often still what he takes to be his own nerd genes, his mind-of-its-own red pompadour, his stringbean physique, and his allied insecurities. And in collaborating with the wonderful dry and squeaky-clean standup comic Jim Gaffigan on regular cartoon segments starring the duo as mock superheroes (”Pale Force”, after their whiter-than-thou complexions), Conan obviously delights in the fact that his animated double incarnates pronounced cowardice, wispy limbs, and a voice that wouldn’t strike terror in an underworld mouse. 2. He also stands almost alone, in a profession in which egotist snark sometimes seems a job requirement, not to have a single mean bone in his body, and is thus a subtle and potent force for betterment in a corrupt culture.

Related: The Pratfall Effect

old, weird america

mwhybark — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:38:17 -0800

Roadside Architecture. "I have been passionate about commercial architecture and roadside related things all my life. I grew up in California but New York City has been my home since 1980. I started this website in 2000 simply as a way to organize my own photos. Since then, it has become a bit of an obsession and grown to well over 1,000 pages." flickr. blog. For example: Mini Golf. Seattle's Walker Rock Garden. Fairy Tale Parks of New Hampshire. Please note, for whatever reason the site author uses a redirect on the primary domain name to here. Also, previously.

The Booze of Attraction

ericb — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:20:28 -0800

Science! "[S]cientists have proven that 'beer goggles' are real — other people really do look more attractive to us if we have been drinking. Surprisingly, the beer goggles effect was not limited to just the opposite sex among the ostensibly straight volunteers recruited for the study — they also rated people from their own sex as more attractive."

No word on cat ears, tentacles.

orthogonality — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:41:58 -0800

So you want to look like an anime character? Because wide eyes are more attractive, and, ahem, easier. And blue eyes are more attractive, but only to blue-eyed men. (This post is dedicated to ....)

I Have Seen the Elephant

Miko — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 17:01:09 -0800

It's 1881. You're real estate speculator James Lafferty, and you've just bought a large parcel of empty, scrubby shoreside land just south of Atlantic City. Problem is, it's cut off from the AC streetcar line by a deep tidal creek. How do you entice potential buyers to make the trek over the inlet and look at your property? Build a giant elephant, of course. Capitalizing on the celebrity of P. T. Barnum's famous Jumbo, Lafferty built 65-foot tall Lucy the Elephant, the first of three giant elephants Lafferty built (followed by Cape May's Light of Asia and Coney Island's Elephantine Colossus). He even took out a patent on the very idea of buildings shaped like animals. Though threatened by decades of neglect and rot, the Save Lucy Committee began preservation efforts in 1970, moving her to her present site and giving her a complete restoration. Photo of the Elephantine Colossus Lucy the Elephant jingle [warning: earworm] Great collection of antique Lucy postcards, many incorrectly identifying her as a hotel (she never was, but the Turkish Pavilion from the Philadelphia Centennial was moved to a site behind her and operated as a hotel)

Love at first smell, and what stinky t-shirts tell us about attraction

iamkimiam — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 06:08:37 -0800

"There's no Brad Pitt of smell," Herz says. "Body odor is an external manifestation of the immune system, and the smells we think are attractive come from the people who are most genetically compatible with us." "Not only does kissing serve the utilitarian purpose of providing a sample of MHC, but it also magnifies the other attraction signals--if only as a result of proximity." — Time Magazine But sometimes the tastes and scents can trick us, or other factors, such as the "divorce pill" make us think something is right for us when it may not be so. These insights found in a pile of stinky t-shirts. Cover stories this month in both Psychology Today and Time magazine reveal why we kiss, why we flirt, why women's menstrual cycles sync, and many other keys to attraction. It's all so...romantic.

A real head-turner

Holden — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 09:14:31 -0800

The Exorcist Experience: U.S. soldier pops The Exorcist into his portable DVD player and discovers that he's right there, where the opening scenes were filmed. Now the Army (and movie director William Friedkin) plan to back an Exorcist-themed tourist attraction. Admission will be $2 or $5 with a kabob lunch.

edh — Tue, 01 Oct 2002 07:31:30 -0800

Seeing is believing. Swapping glasses for contact lenses can dramatically increase success with the opposite sex, research on short-sighted students in a nightclub has found. Anyone else have similar experiences?

john — Tue, 20 Feb 2001 00:22:47 -0800

The Oregon Vortex is a nice place to visit if you enjoy places where things roll uphill and things change size base on their position. Many have tried to figure it out. Physicist John Lister spent forty years there only to burn all his notes.

When is someone going to let the vortex genie out?