Most men lie about how tall they are

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/the-men-who-lie-about-their-height

by bookofjoe • 2 months ago

22 31 2 months ago

newyorker.com

bookofjoe2• 2 months ago

https://archive.ph/QlOHy

QuercusMax• 2 months ago

I like to tell people that my doctor said I'm 6 feet with shoes on.

Not lying; it's true! I'm like 5'11.

dec0dedab0de2• 2 months ago

I am 5'10.25", but I just say 5'10". It is hilarious whenever someone else claims to be 5'10" and I am multiple inches taller than they are.

sgt2• 2 months ago

That's at least 5'11" man. Maybe even 6 feet.

drrob• 2 months ago

And 6' is basically 6'2"...

joleyj• 2 months ago

Is it lying if you believe it?

coolThingsFirst• 2 months ago

Giant of a man standing at 5'10, felt no need to ever lie about my height.

firdunupsa2• 2 months ago

Ok grandma, why did you post this on Hacker News

bookofjoe2• 2 months ago

Who you callin' grandma?

Madmallard• 2 months ago

Why is this on the front page of Hacker News?

How does this have to do with anything related to Hacker News?

melon18• 2 months ago

can't agree more

sgt2• 2 months ago

6'6" here. No way I want to claim more.

Simiry• 2 months ago

I’m 6 foot and a quarter, if I say I’m 6 foot people don’t believe me and it becomes a conversation, if I say I’m 6’1 people believe it and say nothing else.

Path of least resistance

wvbdmp• 2 months ago

I always explicitly quote my government ID.

rationalist• 2 months ago

No one ever measured me for my government ID, they just went with whatever I put on the form.

nostrademons2• 2 months ago

Note that some of this is competitive benchmarking, and often encouraged by those men's partners, and tends to circulate around the way bullshit does because there are relatively few reality checks.

For the longest time I thought I was 5'9". Then my sister got a new boyfriend and was like "Yeah, he's 5'10". Well, I met boyfriend and I was at least an inch taller than him, so I guess that meant I was 5'11". On to my dating profile 5'11" went. Girls I met were like "You're really tall for an Asian dude" and my coworkers were like "We have an unusually tall team", so I got plenty of validation for my newfound height from external sources.

I finally went to the doctor's (yeah, it's pretty common for men to skip a few years in their 20s and early 30s), and sure enough: I was 5'8.75". My sister's husband is 5'8".

bushwart• 2 months ago

I'm 5'8.7667", sorry mate I have you beat.

nostrademons2• 2 months ago

You must be taller than me, feel free to put 6' down.

OutOfHere• 2 months ago

Just because someone else lies about their height doesn't make it right for you to do it. It's the sign of a lowlife, of a person with no integrity. I never would, not even a single inch. A man who lies about one's height will inevitably lie about many other things.

neuroelectron• 2 months ago

The New Yorker is basically The Sun with rambling text instead of pictures of aliens.

MrGilbert• 2 months ago

I'm 174 cm in height. Do I wish to be taller? Sometimes. Do I wish to be taller to impress a potential romantic partner? Absolutely not. But I'm shorter than most men in my country, so on social occasions in public (club, party, whatever), I struggle to make my way to the bar, because I literally cannot see a thing. I cope that with being on the louder side to make my way. It is what it is.

Also:

"smash your face with a hammer"
"tiptoemaxxing"

Everything but seeing a therapist, huh?

univocal• 2 months ago

I'm 174cm and one ugly motherfucker at that, and yet some of the most beautiful women I've ever met asked me out by the simple virtue of being a somewhat decent and caring human being. There's an interview where Elle Fanning straight up admits that the 167cm tall Jack Black is one of the most fascinating men she's ever met[1].

I can't believe there are communities that genuinely listen to someone like Clavicular Whatever or Andrew Tate for advice when there's an inordinate amount of empirical evidence that shows that the importance of mere appearances like height is almost negligible compared to attitude and personality when we talk about seduction (or even simple human interaction).

Like... yes, join that theatre or dance class, and don't be afraid to look goofy or ridicule when you show your sensitive, fragile or funny side. Sure, it will be rough and it will probably hurt, often and repeatedly, at the beginning. But in the long term it's surely more effective than moping around saying girls don't like you while paying someone to enlarge your jaw or whatever.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KW_yQp02W0

kylehotchkiss• 2 months ago

From guys trying to make it past women’s six-foot filter

IMO this filter is a red flag unless she is taller herself. What benefit is there to getting past it? Don't reward people for being overly arbitrary in this stuff ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Height is a dumb status symbol for a country where getting ahead for most people is no longer possible.

lostmsu• 2 months ago

That depends on your dating goal.

ryandrake• 2 months ago

There was a Reddit post a while ago (so take it with appropriate authority) plotting the distribution of men's reported height[1]. It's a pretty normal bell curve, with a distinct spike at exactly 6'0.

I wonder how much of the exaggeration is caused by the US measurement system providing an easy numeric threshold of "6". Does a similar spike appear when you limit the population to those using the metric system?

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/xmeh3p/oc_...

_--__--__• 2 months ago

180cm is the roughly equivalent round number benchmark but it's a bit shorter and most European populations are a bit taller on average than Americans

data-ottawa• 2 months ago

I plotted the sizes of shoes people buy from e-commerce data and there’s a similar bump at US 12 size, with a dip on 10 and 11, no such effect on women’s sizes.

dec0dedab0de2• 2 months ago

Size 12 is the one closest to 12 inches, which is common enough of a foot size that we call it a foot.

twiss• 2 months ago

I think this is more common when reporting heights in feet+inches than in cm. Rounding up 1.76m to 1.80m seems much weirder than rounding up 5'11" to 6', since all measurements in cm are very precise-sounding.

comrade1234• 2 months ago

I had a funny experience in a group where height came up and I answered that I'm 6'1" and a girl in the group exclaimed that that's her boyfriends height too but he was standing next to me and was probably six inches shorter. Everyone looked very embarrassed and did the looking around but not at anyone thing...

tim-tday• 2 months ago

I love when women put must be 6’ tall. I would never date anyone who stated that requirement.

Not only have they proved themselves to be shallow and petty, I’m simply not tall enough.

Most men lie about how tall they are

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