I don't consider myself particularly interesting, but I would say my interests are vastly different from the average guy on dating apps

I don't know how to say this without sounding pretentious, but I prefer intellectual conversation over nights at the bar or whatever. I just want to be able to share the thoughts I have floating around my head with someone, ya know? When I'm not on hexbear.net, I play guitar, draw, write and enjoy analyzing different types of media and digging into the meaning of stuff

Stream of consciousness slop, I know, but I'm super high and my thoughts are firing off. Can anyone relate or see where I'm coming from?

  • build_a_bear_group [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    IDK, I think that it depends how you approach it and such. But I will say that a few things I have found, first pictures of you doing your hobbies go a long way to make yourself interesting and stand out without having a potential match wade through a bullet point list before finding anything interesting or unique about yourself. Even if you think your hobbies are not extremely unique, this will help more than the standard profile pics (shirtless abs, being with attractive friends, catching a fish, etc.)

    I will repeat what others have said of saying "leftist politics" works well for getting matches since people can project whatever they want onto it. And I still think it does work out well, because there is also issues with just how people identify and posture, where a potential match can still take things that would seem more specific and useful, like communist, anarchist, or feminist in many varying ways. Even trying to "hide my power level" I ended up with a lot of matches that would chastise me for still listening to Democracy Now because they have "moderated", even if I just use it for a general run down on current events only.

    Though, TBF, if I toot my own horn, I am very conventionally attractive so YMMV. And even just trying to describe my job, "I build astronomy instrumentation for studying distant galaxies" does easily attract certain types of women.

    • panopticon [comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      That does sound like a pretty neat job, how did you get into it? And do you have a degree in something like physics or engineering, if you don't mind me asking?

      • build_a_bear_group [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        Yeah, physics. I was mostly interested broadly in electromagnetism, optics, and engineering. And a professor at the school I am at, that is now my thesis advisor, works on developing instrumentation for niche astronomy applications. Which also required a lot of custom device work, which seemed fun. It seemed like a good fit, and not what I initially thought I would do going into grad school.

        • panopticon [comrade/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          Yeah that sounds really neat. I'm in an engineering program atm and while the professional opportunities make me feel generally optimistic, the material in the physics major just seems a lot cooler, you know?

          I'm going for a physics minor as well but also I think about changing my major at least once every two weeks, lol. Open to any thoughts you might have about that.

          • build_a_bear_group [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            Well, it depends what you want to do. You can do more with a Bachelors/Masters with engineering and you should have some freedom to take some interesting physics classes. If you do well enough in undergrad and get some contacts and practical skills you can still get some STEM/office job that will at least pay the bills with the physics degree, but probably not be that related to your physics degree and making less than with an engineering degree. If you are thinking about grad school/Ph.D. then I would say you would be better off going physics, because then you want to be doing something you find interesting and if you are not going into academia, most of the Ph.D. jobs will be more focused on your research skills and ability to "investigate" than the exact thing you studied in your thesis, though there is still a wage gap between engineering and physics Ph.D.s

            Something else I would recommend looking into is an applied physics or "engineering physics" major/program depending on what your university offers. That seems to align with your interests and at least from anecdotes of my friends that did that, it seems to have a lot of the job opportunities of engineering while still taking the core physics classes. And applied physics can be pretty broad, from mostly electrical engineering (e.g. making lower noise electronics, with some insight from solid state physics) to building devices for quantum computing, or stuff like my work making detectors for astronomy.

    • stigsbandit34z [they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm ugly (it's not like I'm not getting matches) the problem is finding actual "matches" so to speak

      Myself having a very niche set of interests (some of which are odd obsessions) probably doesn't work to my advantage. And my job if very pedestrian, so not much going on there

      • build_a_bear_group [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Well, I would say that making the interests very obvious, like in the profile pictures I mentioned, could help. Even if they are niche or odd, your matches will be into or accepting of them if you are able to show them in the app. And, in general, part of attracting people is standing out and being unique. So unless they are really weird and off-putting, showing your interests will help even if the potential matches' attitudes are more of "that is interesting" or "I could accept that" rather than "I share all of those interests/hobbies exactly".

        And just because you listed things like "deep conversations", you do need to be more specific since there are a lot of people trying to seem smarter or more interesting than they are that will use vague things like "deep conversation" or "sapiosexual" to seem smart. This is one of those things where being specific helps because whatever your current obsessions are, whether it is organic gardening, symbolic logic, late modern era French history, etc. It will come off more genuine than random person trying to sound smart like "I like intellectual conversations and the Oxford comma" even if the potential match doesn't share the exact same set of obsessions and interests.