Can Your Hobbies Be Unsexy?

From gaming to magic tricks, how much can your hobby screw (or un-screw) you?

Another day, another discourse. Earlier this week, Twitter user CSandbatch posted this chart of men’s hobbies ranked by how unattractive they are. The source is unclear, and some postulated that the entire chart was made up, but if it is, I think it’s a fair approximation of what would happen if you asked women to rank male hobbies from sexiest to least sexy:

Although I’m not terribly knowledgeable about dating, I do spend far too much of my time thinking about how people relate to each other due to my long-documented difficulties making friends. I have a few takeaways here, but the main one is that a man’s hobbies are unlikely to make him seem more or less attractive to a woman, barring extreme circumstances (such as operating and maintaining a goon cave- a huge turn-on for women who appreciate organizational skills and interior design!)

Twitter’s AI might be uncensored but it’s clearly unfamiliar with gooning.

That said, I think this survey (assuming it was real) sparked some interesting discussion about the non-physical traits that can affect how sexy or unsexy someone seems.

Let’s start by looking at the hobbies that were ranked as the least attractive. All of them are pretty geeky for the most part. Some people noted that for the most part, they are passive hobbies related to consumption instead of skill, and that women are turned off by men “relaxing.” (I actually don’t think this is specific to women. Ask a man how he feels about a woman watching Lady Whistledown getting her cheeks clapped to Halsey quartets for hours on end.) But the main thing that stood out to a lot of Twitter users is that some of these hobbies—like video games, the “worst” one—are very common. And women play video games too—lots of women! So what exactly is wrong with video games?

Also, does a hobby being unsexy mean it would disqualify a man, or just that it wouldn’t provide any boost in their attractiveness? and why on Earth is birdwatching catching strays? Personally, I was appalled to see “online trolling” take a hit. That’s been my favorite hobby for years!

I think this can mostly be boiled down to people being asked to imagine how they would feel about a fictional person with these hobbies, versus actually being presented with that person. And before any men start patting themselves on the back for having more insight about their own preferences than women do, I actually think this applies to them too.

When it comes to real person interactions (I’m gleaning this mostly from my conversations/interviews with singles of all stripes), I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that most people’s dealbreakers—men’s and women’s—will be thrown out the window if the following three conditions are met:

1. Hotness: Men are more willing than women to admit they want to be with someone hot, but everyone does. I wouldn’t be surprised if hotness was the number one criteria for straight men and women, it’s just that women might rank other things close to hotness as well, and generally women are embarrassed to admit it. This does not mean that every woman requires a 6’4” Adonis with a chin of steel, or that every man only wants a size 2 blonde supermodel with naturally huge bazgunas. Hotness means different things to different people, and I think most people gravitate toward a level of hotness that is somewhat realistic for them, mixed with whatever their type is. Despite the constant observations that the streets are full of goddesses holding hands with Peter Griffins (I’m convinced women who think this are not actually attracted to men), I actually think people pair off with their physical equivalent most of the time. Perhaps some of these people had to “settle,” but I think a lot of people are genuinely most attracted to people they think could realistically desire them back. At some point, I’ll write about the “sweet spot of hotness” where someone is just realistic enough to be attainable—if you’ve gotten this far, you’re a paid subscriber, so be on the lookout for that article.

2. Rizz (charisma): Before you say this only matters for men, you are dead wrong. Rizzless women struggle to find relationships. I have met men who disqualified women because they were unable to carry a conversation. I knew a very attractive woman who had an inexplicably off-putting and unsettling personality, who couldn’t seem to make it past a first date. Being hot can lessen the negative effects of rizzlessness, especially for women, but if it’s bad enough, even being hot won’t save you. (I will concede women do not need rizz to be able to find a sex partner, but I’m thinking about relationships.) Rizz (and a lack of rizz) might make a bigger difference for men, but I think this is due to two things:

   1. Men are generally expected to make the first move, and rizz is essential for this.

   2. I can’t prove it, but I have a theory that due to women being more physically vulnerable than men, we have an oversensitive ick. That ick is just our ancestors telling us that a guy is either going to be unable to protect us from marauders, or will be a marauder himself. Yes, some women are weird and like the marauders; most don’t.

3. Social Position: By this I don’t mean someone’s career or bank account in that literal sense. I actually think hotness and rizz will transcend that most of the time—I’ve met plenty of attractive women who happily dated men who worked less prestigious jobs, and made less money than they did, because they were hot and fun. I do, however, think that people seek out those from a similar background. You obviously don’t have to be the exact same ethnicity or age, but much like hotness, people usually pair up with other people who came from a similar overall background. This is another area where men will deny caring, but that’s simply not true. Manosphere influencers are under a collective delusion that wealthy men will marry 22-year-old Hooters waitresses. It exposes them as not having met many wealthy men, at least outside of crypto. On the flip side, female “old money” TikTok influencers will encourage their followers to meet wealthy suitors by working at yacht clubs—as if a member of a yacht club would ever date the help. The reality is that most upper class people date and marry other upper class people, and the same goes with basically any other social group. It’s not even just class, things like education also factor in, even if a college degree in and of itself is not sexy—next time you see a bunch of leftist college students, ask yourself the likelihood that any of them are dating a farm worker or truck driver, even one who shared their political views. That’s not to call them hypocrites, just that most people have the best chemistry with someone who shares some basic social groups (education level, class, etc.)

   1. Part of this involves subgroups. Being a geeky Redditor who collects funko pops is not a “culture” the way being Italian or Chinese is, but someone like this will be much more attractive to a fellow quirk chungus than to an athleisure-wearing gym bunny. Trying to emulate a subculture because the people in that group are hot (ie: pretending to be a jock to attract cheerleaders) will not work, especially for men. Being inauthentic is unattractive, and people will pick up on it as a general sense of ick.

I’m sure there’s more to say, but keeping it simple: if these three conditions are met, nothing else matters (barring extremes.) Everyone knows men who are short or broke who still have girlfriends and wives. Everyone knows women who married well after the supposedly “acceptable” age, or who found love after having children with someone else. All of that stuff is null and void if the above three conditions are met.

The same goes with “unsexy” hobbies. The reason that women ranked video games and comic book collecting as unattractive is because when asked to imagine such a man, they imagined this:

They did not imagine someone who was hot, fun, and similar to them!

In fact, I have my own story about video games and men. When my husband and I first moved in together, I told him I would not tolerate any video game console in the house. I had some preexisting prejudices. I grew up with a younger brother and I associated video games with teenage boys. Even though I played The Sims, that felt different (and I actually would have been fine with him playing a game on his phone or laptop; it was the immersion of the TV screen that bothered me.) I was under the impression that if a man played console video games, he would become so immersed in them that he would stop having sex with his partner and refuse to leave the house or shower.

All of that changed when we went shopping for a TV one day and wandered into a Best Buy where they were allowing customers to demo MarioKart 8. I used to play racing games at the arcade as a child and I had positive memories of that experience, so I played. And it was so fun. By the time we left the store, we were considering buying a Switch so we could play MarioKart together. One thing led to another: we bought the Switch, we eventually got a PS5, and for a while we would spend all our free time (when our child was asleep) playing video games side by side (him on the PS5, me on my laptop) while listening to a podcast together.

I did not find my husband less attractive during the height of his video game hobby. If anything, I found him more attractive because we were doing something together. I would have vastly preferred a video game hobby to something that took him away from me for long periods of time, like golfing, fishing or hunting. (You heard it here first, folks: if you play video games, you are being longhoused.)

I know a lot of men pointed out that they are somehow more enlightened for not caring about women’s hobbies, unlike those picky, fickle women. But I think if men were asked to rank women’s hobbies, from sexiest to least sexy, something would still come out last, and those things would probably be hobbies that seemed excessively girly, unrelatable or vapid, like watching reality TV or going shopping. But I would also venture that if presented with a woman who liked those things, who was hot, fun to hang out with, and reasonably similar in background, men wouldn’t care either.

I asked women on Twitter if they had ever experienced a change in attraction (in either direction) in real life after hearing about a man’s hobbies and I got some interesting responses:

Turn offs:

• Being “deep into anime” (multiple women mentioned anime, although one mentioned it as a plus, probably because she was into anime herself)

• Skateboarding

• Anything involving guns or killing something

• Being really into cars

• Drinking beer while watching Pawn Stars

Turn ons:

• Cooking

• Playing music

• Poetry

• Woodworking

Some things, like playing sports or playing D&D, were listed as both turn-offs and turn-ons (one woman said she had a thing for guys who look like jocks but turn out to be secret geeks.) But overwhelmingly, a lot of women said a hobby would never be a turnoff, or a hobby being a turnoff in a vacuum would not translate to dumping a guy or being less attracted to him in real life.

A lot of the rationale behind “unsexy” hobbies was less about the hobbies themselves and more about what they mean: the issue with skateboarding is that the man would be immature, the issue with hunting is that it signifies violent tendencies, and gaming was only mentioned as a problem if it was associated with being selfish, lazy and childish. I don’t think those women would find fault with a guy who occasionally liked to play an hour of his favorite game. Similarly, if you asked men, “What do you think of women who watch reality TV?” they might initially react with, “Oh, she’d be a vapid idiot” but quickly change their tune if they met a really fun woman, with an otherwise well-rounded personality, who confessed to binging Love is Blind now and again on a rainy Sunday.

While I don’t think I’m the person to dispense dating advice, I would say this to anyone worried about their unsexy hobbies: a hobby is only unsexy if it says something negative about you that endangers your ability to meet the aforementioned three requirements (hotness, rizz, social position.) Several women mentioned that it wasn’t the hobby itself that would be the problem, but the level to which a man is so immersed in the hobby that he’s unable to do other things (one reason why gaming came up so many times.) A man who is so obsessed with anime that he is unable to function in regular life without Naruto running around the house is likely completely rizzless. If your hobby doesn’t infringe on your ability to be hot and fun, or your ability to relate to women, it’s likely not a problem at all.

So if you have one takeaway: play the video games. Have fun. Just work on your rizz.