Almost nobody who spams social media often is below-average (and certainly almost nobody in featured videos). Even the prettiest are heavily filtered (take a peek over at r/instagramreality for how warped people can get, sometimes quite subtly).

I almost wanted to take screenshots of two of my friends, one quite attractive, and one more homely, to make a point. The attractive one does the prototypical instathot thing of posting glamour shots and doing inspirational quotes. The homely one posts mostly pictures of her pets and scenery (and almost never herself). If you only go by frequency, the average person online is way prettier than real life. Same for the men as well, though to a smaller extent.

We can also talk about how hot take videos go viral way more than level-headedness. So it sounds like attitudes about dating are way more insane than day-to-day life. I recently opened one on insta and now my feed is littered with them.

This is not a "kids these days" rant. It's a "the algos are literally trying to radicalize you because engagement, even the bad kind, makes them money and they are not interested in your well-being, so you should be and not let the content dictate your view of reality."