If anyone’s interested in giving advice on the “actually looking attractive” aspect of OkCupid profile optimization: I am wondering what to do about facial hair. This is what it currently looks like, and I don’t like it very much at all. Possible options include going back to something like this, or aborting Operation Facial Hair altogether. (My Best Face ranked the first aforelinked photo as my worst, and the other one as my best (which surprised me a bit). That is some evidence about what people prefer, but not very strong evidence, because there are several other differences between the photos that could account for some of the variation.)
If anyone’s interested in giving advice on the “actually looking attractive” aspect of OkCupid profile optimization: I am wondering what to do about facial hair. This is what it currently looks like, and I don’t like it very much at all. Possible options include going back to something like this, or aborting Operation Facial Hair altogether. (My Best Face ranked the first aforelinked photo as my worst, and the other one as my best (which surprised me a bit). That is some evidence about what people prefer, but not very strong evidence, because there are several other differences between the photos that could account for some of the variation.)
I vote for abandoning facial hair. And your photo with the hat is totally the best.
I prefer the second one, but I tend to prefer beards in general.