Everyone does it. It starts with a superficial glance at whomever is standing in front of you. With one look up and down you take into account height, weight, hair and eye color, body type, and anything else that you value in the physical appearance of a possible romantic partner. If you’re as cynical as I am, you’ll also take into account other things like the sound of their voice because for me, there is nothing worse than a girl who makes you wish that you were that cop from Reservoir Dogs who gets his ear chopped off while Stealers Wheel plays in the background, just so that you wouldn’t have to hear that god awful screeching coming from her face hole.
Maybe the guy just doesn’t have enough of Channing Tatum’s body, or maybe the girl you’re eying up looks too much like she could be the next star of the WNBA for your 5’9” stature. Whatever it is, many of us will take all these things into account and deliver a number to determine someone’s value. We’d all like to believe we’re a perfect ten, and maybe in the eyes of some, you are – maybe. I think most people, though, are more inclined to find at least one thing wrong with you to knock you down off that deluded pedestal. I’m here today to deliver what feels like a message from God himself: this barbaric form of rating has got to go.
I’m sure there are some of you reading who are excited thinking that I’m about to go off about how cruel and immature it is to rate someone based on their physical attributes. If that is the case, I’m just gonna let you down right now because I’m simply not that good of a human being. Instead, I’d like to deliver the wisdom passed onto me by one of the wisest teachers at my high school: it’s time for us as a society to adopt a new scale, so stop with the eights and the fours and start using the only rating system that matters.
It’s called the Zero to One Scale, and it’s as simple as it sounds. A zero means you wouldn’t, and a one means you would. I honestly couldn’t tell you if this is more or less degrading than the 1-10 rating we as a human race have been using for who knows how long, but I can tell you that it makes everything a hell of a lot easier. My friends and I no longer argue about if the girl we all swiped right on is a seven or a nine because it doesn’t matter. We all swiped right, which means she’s a one.
But for any of you who, like I do, crave more complexity in the determination of whether or not you’re going to say fuck it and drop your snap in a private zoom message to the smoke show in your four-hundred-person lecture, fear not. I’ve made a couple additions to the Zero to One Scale just to keep it interesting.
First, it’s important to recognize your own personal threshold for a one. This allows us to not completely abandon the old ways that have served us so well over the course of history. Your boy that has been in a bit of a drought recently may lower his one threshold from a seven to a five because at this point, he just needs something to get him back in the game. And that girl who has every guy on campus popping in her DMs in most likely going to have a nine as her one threshold because let’s face it, she’s got better options than the early on set beer belly you’re currently rocking.
The second addition to this scale is the drunk one. He’s the guy that you saw on Tinder and looked through all of his pictures before making the tough call to swipe left, but when you saw him eight White Claws later at the first sorority mixer of the year, he looked way more like Gyllenhaal in Prisoners than Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko. She’s the girl that, while she may not have met your one threshold when you saw her in the dining hall Thursday morning, she’s looking like the closest thing to Margot Robbie you’re gonna get after your fifth beer bong on Saturday night.
There it is: the scale of the future. Embrace it. It’s time for everyone to stop focusing on getting tens. Just go for the ones.
