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Recent thread by @Tyrionlannistercel as well as conversations with @PrettyBoyMaxxing inspired this. I'm bored as all fuck, so here goes my first legitimate high effort thread. In this thread I'm going to lay out to the best of my ability what I think a PSL rating should actually mean and why I think this offered interpretation of it would be the most useful. I'll also explain what I think IRL and SMV means, which I don't think will be too controversial but a brief description of them will be useful in cementing why PSL makes the most sense when considered this way. It's important to note that I don't consider this to be a definitive guide, which is why I didn't select the [GUIDE] tag, instead I intend this to be a useful basis for conversation with other intelligent users. I hope this actually gets modified.
Without further ado let's get right into it.
The PSL Scale
There's some controversy as to whether the PSL scale should start at 0 or 1. I fall into the former camp. The most common rebuttal to my comrades and I on this is that a 0 PSL would never actually exist - I have two points here. First, I think something very similar could be said about a PSL 8. Second, I would contend that a PSL 0 could at least theoretically exist if you consider it to be someone with literally no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Similarly, a PSL 8 would have absolutely no flaws. Also, including a PSL 0 makes the math work out a lot cleaner, so that's also a big incentive.
The other thing to mention before describing the actual scale itself is what the PSL scale should actually be describing. In my opinion, it should describe only a person's facial aesthetics. It shouldn't be affected by a subject's height, physique, or most controversially, their phenotype and coloration. It should however consider skin quality. I debated on whether to include Norwood level or not but tbh I think PSL should consider Norwood level as it affects how your face is perceived.
I'll give picture examples of PSL here, but for the sake of my own argument I'm only going to use whites. That's also just easiest as many more examples exist and they are less controversial.
PSL 0
At this level someone would have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. If you were making a Pros and Cons list on this person's face you would be unable to put anything in the Pros column. I think probably no one belongs here in practicality except for the severely deformed.
. Any attempt to find a positive feature here would be splitting hairs. Everything is a neg by default because he doesn't even have a recognizable human face. Burn victims also go here, or that dude who got kicked in the head by a horse and his eye swelled to like 10 times its original size, etc.
PSL 1
At this level we have extremely ugly but still recognizably human people. These are probably people that most would consider completely undateable, but not all. Prerequisite to be at this level is no halos - you either have all failos or mostly failos and some neutral qualities. You probably also have a few severe failos. However, this tier should not include the severely deformed, those should go into PSL 0.
PSL 2
Here actual (not perceived or imagined, but actual) below average people belong. These people would probably not have much dating success by our standards but would be able to have romantic relationships given they lowered their standards enough. No severe failos exist here, except for high bodyfat percentage, but the feature-mix will typically be mostly failos and neutrals with one halo at most, and usually not a halo in a critical area, like eye area or lower third. Many examples abound here of course, the variability kind of opens up at this PSL.
PSL 3
Now this is the point in the scale where I think we're going to get controversial. I've posted this opinion before, I think the average person hovers somewhere around a PSL 3 to a PSL 3.5. I'll talk more about this later, but suffice to say I think PSLers tend to drastically overrate the average person and forget about the literal sea of bad-looking people dragging that average down.
In this tier you have no severe failos, although you are probably overweight or have that skinny nerd look. You do however, have at least a couple failos if not more, and you will have no more than two halos, and you won't have a haloed eye area and a haloed lower third at the same time. More than likely you'll have neither.
However, that is exactly where I think the actual average person lies statistically speaking. Right there, in the thoroughly unimpressive, not completely hideous to look at but also not remotely attractive zone. (This is from a normie's point of view.) At this PSL, you have a decent enough foundation to potentially boost your SMV through other means to the point where you can secure a mate anyway. Ed Sheeran is a great example of this, so is Bezos. This should be lifefuel for you cels who place yourselves here. Will you sufficiently boost your SMV through fame or fortune though? Probably not, but the opportunity is there.
PSL 4
This is where most people tend to place the average, at either 4 or 4.5 PSL. They do this for the simple reason that depending on which floor you choose the number bisects the scale, which I think is pretty silly logic, but I digress. I come into a sort of shadow of agreement with you all though, because this is where I think most people perceive the average to be. By that I mean this is probably the image that comes up in a PSLer's head when he hears the word "average". Most people in this range will think of themselves as slightly above average or describe themselves that way, but deep in their hearts they know they're average unless they are delusional.
Here you may have a significant halo, such as a good eye area or good lower third. You will also not have any severe failos. However, you may very well have a few failos here that you just can't overcome with your halos, or something else throwing you off that just can't bring your halos together. However, at this stage you're basically a normie and you have a decent foundation to have romantic success, although you're gonna have to fucking work for it.
As a fun exercise, think about why Vin Diesel might edge out Jeff Bezos even though at a superficial glance they have a very similar appearance. Also, I think the vast majority of users here will probably fall between 3.5 and 4.5. Most of your guys' pics that I've seen or that you've PM'd me, I would put you in this range. Its probably fairly unusual that any user gets above or below that, this might very well represent the first standard deviation window on the PSL distribution. Most people in the 4-5 category would have a decent amount of normies willing to call them good-looking. They have a solid foundation to SMV max or receive other halos that go into their IRL score. They may or may not have a good PSLmaxxing base.
As a side note, Grant Gustin is probably the best looking out of this bunch and Diesel the worst, at least PSL wise. Grant is a 4.5+, but I wouldn't put him at a 5.
PSL 5
At this point we are reaching the stage where you no longer have any failos at all. You probably also have a few halos, you might even have an eye area halo and a lower third halo simultaneously. However, something is still limiting you. Maybe you have something that would usually be considered a failo on other men, but somehow on you, it just works - however it still isn't ideal. Men who can rock Norwooding levels fall here. The Rock is a good example, although he is non-white and therefore excluded from the image examples in this mock guide. Or maybe the thing limiting you is a mysterious "lack of harmony". However, regardless, nearly all NT people and most PSLers will probably agree, you're a good looking guy.
At this level you even have the potential to become somewhat of a sex symbol if you can SMVmaxx hard enough.
PSL 6
At this level, you definitely have no failos and your appearance is striking. You are very good looking. You're at the point where you can begin to coast through life on your looks to some degree, and even you know that you're a cut above the pack. If you posted your pic here, PSLers would probably line up to suck your dick. You more than likely have no issues getting a desirable mate, and you probably have both a lower third halo and an eye area halo, as well as many other positives like good skin and hair.
Note that Henry Cavill belongs here even with slight recession (I purposely chose a pic where his hairline looks decent). When Henry Cavill gets to his more obvious Norwoods, he falls to a PSL 5.5. My personal opinion is that Norwooding isn't really a failo until Norwood 2. However, NW0 is a halo.
PSL 7
At this level you are model tier. You are one of the most beautiful men on Earth, top 1% easily. You can be pretty confident that you will mog everyone wherever you go. You have both a lower third and an eye area halo. In addition you have a NW0 halo or at least an NW1. Your skin quality is excellent. Your nose shape, fantastic. Basically almost everything is on point.
PSL 8
Lastly we arrive at the opposite problem of PSL 0. We made an attempt at defining complete imperfection - now how do we define perfection? What image do we choose? Who do we use as an example? Is there a perfect man out there? A Jesus of PSL, so to speak?
Some of you might be offended that some of the examples I used for the PSL 7 - 7.9999999...... category weren't instead placed here. Some of you might still think a PSL 8 doesn't exist. What I will say on that is that I probably agree with you in practicality, however, we can easily define one in theory. It would simply be someone with no flaws, no possible way to detectably improve. (Please keep your autistic reductio ad absurdum arguments out of here, we're not going to count pores or anything). We could probably take a PSL 7, morph him a bit, add a couple tweaks, and claim the pic is a PSL 8. However, for the time being, I'll use this opportunity to pay tribute to my personal favorite PSL figure, even though I don't truly think he's a PSL 8:
Shine on you brilliant star.
This concludes my breakdown of a new PSL scale. Feel free to stop reading here and comment on the scale. Below, I have a few quick discussions on some key topics.
Discussion on the Average, Distribution, and Conversion Factor
Many of you may be saying, "Okay Lord Norwood, nice headcanon you tryhard narcy, but why not just say the average is 4, assume a normal distribution, and be done with it?" Well, the reason why is because I think that defeats the entire point of PSL. The reason why PSL exists is to try and provide a rigorous definition of attractiveness. Setting that definition on the average would effectively make it worthless. Then you really could not have absolutes - saying there was a PSL 8 would make no sense, just like it doesn't make sense to say that someone has a "maximum IQ". You could only talk in percentiles, and today's PSL 4 might be tomorrow's PSL 3 or PSL 5. We also have no solid way of actually taking an average, which makes basing it on an average retarded. We only have a "sense" of what the average is. Metrics which do simply score you in relation to the overall population can actually take huge amounts of data to justify that method - like for example IQ scores.
Of course, this way of doing things means the conversion to an IRL score would be tricky. Under the old mentality, an average PSL is 4, and the conversion factor to an IRL rating is 1.25. Voila. Kind of begs the question, why even use a PSL score...but I digress. Under this system there is no set in stone conversion factor. This is because in my opinion, PSL and IRL are attempting to describe different, yet related things. So instead of converting PSL to IRL, instead PSL should be taken into consideration when finding IRL.
What is an IRL Rating?
Your IRL rating is a measure of your visual attractiveness that considers qualities other than just your face. This includes your height, your race, your phenotype, your coloration (like for example what color your eyes and hair are) how good of a body you have, your proportions, wrist size, hand size, everything a person would see if you strolled up to them in the street - not considering your clothes. Because face is so important, we have an entire score dedicated just to your face - this is your PSL. Your PSL is then a major component of your IRL rating, however, your IRL can still have massive swings. As an extreme example, consider a PSL 6 Indian who is 5'5 and dark as all hell. To make matters worse, he's also a complete framelet. Now consider a 5 PSL white who is 6 foot. Obviously, the tall white is going to have a much higher IRL score.
This is a score where I think it makes sense to simply base it off the average, because that's how I think normies think of it. Again, it doesn't make a ton of sense to cap it at an arbitrary value like 10 - but whatever, let's just do so anyway, and for the nerdcels out there let's mathematically justify it by saying that your IRL score approaches 10 as you approach a higher and higher percentile score.
The average IRL rating is 5/10. We run into perception problems here again that we were trying to avoid earlier for PSL, but let's just say that this represents sexually viable people. So a 1/10 is an ugly fuck, but maybe he could still potentially mate with someone. You want to be a 7+.
What is SMV?
Your SMV, or your sexual market value, takes all possible factors that would attract a mate into account. As such, it is the closet we can get to your actual, real-life performance in mating outside of, you know, actually performing. It goes beyond just visual. However, we can sum it up as looks, money, and status. This takes the IRL rating (which includes the PSL rating) and then also considers your fashion sense, your status, how much money you make, what type of job you have, etc. etc.
This will change based on location. SMV is always relative, never absolute. An Indian's SMV is very different in India then it is in the West. As another example, if a blonde-haired white man went to Asia, he would see his SMV increase significantly. SMV is also rarely actually quantified. It's usually expressed in relative terms "high", "low", "higher than this", "lower than that", etc.
For the vast majority of you this is where your bread will get buttered. This is the meat and potatoes. The reason why is because you theoretically can inflate your money and status near-infinitely. The same isn't true for your looks unless you have an excellent looksmaxxing base. Deathniks, manlets, framelets, sub 4s, SMVmaxxing is where you should live, eat and breathe.
That's all. Hopefully someone actually reads this shit. I put a decent amount of work into it.
Without further ado let's get right into it.
The PSL Scale
There's some controversy as to whether the PSL scale should start at 0 or 1. I fall into the former camp. The most common rebuttal to my comrades and I on this is that a 0 PSL would never actually exist - I have two points here. First, I think something very similar could be said about a PSL 8. Second, I would contend that a PSL 0 could at least theoretically exist if you consider it to be someone with literally no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Similarly, a PSL 8 would have absolutely no flaws. Also, including a PSL 0 makes the math work out a lot cleaner, so that's also a big incentive.
The other thing to mention before describing the actual scale itself is what the PSL scale should actually be describing. In my opinion, it should describe only a person's facial aesthetics. It shouldn't be affected by a subject's height, physique, or most controversially, their phenotype and coloration. It should however consider skin quality. I debated on whether to include Norwood level or not but tbh I think PSL should consider Norwood level as it affects how your face is perceived.
I'll give picture examples of PSL here, but for the sake of my own argument I'm only going to use whites. That's also just easiest as many more examples exist and they are less controversial.
PSL 0
At this level someone would have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. If you were making a Pros and Cons list on this person's face you would be unable to put anything in the Pros column. I think probably no one belongs here in practicality except for the severely deformed.
. Any attempt to find a positive feature here would be splitting hairs. Everything is a neg by default because he doesn't even have a recognizable human face. Burn victims also go here, or that dude who got kicked in the head by a horse and his eye swelled to like 10 times its original size, etc.
PSL 1
At this level we have extremely ugly but still recognizably human people. These are probably people that most would consider completely undateable, but not all. Prerequisite to be at this level is no halos - you either have all failos or mostly failos and some neutral qualities. You probably also have a few severe failos. However, this tier should not include the severely deformed, those should go into PSL 0.
PSL 2
Here actual (not perceived or imagined, but actual) below average people belong. These people would probably not have much dating success by our standards but would be able to have romantic relationships given they lowered their standards enough. No severe failos exist here, except for high bodyfat percentage, but the feature-mix will typically be mostly failos and neutrals with one halo at most, and usually not a halo in a critical area, like eye area or lower third. Many examples abound here of course, the variability kind of opens up at this PSL.
PSL 3
Now this is the point in the scale where I think we're going to get controversial. I've posted this opinion before, I think the average person hovers somewhere around a PSL 3 to a PSL 3.5. I'll talk more about this later, but suffice to say I think PSLers tend to drastically overrate the average person and forget about the literal sea of bad-looking people dragging that average down.
In this tier you have no severe failos, although you are probably overweight or have that skinny nerd look. You do however, have at least a couple failos if not more, and you will have no more than two halos, and you won't have a haloed eye area and a haloed lower third at the same time. More than likely you'll have neither.
However, that is exactly where I think the actual average person lies statistically speaking. Right there, in the thoroughly unimpressive, not completely hideous to look at but also not remotely attractive zone. (This is from a normie's point of view.) At this PSL, you have a decent enough foundation to potentially boost your SMV through other means to the point where you can secure a mate anyway. Ed Sheeran is a great example of this, so is Bezos. This should be lifefuel for you cels who place yourselves here. Will you sufficiently boost your SMV through fame or fortune though? Probably not, but the opportunity is there.
PSL 4
This is where most people tend to place the average, at either 4 or 4.5 PSL. They do this for the simple reason that depending on which floor you choose the number bisects the scale, which I think is pretty silly logic, but I digress. I come into a sort of shadow of agreement with you all though, because this is where I think most people perceive the average to be. By that I mean this is probably the image that comes up in a PSLer's head when he hears the word "average". Most people in this range will think of themselves as slightly above average or describe themselves that way, but deep in their hearts they know they're average unless they are delusional.
Here you may have a significant halo, such as a good eye area or good lower third. You will also not have any severe failos. However, you may very well have a few failos here that you just can't overcome with your halos, or something else throwing you off that just can't bring your halos together. However, at this stage you're basically a normie and you have a decent foundation to have romantic success, although you're gonna have to fucking work for it.
As a fun exercise, think about why Vin Diesel might edge out Jeff Bezos even though at a superficial glance they have a very similar appearance. Also, I think the vast majority of users here will probably fall between 3.5 and 4.5. Most of your guys' pics that I've seen or that you've PM'd me, I would put you in this range. Its probably fairly unusual that any user gets above or below that, this might very well represent the first standard deviation window on the PSL distribution. Most people in the 4-5 category would have a decent amount of normies willing to call them good-looking. They have a solid foundation to SMV max or receive other halos that go into their IRL score. They may or may not have a good PSLmaxxing base.
As a side note, Grant Gustin is probably the best looking out of this bunch and Diesel the worst, at least PSL wise. Grant is a 4.5+, but I wouldn't put him at a 5.
PSL 5
At this point we are reaching the stage where you no longer have any failos at all. You probably also have a few halos, you might even have an eye area halo and a lower third halo simultaneously. However, something is still limiting you. Maybe you have something that would usually be considered a failo on other men, but somehow on you, it just works - however it still isn't ideal. Men who can rock Norwooding levels fall here. The Rock is a good example, although he is non-white and therefore excluded from the image examples in this mock guide. Or maybe the thing limiting you is a mysterious "lack of harmony". However, regardless, nearly all NT people and most PSLers will probably agree, you're a good looking guy.
At this level you even have the potential to become somewhat of a sex symbol if you can SMVmaxx hard enough.
PSL 6
At this level, you definitely have no failos and your appearance is striking. You are very good looking. You're at the point where you can begin to coast through life on your looks to some degree, and even you know that you're a cut above the pack. If you posted your pic here, PSLers would probably line up to suck your dick. You more than likely have no issues getting a desirable mate, and you probably have both a lower third halo and an eye area halo, as well as many other positives like good skin and hair.
Note that Henry Cavill belongs here even with slight recession (I purposely chose a pic where his hairline looks decent). When Henry Cavill gets to his more obvious Norwoods, he falls to a PSL 5.5. My personal opinion is that Norwooding isn't really a failo until Norwood 2. However, NW0 is a halo.
PSL 7
At this level you are model tier. You are one of the most beautiful men on Earth, top 1% easily. You can be pretty confident that you will mog everyone wherever you go. You have both a lower third and an eye area halo. In addition you have a NW0 halo or at least an NW1. Your skin quality is excellent. Your nose shape, fantastic. Basically almost everything is on point.
PSL 8
Lastly we arrive at the opposite problem of PSL 0. We made an attempt at defining complete imperfection - now how do we define perfection? What image do we choose? Who do we use as an example? Is there a perfect man out there? A Jesus of PSL, so to speak?
Some of you might be offended that some of the examples I used for the PSL 7 - 7.9999999...... category weren't instead placed here. Some of you might still think a PSL 8 doesn't exist. What I will say on that is that I probably agree with you in practicality, however, we can easily define one in theory. It would simply be someone with no flaws, no possible way to detectably improve. (Please keep your autistic reductio ad absurdum arguments out of here, we're not going to count pores or anything). We could probably take a PSL 7, morph him a bit, add a couple tweaks, and claim the pic is a PSL 8. However, for the time being, I'll use this opportunity to pay tribute to my personal favorite PSL figure, even though I don't truly think he's a PSL 8:
Shine on you brilliant star.
This concludes my breakdown of a new PSL scale. Feel free to stop reading here and comment on the scale. Below, I have a few quick discussions on some key topics.
Discussion on the Average, Distribution, and Conversion Factor
Many of you may be saying, "Okay Lord Norwood, nice headcanon you tryhard narcy, but why not just say the average is 4, assume a normal distribution, and be done with it?" Well, the reason why is because I think that defeats the entire point of PSL. The reason why PSL exists is to try and provide a rigorous definition of attractiveness. Setting that definition on the average would effectively make it worthless. Then you really could not have absolutes - saying there was a PSL 8 would make no sense, just like it doesn't make sense to say that someone has a "maximum IQ". You could only talk in percentiles, and today's PSL 4 might be tomorrow's PSL 3 or PSL 5. We also have no solid way of actually taking an average, which makes basing it on an average retarded. We only have a "sense" of what the average is. Metrics which do simply score you in relation to the overall population can actually take huge amounts of data to justify that method - like for example IQ scores.
Of course, this way of doing things means the conversion to an IRL score would be tricky. Under the old mentality, an average PSL is 4, and the conversion factor to an IRL rating is 1.25. Voila. Kind of begs the question, why even use a PSL score...but I digress. Under this system there is no set in stone conversion factor. This is because in my opinion, PSL and IRL are attempting to describe different, yet related things. So instead of converting PSL to IRL, instead PSL should be taken into consideration when finding IRL.
What is an IRL Rating?
Your IRL rating is a measure of your visual attractiveness that considers qualities other than just your face. This includes your height, your race, your phenotype, your coloration (like for example what color your eyes and hair are) how good of a body you have, your proportions, wrist size, hand size, everything a person would see if you strolled up to them in the street - not considering your clothes. Because face is so important, we have an entire score dedicated just to your face - this is your PSL. Your PSL is then a major component of your IRL rating, however, your IRL can still have massive swings. As an extreme example, consider a PSL 6 Indian who is 5'5 and dark as all hell. To make matters worse, he's also a complete framelet. Now consider a 5 PSL white who is 6 foot. Obviously, the tall white is going to have a much higher IRL score.
This is a score where I think it makes sense to simply base it off the average, because that's how I think normies think of it. Again, it doesn't make a ton of sense to cap it at an arbitrary value like 10 - but whatever, let's just do so anyway, and for the nerdcels out there let's mathematically justify it by saying that your IRL score approaches 10 as you approach a higher and higher percentile score.
The average IRL rating is 5/10. We run into perception problems here again that we were trying to avoid earlier for PSL, but let's just say that this represents sexually viable people. So a 1/10 is an ugly fuck, but maybe he could still potentially mate with someone. You want to be a 7+.
What is SMV?
Your SMV, or your sexual market value, takes all possible factors that would attract a mate into account. As such, it is the closet we can get to your actual, real-life performance in mating outside of, you know, actually performing. It goes beyond just visual. However, we can sum it up as looks, money, and status. This takes the IRL rating (which includes the PSL rating) and then also considers your fashion sense, your status, how much money you make, what type of job you have, etc. etc.
This will change based on location. SMV is always relative, never absolute. An Indian's SMV is very different in India then it is in the West. As another example, if a blonde-haired white man went to Asia, he would see his SMV increase significantly. SMV is also rarely actually quantified. It's usually expressed in relative terms "high", "low", "higher than this", "lower than that", etc.
For the vast majority of you this is where your bread will get buttered. This is the meat and potatoes. The reason why is because you theoretically can inflate your money and status near-infinitely. The same isn't true for your looks unless you have an excellent looksmaxxing base. Deathniks, manlets, framelets, sub 4s, SMVmaxxing is where you should live, eat and breathe.
That's all. Hopefully someone actually reads this shit. I put a decent amount of work into it.
