S.A.D. defines the “popular” Asian, but it’s what we expect.
Subtle Asian Dating (S.A.D.) is a new Facebook group, created by the Subtle Asian Dating page and inspired by the title of another popular group called Subtle Asian Traits, on which members of the global Asian community post dating profiles for their friends or themselves, highlighting pros and cons with accompanying pictures. It has recently gained major traction and attention among Asians with attractive, single Asian friends around the world, from Canada and the U.S. to Australia and China.
A major theme, which has also become a meme in the group, is that the majority of profiles features one specific type of Asian who fits several ambitious characteristics: ABG or ABB (Asian Baby Girl or Asian Baby Boy) but also “wholesome,” 4.0 GPA, Ivy League school, multilingual, raves, boba lover, might be short but has a big personality, Instagram model, six-pack or super fit body, and fashionable — the list goes on. And yet, the majority of members claim to feel that they are the opposite; it shows in comments and popular non-profile posts that gain several thousands of likes (Figure 1, 2, 3). If S.A.D. is meant for all kinds of Asians to find romance, why do all its popular profiles advertise the same, rare kind of person?
As learned in Networks, popularity inherently requires that a few people command a huge fraction of attention, while most of the others remain relatively unnoticed. In this case, those few includes Asians who meet all of the above requirements. But there’s more to the explanation.
Individuals who post on S.A.D. primarily promote friends that they think others will like based on real-life experience or social norms — people whom they expect will be highly liked, which would be a measurement of payoff. Like a z’’-value expectation of what stable fraction of people will buy a product, these individuals have a z’’-value expectation of what stable fraction of people will find the profile attractive and want to give it likes, thus making that profile or “product” thrive and “sell.” This value is not an explicit fraction of people or based on a set “price” number of likes, but having thousands of comments and likes, frequently showing up in news feeds, and moving to the top of a feed are various aspects that together might deem a profile popular.
Once a few people posted these kinds of profiles and other members saw how popular they were, other individuals followed suit by posting similar profiles. Those profiles then also gained much attention and inspired more, similar posts. This exemplifies the “rich get richer” phenomenon, in which the “rich” are this popular type of Asian whose perceived attractiveness and value “get richer” as their high desirability is reinforced. So, naturally, people continue to feed the rich because they want to promote products that will actually sell well (or profiles that will be highly liked), and S.A.D. is flooded with more flawless, “wholesome” ABGs and ABBs.
Each S.A.D. member’s expectations about likable Asian profiles matter, and they influence what is posted to produce real effects. We might truly be “sad members” because the popular profiles seem better than us, but we must admit we’re also doing this to ourselves.
Figure 1: Example of popular traits vs. average members.
Figure 2: Despite the given context, this post makes a point about common traits in popular profiles.
Figure 3: Example of the effects on many people’s well-being.
References:
Subtle Asian Dating Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/725870897781323/?fref=nf (must request to join to see posts)