How would you rate yourself out of 10?
You’ve probably seen, heard of, or even imagined (?) something about this trend that took over TikTok a while ago. It’s all about so-called influencers stopping random strangers—mostly young people—on the street and asking them this question. Then, they find another person, show them a photo of the previous stranger, and ask them to rate them. The cycle repeats.
The whole point is to see how people value themselves and how much that aligns with what a random stranger—or society, once the video goes viral—thinks. It’s all surface-level, purely based on appearance. These strangers stay strangers. They never actually meet, they don’t know a thing about each other, not even their names.
I don’t know exactly why, but this trend annoys the hell out of me, and I’ve been wanting to rant about it for a while.
The first thing that bothers me is that it’s a question with no real answer. No matter what you say, it all comes down to the next person they interview. Whether you end up making a fool of yourself or not is entirely in the hands of a complete stranger who has no idea who you are—and the thousands of anonymous cowards in the comments saying “how dare you rate yourself a 7 when you’re clearly a 4?”
How would you rate yourself out of 10?
The answer is obvious—but not to someone whose frontal lobe isn’t fully developed yet. That’s the trap. That’s why the interviewers target young people. You don’t even have to scroll past the comments to see that the ones eating this content up are Gen Z kids (or even Alpha) who are probably asking themselves the same question.
I don’t blame them, because we’ve all been there. That stage of life when you think of yourself as a 6/10 at best. Even that high school crush you saw as perfect and untouchable probably felt like a 6/10 at some point.
We compare ourselves to the top 1% because, when we’re young, we don’t realize that the insanely beautiful people we see in commercials, movies, and social media are the 1%. And are they really as beautiful as we’ve been told? We don’t even question it, because those are the people even our close family members see on screen, and can't contain to comment something about their beauty.
The truth is, actors and models aren’t ugly, but how attractive are they, really? Well, it depends on who you ask. That’s the only way to answer a loaded question like How would you rate yourself out of 10?
Some women think Vin Diesel is a 10/10 (How? Why? Genuine question) and some men think Ana de Armas is a 5/10 (How? Why? Genuine question, again). People are like colors. Attraction is subjective. That’s how it’s always been and always will be. The menu is endless, and everyone goes for whatever they’re craving at the moment.
Of course, I’m a fucking 10—but I’m saying that because you’re asking me. Whether I’m a 10 to you or anyone else, well, that depends on who you ask.
And let’s not forget, we all have good and bad days. Some days we feel like a solid 10, other days more like a 7.58, or maybe even less. Sometimes we just don’t like what we see in the mirror, and that’s normal too. Self-esteem is a weird thing—it fluctuates when you least expect it.
I could make my usual grumpy old man comment (I'm thirty, lmao) about how sad it is that younger generations put so much weight on appearances, but the truth is, society has always been like this. The only difference now is that we’re walking around with our fucking phones in hand, rating people we see on our screens.
I’m still not sure what exactly pisses me off the most about all of this. Part of me thinks it’s unfair to publicly humiliate strangers just to make a profit off their image. Another part hates that some people have their heads so far up their own asses that they think they have the right to decide who’s a 4 and who’s a 10.
Or maybe it just hits a nerve because my teenage self thought he was ugly as hell, and it took me multiple glow-ups, plus constant physical and mental effort, to build the self-esteem I have now.
I don’t know. I just want you to take this one truth with you if you made it this far:
🧬 In the eyes of the right person, you’ll always be a 10. Thanks for reading.