Note that some of this is competitive benchmarking, and often encouraged by those men's partners, and tends to circulate around the way bullshit does because there are relatively few reality checks.

For the longest time I thought I was 5'9". Then my sister got a new boyfriend and was like "Yeah, he's 5'10". Well, I met boyfriend and I was at least an inch taller than him, so I guess that meant I was 5'11". On to my dating profile 5'11" went. Girls I met were like "You're really tall for an Asian dude" and my coworkers were like "We have an unusually tall team", so I got plenty of validation for my newfound height from external sources.

I finally went to the doctor's (yeah, it's pretty common for men to skip a few years in their 20s and early 30s), and sure enough: I was 5'8.75". My sister's husband is 5'8".

I had a funny experience in a group where height came up and I answered that I'm 6'1" and a girl in the group exclaimed that that's her boyfriends height too but he was standing next to me and was probably six inches shorter. Everyone looked very embarrassed and did the looking around but not at anyone thing...

There was a Reddit post a while ago (so take it with appropriate authority) plotting the distribution of men's reported height[1]. It's a pretty normal bell curve, with a distinct spike at exactly 6'0.

I wonder how much of the exaggeration is caused by the US measurement system providing an easy numeric threshold of "6". Does a similar spike appear when you limit the population to those using the metric system?

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/xmeh3p/oc_...

I think this is more common when reporting heights in feet+inches than in cm. Rounding up 1.76m to 1.80m seems much weirder than rounding up 5'11" to 6', since all measurements in cm are very precise-sounding.

I am 5'10.25", but I just say 5'10". It is hilarious whenever someone else claims to be 5'10" and I am multiple inches taller than they are.

I'm 174 cm in height. Do I wish to be taller? Sometimes. Do I wish to be taller to impress a potential romantic partner? Absolutely not. But I'm shorter than most men in my country, so on social occasions in public (club, party, whatever), I struggle to make my way to the bar, because I literally cannot see a thing. I cope that with being on the louder side to make my way. It is what it is.

Also:

> "smash your face with a hammer"

> "tiptoemaxxing"

Everything but seeing a therapist, huh?

I’m 6 foot and a quarter, if I say I’m 6 foot people don’t believe me and it becomes a conversation, if I say I’m 6’1 people believe it and say nothing else.

Path of least resistance

6'6" here. No way I want to claim more.

I always explicitly quote my government ID.

Giant of a man standing at 5'10, felt no need to ever lie about my height.

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> From guys trying to make it past women’s six-foot filter

IMO this filter is a red flag unless she is taller herself. What benefit is there to getting past it? Don't reward people for being overly arbitrary in this stuff ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Height is a dumb status symbol for a country where getting ahead for most people is no longer possible.

Is it lying if you believe it?

I like to tell people that my doctor said I'm 6 feet with shoes on.

Not lying; it's true! I'm like 5'11.

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Ok grandma, why did you post this on Hacker News

Why is this on the front page of Hacker News?

How does this have to do with anything related to Hacker News?

The New Yorker is basically The Sun with rambling text instead of pictures of aliens.