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>It’s comfortable enough for Lewis, who is 5 foot 9. (Lewis jokes that I should report that he’s an inch taller so that he can boast about it on the dating apps. I do not oblige.)

I think something got lost in translation here. In SF online dating app culture, 5'10 is the minimum "not short" height. Note that it's specifically not considered "tall". Why 5'10? I don't know. How do I know this? Way too many overheard conversations with coworkers, housemates, and countless acquaintances of the above over the past eight years of living here as a tech worker. The result is lots of men rounding 2-3 inches up to reach 5'10. I hesitate to call it lying, because there's a reality distortion field that results from enough people doing it. Lots of people are convinced that they or their partners are actually a taller height. I can't find it at the moment, but I saw a post a while ago about how this becomes a real problem for things like ski rentals, where inches in height difference actually matter.

Then 5'10-5'11 guys who previously wouldn't have rounded up to 6' are forced into doing so, because the expectation is that a guy who puts 5'10 is shorter than he really is. Then the 6' guys have to put 6'2 for the same reason. At 6'2 it doesn't matter anymore, since it's officially tall. Yes, this is really dumb. But the point is that it's not about "boasting", which sounds silly.

[paulryanrogers]

Average male height in the US is 5'9" so that may be where the threshold came from.