What makes a person interesting?

Nando’s recently launched an advertisement campaign in Australia under the slogan ‘eat interesting’ (emphasis added). The advertisement is themed around online dating. 

I didn't know they served wine at Nandos...

In it, two people who have obviously exchanged messages online meet at a Nando’s restaurant for a date. He is mid-thirties, overweight, bald and ‘nerdy-looking’. She is mid-thirties, obviously takes care of herself and probably works in the NSW public service. They have a conversation; it goes like this:

…

‘I notice that you look nothing like your profile picture?’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, in your picture you have long blond hair…’

‘I haven’t updated my pic in a while.’

‘And you said you’re into Yoga’

‘Yoda. Do you know who he is?’

‘Yep. And where do you surf?’

‘I…don’t know’ (they should have said the internet…)

‘And you said you did some modelling?’

‘Oh yeah, just a little bit {smile}…planes, trains, that sort of thing.’

…

To break the awkward silence he digs into his meal of Chicken and chips, to which the slogan plays: ‘eat interesting’.

The message is a bit odd. It seems to say that what would be interesting is someone with long blonde hair who is into Yoga, surfing and modelling. After a bit of reduction, I think it is fair to put it another way: ‘people who are principally physical are interesting’.

While he is not conventionally handsome, I see no reason why the chap in the advertisement isn’t interesting. What’s to say his modelling exploits haven’t led him to build an enormous working reproduction of the London metropolitan rail network in his garage? His fondness for Yoda for speaks of a predilection for fantasy and science fiction—perhaps he has a very active imagination and some wonderful stories to tell.

I would wager there were a lot of interesting questions to answer when making this...

Awkward man is basically cerebral, and average Sydney lady is basically looking for something mindless but pretty. That’s fair, and I certainly don’t want to suggest that someone who lies to get dates shouldn’t get a bad rap. But I do think the insinuation that physicality, especially when proxied by Yoga and surfing, the wind-chimes of a pseudo-spiritual lifestyle, is more ‘interesting’ than cerebral and creative pursuits, is gross.  

Imagine being on a date with someone whose defining features were yoga, surfing, having long blonde hair and modelling. What would you talk about? Would they be able to say anything interesting about those things? Could they describe the modelling industry to you in an interesting way?

When you ask them what they did today, what would they say? ‘Got up, prayed to the rising sun in down-dog, then went to the beach to catch the mid-morning swell after all the suits had gone to work; had a boost juice for lunch then went to get my body hair removed for my photo shoot at 4. Had a salad for afternoon tea and now I’m here with you.’

He's so interesting...just look at that ethnic necklace;
...and that tatoo; so mysterious, I wonder what it means?

Fascinating.

What were you thinking about while surfing?

‘Just how pretty everything is…oh, and how I could get the salt out of my hair before the shoot.’

I could go on. My point is that this person is, I would suspect, actually really boring. By contrast, the nerd-burger could probably tell you about the chapter of his fantasy novel he concocted in his head while taking the train to work in the morning, the program he coded to optimise traffic flows through the harbour tunnel while at work, and the scale replica of the titanic he finally managed to finish building out of matchsticks after work—the finishing touch was a hand sculpted figure of Jack and Rosa for the bow. 

Shiiiiiiiiiitt...

I’m not saying everyone should start dating nerds. I just want to underline that what makes someone aesthetically pleasing, or even generally attractive, is a very different thing to what makes someone interesting. Middle aged Sydney public servant is not looking for an interesting partner; she is looking for a pleasant partner. Let’s not get confused. 

P.S. I broke my subjectivist rules in this article. Sydney woman probably thinks a scale matchstick model of the titanic and fantasy plots are boring, and that stretching for 90 minutes is really interesting. However, the advertisement implies that this value apportionment is true/correct/objective for the most part, and I take umbrage with that.