“Competency kink” is one of those terms that often makes people’s eyes light up when I mention it because they recognize this concept from their own life. I think many (most? all?) of us are attracted to competency, but there are people for whom competency can make or break an attraction, and I am one of those people.
Be it the local barista whose latte art is legendary, the fast-fingered guitar player busking on a street corner, or the movie star whose emotive eyes light up entire theatres, I can develop deeply intense crushes on people just because they’re so damn good at what they do. I think this is one of the reasons I value competence so highly in myself, too (and am self-critical when I perceive myself to be incompetent as something I am doing): I know that it not only makes me skilled or talented, but to a significant portion of the population, it also makes me hot. Win-win!
Here are 5 people who are all, frankly, attractive anyway, but are made even moreso by the fact that they’re extremely fucking competent. Warning: there is fangirlish gushing ahead.
1) The YouTuber who makes cocktail videos. There are multiple layers to this man’s competency. First, obviously, he knows cocktails: he can rattle off the history of seemingly any drink, and has both the mental and physical skills necessary to create entirely new recipes from his own imagination. He’s great with a shaker, can crack an ice cube into pieces with one strategic tap of a barspoon, and improvises new drinks the way a jazz sax player improvises a solo. But on top of his cocktail wizardry, there’s also his video production competence: his editing is always impeccable, his set is well-dressed, and he brings a telegenic whimsy to every video. If anyone was ever born to make YouTube videos about cocktails, it’s this man.
2) The improvisor who makes improv look easy. Look, it’s been well-established on the internet over many years that I basically have a crush on every good improvisor (I mean “good” both in the sense of “skilled at improv” and in the sense of “not a misogynist/racist/right-wing asshole”). I was going to link to the one I’m thinking of today but, let’s face it, this applies to hundreds if not thousands of people (plus I have spoken to him in real life and am thus too embarrassed to specify who I mean). Improvisors make up wildly funny shit on the spot, as part of an art form that famously relies on always supporting your co-performers’ ideas and listening to them more closely than any dude on a Tinder date has ever listened to me in my life. Being “yes-and”-ed is hot, and people who are good at “yes-and”-ing are therefore very, very hot. BRB, I’m off to re-watch a completely improvised musical number about the city of Poughkeepsie that my current improv crush pulled out of his proverbial ass last week.
3) The musician whose brain is an absurd miracle. I’ve been a fan of the musical collective known as the Postmodern Jukebox for many years, and have always been struck by the brilliance of its fearless leader, Scott Bradlee. As far as I’m aware, this man singlehandedly writes most of the arrangements for the band, transforming modern-day radio hits to make them sound like they were written and recorded in decades gone by. I can’t even wrap my head around the savant-like skill it would require to turn the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” into a 1940s-esque bop, or to arrange a Super Mario Brothers medley designed to be tap-danced to. It’s hot when someone is so good at what they do that they almost seem like an alien sent from Planet Talent to make life on Earth more tolerable.
4) The Pokémon genius. I’ve been watching this guy do Pokémon challenges on YouTube and Twitch for much of the pandemic, and continue to find it astonishing how weirdly hot it is to me when someone knows tons of minutiae about Pokémon games. One of my favorite pastimes is to get high and watch him do battles, especially when he correctly predicts what the opponent A.I. is going to do (which is often). After spending much of my childhood and adolescence feeling like an uncool dork for being into these games, there’s something healing about seeing someone way dorkier than me in this regard who has nonetheless attained massive success and is, let’s not forget, a total babe.
5) The gorgeous lawyer. I’m talking about the YouTube lawyer known as LegalEagle, but to be honest, a lot of lawyers are hot to me. It’s the intelligence, the encyclopedic mastery of their work, and (in some cases) the dedication to achieving actual justice. Plus, a lot of times they wear suits, and suits are objectively hot. I rest my case.