Since the dawn of Silicon Valley, there’s been a widespread perception that San Francisco is, put gently, not exactly a dating mecca. The city famously has a skewed male-to-female ratio, and there’s a perception among many women that men who work in tech tend to have poor social and emotional skills and a lack of style, often opting for Patagonia vests and Meta glasses rather than putting substantive effort into their appearance.

However, on August 31, Celeste Amadon, the founder of the AI-powered dating app Known, attempted to reverse that stereotype. In an X thread, she announced that she and her team were compiling a list of “SF’s most dateable people,” titled “San Francisco’s Hot List.”

The post was skewered online by many in and outside of the tech scene, with some referring to it as “cringe.” But it was an extremely effective bit of marketing for Known, garnering more than 15,000 submissions 24 hours after the tweet was posted, according to Amadon. It was also an effective piece of counter-propaganda to the stereotype of San Franciscans, officially heralding that San Francisco Is Hot.

Known’s Hot List is part of a broader conversation focused on the general attractiveness of the San Francisco populace—and why some locals seem to be placing more importance on being perceived as hot. Last summer, two women who work in tech—Madison Kanna and Cat Orman—threw an “enforced ratio” party at a Tesla showroom, ensuring that there were as many women as men. The invite stipulated that the vibe would be “unapologetically feminine and fun” and that “Patagonia vests will be turned away at the door.”

Mantis Biotech startup founder Georgia Witchel posted an X thread titled “Tech Is Having a Hot Girl Renaissance.” In the thread, Witchel describes how social media has been deluged with “young, attractive women taking tastefully slutty duck-faced mirror selfies” to promote their startups, citing Known and the insurance company Corgi as examples. Witchel says her argument is not so much that she objects to young women using their attractiveness as a marketing strategy—it's more to explain how and why it has emerged as a marketing strategy to begin with, telling WIRED the trend is a result of “a renaissance of sales culture in SF.”