If you ever went to summer camp, you may be familiar with the concept of “camp goggles,” and its close cousin, the “3-9-1” phenomenon. It worked like this: A boy who was of middling attractiveness in the real world would, in the closed-circuit environment of a co-ed summer camp, begin to look very cute. After camp ended, the boy’s appeal would vanish; his hair looked less swishy, his acne seemed worse, and it became obvious that his braces would be an impediment to good kissing. You’d so regret that you had ever found him appealing in the first place that his attractiveness rating — which had earlier climbed from a 3 to a 9 — would plummet to 1.

Any self-contained, temporary social ecosystem — a college class, a study circle, a weekend group trip — has a way of shifting your perceptions of attractiveness. And in adulthood, no environment has a greater distorting effect than the workplace. Enter the “Office Ten,” born from a combination of scarcity and proximity.

@danielle__cohen_ investigates why we may find ourselves attracted to our (probably mid?) coworkers at the link in bio.

Photo-illustration by Christina Hong; photo from NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images