I CTO'd a fairly successful dating site for 4 years. I think a lot of the critiques of dating sites/apps miss the mark. The "they only stay in business by keep you single" sort of comments.
Instead, i think dating sites' issues are more fundamental. Thought experiment: write a dating profile for yourself in the 3rd person. Then have you 5 closest friends and family members each write one on your behalf. Now have everyone vote on which of the 11 profiles is the most "you". Do you believe yours comes in first? How about top 5?
When we fill out profiles, we naturally try to highlight some parts of ourselves and hide others. Your friends and family see you as you present. Only you see yourself as you intent.
The result of this all is that our dating profiles are a limited, and often misleading, approximation of ourselves. Any matchmaking app is thus matching my "Online Dating Approximation" with your "Online Dating Approximation". The hope is that if our approximations match, we can extrapolate us matching? Weak connection in my experience.
I think this is why Tinder and Bumble have had so much success with their frankly superficial model. At least the online vs reality is closer than more in-depth matching schemes. But we still hear tales of cat/hat-fishing, so maybe they suffer the same issues.
None of the dating apps ive seen have really keyed into the "monkey brain" side of love. The subtle things that make us truly love a person. To be seen if any get there, but there is just no substitute for getting to know someone in person vs flipping through people online.
> None of the dating apps ive seen have really keyed into the "monkey brain" side of love.
Back in the day, okcupid did this for me. I'm quirky, and expect the same in dates. It wasn't just a biography, you could see their answers to all sorts of random crap. This gave a fuller picture of a person. Of course, I had already learned that falling in love online was a bright red flag, so my expectation was somewhat less than finding that monkey brain chemistry: I was looking for people who I could tolerate (and vice verse!) long enough to figure that part out.
After my first marriage ended, apps had all turned into tindr, and it seems that quirky folks end up in the generic loser pile, while the top 1-10% are doing bloodsport. Fortunate for me, I'm on the empathetic side of quirky and connecting with people in person is easy enough if I put myself out there. But there's the rub: solo tindr binges make me feel miserable, going out and living makes me feel alive -- and that's what people are attracted to.
Yes, the observation from someone in the industry is that the top 10-20% are "date bacon" and have no trouble meeting people, and everyone else is a loser.
In my brief recent experience in the app world, spam wasn't a huge problem. Maybe it's worse for men, but the spam accounts and messages I saw were all vapid normies who I'd never click on. I got much less of that than weird (but unfortunately real) aggro dudes who wanted me to see their dicks. (Often by insisting we move to another messaging platform with less consent control)
I have not used any dating app in the past decade. OKC was last platform, while in graduate school. I LOVED the "percent match" but across multiple profiles (over a few years) I learned how "to game" their system by only answering certain impactful (but not damaging) questions.
If you have not read Christian Rudder's "DATACLISM" book (he is a co-founder of Match group, writing on their data analytics blog), it is FULL of "human condition", via charts/diagrams/analysis.
My past two relationships have been via dating neighbors, which I do not actually recommend (as more successful).
OkCupid was awesome. I met my wife there ten years ago. We were a 93% match! Had many of the same (or similar) answers to the personality questions.
Interestingly, a few months before meeting my now wife, I dated a girl I met on Meetup who also happened to be on Match. Our relationship only lasted a few months. We were a 72% match or something like that. Go figure!
+1 for OkCupid. I met a lot of the most important persons there who even stayed friends. It is one of the sad examples of MBAs destroying an app they don't understand saying the "UX ix too tedious".
There was a post on HN once by a former OkCupid person who, as I read it, took a more nuanced view along the lines of: the market moved to cellphones and that kind of long form entry (or reading) isn't viable on a few-inch screen with point and grunt input.
Beyond an insider sharing the view, I find it compelling because it didn't require anyone to have been an idiot. I've certainly seen other effects that look like the widespread usage of cellphones dumbing down the internet in disappointing ways. ... and it explains why someone doesn't just recreate the magic that OkCupid had: they can't. For classic-OkCupid to exist the public needs widespread access to a communications tool suitable for sending things more nuanced than dick pics.
I think what also people miss - is that by OkCupid requiring long form essays. the demographic would tend to be educated college folks - quirky gals studying humanities, chemistry etc.
so you literally have a crowd of people who like reading, and are critical thinkers etc & most likely to be high earners too.
but like every thing - the power of the lowest common denominator rules ie endless swiping on who you think is hot.
this doesn't end with apps -- with forums gone -- you can hardly find places online where civilized discourse happens.
now everything is just for the 'gram. or to go viral on tiktok.
Competition is supposed to give us choice. Instead, when one competitor discovers a cheap trick, the rest have to follow suit to stay alive, or at least believe they do. Hence there are a half dozen dating apps that all offer the same fucking swipe right garbage. OKCupid was pretty good, before the ubiquity of smartphones.
OkCupid was great in the early 2010s when you used it mainly on a website and before it was bought and enshittified by the Match group just like all other dating sites.
It seems like it would be easy to recreate that magic -- it's just a website after all -- but getting the requisite network effects would be pretty much impossible. And if by some miracle you did succeed, Match group would just buy it and ruin it.
you should go get an MBA, it's the closest thing you'll ever find to surrounding yourself with more interesting OKCupid-from-back-in-the-day characters than you can possibly date through in 2 years!
Meaning, if you don't think MBAs understand OKCupid, they do. But they also understand match.com
Plenty of fish was the only good one. It sucked and did no matching at all. That meant there was an expectation that you basically exchange 2 messages and then meet in person. All the rest is bs: people are not the same in person as online, so the main job of a dating app is to get people in chairs in person asap
I tried that one in my last foray into online dating. It was how you describe: simple, no b.s. Only, it was pretty much dead and I quickly met up with the two active people on the site and abandoned it. (Slight exaggeration, I'm sure)
The story is about how Tinder and Bumble are in decline. The superficial model isn’t working anymore.
I think the issues are much more fundamental than you suggest. They’re societal and they’re subcultural within the apps. For one, people are much pickier now than they’ve ever been. On the other hand, the dating apps have this filtration problem: those who successfully form a relationship quit the app, possibly for life.
Unfortunately, it’s not random when people form successful relationships. Some people are just much better at it than others. This is where the filtration problem arises: over time, the concentration of people who aren’t good at forming relationships increases, as these are the folks who stay in the apps the longest. This makes it harder and harder to find a relationship through the apps, and frustration ensues.
The filtration problem isn't app specific, that's life. For example, looking for partners at 40 is very difficult, and the population of singles has been very filtered.
With respect to the apps, you have to realize the filtering problem comes to a steady state, where new "dateables" in equals "datables" out. This isn't necessarily a problem
I think the time constant might be larger than the lifetime of any of the dating apps so far.
Unless the "undateable" person gives up and accepts staying single forever, they may stay on the platform for a decade or more. Maybe with decreasing activity/time investment, but still an active user eligible for matching. That's longer than I'd expect a dating platform (or any random software startup in general) to thrive.
A lot of these profiles stay on the site and appear active when the user has moved on. That’s good for the company but bad for actual people looking for matches
> A lot of these profiles stay on the site and appear active when the user has moved on. That’s good for the company but bad for actual people looking for matches
It would seem that the obviously good solution to this is to hide profiles if the user hasn't been active in a certain time period. Say, 30 days?
Of course, that's not good for the company metrics. They have to inflate their numbers somehow, and so including accounts that aren't being used anymore in their subscriber count makes them look good!
I imagine there’s a relationship between this accumulation of singles and population growth rates. It would be interesting to compare the demographic flows of online dating in countries with aging populations vs populations that are trending younger over time.
Maybe for some people. Personally I don’t find it very interesting. From the people I know on Instagram, the pictures they take and the stories they write are extremely curated and artificial.
It’s like deciding to date a famous actress based on a character she played in a movie. She may look like the character but personality and interest-wise she’s unlikely to be anything even remotely resembling the character!
This really takes the artificiality of the dating profile and explodes it to an incredible degree. I’d much rather meet someone through a common interest and start dating organically. That’s basically what the article is saying is coming back.
I've heard tinder users say they are picky because swiping yes on too many reduces your visibility (or something like that). That seems like a bad incentive to make people take chances on each other.
do we actually have any evidence this is true? people have complained about dating since we were neanderthals; articles like this have written themselves for the past decade
There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. What the profile says is not just a list of bullet points of facts. How it says what it says is in my opinion a more reliable signal than the facts contained in it.
Anyone can say that they are funny, and loves to travel. Can they write it funny? The kind of funny wich meshes with your funny? Are they insightfull? Empathic? Judgemental? Confident? Do they have lots of insecurities? These scream of the page from between the words even if, and perhaps especially so if the person is unaware of them.
But of course that only works if they wrote the words themselves. Otherwise i might as well ask them for the phone number of that relative of them who wrote their profile.
> Thought experiment: write a dating profile for yourself in the 3rd person. Then have you 5 closest friends and family members each write one on your behalf.
This works for what you like as well, your close friends or family will likely write down a better list of what you like than you would do. We aren't honest about what we like since we want to say "I like to exercise" or "I like to cook" instead of less noble things that would describe you better. This makes it really hard to match people who would like each other since they aren't honest about what they would like in a partner.
Anyway, the main problem is that you have to sell yourself online. It isn't natural to sell ourselves, we learn who people are by seeing what they do not by listening to them talk about themselves.
> The result of this all is that our dating profiles are a limited, and often misleading, approximation of ourselves.
I once asked my therapist what she thought of an idea where therapists did double-duty as matchmakers, serving as a kind of gatekeeper, where they only set you up with someone once they saw you really did the work and moved past whatever was holding you back in your relationships, thus protecting the market from "lemons". She said it wouldn't work and didn't go into the details; over time, I came to appreciate that getting better at relationships meant diving in, imperfect as I am, and getting better through experience. So such a gatekeeper would have a moral hazard/catch-22, not being able to set people up on dates would prevent them from progressing.
Who you really are is someone who is always a work in progress. No dating profile could ever capture that - and it's unreasonable to expect one to ever succeed at doing so. And if someone isn't changing and growing - they should work on that before blaming their dating profile.
> So such a gatekeeper would have a moral hazard/catch-22, not being able to set people up on dates would prevent them from progressing.
Clearly this. Many people think that therapy is just like going to a doctor that will fix you in a moment with the right pill (well, or in a few sessions). But really it's like having a personal trainer. They can guide you but you need to sweat it yourself if you want improvements.
>over time, I came to appreciate that getting better at relationships meant diving in, imperfect as I am, and getting better through experience.
And for me, I only got angrier at the artificial experience and more or less gave up, focusing on a career where I feel I do have impact.
I don't know, I guess everyone will process the ordeal differently. I never liked the idea of stuff like Twitter or Facebook to begin with, so I wasn't surprised that a social media website dedicated to the messiest part of courtship would drive me over the edge.
> When we fill out profiles, we naturally try to highlight some parts of ourselves and hide others.
Sure, but this is not unique to dating sites. When meeting anyone on a first date IRL we present the best version of ourselves. It takes time for people to get to know each other, and whether they first meet online or in a bar is not much different. Meeting IRL obviously has more signals than seeing a digital profile, but a digital profile is somewhere in between a glance and a wink at a bar, and having an in-person conversation with someone.
The really insidious aspect of dating sites is how exploitative they can be, and "they only stay in business by keeping you single" is fairly accurate. On Tinder, you never truly know whether you're not getting likes because of your profile, or because their algorithm has decided to effectively shadowban you. Your only option would be to buy boost packs and super-likes to even get a chance to be seen.
There's a large market opportunity for a dating site that is actually transparent and not exploitative.
The problem in Korea at least isn't with meeting people (well, for 80% of the population), it is young couples feeling they can't meet the finances required to satisfy social norms, and thus deciding to delay the marriage-kids sequence indefinitely.
Several of my coworkers had been dating for 5+ years, but they were only making $50k annually (early career engineers). The socially expected family-sized condo costs $500k to $1M, and the young couple is expected to buy and furnish it before their wedding.
Huh? You were the CTO of a dating app, you start a line with “more fundamental…” What was the ratio of active women to active men? That seems to be most important.
Like dating apps are something like 5-95 active women to active men. If my dating app were 50-50, dude, I could make my app like the WeChat shake to match, and it will perform better than profiles or swiping or whatever big philosophical ideas you have.
On our app we were about 60% women to 40% men. Nonbinary made up a small enough % to round to zero. DAU/MAU were roughly the same, though you might see seasonal swings toward one or another.
I have a hard time with this. For one, a dating site where there is 3 women for every 2 men is such an anomaly in itself, and then when word gets out that "hey, it's a dating site that isn't a total sausage fest" (to be blunt), then I can't see that ratio doing anything but skewing rapidly in the direction of every other dating site.
For the reason you describe we consciously chose to never talk publicly about gender ratios. Having predominately female users (or even close to 50/50 actives) tends to attract people for the wrong reasons.
By "wrong reasons" i am referring to the intentions of those new users.
Say your users are predominantly seeking long-term relationships, and your branding supports that. Then a bunch of men, fueled by gender-ratio marketing, flood your app seeking hookups. You will see short-term a bump in engagement and payments. A/B testing will suggest everything is great. But long-term your product loses value as your users lose faith in your ability to deliver on what they signed up for. The (in this case women) leave and the product becomes another graveyard.
I think it's a conglomeration of issues _including_ unaligned incentives of the companies vs their users. The fact that they're nearly all self curated profiles is a symptom of the former.
The core "Apps" don't want the real you with all your idiocracies and flaws, that won't sell the most subscriptions. They want the heavily curated "you", which inevitably becomes a bait and switch for someone else when the idealized you is replaced by IRL you.
With the newer generations fully online for their lifespans, it may be an interesting (and dystopian) exercise to use a specially trained LLM with hooks into social platforms, long form writing, etc to "summarize" ones "life corpus" instead of relying entirely on self reporting and curated images.
Can't help but interpret this take as a little disingenuous. Most dating apps seem to follow the trajectory of "new app launched" -> "new app grows and gets popular" -> "new app bought out by match.com" -> "new app turns to shit"
I'd like to see one that doesn't employ all the dark patterns, but where instead the incentives of the org are aligned with the incentives of the users. If you manage to onboard enough users to get traction, establish yourself as the go-to place for dating, and tell every single little greedy MBA and investurd to pound sand - you may well have solve this problem once and for all and stay king of the castle.
Agreed. GP's comment ignores the reality that dating apps are aggressively monopolized by a single company, and that many of their acquisitions have resulted in demonstrable drops in quality.
It's not that nobody has figured out dating apps yet, it is that selling lonely men expensive add-ons is far too profitable.
The problem is that getting to that point requires quite a bit of capital. The hard part isn’t building the app, it’s buying users, largely through advertising, and then filtering the assholes through moderation staffing. Both of that costs a lot of money, up front. To date, nobody has come up with a way to monetize dating apps in a way that doesn’t negate the benefits of the app.
Personally I’d love to see someone figure out a way to do an activitypub based dating app, where people can build small community instances funded directly by the users.
There's also the fact people only have a somewhat accurate idea of what they'll actually like in a partner. Maybe you only think you'll like someone who's always direct, or who wants to be submissive in bed, or is financially responsible.
> I think a lot of the critiques of dating sites/apps miss the mark. The "they only stay in business by keep you single" sort of comments.
Yeah? I think your comment, as someone that got paid by this market, completely miss the mark. People aren't tired of dating apps because they don't know how to use it, this is just a patronizing comment of someone that made money out of it, probably pushing features that made you guys stay in the business because you kept single people in the app.
> None of the dating apps ive seen have really keyed into the "monkey brain" side of love.
Now you should review the comments and your opinion then you might get so some conclusion related to why none of those apps works long-term for the user, including the one you were responsible for.
I imagine random but surprisingly shared tidbits like your favorite spongebob character being Plankton. Or remembering your most embarassing MySpace post. Or your favorite toy growing up being one of those super balls that you bounced into oblivion one day, never to be seen again (hey, it said "super" after all).
Those buzzfeed-esque tiny details you probably wouldn't think about unless prompted. But it can say a lot about you and where/how you grew up.
I have a theory that contemporary life causes many people great despair, relating both to dating/relationships and career, because our culture is not very supportive or accepting of personal growth.
So, if you get off to a good start in your dating life and career from your late teens and early 20s, you get plenty of approval and validation and compounding success as you progress through life, and acceptance that you deserve the success you're having ("they were always a high achiever, ever since school days").
Whereas if you're not in the top tier of "chosen" people and experience a few painful rejections and setbacks, you're made to feel that's just what you deserve and what you're stuck with, and there's not much you can do to improve your lot. I suspect this has become more of an entrenched belief since the discovery of evolution/DNA, and the generally accepted belief that most of our life outcomes are predetermined by our inheritance.
I think the dating apps (and employment recruitment platforms/techniques) intensify this further, by filtering based on a few simple characteristics, some of which really are genetically predetermined (height) and others that are downstream consequences of having had a blessed start in life (income/education level/job seniority/state of health).
Society generally, including/especially the dating/employment spheres, don't seem to offer much support for people who really sincerely trying to undertake a journey of personal improvement (outside of mainstream accepted practices like conventional fitness training and education). You're just expected to be "good to go". Someone who may have been dealt a rough hand in life but is trying very hard to improve themselves, including their social skills, their emotions, their health/fitness, their career prospects - all of which will lead them to becoming better romantic partners over time - can find themselves getting little support and encouragement along the way, and indeed can get a lot of discouragement from some quarters (including friends and family members).
I think a lot about how the world would be better if more people were encouraged and empowered to go on long-term journeys of deep personal growth, and what kinds of social platforms, including dating and employment platforms, could emerge out of that and bring much more opportunity and satisfaction to people who currently feel the despair of being left behind.
Humans are the same as we were for millennia, the problem is that we seem to be having a bit of a self-denial crisis nowadays. We just can’t accept our flaws anymore, apparently, so we build these fake meaningless narratives that “everyone is special” and “all bodies are beautiful” etc. The truth is that dating is brutal; it works very well for a few people, but for the majority of average people it is a hard competition to which nobody actually know the rules. It’s completely asymmetric gender-wise and failing on it is basically failing on being.
So you find yourself in this situation where everyone is so nice and polite, so sophisticated and accepting, so inclusive, but for some reason nobody gives a single ** about having a romantic relationship with you. How’s that possible? Well it’s possible because it’s all fake. Deep inside, in our intimacy and our inner circles, we’re the same as we were a thousand years ago. The apps simply make it obvious and pull it to the surface.
Ugly people with lumpy bodies have been successfully reproducing for millennia. Many of them even had/have shit personalities to top it off. Dating sucks because in modern times we are coddled and are terrified of failure, many of us spend way too much time behind computer screens and on social media so our people skills have atrophied, and we also spend relatively little time around other people in fun and recreational environments so the opportunities are just missing in a massive way.
The apps completely change how we perceive ourselves and our potential sexual partners. I can't believe I have to say this, but the biggest things that have changed with regards to dating in the past 10 years vs the past 1,000 are social patterns and technology.
>It’s completely asymmetric gender-wise and failing on it is basically failing on being.
This kind of attitude is so harmful. If your life's purpose is 100% dependent on some idealized stranger granting you validation you are in for a bad time. Sex is great, biological imperatives are powerful, but you wont find animals falling into existential dread and despair because they haven't gotten laid yet (or recently). That is a particularly human trait, and it comes from obsessive and self-defeating beliefs about the world rather than reality itself. You might feel like this belief is out of your hands, but it very much is not. Your beliefs are one of the few things in this world that are entirely up to you to change and improve upon (or not).
I think we’re saying the same thing basically but my perspective was a bit too negative. Dating is brutal but we still do it, ugly or not, of course. We’ve been doing it for millennia and we never needed politically correct fashion ads to make that work. The problem is when you find yourself surrounded by this comforting mumbo jumbo of “every body is beautiful” and then when you get out there it doesn’t apply. I’d much rather have someone tell me “it’s a jungle out there, get ready, people will treat you like shit but find your path and be strong and unique in who you are”.
Your comment about the harmful attitude is correct, I 100% agree. But again, if you listen to what is implicitly conveyed in social media (where every human being is basically reduced to a single one-dimensional score), you would have a hard time reaching that conclusion. Nobody really “says” that, but as a human being you read between the lines. I guess it sounded like I was saying “date apps are fine, it’s us who are the problem” but I didn’t mean it, I think social media is very harmful.
Have you ever watched a nature program? 99% of animals are spending 99% of their time trying to survive and reproduce. They aren’t asking themselves “why?” hence the absence of any existential crises.
That is the universal behavior, and it is totally valid for any being capable of knowing this to be depressed about it.
The experiences with people need to be high quality if you want people to socialize often.
Speaking for myself, I'm not really interested in being around loud, raucous places where I have to spend money just to exist and socialize there. Those are businesses, not communities.
Third places and real communities don't really exist anymore.
I legitimately can't remember the last time I went to a public event and enjoyed myself.
I have seen numerous interviews with people who are religious. They have that community. I know, I know, I'm not encouraging you to become religious, but it is pretty hard to beat as a community. However, for non-religious people, yes, I think in-person/in-real-life community is in broad decline. When I go to public events now, most people are looking at their phones, or talking with the one friend they came with. Drinking helps to lower the barrier a bit. Try a wine tasting event. They aren't very loud and only modestly business oriented. Mostly they are about mixing and pretending that you really are there to drink a little too much and chat with someone cute. Also, don't worry if the first wine tasting event doesn't feel right. You can use the first event as a springboard to find other small, inclusive wine tasting events. Those are the secret sauce and the gender balance can be good -- way better than craft beer festivals (sausage fest).
> Third places and real communities don't really exist anymore.
I joined a book club last year, and it was great for a few months, but I noticed that most people, unless truly dedicated, petered off, or would only come and 'taste' for a month then ghost. I'm not saying I'm any better. When you've gone to 5 book clubs that have fallen apart, why would you risk committing and being sad when it falls apart again?
I believe our ability to commit is deteriorating; the how and why is a whole nother topic.
I think you answered yourself, in a sense. Our ability to commit is deteriorating, but the reason why is (partly) the risk of commitment itself. You risk being hurt or disappointed if you commit to the wrong event or wrong person. Figuring out what's "good" to commit to is possibly more individual than we realize.
I personally find it weird when people talk shit about someone being unwilling to commit, as if one should jump straight into serious obligations without any forethought. You didn't do that of course, but I see it come up in discussions sometimes, mostly concerning relationships. Commitment is more complicated than most people see it imo.
>I legitimately can't remember the last time I went to a public event and enjoyed myself.
A public event you didn't pay for? Really depends. I can still enjoy a decent meetup here and there. But meetup issues come from the meetup itself or the people being inconsistent. Hard to build relationships when it's a revolving door that claims to meet "every 2 weeks" but ends up averaging 4-8 weeks.
>you wont find animals falling into existential dread and despair because they haven't gotten laid yet (or recently)
I don't think I've heard of any animal falling into existential dread or despair, for any reason. But quality of life is absolutely impacted by ability to breed.
Years ago there was this elephant at the zoo pacing at his enclosure. I spent 30 minutes watching, and while it didn't explicitly mention anything about feeling existential dread or despair, it certainly looked like it did.
I think it's a bit of both. Humans are the same, but the tech and environment and especially quality of life isn't anymore. what was good enough in the 50's to attract a mate in a local town isn't good enough for the entire state or even country. I'm sure if Tinder existed in the 50's there'd be similar-ish issues.
At the same time, part of this is because there's been a lot of change in how and where we interact. There isn't really a "poker night" in a lot of modern 30's life with neighbors you chat with every day. young adults can't afford (in time nor money) to get out to a night life more than a few times a month, and even those night life places feel more like people come with established groups. Modern society doesn't pay enough and gets more and more expensive. It's no surprise it can feel soul crushing.
You raise a good point. I'll summarise: "Kids these days are broke." Get-off-my-lawn joking aside, the purchasing power of younger generations is definitely less than before. As a result, young people go to bars / restaurants / concerts / holidays much less, further reducing their social (and dating) opportunities. I blame global trade which makes a few much richer at the expense of stalled or slightly declining prosperity for the masses.
The only part I disagree with is the historical perspective. When was this time that people believed in personal growth? For most of history the nobels were nobels, peasants were peasants and that was that. If anything, the sense of having dynamic control of one's destiny throughout one's lifespan is a recent invention. (Well at least in the west)
Absolutely with you. The great dissonance is between people's expectations and their reality, not the past and the present. Life for someone born poor even a century ago was brutal and oppressive in a way most of us have difficulty understanding.
> Life for someone born poor even a century ago was brutal and oppressive in a way most of us have difficulty understanding.
Not really. A century ago people in many parts of the USA were dirt poor. I mean no savings, no electricity, no indoor plumbing. But they ate well—real food they grew, raised, and hunted themselves. They had deep communal bonds, spiritual fulfillment, and a sense of meaning in their lives that is increasingly absent. I wouldn’t be surprised if your average sharecropper’s wife would blow away your average urban girl boss in self reported happiness.
I'm sorry but that's just pining for a past that never happened. In the 20th century some 100 million people died from famine. Starved to death. We're down to 200,000 deaths from hunger per year, compared to an average of maybe 2M/year up to the 1960s, while the global population tripled.
Did some people eat well, some of the time in the 1900s? Absolutely. But ending hunger is maybe the greatest conquest of our time and it's barely recognised. That's exactly the sort of expectation gap I was referring to in my original comment.
> I'm sorry but that's just pining for a past that never happened. In the 20th century some 100 million people died from famine. Starved to death. We're down to 200,000 deaths from hunger per year, compared to an average of maybe 2M/year up to the 1960s, while the global population tripled.
Did some people eat well, some of the time in the 1900s? Absolutely.
I'm sorry, but perhaps it wasn't clear from context that I'm talking about the USA. There has never been a wide scale famine in the United States even in its poorest communities. Even during the Great Depression there were virtually no deaths due to starvation[1].
> But ending hunger is maybe the greatest conquest of our time and it's barely recognised. That's exactly the sort of expectation gap I was referring to in my original comment.
Your goalpost-moving notwithstanding, I'm reminded of that famous Sufi tale with the refrain "Good thing, bad thing, who knows?" After all the environmental impacts of the population explosion that it kicked off are still just barely beginning to be felt. But for what it's worth the Green Revolution was part of the standard curriculum when I was in middle and secondary school, so I wouldn't say it's unrecognized.
They were not well fed a century ago. The US had to start putting iron and iodine in all the food because all the young men were too weak and sick with pellagra to be able to fight in wars.
Reported happiness seems like a poor metric for comparison when the concept itself may be rather foreign to someone in the past. If your life is mostly hardship, you may not spend much time being introspective about how you feel about your plight. In a life of luxury, you have nothing but time to think about it and find things to critique. So, you may have an objectively better life, and overall more happiness, but report it as unhappy because there is more that you want to do that you feel should be achievable. Compared to someone who couldn’t comprehend their situation ever improving, so they. There is no basis for comparison of what it means to be happy between different life experiences.
It’s not about quality of life. Abuse victims will say they are happy, and stay with their abusers. War veterans can think fondly on their time at war, but neither are objectively good situations. Reporting that you are happy is not the same as being happy.
I guess what I’m describing is the difference of trauma/suffering (both physical and mental) vs not. There’s too much psychology in play when dealing with how we handle trauma to trust a self reported metric.
The psychology being subjective is my point. The physiological condition is not subjective. My statement wasn’t that something was “objectively good” but that experiencing pain and suffering was “not objectively good” or rather (objectively) not a good thing. Pain is real, and the absence of pain is objectively better.
> Pain is real, and the absence of pain is objectively better.
But that’s observably false. There are persons who don’t feel pain, and they are considerably more likely to seriously injure or even maim themselves than normal persons. That’s hardly “objectively better.”
Furthermore, the existence of masochism shows that some people prefer pain to its absence at least some of the time. Thus “Pain is real, and the absence of pain is objectively better” is just your subjective opinion.
Since we’re talking about subjective reports regardless, we may as well rely on the subjective reports of the people having the experiences rather than the subjective opinions of others who aren’t having the experiences.
If you can’t agree that physically harming people is bad, I don’t think we’re going to see eye to eye on this. But, your example of masochism is exactly my point. You can’t trust their reported state because people can bend their psychology to believe it to be fine. Nevertheless, torture/murder/rape, etc are all still objectively bad.
As an example: there are genuine cases of masochists that are subjectively happier because pain is being inflicted on them. In many of these cases no serious harm is done to their body. Your claim "you can't trust their reported state" is either 1) a claim that the outside observer knows better than the individual what their subjective state is or 2) that the health of the subject is more important than their subjective happiness.
If you are arguing for #1, I disagree. If you are arguing for #2, you should be more clear about why/how you keep using the word "objectively".
People can feel less happy when there is a lack of challenge in their life. Consider the example of the guy that spends his life wasting away in front of video games, going for impulsive pleasures instead of long term rewarding goals.
I would guess that each person has a different ideal level and variety of suffering (or responsibility, or challenge, or whatever you want to call it), for which their personality is best suited. We are so far removed from the challenges of the past that we don't know what the subjective experience would be like.
Yes. It’s easily googled. And they look like a normal healthy weight for the early 20th century[1]. Mama there has a healthy belly. Where are you seeing concentration camp victims?
Yeah this is a good point. I guess genetic determinism is just the contemporary scientific justification for a mentality that’s existed in some for a long time or indeed forever. (I’d be interested to know if other human cultures were more and accepting and supportive of personal growth.)
Explanation or justification? Does current scientific consensus (let's say there's one) say that this mentality is okay or that it's a bias that we should be aware (and try to correct against)?
I see genetics being used as a “just so” explanation for all kinds of things that the science doesn’t really support, by people with different ideologies depending on the thing they’re trying to justify.
We take obviously mostly-genetically-determined traits like height, eye/hair/skin colour, facial features etc, then extrapolate to argue/assume that all kinds of other things must also be genetically determined, like cognition, behavioral patterns, emotional patterns, for which there is far less evidence of them being hard-coded in DNA. This will be confounded by the fact that we can often see commonalities in these factors from parents to children and between siblings, and assume these commonalities exist due to genetic coding, not recognizing that there are other forms of inheritance/conditioning that can explain these commonalities, but that even if these inherited patterns are deeply ingrained, they can be altered via the right practices (emotional “letting go” being the most important in my experience).
Yes I’ve been exploring this topic (and undertaking personal growth work) for well over a decade.
I know all about the twin studies and the way they’re used to support all kinds of claims but that don’t actually hold up to scrutiny.
DNA just encodes proteins. It can’t explain/predict detailed behavioral patterns.
A prominent example of how genetics can influence aggressive/criminal behavior is due to variations in the MAOA (“Warrior”) gene, but the promotion/suppression of this gene is still strongly influenced by environmental factors [1].
Twin studies (particularly separated twin studies) claim to prove that all kinds of things are genetically encoded, because “they must be”, without considering how much is caused/influenced by other factors - the gestational environment and the experience of being separated from the birth family being the most obvious.
That’s not to say these behavioral patterns aren’t deeply ingrained and difficult/slow to change, but that’s very different from being hard-coded in DNA and impossible to change. For n=1 anecdata, I’ve significantly reduced my aggressive tendencies after years of growth work.
Are you willing to have a detailed discussion on this? I don't want to spend a few hours refreshing my knowledge of the research and gathering papers only to be ignored.
I read the abstract and skimmed the main content and couldn’t find anything that refutes what I’ve written or what I understand.
I’m fine to have a discussion if your intention is to achieve a shared understanding of the topic, which is what healthy debating is about and what this site seeks to cultivate (even if it rarely achieves it). It does seem a little like you’re more interested in “winning” an argument for a position you’re already invested in, but I’m happy to be shown otherwise and to engage in a discussion if you bring a spirit of shared learning to it.
Edit: rather than doing it here (in a thread that is already very long and stale) you can email me if you like (address in bio).
Further to my previous comment, before you write much on the topic, make sure you've properly read and considered what I've written (just the previous few comments relating to genetic determinism), in relation to the paper you shared. On reflection, I'm surprised you wrote "did you check out the paper I linked?", as if you assume it contains findings that contradict anything I've written, and it makes me think you might be intending to argue against something you assume I believe rather than something I actually believe. To be clear: (a) I believe very strongly in inheritance and common patterns of behaviour among family members; (b) I know of no research proving that behavioural patterns are entirely attributable to DNA code and/or are immutable, and (c) I'm aware of ways deeply ingrained patterns of behaviour can be significantly altered/abated when effective approaches are applied. The paper you linked doesn't make any specific claims relating to parts (b) or (c) of my statement.
Genetics is not a credible science, ie, it's just another one of the many sciences that thinks correlation is causation. This is because it can't do experiments, so it can't really show causation.
(Identical twins are close to a natural experiment but not a very good one as even they don't have the same genetics.)
This is a far stronger claim than I think you mean. We have a ton of evidence that those bits of DNA in our cells govern cell expression and even know in some cases that bit X being malformed causes bad condition Y (sure, you could hypothesize that they both have a common cause, but how the heck would that work? Correlation being causation works if both common cause and backwards causation are implausible, as they are often in genetics).
> but not a very good one as even they don't have the same genetics
Uhhh... they have almost exactly the same genetics. To a similar extent that two random cells from your body will have the same genetics. Yes, there will be a handful of mutations, but that's very unlikely to have an effect on any particular trait.
Who are you to tell us to not trust our eyes? When you're wrong at trivia, can you just claim "I meant [the right answer]"? If that's what you meant, perhaps you would have said it, but if you would had said it, it would have ruined your argument.
Simply put, you haven't made a convincing case that genetics, a science affecting all life, not just humans, is "not a credible science", despite indeed involving experiments all the time.
This is a bad defense because you're using "genetically determined", which is either meaningless or not true.
Height is not genetically determined unless you add "in an environment where nothing else that affects it happens". Like, say, someone cutting off your legs.
Saying something is genetically determined is not necessarily the same as saying it's completely genetically determined. And it's not meaningless, because there are things that aren't genetically determined at all, or at least are only genetically determined to such a small amount that they wouldn't be described as being genetically determined.
The only other thing to affect height is nutrition. Assuming the same nutrition, certain ethnicities will trend taller than others. Denying that is just straight stupidity because you can observe the trend just by going outside.
> The only other thing to affect height is nutrition.
And puberty blockers, pituitary gland diseases, and lack of sleep.
…and cutting your legs off.
> Assuming the same nutrition, certain ethnicities will trend taller than others.
See, one thing about statistics is they're not necessarily valid for individuals, because eg not all statistical distributions have any values at their averages.
Agreed, I think this is all downstream from recent macroeconomic forces in the west/America. Namely the "land of opportunity" in the post WW2 era has disappeared and the class structure has largely calcified and will carry over multiple generations. The anxiety people feel about not being one of the "top tier and chosen" is because that's the only avenue for social mobility left.
Or maybe it was always mostly BS and the information age where the message is less controlled/manipulated by a few elite owned sources is making that obvious.
I think you hit the nail on the head in a lot of aspects but I don't fully agree. Our society does endorse and actively support the virtues of personal growth. The issue is, as you pointed out, it only values the growth of those "chosen" to reach a high-percentile level at the end of their journey. There's nothing more abhorrent to our societal myths of a just road for everyone to take than someone who worked years to reach some level of success in a field they want to excel in but only hit a point barely above mediocrity.
> There's nothing more abhorrent to our societal myths of a just road for everyone to take than someone who worked years to reach some level of success in a field they want to excel in but only hit a point barely above mediocrity.
I think it depends on how we define mediocrity. Is it mediocre to spend as much time it requires to get a PhD becoming a good pastry chef or carpenter? In the west very likely yes, unless you're an "entrepreneur".
Ironically, despite being touted as individual work, this kind of success and excellence requires institutions to be recognized.
> Is it mediocre to spend as much time it requires to get a PhD becoming a good pastry chef or carpenter? In the west very likely yes, unless you're an "entrepreneur".
Or, unless you apply your skill into pursuing a bakery career, or a celebrity career (e.g. by running a baking channel on YouTube). Being good at something alone doesn't get you past being perceived as mediocre at best - you have to have an external institution attest for it. PhD, that's easy - the title is itself an attestation. Baking? Proof is in running a successful bakery[0], or in being called a great baker in mass media articles, or in running a popular baking show, etc.
I guess that's implicit in the whole philosophy of "self-improvement" being conditioned on how others see you.
--
[0] - However little sense this makes these days; "running business doing X" is 99% about "running business" and 1% about "doing X", and if you want money and control, you have to let other people to "do" X for you.
Never thought about it this way, but yeah makes a lot of sense. So the real approach should be: pick the kind of institution you care about first. Skill mastery might just end up being optional.
To be honest, I'm rather surprised how good we have it those days, when good skills and hard work at least have a quite good chance to lead to a decent life
Ironically, by relying on institutions so much, the value of their recognition becomes reduced over time, and we get stuff like credential creep, university bureaucratic bloat, and general mistrust in academia.
Not really no, I am quite far from the startup scene on the contrary. In French we'd call an entrepreneur anyone who runs a business, aside from a small shop owner maybe.
TeMPOraL nailed what I was trying to convey.
What is your experience like? Do you live in a place where high quality work alone is unanimously recognised as success?
Yeah I hear you, and no doubt Horatio Algers (and simplistic interpretations/retellings of his story arcs) have done plenty of harm in this respect.
I think we can do much better than “if you work hard and believe in your dreams you’ll make it”. There are many techniques people can learn than can amplify the impacts of their efforts and make them much better companions. They’re just not widely known/accepted as yet.
There are numerous studies confirming the effect you're speaking of, altough I'm not sure if dating apps have an influence on that.
It was shown that certain national ice hockey teams were comprised mainly of players who were born at the beginning of the year. It is theorized that this is because the date that cuts one class for another is at the beginning of the year. If you're born in January, and you start playing hockey at 5, you're gonna be significantly older than a child that's born in december. As a result, you'll be recognized and helped more by your coach, which improves your chances of becoming better, and drags into adulthood, up until you're in the national team. The same applies for academic and professional careers and I'm sure dating as sell.
> Whereas if you're not in the top tier of "chosen" people and experience a few painful rejections and setbacks, you're made to feel that's just what you deserve and what you're stuck with, and there's not much you can do to improve your lot.
You aren't "made to feel anything", it's a two way street. You have someone who says something negative, and you have the choice to listen to it or disregard it. That's a choice
> I think a lot about how the world would be better if more people were encouraged and empowered to go on long-term journeys of deep personal growth
I think if you're motivated enough to do this, you're already motivated enough to go out and get the career success or love life or whatever you're after. Frankly doing that is probably simpler and more straightforward than "self discovery" or whatever. There's a Carlin bit for this https://youtube.com/watch?v=4s3bJYHQXYg
> You have someone who says something negative, and you have the choice to listen to it or disregard it. That's a choice
This is just not true about human psychology. Like it is not true at all.
People are affected by what is said about them. And those few unaffected generally tend to have much bigger issues in relationships, because their lack of caring usually makes them into very uncomfortable to be around.
> You have someone who says something negative, and you have the choice to listen to it or disregard it. That's a choice
That's like saying "You have someone punching you in the face, and you have the choice to be hurt by it or not. Being hurt by being punched in the face is a choice."
You don't choose to be hurt and you don't choose the consequences of being hurt.
>You don't choose to be hurt and you don't choose the consequences of being hurt.
Only the first part is true. We don't get to choose our emotional responses, but we absolutely can determine how we react to all manner of discomforts and challenges. For instance, you can discover and put in the work of practicing healthy and sustainable coping mechanisms for the inevitable fear, rejection, and hurt you will feel in life when other people treat you in ways that don't suit you. You can also choose to put in work towards changing your outlook and core beliefs, so you are much more resilient to being hurt by the words and actions of other people. Emotional resilience is a skill (but it is not at all the same as being emotionally repressed, which is a maladaptive defense mechanism).
Being physically or emotionally hurt is not the same as being harmed. People can be punched in the face and yet recover with grace and equanimity. Indeed, even if that graceful recovery involves running the fuck away from a pointless fight. This isn't easy stuff, but it is possible.
>you can discover and put in the work of practicing healthy and sustainable coping mechanisms for the inevitable fear, rejection, and hurt you will feel in life when other people treat you in ways that don't suit you.
Thats a skill and like sports, there are certain affinities to having and tailloring that skill. It's why we call it "emotional intelligence". There will be some absolute saints that can manage their emotions to an almost sociopathic level, and 90+% of people can train their lives and never truly obtain such skill. We are shaped by early experiences, memories, and traumas too much to truly say "anyone can do this".
Likewise, being punched in the face is a skill. But not necessarily one that is "mastered", just mitigated. the best boxers in the world will get punched enough to have permanent damage, even with modern safety regulations. That's just a fact. Meanwhile, most people who don't spend time fighting will have different biology that determines how well they can take a face punch. Someone more muscular will take it better than a meek lad. You may not even realize the former got punched the next day wihle the latter has a scar that never heals. You can't fully control that without a major lifestyle change.
How so? If you're just walking on the street and you happen to get sucker punched out of nowhere by a person you never met nor will never meet again, what could you have done to choose "not to get hurt"? enroll in martial arts and train your peripheral vision to always be on guard?
I won't even entertain "you choose the consequences of being hurt". Mike Tyson says it best: "everyone's got a plan until they are punched in the face"
Someone throwing insults or punches at you that hurt is not something you choose, it's something you feel. Why do you think the attacker bears no responsibility?
I love Carlin and it’s a good gag with some truth in it.
But it assumes we’re all hardwired to be a certain way, which is the very assumption I’m arguing needs to change.
It’s true most self-help is ineffective, and it’s because you can’t change much in your life just by consciously making an effort to change, or just “trying harder”. There is a lot you can change by undoing subconscious self-sabotage patterns and undertaking “letting go” practices, over a long enough period of time. This kind of stuff is fringe now but is growing in popularity because people are finding it far more effective than mainstream self-help and therapy (I sure have).
You don't think mainstream self help or therapy uses the concept of forgiveness or breaking self destructive beliefs and patterns? I implore you to tell me what it is you think therapy actually does and contrast it with whatever this newfangled fringe approach is.
I think you both might be talking about the same thing. CBT is much more detailed and comprehensive than "practicing letting go," but in a sense, accepting reality and then letting go (of our maladaptive beliefs and coping behaviors) is at its core. GP may have encountered CBT from an alternative source, and thus doesn't associate it with 'mainstream therapy.' Which I'm not even sure if CBT is prominent enough yet to be considered the main clinical paradigm.
> There is a lot you can change by undoing subconscious self-sabotage patterns and undertaking “letting go” practices, over a long enough period of time. This kind of stuff is fringe now but is growing in popularity
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is an excellent curriculum for training in the use of a set of tools along these lines (and many more skills besides).
first off sorry if my initial response reads brusque, I've been burnt by the self help stuff and learned the hard way to be skeptical of it, didn't think that the skepticism would lead to this much argument...
> There is a lot you can change by undoing subconscious self-sabotage patterns and undertaking “letting go” practices,
What do you mean by this, like buddhism or something like it? Is there some kind of literature on this?
>The correct solution to abuse is a punch to the face.
if you can afford it, sure. But that civil lawsuit you dismiss will suddenly crush you if you punch the wrong person in the face.
Maybe there is a bit too much soft footed training these days, but there's also a very good reason, financially and legally, to know when to hold your punches. At least be smart enough to get an explicit reason on record before you start swinging fists.
I like where you showed me that the civil way gets results.
Oh wait.
It may be ugly but people tend to leave someone alone after getting knocked out. Words are a warning, a substitute for violence. We use words because violence is ugly. When words don't work, you don't use more words. That's insanity.
0 tends to be more than a negative number. I'm not saying not to resort to violence. I'm just saying it has a higher chance to backfire than retreating.
The gist of it is to question existing thoughts or reactions, which sounds good on paper because how else do you grow without introspection? However, it does little to solve real mental or emotional issues. I felt like I was talking through a workbook and not connecting to a real human.
It's led to reduced trust in psychology and psychiatry. Maybe in another hundred years we'll have a clue or two.
To everyone here, this is how a confident person with a healthy dose of self-esteem feels and behaves like (with a pinch of salt as this depiction is a bit idealistic).
To @mvncleaninst, not everyone has the same emotional strength and tools to cope with these sort of situations, and trust me, I am not apologizing for mediocrity and lack of courage, I absolutely loathe when people try to excuse what's under their control with made-up stories, disorders and whatnot.
Depression is a real thing, some people have gone through real shit. An example, many people grow up in completely dysfunctional households, you have no idea how that can absolutely destroy someone's perception of it's own value. Same thing with poverty, a lot of people had dealt with both of these things and most likely many more. The wounds inflicted by these circumstances stay with people their whole lives, one cannot just "shrug off these things and carry on" as they have become imbued with them.
Life can break absolutely anybody; if you don't believe this is true, congrats. you've had it easy, so far.
From (George) Carlin's wikipedia entry:
"Because of my abuse of drugs, I neglected my business affairs and had large arrears with the IRS, and that took me eighteen to twenty years to dig out of."
It seems that your motivation expert actually does much worse than the average person on things that require planning and self-control. Colour me surprised. Is this part of his comedy act?
I like this post. It rings true with me. One trend I have noticed in my life: If people grew up under difficult circumstances, it seems to sap their grit (ability to grind). They mostly give up more easily. However, at 1-5% of those can turn the difficult circumstances into a super power and "out grind" anyone. It is weird how it happens.
> You aren't "made to feel anything", it's a two way street. You have someone who says something negative, and you have the choice to listen to it or disregard it. That's a choice
Right, this is why we can choose not to feel the pain of being punched in the face.
I get your point, but would also like to add that to a certain extent (and variable by person) pain from physical injuries can be influenced by psychology.
There was a time I was cycling at night down a half-finished cycle route, the kerb separating it from the guided busway had been placed but not the tarmac, but I couldn't see that at night (I had a light but it still wasn't visible).
I tried to leave the cycle path, bounced off the surprise rise of the kerb, and it hurt before I hit the ground. Picked myself up, stopped thinking about it, went on to the cinema, watched the film, when the lights came up I realised quite how badly I'd been grazed.
Sometimes I can switch the pain off on purpose, sometimes I can't. The dichotomy isn't even just with regards to physical pain, it's also a sometimes-yes-sometimes-no with emotional distress, so I can go into a "public performance" mode on a stage and goof about no trouble, but I can't seem to shake my deep dislike of mere phone calls.
People are weird, I'm a person therefore I'm weird. :)
>bounced off the surprise rise of the kerb, and it hurt before I hit the ground.
Sounds like a form of phantom pain. I don't know the exact term but it is a well studied phenomenon. one that, AFAIK, isn't fully understood.
But yes, your brain can very much lie to you. Just look up how much post processing your brain will do to help you see the way you see.
>Sometimes I can switch the pain off on purpose, sometimes I can't.
yeah, we have chemicals in our body to do that. It doesn't turn off pain automatically because it is in fact a good thing to realize when you're bleeding out of your leg. It only turns that off for you semi-voluntarily if your brain involuntarily determines (again based on other chemicals) that GTFO is more beneficial to survival than tending to your wound. I'm not going to say it's impossible to train these excretions of chemicals. I will argue that this is probably something you can train for years to do and fail, though.
There's so much about our bodies that still eludes the brightest minds. Even a function as basic as sleeping and why and how it benefits us is still not fully in our understanding.
That's not a psychological response, that's adrenaline. It numbs the pain response because in fight or flight situations, it's a distraction. It's not a choice, and it's fleeting and transient, a few minutes to twenty minutes.
You're literally "made to feel" certain ways. During your formative years someone was shouting you suck and generally acting as you're a burden and unwanted? You'll feel that shit for the rest of your life no matter what you "decide to think". It becomes ingrained in you. It becomes who you are. You can work on it like GP said and improve the situation but don't act like it's trivial or just a change of perspective. It isn't. It's like your body needs healing after a fractured bone. Your mind also needs that time and setting.
I'm not saying that trauma isn't real, I'm saying that it doesn't have to impact your prospects in life. You don't have to let it define you. There's a capacity to sidestep it
Here's a personal example: having abusive family members tell me I won't be successful or independent, being hurt by it but knowing in the back of my head that I would get out of there. It's hope
And I get it: not all trauma is equal here, but if I have to choose one extreme I'd prefer the one that gives people some shred of agency
In your analysis, it seems like the growing person should be recognized by the chosen class and be given a shot at relationships. Why though? If you don’t belong to the chosen class, find a partner that isn’t in the chosen class as well and grow together.
Maybe I am mistaken, but this has a subtext of "I want to be recognized, but I don’t want to deal with disadvantaged people myself".
Well, it’s not true of me, because I was lucky enough to find someone with whom to share a journey of growth (we got together in 2011, just before the dating apps took hold), and it’s worked out well for us.
But I see what life is like for friends who are trying to find serious relationships/life partnerships via the apps, and how much it’s all geared towards being/seeming “the best” and finding “the right person”, and how brutal it is for their self esteem and life outlook (a good friend is at the age where she’s probably missed the chance to have children, having tried to find the right guy via the apps for many years).
I often wonder how it could be better for her and other friends if there were apps/communities more geared towards finding people to grow with rather than finding someone who ticks the boxes now.
I'm sorry to hear that your friend is struggling to find a long term partner. When I think about dating apps, they are mostly about cold introductions. If possible, you should try to do some warm introductions from her. It seems easier to break someone's heart with shitty behaviour from a cold introduction, than a warm introduction. Cold intros are relatively anonymous so you can hide after your bad behaviour. With a warm intro, if someone does something awful, their friends will probably learn about it.
In some ways it may be even more difficult to find a partner to grow with than one who has already grown and will give you a chance, because there’s more questions involved. Do they have the same capacity for growth? Are they as tenacious? Will they keep up their efforts after receiving the gratification of acceptance? Etc, etc.
In the "good old days" dating was simpler, but also much, much worse for the average woman. People dated within their town almost exclusively. The best bachelors would be gone pretty quickly. That put a ton of pressure on the remaining women to quickly settle for an average guy in order not to be stuck with a terrible partner (an angry drunk or other kind of lowlife). Not marrying wasn't an option, and divorce wasn't an option. They had to choose, and their dating pool was small and constantly shrinking. Many women got stuck in unhappy marriages, but that was life.
I agree with you that many guys today struggle with dating because they haven't done the necessary work to be good partners, but the problem isn't that "contemporary life doesn't encourage self-improvement". The "problem", if you even want to call it that, is that women prefer being single over a bad relationship with a crummy guy. For the first time in history, women have the economic independence to walk away from a bad deal, and guys have up their game as a consequence.
This sentiment is all over & is very demoralizing to guys who got an education, have a decent job, go to the gym and still get rejected by women who seem to be their peers. I'm not a fan of incel ideology, but there is something to the 'she'll have her fun with bad boys then settle down with you in her 30s when she's looking for someone with a stable income' sentiment that goes around. 20s dating is hugely depressing for men and it shows with all the stats of young men 'dropping out' of life. I got lucky and met someone sweet a couple years ago, but it was extremely rocky for a long time, and it still is for most of my friends.
But men just have to 'step it up'. Six feet, six figures, bare minimum right?
Yes that’s true. Dating wasn’t that great for me in my 20s - five foot four, decent job, in great shape physically (part time fitness instructor), somewhat outgoing.
Got married at 28 to someone who was physically attractive. But had nothing much going for her and divorced at 32.
Dating was somewhat better then. But didn’t really want anything serious and had close female friends who I travelled with and really gave me the emotional support and no drama.
I got remarried at 36 and have been happily married for 13 years.
That being said, short men do have what I call the “two strikes rule”. You can’t be short and anything. Meaning short and fat, broke, ugly, bad personality, etc. I fought the and part
I watched American dating on recent trip. Even as a spectator sport, it’s enthralling.
I would like to address the emotion you describe.
Firstly, I doubt it’s just men. I don’t know the simplest adjective, but I’d call the dating scene as “optimized” and “casino like”. Persistence and luck are not small components here.
If anyone’s self worth ends up getting linked to the outcome of such a system, dropping out isnt unsurprising.
It is also quite pointless, to tell someone who is lonely or young, to not treat the process personally.
Well, considering that on these apps (and likely in the general population) men want to be in a relationship more than women, it's almost irrelevant what women should do to improve, there's already a brutal competition for them.
That said, the problem with these apps is that their business model depends on long term user value. (If you register for free, quickly find someone, then you paid nothing to them. Maybe they were able to show you a few ads.) And those who are on it for long tend to have problems. And especially big issue are those who don't give up, but are ruining the mood for others. (Which leads to even fewer women on the platforms.)
> men want to be in a relationship more than women
Is this a commonly held opinion? I’d be curious to read any material on this, because nothing (to me at least) suggests one gender wants it more than the other. Is it simply because there are more men than women on the popular dating apps?
Okay, maybe want is not the best word, but consider the lengths men go to get dates, get laid, to propose, etc. It would be hard to untangle the biological drive from the social pressure. (Plus then there's still the mix of desire for sex and for long term relationships.)
The "she'll settle down in her 30s" is the wrong part of this plan. Women on her 30s fastly become lower on the totem pole than even men were in their early 20s. Girls should be taught that, but nowadays its a faux pax to tell the biological truth to people. The same should be explained to boys: it will get better when your life starts to come together in your late 20s. It would make the lives of a huge percent of the population, both male and female, a lot happier.
Then a substantial portion of them become bitter and offer bad advice to younger women encouraging them follow in the same path, because misery loves company. Or because the sour grapes mentality has them conclude that they never actually wanted kids and their lonely spinster alcoholic lifestyle is actually what they wanted; they tell people they're happy and are models to be emulated. They set up a new generation for failure to validate themselves.
This is nuts. Remember, the minimum birth rate is 2.1. Every single woman you've ever met must have 2.1 children just to keep population constant. Every woman who decides to have one or two increases the burden on everyone else.
Just think about the timeline here. Start having children at 35, have your third kid at 38? By the time your youngest is 18 you'll be 56! This is supposed to be the standard life plan, the thing everybody does?
"What about immigration?"
Mexico, Brazil and India already have below-replacement fertility. China, Japan and South Korea have been below replacement so long their populations are now rapidly shrinking. Where are all these immigrants supposed to come from?
No one is obligated to have any children, let alone three. The population growth rate should have absolutely zero influence on your decision to reproduce.
And “risky” here means potential of death or serious defect in child, or death for the mother. It’s irresponsible, unethical, and I don’t understand any parent that would risk the health of their child.
Men who have to have the “glow up” in their late 20s are going to spend that time acting ultra misogynistic to try to take revenge for their earlier life of being rejected. Seen this exact dynamic happen too often in SV circles. Billy the beta is usually not happy to be billy the beta, and given an opportunity, even billy will prove he’s had a latent fuckboy in him the whole time.
Then they should be taught earlier to get wealthy and successful first, not married, and be ready to buy when timing the market.
Fairy tales are fiction, dating marketplaces are just as ruthless as capital markets. Get sophisticated fast and first. It doesn’t guarantee success (never assured!), but it will improve your odds.
Everyone knows that too. But obviously, everyone is not going to be wealthy, and everyone is not going to be “successful”, especially by their mid to late 20s.
The question is, what are you willing to accept, both of yourself and the other person. The big wrench here is when a significant portion of the market accepts being single and pulls out of the market. Now you have a fundamental mismatch in the number of buyers/sellers, which is a nearly unsolvable problem, without getting into things like restricting people’s freedoms.
Strongly agree! At least if you’re wealthy/successful and alone, you have options, and is better than being poor and alone (imho). Relationships should be complimentary, not a critical component in one’s survival.
There are 8 billion people in the world. With enough resources, you should be able to find someone somewhere to enjoy a time window of partnership or closeness. Accumulate resources, which gives you options, which leads to freedom (including freedom to find love [or your idea of healthy companionship]).
> AI Waifus are about to solve that problem, and women are going to be the most negatively impacted.
No, AI waifus are going to mostly impact incels meeting the strict etymology of the term, which, who knows, might make them somewhat less socially dangerous if not any less socially maladjusted.
Sure, other people might toy with them, but no one who was having any success in the dating world is going to be taken out of it by them.
> Expect attempts to regulate out this industry led by mostly women’s groups.
Literally no one cares that the worst and least desirable men are going to entertain themselves with yet another form of fantasy of having a girlfriend, and other than where it involves using imagery of real people in a way that intersects with the kind of behavior addressed by revenge porn laws or otherwise involves material prohibited for reasons unrelated to the specific use in AI companions (simulated CSAM, for instance), I wouldn't expect any eftorts to regulate it on its own.
No, AI relationship apps are more popular with women than men, because the main fantastical part about fictional men is that they're good writers and emotionally expressive.
I have a very hard time believing heterosexual women are going to be negatively impacted by AI waifus. Thinking such things is a strong indicator one needs to go outside and touch grass.
The problem I see is that we have seen progress for women in this space, but not for men.
Women are objectified. The attention a woman receives is related to what she is, not what she does. It's very straightforward to apply this to dating: just look good and confident.
Men are subjectified. The attention a man gets receives is related to what he does, not what he is. It's very tricky to navigate this in dating. How does someone present their interests in a way that is attractive?
This is further complicated by the most common narratives we hear about men's behavior. Masculine behavior is a looming threat. Every man must prove himself not a predator. But how?
yes although you can be in your 30s and subsidize your bad boy lifestyle and persona to the 20s women and ignore the “now I’m ready to settle down” older woman. its even more fun and attractive if some women felt out of grasp in your 20s.
Zoomer women will be progressive as hell political in how they claim to vote, but the moment in turns into interpersonal relations, they turn into eugenicist facists (six feet, six inches, six figures).
That’s because tinder makes them think that those people are in their dating pool. In reality those men will happily sleep with them like they did with the 50 other women but aren’t interested in more.
Also 200k is the new 6 figures, 100k doesn’t cut it anymore
Dating is clearly impossible and hating women is the bestest and smartest course of action. All the couples you see around you must have something you lack. Give up and drop out already. Everybody eventually dies so everything is pointless anyway.
> but there is something to the 'she'll have her fun with bad boys then settle down with you in her 30s
No, there isn't. The reality here is there's a bunch of men who have "here's my list of positive traits" and are leaving something out, because everyone is the angel of their own story.
> The reality here is there's a bunch of men who have "here's my list of positive traits" and are leaving something out, because everyone is the angel of their own story.
Sure. Average men have flaws. But so do women. When I was dating around I met a bunch of girls who had a wild drugs & partying phase in college. A couple still had cocaine habits. I smoked some weed in high school then stopped. I’ve had sex with 7 women in my entire life, 5 of which were one or two night stands because we didn’t get on. I’m told I’m judgemental & picky because I’m not attracted to women with twice or more my sexual experience.
It’s true that a person’s sexual history does not define their worth as a person, just as height or weight doesn’t. But, what is ignored these days, every person absolutely has a right to their own preferences of attraction. But we insist that young men are terrible people if they don’t accept a history of promiscuity with anything less than enthusiasm.
How do you even know about the other person's history? I have no idea how many partners any of my dates and significant others have had. Could be one, could be one hundred, I don't care. I never ask, I got never asked about it, and would find it both weird and concerning if my current partner wanted to know.
>How do you even know about the other person's history?
I mean, it's kind of natural that you learn it as you get to know them. I don't ask 'what's your tally of sexual partners' out of any context on a first date. But someone describes their life and you pick up on it one way or another and then it comes up in conversation naturally. You can sometimes tell in the bedroom when exciting new things for you are old hat and boring to her. Sometimes they get dodgy about discussing it. And why? Are they ashamed? Or is it because they suspect I would prefer a partner who is more like me and they feel the need to conceal their decisions?
>Could be one, could be one hundred, I don't care.
Good for you! I wish I had such a lack of feeling on the subject, it would certainly make dating easier.
>find it both weird and concerning if my current partner wanted to know.
Why? This statement seems quite a bit like you're passing a harsh judgement on people like me for preferring partners with a similar amount of sexual experience. I see a similar sentiment on the internet all the time, that we're weird and concerning for anything less than unquestioningly embracing partners who may have had sex with 100 people.
> Why? This statement seems quite a bit like you're passing a harsh judgement on people like me for preferring partners with a similar amount of sexual experience.
I think exactly because the question of experience seems so easily to carry judgment (in either direction, too few / too many). I don't see how my or their experience should change anything in our current relationship, so if they asked, I would assume some judgment such as you have. And sexual judgment would be incompatible with my values.
I don't even know if my partner had long term relationships before me -- I suspect yes, and I assume they haven't been married. But I don't care about those facts either.
>I don't even know if my partner had long term relationships before me -- I suspect yes, and I assume they haven't been married.
Huh, well I guess different strokes for different folks. The idea of dating someone & not picking up, as a matter of course, on whether or not they've ever had a previous relationship is baffling.
The "six feet" women are a small and ever thinning slice of society, if this is a problem you might want to adjust either your targets or your social circle.
But otherwise, even if I'd found your analysis to be correct, I think a few decades of society adjusting to this freedom is well deserved after a millenia of patriarchy.
Quite a polarized way of considering the two sexes, as well as needlessly antagonistic towards contemporary males. They did not have a hand in the defects of a society that once was. Furthermore, two wrongs do not make a right.
Ordinary guys getting married to ordinary women = patriarchy.
The Sultan having a harem of 40,000 = not patriarchy.
That really seems to be the attitude. Women haven't changed at all and want the same thing they always have. It was a brief bit of egalitarianism in history that gave us a "tradition" that was in fact an anomaly.
As a side note, I laugh at the 6-6-6 thing. It doesn't help. They want something else.
What if they want nothing at all? As in, women naturally aren't that attracted to men but through historical male domination, women's level of attraction has been mostly irrelevant historically.
Women preferring taller men will not go away because its desirability is rooted in biology. Taller men make women feel physically safe. Unless culture reconstructs how women view safety in sexual selection, this will continue to be the case.
"I am eighteen years old, have a good set of teeth, and believe in Andy Johnson, the Star-Spangled Banner, and the 4th of July. I have taken up a State lot, cleared up eighteen acres last year, and seeded ten of it down.
My buckwheat looks first rate, and the oats and potatoes are bully. I have got nine sheep, a two year old bull, and two heifers, besides a house and a barn.
I want to get married. I want to buy bread and butter, hoop skirts, and waterfalls for some person of the female persuasion during life. That’s what’s the matter with me. But I don’t know how to do it."
Some people argue with the ‘no true woman’ fallacy, or don’t trust them to know how to self reflect properly, but clearly something is dying in society.
You need to find some kind of proxy for life satisfaction otherwise you could just be measuring a change in society’s expectations regarding the answer to that question.
That is, if there’s less expectation to lie and say everything is fine, you could get declining life satisfaction numbers with no actual decline in satisfaction.
Anecdotally people I know from my grandparent’s generation are much less likely to admit to being unhappy.
> ...answers to subjective well-being questions have been shown to be correlated with physical evidence of affect such as smiling, laughing, heart rate measures, sociability, and electrical activity in the brain (Diener, 1984)
One of the most useful things you can do in debate is reveal yourself to be immune to evidence of anything you don't like. It is useful because it allows rational participants to stop wasting time with you.
The data says people are saying they are less happy over some time period. There are 2 competing hypotheses to explain the cause.
1) Society has changed in a way that has made people less happy. 2) Society has changed in a way that has made people less likely to lie about being happy.
If you stop to think it through for a second, you’ll quickly understand how the statement “we have some data from somewhere in the middle of the time period in question that self reported satisfaction and a actual satisfaction are correlated” isn’t evidence to support either side. That statement can easily fit either hypothesis.
This is quite easy to test in a longitudinal cross-cultural study of people over time. You'd probably find half a book shelf of research already which does exactly that, if only one bothered to look for it.
My grandparents too, but what I've found out that they really are much happier, because they have seen so much worse. Try to imagine how you'd feel yourself at the moment if you'd have seen WWII, deportations, 50 years of communist occupation etc?
There are so many factors at play and even when we try, we can only control for a minority of them. The average measured quality of life has gone down for everyone. A little steeper for women than men, yes, here are just some alternative seemingly plausible partial causes for that:
- The patriarchy is still here, but we now expect women to have a career while simultaneously taking care of children.
- Decades of hypersexualized media put the emphasis on sex during dating over caring relationships.
Historically, the % of women that were able to reproduce is something like 90%+, while the % for men was in the low 20s or something. At least from now on it seems that women will "become equal" to men in regards to biological dread.
How historically is this, caveman era with harems?
I have not (yet) seen any relatively modern stable society where 80% of men don’t have children. Having that many men with not much to lose would, presumably, be a destabilizing force.
How about "modern" Muslim societies where polygamy is still a thing?
Also: Just because you are married, and your wife gives birth to a child does not necessarily mean that it's your child :) Nowadays, with contraception and paternity tests available, the number of guys unknowingly raising another man's child is around 2-3%, but it was much higher in the past.
It's basically just Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and sub-Saharan west African countries that have >1% rate of polygamy and only the African countries that have more than 5%. Not exactly the most stable countries.
> For the first time in history, women have the economic independence to walk away from a bad deal, and guys have up their game as a consequence.
I see variations of this statement all the time. This weird, almost gleeful misandry masquerading as a historical perspective. It needs to stop. It has poisoned all our interactions and it is hurting people.
I feel like anyone who feels this way should sit and talk to the older women in their lives and ask themselves would they want that. I've talked to happily married women in their 60s and 70s and I hear nothing but abuse and more abuse. I watched my mom and aunt fall into poverty when they got a divorce and have the marry the first man that seemed decent to keep their kids fr starving. My unmarried aunt is dissatisfied by never having children and never marrying, but she's always have independence and never been hit and never worried she would be homeless. When I consider old spinsters vs old married people well, it makes think I'd rather be a spinster if I can't find a decent guy. Of course there are true happy couple in there but they are so few it really makes me grateful no fault divorce exists.
For me, I dated a lot of men. Sometimes we're not a match, but a lot of the time these guys seemed angry I didn't need them. One guy actually became physically abusive when he came over to my house and saw how much nicer I lived than him. We'd been dating for weeks. Another guy, dumped me for paying for a whole date. Another guy, withdrew his interest upon learning my profession and considering I'd definitely make more than him whatever I made.
You know the advice female relatives give me? Hide how much I make. That is the state of heterosexual dating. It's where my friend who is a self made millionaire gets asked by her boyfriend when she's going to become a housewife so he can marry her. Women aren't perfect, but there's definitely got to be some kind of change for men as a collective. I know some great male partners, but I also know that they're out weighed by so many men I know personally.
> Women aren't perfect, but there's definitely got to be some kind of change for men as a collective. I know some great male partners, but I also know that they're out weighed by so many men I know personally.
This is a bit like saying: “White people aren’t perfect, but there's definitely got to be some kind of change for black people as a collective. I know some great black folks, but I also know that they’re outweighed by so many blacks I know personally.”
(I suspect that this is the reason your comment has been downvoted.)
This was really interesting to read. I believe everything you said, but I have never met anyone like what you are describing. I only get complaints from friends that women expect them to pay for everything on a date.
I don't know anybody that complains that their wife/gf makes more than them. It's pretty rare, but those in that position are very grateful for the freedom to work lower paying jobs with higher satisfaction.
Yeah but would you date/marry a house husband? If you are earning big bucks you kind of need someone to stay home and take care of the kids/house/laundry/dinner etc. For one most mothers never trained their boys for that role but even if some did would you seek that man out for dating? I would guess not, so it’s an adverse selection problem with adverse results
I would. I'm intensively jealous of the women I know who have nabbed one. The issue is the one time I found a supposed homemaker guy he was still the same kind of abuse and stopped cooking/cleaning. It was kinda galling. How are you gonna threaten me with physical violence and I pay for everything and now I'm even cooking and cleaning every day please.
I'd be quite happy marrying an affluent woman as it means I'd have at least a potential chance of leaving corporate tech and having the time to write a novel (which is all my childhood self ever wanted.)
I think guys who are intimidated by successful women have a ton of growing up to do, clearly. Surely it would be amazing to be with someone ambitious and intelligent?
That is a very short term view. It’s essentially ‘Uber driving for relationships’.
Those same women will then complain bitterly when they get older or become a single mom, and no one pays attention to them anymore and have to start actually doing the work.
Like an Uber driver whose car has been worn to a nub with zero equity in anything, still living paycheck to paycheck, and no new skills. But 10 years down the tubes, and they never had to work for ‘the man’, and saw a lot of cool stuff.
The social construct of marriage tries to even this out - that ‘crummy’ man stays around and provides in many ways (social, financial, physical) even after she’s no longer hot and ‘marketable’. And who will help support and protect her while she has kids. The things that make them ‘crummy’ is exactly what is needed to support all that.
It’s the social/relationship equivalent of a retirement fund/pension. It’s not exciting up front.
Pay in now, (and keep him around) so you’re not eating dogfood in 20 years and have kids who can help you too. Instead of being terribly lonely, mentally ill, and then dying alone and getting eaten by your cats.
Which society has also been nuking social safety net wise, much to everyone’s likely long term regret frankly.
It’s folks losing the plot society wide. It’s how we end up with a lot of very sad stories later.
Wow there’s so much to unpack here. We live in a world that is largely heterosexual and monogamous, meaning it takes two to tango. If there’s a bunch of women ending up single, then that necessitates about an equal amount of single men too. The “bitterness” will be bourne by both fronts equally, and the “hot and marketable” comment cuts both ways.
Rather than play the blame game and make gross uber analogies, It’s worth pointing out why some people would rather be single. Is it because they’d rather not be in unhappy marriages? If so, the focus should be on how to improve marriage for both parties.
Is it because on top of needing to have a career, they’re also expected to shoulder much of the burden of raising kids? Let’s think of how we can make it more fair to everyone, or work on supporting parenthood as a society.
> Wow there’s so much to unpack here. We live in a world that is largely heterosexual and monogamous, meaning it takes two to tango.
Is it really?
The world may be largely monogamous and heterosexual, but is that the case for Westernized societies? I remember reading stats on how native Western EU cultures rank highest in terms of infidelity and divorce rates, with Luxembourg enjoying a massive 40% divorce rate. The world may be monogamous, but I doubt that's only because repressive Old World societies are propping it up.
Costs became unmanageable and out of reach for the average folks once women entered the workforce, essentially doubling the supply of labor overnight. This could have been balanced out with men not being looked down upon for staying at home with the kids (although that raises more questions, considering men weren't really biologically wired for the task).
There's a reason most rich families have mostly stay-at-home wives/moms even today. The man earns the dough, while the woman stays home or works a very chill job, while her primary focus remains the house and the family (including its finances, social standing, kids - which tends to be a very high amount btw, etc). And in my experience, the ones that aren't structured this way tend to fall apart quickly.
> I remember reading stats on how native Western EU cultures rank highest in terms of infidelity and divorce rates, with Luxembourg enjoying a massive 40% divorce rate.
The entire country of Luxembourg has a smaller population than most big cities, with only slightly more than half of that population having the Luxembourgish nationality. It’s hardly representative for “native Western EU cultures”.
It seems Portugal and Spain rank at the top for divorces (80%+!), followed by Luxembourg, then Russia and Ukraine. The EU average is 45%,just like the US average.
‘Crossing the streams’ with social roles is also an issue of insecurity. Which we can all point fingers at people and say ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’, but people don’t work that way.
I’ve personally seen women get really distressed when they see an actual good male parent (better than them, it appeared) with kids.
And I’ve seen the same with men (to the point of aggressive harassment) with a women who were better than them at ‘manly’ stuff, like welding/fabricating, or car repair.
All of them denied it, but for anyone paying even a little attention it was pretty blatant.
As a side note - it may be worth reframing ‘the world being largely monogamous and heterosexual’ to something more like ‘societies strongly enforcing monogamy and heterosexuality’.
Anyone who has ever spent any time in a gay club can report that many/most of the other patrons were heterosexual/monogamous too. At least until they entered the club.
Society doesn’t exist for long without a supply of children, and has very strong incentives to enforce certain behaviors.
> If there’s a bunch of women ending up single, then that necessitates about an equal amount of single men too.
A minority of those single men have numerous (sometimes >hundreds) short-term relationships. But far more of those single men have very few or even no relationships at all. I think this disparity is far more extreme for men than for women.
If that upper echelon of single and promiscuous men were socially pressured to stop man-whoring and settle into healthy long-term relationships, then the rest would have better odds. Of course those men will never voluntarily change their ways unless there exists a strong social pressure to change. In the past, this pressure existed in the form of men without partners [wives, but it doesn't have to be wives] being viewed with suspicion if they wanted to attain social standing at work or in their community. This pressure has all-but evaporated into nothingness.
And of course, people lie all the time too. There are a great many men (and women) that do things they would never, ever admit to. Regularly.
I never cheated, but I was very shocked at how much attention I got as a married man.
Take the ring off? Complete 180.
It’s also pretty easy to look at the reported partner counts between the sexes and see that it’s literally impossible that both are true at the same time.
These factors all interrelate, as does interpersonal expectations, societal roles, etc.
What you’re pointing out, IMO, is that expectations and roles aren’t realistic. People keep stepping on each others toes, fighting to justify themselves, burning out, etc.
But then, there have always been the ‘confirmed bachelors’ and ‘old maids’ no? It would be interesting to see the percentages over time however.
One thing that is easily confirmed by data and just by looking around - older, established men have no shortage of ‘market value’, as do young pretty women.
Also, there has never been a time where raising kids or stable long term relationships was easy, or when there was no abuse somewhere.
Without gender misbalance and polyamory you can’t assign a higher “market value” to either, as an older single woman will also have a single male counterpart. What you’re seeing is confirmation bias.
Ok, your point is? The article is discussing dating and relationships not sexual partners. Your original post was commenting on relationships/marriage as well. How you concluded that this was revolving around sex is unclear.
Look, I’ll reiterate it one more time: For every person who is single, statistically there should be another single counterpart of the opposite sex. That some people choose to stay single rather than get into a bad relationship/marriage says a lot about what it’s like to be in one for one or both parties. It’s worth having some introspection on why this is happening, instead of making gross comparisons and assumptions.
You’re the one making statistically unsound assumptions here. None of what you’re saying has any basis in actual fact.
Plenty of people are in relationships (formal) that don’t have sex with each other anymore. A few never had sex, but are in relationships where the social assumption is they did/are.
Plenty of people (including women) have multiple partners, some long term, some transitory. (Many to one). Sometimes they know of each other. Usually they do not.
Plenty of people have one or more partners of different ages (sex or relationship wise).
Plenty of people have no meaningful relationships (sex or formal) of any kind for long periods of time or ‘anymore’. Often by choice, sometimes involuntarily. I know several men who flat out ‘noped out’ in their 40’s because they got tired of what they perceived as predatory behavior. And at least one woman who did the same. All of them had been married for long periods of time.
Hell, one female sex worker can have anywhere from 20 to 100 clients (monthly) last I read on a regular basis.
It’s not that uncommon for some edge case men to sleep with that many women every couple months. I’m sure they’d be ecstatic if they could be paid for it, but male sex workers predominantly have male clients.
Many people consider things like this to be some kind of dating, or at least related/impactful to it. All of it interplays with relationships. The social expectation is that dating, relationships, and sex are all interrelated.
So what are you trying to say exactly besides ‘that’s all gross so I don’t want to believe it’?
If you think that’s bad, don’t get into the medical field! You won’t necessarily get the truth, but if you have even a decent idea of the STD transmission odds, it’s clear what the lies are!
Seems like past 30, very few men stay/are single. Women > 50 start getting single dramatically faster, though I've noticed it often really starts kicking off ~ 40. (Some of this due to men dying sooner than women, and a lot of it later, but if you don't think menopause has something to do with it - you've never had a partner with menopause).
But also notably, women are not often single - unlike young men - until they're really old. Weird eh? Even though there are more women than men in the population by a measurable %.
My observation is that if not stably paired, women have it pretty rough past 30, and end up dating older and older men or 'settling' for folks they never would have given the time of day when younger. Women are also more likely to do 'Mistress' type arrangements.
Men have it really rough when young, until they figure themselves out, and then most of them have it easier (the more money, fame, popularity, infamy, etc. the better) unless they're actively driving women away.
Most homosexual relationships I've seen often end up playing out this same dynamic, but with members of the same gender. The notable exception being 'twins' [https://inmagazine.ca/2021/01/doubling-down-on-boyfriend-twi...], which was always interesting to watch. It wasn't just men either.
Trans, same but with one partner trans (of course).
> Which society has also been nuking social safety net wise
If you mean "marriage with no possible divorce is a social safety net", then I have to protest that "safety" is pretty relative here. It's a system with absolutely no safeguards against the husband (or wife) becoming abusive or violent, especially if your society is patriarchal enough to encourage honor killings.
> I agree with you that many guys today struggle with dating because they haven't done the necessary work to be good partners, but the problem isn't that "contemporary life doesn't encourage self-improvement". The "problem", if you even want to call it that, is that women prefer being single over a bad relationship with a crummy guy. For the first time in history, women have the economic independence to walk away from a bad deal, and guys have up their game as a consequence.
---
What if there actually are plenty of men who have 'stepped their game up' and are perfectly qualified peers to women and would make suitable partners, but the women just have wildly unrealistic expectations?
Or the women just aren't that interested in men in general?
Could those be factors, rather than men just being so beneath women?
Yeah but they will fail because they stuck at marketing. It’s like business sometimes you have the right product but you just can’t get it in front of your customers so they actually buy it
Nah. Men who think like that are thinking like victims. Shifting the blame elsewhere.
No one owes you any love, except your family.
If you want to find love or a partner out there, you’ve gotta find it and earn it. It could take a long time, or not happen - but if you aren’t in good shape, don’t have any money saved up and aren’t interesting, don’t be surprised if you end up alone or with someone below your standards.
I'm saying perhaps a major part of the reason so many men are single is not necessarily because they are lazy losers who refuse to level up like you suggest, but because they can't meet modern women's unrealistic standards or women just aren't that interested in them even after they've leveled up.
Many men can 'level up' to the maximum realistic extent, and still have few women interested in them. That doesn't make these men lazy losers who refuse to put in the work.
I'm not suggesting they are owed a woman for leveling up to the maximum realistic extent, I'm just saying it's very unfair of you to call them lazy losers for their effort not bearing fruit.
The interesting fact is that mostmost men are "below average" "bad" partners according to how women perceive men (I don't remember the exact numbers but it is something ridiculous like only 5% of men are worth considerations).
I guess that's the result of watching television for 4-5 hours a day, where every actor/actress is super humanly handsome. This changes your baseline, and makes guys/girls in the real world ugly by comparison.
There's also something to be said for women that read a lot of romance novels or fanfics and have warped "love maps". Probably not a big % of the population, but it changes the psychological waters of relationships with them.
I hate that stupid OK cupid article because what is always missed is that it's not always the same set of guys for all women. Almost no guy was overwhelmingly considered attractive or unattractive by women. Women are picky, but what they are interested in about men varies widely. Men are are the opposite of that. They have a very liberal acceptance criteria and it doesn't vary much between men. This makes perfect sense from a biological perspective. Men want to have sex with as many women as possible. They don't have much pressure to be picky. Women can only be pregnant so many times, so they're very picky, but that pickiness would definitely vary because what would be an ideal partner would vary based what they have going on in environment and genes.
It didn't miss that. It just changes nothing. Women can be as varied as they like but if all that variance is falling within 20% of men then it's still pretty whack which is the point.
So sure one woman could pick x number of guys and another could pick a completely different set y. If x+y is only 20% then it means nothing. If anything, it just makes things worse for any individual guy.
In real life, you're way overstating the variance anyway. I think you kind of see that yourself when you use qualifiers like "overwhelmingly attractive".
Because women are more picky. Men choose quantity over quality :P For a man any reasonably good looking, reasonably slim woman is good as a potential sex partner (so they will swipe right on Tinder). Women want the best of the best.
The women selected by modern Hollywood as sex icons are, for the most part, nothing special. There are at least three women working at my local grocery store that make Scarlett Johansson look like a hag. They're more beautiful than anybody I've seen in a movie in many years, and I've seen hundreds if not thousands of women like them out in public.
I know these sort of tastes are subjective, but I've talked to a lot of guys who feel the same way. The women in media are mid, most women who are young and physically fit can match if not greatly exceed the looks of women in media. However I acknowledge that women themselves often do not feel this way; they compare themselves to the female celebrities and feel bad about themselves even though most men would rate them higher than the celebrities. They rate themselves lower than men would rate them because media is toxic and purposely makes women feel insecure to sell more beauty products, lifestyles, etc.
What you have realized is that attraction is more than just physical beauty. There are plenty of non-verbal and biochemical cues that generate attraction. That's why you find these women in real life more beautiful than women on screens.
It's why the article linked in the root of this thread was even written.
Human attraction happens best in person because there is more to it than just looks.
I understand that, but it's also true just in terms of physical beauty as well. Hollywood women are nothing special, not anymore anyway. There are no more Audrey Hepburns in Hollywood. Hollywood's beauty standards for sex-icon women have severely deteriorated.
Charitable explanation: Hollywood has become better at selecting for acting talent instead of beauty.
Uncharitable explanation: Fewer Hollywood casting directors are straight men.
My other favorite: men (in media) who are doing things ultra creepy/illegal, but given a 'pass' because "omghot". Twilight: "older guy lurks around high school girl's home, peering in her bedroom window at night". Fifty Shades: "guy stalks young college student to find her address and work, and steals her car".
(Don't even start me on the whole Christian Grey character, which will forever go down as one of the most over-the-top 'perfect male'. Let's see: 33 year old man is deca-billionaire in telco after coming from foster home. And it was so effortless to become said deca-billionaire that he also found time to become a commercial helicopter pilot, a concert pianist, someone who doesn't break a sweat cranking out Michelin-tier meals for idle snacks and brunches... and looks like an underwear model.
I don't think things have changed much. Your explanation pretty much blames men which has been in vogue. The dating apps just expanded the size of the "town". Women still look for the top tier guys. I don't believe they are choosing to be single but convincing themselves they can do better when in reality they can't. Dating apps feed the illusion of choice that mr. right is easily obtainable.
I mean they can, kind of. Top tier guys will have sex with multiple women, some of which will be "lower" on the rankings than them. This leads women to believe they are in their league, since they are having sex.
Then time comes to settle down and those guys don't settle with those girls. Cue "Where have all the good men gone?" and "Why are men so scared to settle?". It's the same problem the average male faces, just in reverse.
Those women also had far less competition. The men the next town over they now have access to come with a town full of women who are now able to access the men of the town the woman is in. Each time her dating pool increases, the competition increases too.
There's no free lunch, just tyranny of too many choices, endless analysis paralyses and FOMO.
It turns out greater choice and rising expectations are an increasing burden on one's psyche. Many of our lives are much better on many objective measures, yet we're more and more unhappy. We're optimizing for the wrong things.
I think part of it is the old feminist theory of the "second shift" [1]; they have careers now, but they're working twice as much as they used to, doing the bulk of the housework and childrearing, and keeping a full time job. Men these days share more housework than their fathers, which mitigates the problem.
However, with the rise of living costs, now both partners need a full-time job, and the domestic labor is still there; more work needs to be done than before, despite technology making the individual worker more productive. It's not a surprise that fewer people are able to have children; they have more work and are still just barely paying the bills.
In the 70s, there was a movement called the "International Wages for Housework Campaign," which argued that women should be paid a salary for domestic labor, which is essential to society, and that this is an essential component of Women's Liberation [2]. It's interestingly contrary to the view that feminists are all liberal individualists who don't believe in men and women being different.
Or maybe life satisfaction has been going down for every gender because we live in a horrible system that asks too much of the individual? With women in the workplace now they also get to suffer under the stress of capitalism on top of also being expected to shoulder the majority of domestic and childrearing tasks in the household.
I don't see this as a "biology is destiny" issue, I see this as a women are still facing pressures from the past and facing pressures of the present.
By that logic, men should be getting happier if now they don’t need to do either the breadwinning or the child raising?
I don’t think biology is deterministic, but it is a factor, for both sexes. (Note that surveys show little to no difference between men and women when it comes to the question of whether they want children and how many.) My suggestion is instead that we have a market failure. People have choices, but not necessarily the ones that will make them happy. The solution to market failure is, of course, regulation of the market, but western individualists don’t want to hear that.
> By that logic, men should be getting happier if now they don’t need to do either the breadwinning or the child raising?
That doesn't follow from what they said. Men never had to do the child raising. Men probably do more childraising and housework than they used to do in the past, because they've been sharing domestic labor more as a result of the spread of feminism. OP is saying that the amount of work between a heterosexual couple has risen: before, it was the man doing a full-time salaried job, and the woman doing housework, cooking, shopping, and childraising as her full-time, unpaid job; and now they're both working full-time, and they have to split the domestic labor between them somehow, or, it's all on the woman and the man does no more than he used to do.
This is a bit oversimplified, though. There were always working-class women who worked as maids or in shops, or, in the 20th century, as teachers and secretaries. Those lower-class women just weren't paid that much. They always had a "second shift" [1], but since the 60s, it's spread to all women.
This is the worse kind of antifeminist argument. "Women say that they prefer the modern world to a more patriarchal system, but actually they are wrong and really would prefer the old ways."
You’re assuming that “women” asked for the full package of changes we ended up with. I’d argue that their focus was more on being able to vote and being able to have bank accounts, and the sexual revolution was driven more by liberal men than by a broad coalition of women: https://blog.ninapaley.com/2019/08/23/andrea-dworkin-on-the-... (“Norman Mailer remarked during the sixties that the problem with the sexual revolution was that it had gotten into the hands of the wrong people. He was right. It was in the hands of men.”). The package of changes was “women get to be able to act like men, in the workplace and in dating,” without regard to women’s distinct realities and preferences in both spheres.
More over, the disconnect here isn’t between what “women” want and what they say they want. The disconnect is between the beliefs and attitudes of a minority of elite liberal men and women, and the average woman, especially the average non-college educated woman.
I don't disagree with your point, but still: there was plenty of pressure on the men, too, and "many men got stuck in unhappy marriages, but that was life".
Also, early pressure to marry "the best bachelor" often meant "the guy on the football team", "the guy that peaked in high school" (you just didn't know it yet).
Often they were the ones who became the angry alcoholics.
I don't see many men, old or young, doing much to improve their standing as a bachelor, given what is in their control. I've had to do a lot of listening and learning to be a man women would be interested in. Modern male culture in the US typically does NOT do that.
At the same time, I think you're right that women have more power over their life decisions more than ever. This is great and I want that for the women of earth.
> The best bachelors would be gone pretty quickly. That put a ton of pressure on the remaining women to quickly settle for an average guy in order not to be stuck with a terrible partner
So average women with average men, I don't see the issue. The problem is now a lot of women aims very high, even out of their league, when they don't have much to put on the table.
The average kind of sucks for everyone. Being average single is a lot better than average income family. Raising your average family of 4 on an average 61k salary just seems like hell in any major metro. Better just Netflix and seek other validation.
I don't think is that simple, the happiness levels of women have not increased in recent years according to many studies, its more likely a complex issue and that aspect you mention may be a minor variable; I believe is more likely than us (our brains to be exact) have had not time to adapt to the new times where you have to watch hundreds of people with "better" partners than us just by scrolling through your feeds, and that is quite chaotic but soon enough we will adapt a bit better.
Our brain means we adapt faster than any other species so we are not as dependend on evolutionary self-selection as other species, its the major reason we "won" the evolutionary race (e.g. same reason we would be the only species to survive a meteorite collision against earth -even if not for long- without any evolutionary progress to increase our adaptability to space)
> In the "good old days" dating was simpler, but also much, much worse for the average woman. People dated within their town almost exclusively. The best bachelors would be gone pretty quickly.
Honestly, the ability to tell “the best bachelor” without experience together of the type that used to be frowned on before marriage was always weak; what has changed is that the social and economic compulsion/incentive (on both sides) to marry has become a lot weaker and the volume of exposure much greater, and norms limiting the kind of experience that reveals fundamental incompatibility before marriage have weakened.
When you're fresh out of high school and the push is to make a rush for the best bachelor or the cream of the crop in your small town, oftentimes you'd end up with the guy "who peaked in high school", because you only had high school to really go off of. The worst part is those guys were considered the best bachelors, and the "peaked in high school" bit wasn't discovered until later/too late.
Women don't prefer being single. Women want a relationship - but with a hot tall confident rich guy their friends will be envious of who makes them feel butterflies ("chemistry").
That's the definition of the ideal boyfriend for most younger women.
So the hot tall confident rich guys play the field, because they can. Worse, some of the hottest and most confident guys are narcissists - because narcissists and sociopaths are very good at seducing people with love bombing and future faking.
Inexperienced women get their hearts broken and decide that all men are jerks - partly because at this stage the kind funny not-so-hot guys don't register as realistic prospects on their dating radar.
There are subcultures within this, and there's certainly a niche of women who find clever, funny, and kind men more attractive than rich and tall etc men. But it's relatively small compared to most of the population.
At the same time there's a strongly gender-polarised and adversarial (actually hate-filled) culture in the US where wannabe manly men who hate everything woke etc are in a permanent war with feminists who are convinced that all masculinity is toxic.
It's not so much that "guys have to up their game" but that the entire culture is emotionally dysfunctional, and dating is stuck in a kind of permanent adolescence where healthy give-and-take relationships aren't modelled at all.
Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal?
> Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal?
The first thing that comes to mind is the relationship between Holden and Naomi in The Expanse. (Okay, so it's not a marriage. Does that really matter?)
I'm sure there are others, but they are difficult to recall precisely because they just are, without calling too much attention to themselves. So there's a selection bias in what we remember.
Naomi who has a kid she never tells him about and whose ex (who she also fails to mention) is the head of a lunatic fringe terrorist organization? Naomi who was also a part of that and was integral in executing an attack (also without a mention)? Naomi who disappears without a word to go infiltrate that organization in a move she thinks is likely to get her killed?
Holden is no peach of a partner either. Don’t play the “Holden does something the hardest way possible because he can’t ask for help” drinking game, you’ll be unconscious in a few hours.
> isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal?
TV shows are about drama. If you have "this relationship is too good" and "this relationship is too bad" as exit clauses here, of course you are going to have trouble.
Does Ben and Leslie from Parks and Rec count for you? Or is that "too idealized"?
Watch how many times Ben gets to do what Ben wants to do when it’s not his birthday, then tell me you’d want to be him. That relationship is about Leslie being enabled.
>Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal?
Oh man this is such a big one. There's so much media out there that depicts total loser guys winding up with incredible women & vice versa. If you're a young man & didn't have dad or older brother guide you through your end of the responsibilities in a relationship, there's almost nowhere to get the correct information, and tons of 'malware' information out there. One might be inclined to point to feminist literature on the subject, but that will just make you a doormat.
The last three paragraphs are on the money. So on the money. The level of conditioned hate is just bizarre.
I have witnessed some truly weird conversations in hypereducated blue-state America. I never say anything, but I always take mental notes.
One example:
So I go out to lunch with this friend, and they invite a friend of theirs. A woman, in her 20s, from an Ivy League school. I'm not sure why we were all having lunch together actually, in retrospect.
Anyway, she's talking about how she has this boyfriend. I think he's in the Air Force or something (which at some level is icky to these people). And she has some time off from her career for some reason, so she has some time. And she's spending a lot of it just being with him, to the point that, she'll cook dinner and stuff. And she implies that she's having a lot of sex with him, and that she's being very giving in all this, and you can tell that at some level she just finds him very attractive and takes pleasure in delighting him (as he, I assume, does likewise in making her happy). Which is basically the description of a good relationship, right?
But she also has to justify this feeling to herself -- that she likes making her boyfriend happy. And she has to justify to herself that she's doing things like cooking dinner that, on the one hand, she's voluntarily chosen to do, but that, on the other hand, she clearly also thinks are somehow "beneath her". So she explains it to us at the table like this: She's intentionally ruining her boyfriend, so that when they eventually break up -- because that's what you do, right? -- then he will not be satisfied in any of his subsequent relationships. She has to frame her natural impulse to be kind and giving, as a political act that is actually a kind of cruelty -- because that's what she assumes we will approve of.
None of us ask for this justification, this is just a monologue that she volunteers. I don't say anything, but -- what the fuck? I think this has become a normal (if unnatural) trained attitude.
I could give other examples too, but that's enough for now.
>Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal?
Sentimental and idealized are very vague, but there are a ton of US sitcoms that have this premise. But also, watching a couple just go about their day to day life that 90% of people go through seems boring as hell, who would watch that?
> Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal?
The parents in "That '70s show" perhaps? I see the irony in this title tho.
Most often when a main character on a TV show has a relationship, it exists to increase the drama. So it makes sense that we’d see healthier relationships among side-characters.
A movie about unexceptional people doing unexceptional things? Nope can’t think of many movies that would have that. Exceptional people tend to be egotistical assholes that take extreme risks and they make movies about the ones that succeed or fail spectacularly
> Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal?
Married with children. Al was a shoe salesman. Peggy was hot in high school. They had kids. They took care of them. They didn't exactly love each other, but they didn't hated one another also. The most realistically portrayed family on TV in decades.
> Al was a shoe salesman. Peggy was hot in high school.
They were both hot in high school. They peaked in high school and married/created a family with their high school sweetheart. That's the entire point of the show.
> They had kids. They took care of them.
They were also neglectful and callous.
> They didn't exactly love each other, but they didn't hated one another also.
Did you watch the show? They most certainly verged on hating each other, and were never as ambivalent as you make out.
> The most realistically portrayed family on TV in decades.
The Middle. Malcom in the Middle. That 70's Show. Any of a dozen "prestige" television shows that aren't sitcoms.
> Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal?
It's been a long time since I read something as aggressively condescending as the idea that "butterflies" are what women en masse consider to be "chemistry".
You are confounding social and professional outcomes. Social to me is much more genetic (looks, personality, etc.) than professional. Yes, IQ matters some for professional success. Grit, aka "The Grind" is probably the number one indicator of success. I'm not saying everyone can grind to wealthy, but almost everyone can grind to middle class. And the grind applies to all types of jobs -- professional or not, high income or not, corporate or start-up.
Also, you wrote your post (I assume) from the perspective of a man. Even the most unattractive women on dating apps get far more attention than the most attractive men. This has been shown time and time again. Also, most men are invisible to women, but the reverse is not true. (Do not read this post as disparaging towards women.)
What is really happening is that visual-only dating apps are refining the purest biological imperatives: women only seek the best physical mates (top 20%), where as men pursue whatever they can. As a result, most men get zero attention on dating apps. The craziest irony to me: I grew up before the Internet and dating apps became a thing. RARELY did I hear women talk about finding an attractive mate. They wanted to find someone compatible and supportive with good long term intentions. These visual-only dating apps have weirdly inverted the world as most women chase the very best men... who treat them terribly, but are very good looking and have a lot of practice seducing women. Rinse and repeat; almost everyone on dating apps except for the very top are much less satisfied than life before dating apps.
The first paragraph put into words what i've always been intuitively convinced of, but it seems difficult to make people understand it who haven't had to live through it.
>Someone who may have been dealt a rough hand in life but is trying very hard to improve themselves, including their social skills, their emotions, their health/fitness, their career prospects - all of which will lead them to becoming better romantic partners over time - can find themselves getting little support and encouragement along the way, and indeed can get a lot of discouragement from some quarters (including friends and family members).
In dating apps, the first approximation is that women rate men based on attributes that follow the power law (such as social status), whereas men rate women based on attributes that follow the normal distribution (such as looks, age etc.). The same dynamics applies to many animals when they choose their mates.
It directly follows that on these platforms, the attractiveness of men is much less evenly distributed than the attractiveness of women, but there is "rich get richer" or Matthew effect which skews the popularity of most men.
This point is almost never mentioned in such analysis. But that is the basis of the different experience average men and average women have on current dating market.
I don't know, from what I've heard, women rate mostly based on red flags (is there anything I don't like), whereas men rate based on green flags (is there anything I like). Which of course makes it hard for men to create a good profile, whereas women get swamped with messages and have a lot of "dont's" in their profiles. But it doesn't mean women are neccessarily "pickier". They are just as "interested" or "on the search" as men, but are often more cautious because of bad experiences.
Evo-psych explanations break down when you look at actual couples, I think. I recall a study where people ranked each other with 1-9, and they found that the stated preference was similar to what you describe, with women prefering the higher ranked men, and vice-versa but with the men having wider spread preferences. But when they looked at actual couples it was far more random with "9"s paired with "5"s and so on. (I can't find a link but maybe someone else finds it?) In reality, common interests and similar social milieus are probably the most important factors.
I am not talking about self-reported preferences but the statistical analysis of the observable experiences men and women have on dating apps. I find the former to not be consistent with the latter, and I find the latter more trustworthy.
I have learned a lot about this in the zoo with my daughter. Adults become extremely uncomfortable when the children find the human-like behavior of apes funny. Adults just want to go away. To me it seems that our animal nature is too much for most people to psychologically accept.
That is why I completely avoid that evo-psych discussion in general and here in particular. Dating app popularity can be easily observed and we don't need to go into that discussion at all.
>I have learned a lot about this in the zoo with my daughter. Adults become extremely uncomfortable when the children find the human-like behavior of apes funny. Adults just want to go away.
Can you provide an example? I don't disagree, I just don't know if you're talking about bullying or what.
I meant less about what they do, and more about how they do it. Dogs for example may bully, but it does not seem eerily human-like.
If you spend some time watching our closest ancestors, you start to see that they have lot of common gestures with humans. It is difficult to thoroughly explain this using just words.
>But when they looked at actual couples it was far more random with "9"s paired with "5"s and so on.
are these general couples or couples that met online? There is definitely a whole different dynamic to meeting someone physically and how that body language and actual time to converse changes their perception (not swipe and try to woo them with a text message).
You're not even getting 5 seconds on a dating app if you don't have the right looks or right pitch. I always had an idea for one of those trashy Blind Date reality shows with a premise of "would you swipe right on your SO/Spouse?". because we're never getting organic data for that.
I hear this claim alot on social media but is there any solid research backing this up?
I want to propose a different hypothesis - men and women lie differently. Men are more likely to say they got no matches on a dating site and complain whereas women are more likely to keep quiet of they get few to no matches and exaggerate the number they do get.
Maybe men are more likely to blame the site or algorithm whereas women are more likely to blame themselves.
Maybe ratios of unsuccessful attempts are roughly evenly distributed and the difference can be explained solely by the fact that men must ask and make the first move in most cultures whereas women don't have to.
OKCupid had a blog (I believe it was called “OKData”, which had a few posts that agreed with the parent post. I believe that the blog was removed after an acquisition, but the content was published as a book, which is still available.
This chokes out competition, and users end up with several apps with some gimmick, but at their core they're designed to keep most users locked into actively dating, either to make the app seem popular, or to squeeze money out of them.
One of the deleted articles, which I think you refer to, was called "Your Looks and Your Inbox". Apparently some people have made copies of it online, for example:
Christian Rudder (main author of the blog) wrote his own book Dataclysm. It's separate from the blog though, that was called OkTrends and you can find the articles on archive.org.
Annectotal, but the women I know, if anything, try to tone down the number of matches they get, and dates they go on, whereas for the men it's the other way around. You hear of every single match from a male friend.
Women do tend to make that claim in social circumstances but to be fair it's a pretty flattering self portrait. Could these women be exaggerating to make themselves look hot and unobtainable and the women who fail be keeping quiet.
I met guys who talk about their successful conquests on these apps and I get the feeling that a lot of that is just guys exaggerating or lying to impress others
I can say this I got a lot of dates in dating apps and I'm short and not very hot. My strategy was just ask for dates and play the numbers game - accept nos and just keep asking. I wasn't getting a lot of dates before I tried this strategy. I know another guy similarly situated who successfully used the same strategy.
Maybe it's not about the apps themselves but about how they are used and who uses them - eg. Shy guys who are nervous about asking girls on dates for example
> Men are more likely to say they got no matches on a dating site and complain
Does not really align with the fact that men tend to brag about their experience (hence: every single match is mentioned to friends)
> women are more likely to keep quiet of they get few to no matches and exaggerate the number they do get.
But they don't keep quiet, they complain about the quality of the men on display. And the ones who are successful usually don't mention it openly, to avoid negative connotations about promiscuity and such.
> Maybe men are more likely to blame the site or algorithm
In my experience, men tend to compain about the women (namely their behavior to be too picky). As apparent in this discussion as a whole.
> women are more likely to blame themselves
As mentioned, they're likely to blame the choice ("the grapes are sour"), or, if they get any matches, the quality of their dates.
> men must ask and make the first move in most cultures whereas women don't have to.
The book Sperm Wars talked about an interesting research about the number of sex partners for men and women. Is is well-known that men report double the amount of sex partners than women. People typically think this can be explained by men bragging i.e. exaggerating their numbers.
Researchers repeated the test by hooking men and women to a lie detector. While tge number of sex partners reported by men dropped a little, the interesting thing was that the number of sex partners reported by women raised a lot. Ultimately they were very close to each other.
I think the social stigma for women is higher for number of partners in general, and that explains the tendency to downplay numbers.
Not solid research but I set up an account with a single scrappy black/white picture of a photo of a woman from the 1940s. Her profile drew an order of magnitude more attention than what I normally get.
I know asking for funding to do research on getting girls is probably going to be a no go. But I feel like it's necessary. It's something a lot of people think is important and bad actors like pick up artists and others with various agendas like past resentment have stepped up to fill the void. The dating pool seems posioned and I think good solid fact finding especially with regard to what works would go a long way towards helping to fix things
>men and women lie differently. Men are more likely to say they got no matches on a dating site and complain whereas women are more likely to keep quiet of they get few to no matches and exaggerate the number they do get.
There's no Tinder-specific data, but it's been very well reported that the rate of matches between men and women on older dating sites was drastic, at least 1:2. So I don't think it's really a "lie" when men say they get no dates. I'm sure with the Tinder age that gap has only widened.
You also need to keep in mind that people complain in different places. You're likely not going to find a woman complaining about lack of matches on Hacker News, for example.
>Maybe ratios of unsuccessful attempts are roughly evenly distributed and the difference can be explained solely by the fact that men must ask and make the first move in most cultures whereas women don't have to.
It's possible, but I hear this is even a problem on sites where the woman is expected to make the first move. There's just some element of pickiness men lack compared to women. Be it due to quantity of choice or the bar to meet or whatnot.
> some element of pickiness men lack compared to women.
From the women I talked to about this, they were not that picky at first. They become picky as soon as they notice that every swipe they do results in a match, and all those matches pressure to meet up soon. When they've become picky, they match only with guys that have no real intention to meet. Presumably because those are the ones who are flooded with matches as well.
I have never heard the power law/normal distribution claim on social media and almost never anywhere else either. Do you have some links?
I don't know about solid research. The last time I was looking up research about this was around 15 years ago, when I was actually planning to publish a paper about the finding above.
I had some data about a series of speed-dating events. Men gave double the amount of +'s (if both give a +, then it is a match) as compared to women, and the distributions were what I claim above.
Then there was the OkCupid article and some other research articles on dating sites (no apps at that time) and speed-dating events. I don't remember any research mentioning the different distributions although it was obvious from the graphs on the research papers that all of these followed the same distributions.
I think one of the reasons why there is so little research is that there is some taboo around this subject. For example the OkCupid article mentioned was pulled off. I don't know what the taboo is. Perhaps these results hint too much about differences between sexes or our evoluationary past?
This is easy to test. Create 6 dating profiles: Looks: (1) below average, (2) average, and (3) above above. Then, man vs woman. Now watch what happens. There are lots of YouTube videos of people who have done it. It is stunning how much more attention goes to the most attractive men. Average and below attractive men will get almost zero attention. If you go deeper, and continue past the like to a conversation, it becomes more striking.
>> In dating apps, the first approximation is that women rate men based on attributes that follow the power law (such as social status)
Based on my observations and conversations with girlfriends who use dating apps, women rate men based on height first, and everything else (including social status) second.
I am five foot four and my former dating life from the time I was 22-36 wasn’t anything to write home about (with one failed marriage in between).
I got friend zoned more than I wish to admit. I started dating my now wife at 36 and I’m now 49.
I wasn’t unattractive - I was in peak physical shape by any metric as a part time fitness instructor, runner, muscular, 10% body fat. I was outgoing, decently successful financially etc.
But I am short.
It got better after my divorce At 32. Maturity - maybe? The nature of competition changed - probably? I was single, no kids, intelligent, still in above average shape. But I would have still failed miserably on dating apps I think. I met my now wife at work and the women I dated before then were mostly through teaching classes at gyms.
They were more willing to let their guard down with me as an instructor than just some random dude trying to hit on them at the gym
Dating apps are pretty much worthless for men under 5'11" or so.
My 5' 2" wife freely admits I would have never passed her height filters (we met at a bar).
It's sad - for my age group, I'm roughly average (slightly below) height at 5' 8".
Most women I've talked to (my wife included) set their height filters at 5' 11" or above.
When you take weight into account, they're all looking at the same 15-20% of guys - and then complain that all the guys they meet online are jerks.
I wish the online platforms would include population demographics in those filters - I don't think most people understand how many potential partners they're missing out on by setting filters that they don't really care about.
This is fascinating to me. I'm a 5'9 American guy who got married in my early 20s to a girl who I met in college the old-fashioned way (in-person through an extracurricular activity) before the iPhone existed. So I was just never aware at all that height is such a big deal for women until I started reading about it in discussions of these online dating services. I'm wondering:
1. Knowing this, don't guys just lie about their height in their profile?
2. Are most women really able to look at a guy in-person and know that he's 5'10 vs. 6'0? Or is it mostly abstract and only becomes an issue because height is explicitly listed in online profiles?
There is in fact an entire small meme culture of "five feet eleven and a half inches vs six feet" based on the absurdity of this, yes. you can probably get away with being 5'10 or especially 5'11 and lie to say 6' without issue unless you are in fact dating a taller than average woman. But if you get to the point of meetting up that probably won't matter.
You can only lie to some extent, though. hard to pass off 5'8 as 6'.
There is a huge difference between being 5-9 and 5-4. Again, I’m just stating the obvious, I’m happily married and have been for 13 years.
I also started dating my now wife at 35 and she was a single mother of a then 9 and 14 year holding her own and we met at work. She was looking for something different than women in their 20s.
Yes, I can imagine that. At 5'4 I think you're close to the average for women and that will stand out. What's fascinating to me is this apparently strong preference for 6'0+ and not a hair under that.
This is mostly a rhetorical question. But why does the man have to be taller?
My only two long term relationships (and marriages) were with short women. I have never gone after taller women and I only had any type of romantic chemistry with one person that was taller than I was. We were in the same friend group at the gym I taught at and she was going through a divorce. By the time things finalized and the opportunity made itself available, I was dating my now wife.
> It's sad - for my age group, I'm roughly average (slightly below) height at 5' 8".
This is not the average for men in certain socioeconomic classes/age groups/ethnicities. For a non malnutritioned young man, 5ft8in or 172cm is probably going to be on the lower end depending on ethnicity.
This is not to make any judgment on which heights woman should or should not be “filtering”.
I'm 5'8" on a good day, and my dating app experience is pretty meh. But in real life, my height never seems to matter. Literally last night I was approached by a woman over 6'.
It's wild how people's real-world preferences can be completely different than their more superficial online ones (I'm not excluding myself from this, or is this aimed at any gender/group in general).
This was my question elsewhere, but I'll put it here too because I'm really curious: Are most women really able to look at a guy in-person and know that he's 5'10 vs. 6'0? Or is it mostly abstract and only becomes an issue because height is explicitly listed in online profiles? I suspect the latter, and I think you're saying the same.
When dating in Korea women would guess my height to 2 cm higher than I am tall. Which was very eerie, because I correct my gait with 1.5 cm high insoles. I would estimate most women there have an accuracy of +/- 1 cm, and the worst were +/- 2.5 cm.
I did not go too deep into what I mean by social status. I actually do not think women rate men on attributes like education/job title/car/wealth that are typically associated with social status, but more with dominance, and height is one proxy attribute for dominance -- lack of above-average height is a good indicator that men is likely not very dominant.
I wonder if this also relates to the choice of people in "visible" positions such as politicians and business executives. The men are selected for tallness first, and the women for competency.
The entire premise of that analysis is broken by a simple truth - that while rarely discussed in "polite society", it turns out that women enjoy sex too.
I've only read the abstract, but I think your pithy analysis doesn't seem to undermine the hypothesis that sexuality in society can be analyzed through an economic lens. After all, sellers of goods and services tend to enjoy the activity of selling, but many other incentives and interactions can also be in play at the same time.
It is easier to talk about this in the context of dating apps. This phenomenon appears to touch some taboos, and I think that explains why these discussions never get anywhere. You can always find narratives that support what you want to believe, because social behavior is so complex. When we concentrate on the statistical analysis of differences of experiences men and women have in dating apps, it is easier to keep the talk about the actual phenomenon.
Such pressure does exist. And it's even stronger in, say, Christian communities, but I don't think it makes finding a partner a breeze in them (although they do tend to get married sooner?)
This is a spectacularly polemic framing that can only serve to score points, not advance civil discussion. In other domains it seems that our society has come to terms with the idea that systemic discrepancies in attainment can't just be dismissed by looking at low-attainment individuals in isolation - would you accept "$minority people could accept that they don't have a right to a job at Google/spot at Harvard/position in government" as a retort against allegations of racial discrimination?
I mean, it doesn't seem more spectacularly polemic to me than "Social pressure to commit to monogamous relationships is the only possible solution to this".
It does to me; your quoted sentiment amounts to a concrete claim that can be argued for or against, and does not insinuate that the position of the speaker's opponents is due to something that everyone in the discussion would be bound to agree to be an indefensible moral failing.
A contextually appropriate mirrored version of the statement I responded to would be something along the lines of "or women could accept that they don't have a right to a romantic relationship with a rich, hot, committed and deferential movie star". Would you consider that no worse than the "enforced monogamy" claim?
Women aren't saying they have a right to go out with a movie star. At worst, some of them are choosing, upon finding out they can't get the movie star, to remain single. Which would seem to be their right, no? Even if us non-movie-star males might prefer if they chose differently.
I don't agree. The difference is that people do have a right to not be discriminated against because of their race etc. But no right to force another person to be in a romantic relationship with them.
true. But the issue here is that if men start stating physical preferences for women they are seen as sleazy at best. This isn't an equal playing field socially, even if the sentiment of "no one is owed a relationship" is a technically correct one.
And it applies even to your metaphor. Man or woman, if you explicitly say "no blacks" you are going to be eviscerated. Even if older OkCupid profiles did in fact show that african americans, both male and female, had fewer matches there.
I think your google example is a bad one. Almost everyone is more "libertarian" about the right to choose your partner / choose to be single then they are about the right to freely choose who to employ without any constraints.
Men don’t have a right but “Too bad sucks for you” isn’t a sustainable approach to a basic biological function. Imagine saying “you don’t have a right to a meal” to a crowd of starving people. That’s how we get violent revolutions and bloody wars and mass shootings.
I think the first step would be creating a well funded government organization or nonprofit with a broad mandate to solve the problems of community, relationships, and the birth rate in the 21st century. Make it a proper national security issue.
Creating a neutral dating app with proper moderation (against harassment and fake/spam accounts) and without the profit incentive would be a great entry point for that organization to study relationships in general.
Replying to scarface, who has no reply button... It would help to know that profiles are not likely to be a Chinese scammer, and it would help in that the app wouldn't be actively _hiding_ profiles of people that have expressed an interest you behind a "gold-level" function. Because that's what Tinder does: it finds the short list of people that might be interested in you, and then hides them behind a pay wall, occasionally trickling one out (and dare I speculate, the one that is least likely to lead to a relationship).
If anything, Tinder is the precise opposite of a dating app.
Every time the app successfully matches two people well enough that they form a long-term commitment to each other, that is a step in the right direction. When the app instead matches people adequately enough for a short-term relationship but keeps them coming back to the app for more, that aggravates the problem.
Possibly, the commercial incentives of these apps have them deliberately optimizing for short-term matches. Or it may be the case that the apps are doing as best as they can manage and the problem is simply very difficult to solve. If the former is the case, then removing or regulating the commercial incentive might help.
I like to stew on this a lot. The root of it all might be economic and social opportunity. If you can succeed, you can attract good partners. If you are secure, you can be a better parent. If you have good parents, you will have more opportunity.
Of course, this has little to do with dating apps.
That still doesn’t help the fact that no woman says “you know I really like short fat guys”.
As incellish as that sounds, I am 50 and I have been happily married for 13 years and before that unhappily married for four from the time I was 28-32. But my dating life mostly sucked in my 20s as a five foot 4 decently successful guy, in great shape as a part time fitness instructor, outgoing, and with a modicum of social skills.
A guy who is not financially successful and who is tall has a much better chance in the dating or at least the hookup pool than a short person who is financially successful.
Fair point, I’ve focused on “maybe you’re short, but you can still be fit, confident, great partner, etc”. However, unrealistic expectations and dating “market structure” that lets the top 10% of guys dominate the whole field can significantly undermine all that.
Yes too bad sucks for you. There is no other option that's not horrifying for those involved. By definition anything other than freely given enthusiastic consent is coercive. Just get a masturbatior, jesus christ.
Do you want to sign up for the "might get forced to be with someone who's abusive" lottery?
I've heard taxation is theft, taxation is rape is definitely a new one.
Realistically, if I were forced into that I would kill
my husband or myself. I would rather be in jail or dead than be subjected to institutionalized human trafficking and domestic slavery. That's the difference. You're trying to draw an equivalence between a mountain and mole hill in magnitude by saying that what they have in common is that they're backed by the force
of law.
For several reasons. First, taxes builds the foundation of a productive society. Without them we would all be less productive. Second, taxes makes sure we provide for people who are not able to provide their basic needs for themselves, this is a moral obligation (in my opinion).
Taxes may build the foundation of a productive society, but reproduction builds the actual society. And in both taxes and coerced reproduction, something is taken by force from someone who has not consented to that. In the case of reproduction we are talking about roughly nine months of effort (at least), and in the case of taxes it depends on the country, but in mine it is roughly six months of effort (Tax Liberation Day falls on June 20th here). So that's roughly six month of coerced slavery, and unlike reproduction, it comes back every single year.
So I see a lot of similarities, yet one is generally accepted, and the other... not so much. Even though most of the world is heading towards population collapse, and surely the moral obligation you speak of also applies when it comes to ensuring society survives in the first place.
God I really hope when you're reincarnated it's as a woman so you can truly understand how completely certifiably insane you sound.
"the government death squads and taxes are both taking something by force that's not consented to -- life, and percentage of your income" -- like holy hell dude.
I don't even know where to begin to bridge the experience gap of someone who thinks that government sponsored human trafficking (because that's what forced marriage is), rape, and forced impregnation is comparable to taxes.
Give me the choice between working a menial dead end job until I die or the hell you're describing for only 1 year and I'll have my resume polished before you can finish the sentence.
They are taking literally HALF THE LIFE of every working person, and you are sufficiently brainwashed to think that that's perfectly normal. Or perhaps you know full well what's happening, but prefer the status quo because you are a net receiver in this situation.
For the rest, your total lack of empathy ("only women can suffer"), twisting of my words ("death squads", really?), and your willingness to kill your husband (irrational, but there you go) means I won't be responding to you in the future.
I'm not a receiver in taxes, I'm a software engineer who pays far more than I will ever receive in taxes. It's fine, they're not taking half my life they're taking (for my last tax year) about 30% of my gross income. I wouldn't suddenly get 4 months off if I had that money back. My salary negotiation takes taxes into account. I just voted for two tax levies one being for schools where I don't have and never will have children going because I have a private school I want to send my future kids.
I'm not saying only women can suffer, I'm saying you literally can't grasp how much of a hell the world you're imagining with forced marriage is. And of course I'd kill my husband, in your world he's my government appointed rapist whose babies I will be forced to have. What other option do I have? Right now today that would be more than enough to qualify for self defense. You apparently think this is fine and the pregnancy is "just" 9 months of your civic duty while me and every other woman will say is the furthest thing from fine possible. You're arguing that "death squads" is too hyperbolic but I'd rather take the firing squad. Men would suffer in your hell too but you don't see any of the downsides I guess.
People's autonomy over their sexual activity is universally acknowledged to be much more important than their autonomy over the totality of their paycheck. For a start, getting taxed is much less distressing and psychologically / spiritually / physically damaging than getting raped.
Tell from what? I've always heard it as the exact opposite. From the article:
From men:
> The apps are algorithmic doom barrels
> I’m fated to end up alone
> he has tried Bumble, Match, Badoo and Facebook dating, but in nearly three years has only met one person, with whom he had six dates before the relationship ended
> The vast majority of matches have resulted in no dialogue, most of the rest there was a bit of to and fro before being ghosted
From women:
> I meet so many men,” she says enthusiastically
> So I’ve given myself the challenge of flirting with one person every day, which has been a lot of fun
> I was getting a torrent of likes – and I absolutely hated it
> I’m simply looking for an interesting or creative person, and that’s one thing you can’t spot easily on an app, but then I’d get too many matches, which was really overwhelming
> I’d get a lot of comments about being a wheelchair user
Hell even disabled women seem to have absolutely no issue getting matches. Maybe the buffet of men they get to fastidiously sort through isn't well stocked enough for them? Well la di da, welcome to reality.
There appears to be quite a large contingent of women that are upset with so-called 'passport bros', as well as women that have hit the wall and haven't yet come to terms with the fact that it's too late to establish a family. But you are right that younger women are having the time of their lives; for that group, everything is possible on the dating apps.
There's a reason for this, how we raise girls is tailored to making good girlfriend/wife material. You don't see the incredible amount of effort that is spent over a lifetime to this end because we're
used to it.
Once you see the dynamic you can't unsee it. It even happens with bisexual women where the joke is, "I'm attracted to like 10 men and every woman."
For better and worse boys don't get this treatment. If you spent 10,000 hours under the weight of intense social and societal pressure to mold yourself into someone that you think of as attractive because your social status depends on it, where the idea of what's attractive that has been planted into your brain since birth lines up with what women find desirable in a partner i'd bet you'd be a catch too.
There's a huge impedance mismatch that is set up to hurt men which is that being the kind of guy that women find attractive hurts your social status among men. Pretty boy is used as an insult but you will find no shortage of women throwing themselves at them.
> There's a reason for this, how we raise girls is tailored to making good girlfriend/wife material. You don't see the incredible amount of effort that is spent over a lifetime to this end because we're used to it.
No, you're mistaking pressure to conform for pressure to be attractive. Women are constantly pressured not to stray too far away from society's defaults, and they're judged much more strictly for non-conformism than men are.
But the things which mainstream society encourages for women in the name of conformity have a huge overlap with what men consider attractive anyway (a quick example which comes to mind is the pressure to stay thin). Whereas men still gain social status by being attractive, but are given much more leeway to deviate in their lifestyles.
> ...being the kind of guy that women find attractive hurts your social status among men. Pretty boy is used as an insult but you will find no shortage of women throwing themselves at them.
No, being attractive is still a boost for a man's social status. Being tall, or rich, or strong won't get you insulted at all. "Pretty boy" is an exception, but I could compare it to "bimbo" for women.
There is a surprising amount of overlap between two groups of people: those who argue that society should not provide any material benefits or services (money, housing, healthcare etc.) to its members, and those who argue that society should be structured so that men have access to sex.
I didn’t exactly win the genetic lottery at 5 foot 4. My only saving physical grace was that I build muscle fast and even when I do let my weight go to hell, I look muscular.
But is the problem that men who are looking for 10s are twos? I’m in no way considering myself more than a 5.
I’m a social person by nature, I like to try different things and I’ve really spent my adult life working on my emotional intelligence. I was in more or less great physical shape throughout my 20s and 30s and even after being married for 12 years I make it my mission to stay in shape the best I physically can as does my wife - at 49 and 47.
The unstated alternative here is that women would be forced into the misery of sexual slavery. As a man, my daughters have the freedom to decide to participate in marriage, and nobody will take that right away from them.
Let me introduce you to the article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
> Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
This comment is so eye-poppingly fatuous that I don't even know where to begin. The parent commenter is speaking about how people (a group which includes women) have the right to choose who they want to marry, which includes the right to marry nobody at all. You appear to be using the declaration of human rights to imply that the desire of one person to marry another somehow overrides the prior right, which is utter nonsense. Please refrain from commenting if you can't provide a more cogent argument than ChatGPT.
I'm so happy that I dated pre-dating app era, between 2005-2010. There were dating apps but not that mainstream. I walked up to my wife and her friend with some BS reason at a club, kept on the conversation and boom 10+ years together.
I'm average looking, she has a beautiful face and has been dancing since the age of 4. I'd have 0 chance with these kind of girls on dating apps. Absolutely 0.
Another good thing, that time social media have not yet screwed up people's self esteem and that helped a lot -> she has not overrated herself, I have not underrated myself.
We've been dating in person for a couple of billion years, we are hard-wired for that as body language tells a lot more in a fraction of a second than any made up profile text and over edited photos.
You can still meet people today outside of dating apps. A good friend of mine met his gf at a surf hostel. I met my gf on a boat in the Maldives. I think most people would objectively say she is out of my league if they saw us in a photo together.
I think the hardest part about meeting someone is being in a situation to meet them. If your life is something like: sleep -> eat -> work -> repeat, it's very hard to meet someone.
Traveling really only makes sense if one of you wants to move or want to have a long distance relationship. Both of these are rare attributes for meeting people while traveling.
Most of the women I meet while traveling are also not single. They’re with their partners whereas many men will travel solo. Traveling solo isn’t a thing most women will do at all. Many men will.
At the same time I was using online dating site. It helped to accelerate the search and filter candidates. I could save time rejecting illiterate and/or less clever girls. Think about Google maps and real estate search - you don’t want a house on the highway.
I wouldn’t use that today. Full of fake profiles to lure paying customers and to keep them as long as they can. Free subscription is not existing anymore.
Whether you like it or not, the dating game is fundamentally built on the objectification of others. It sucks, but pretending that's not the case doesn't change the reality of it.
We're animals. We're programmed to want to bang attractive people.
It's completely different for introverts like me. I can figure out multivariate calculus or how a git merge works, but I do not have the faintest idea how to start a conversation with someone. Especially if it's two or more people already talking. The only avenues that worked for me are work and apps.
Have we been dating in person for a couple of billion years?
Setting aside that people have not been around for billions of years, if you go back in history without the tech and the mobility we have today "dating" is a complete different thing. You didn't have such a large pool of potential partners, where you were born played a huge role and you also didn't have as much freedom to do your own thing as you did today.
You better watch out though I would actually be more worried with that type of relationship because your wife will now realize she has unlimited options and start to second guess. So many divorces happen now from things as simple as a facebook message leading to an affair.
That fear of missing out could hit hard and lots of people get blindsided by it.
* There's no endless swiping. Users can only see a handleful of matches, each profile stays visible until users say yes/no on each profile, and the profiles are only topped up twice a day.
* All chatting is in-person, which is much more human than trying to text online. If users match, they can't chat. They both put down a deposit (about double the cost of a drink in a bar), pick a day & time they're avaliable, and Breeze automatically makes a reservation at a local bar (the first drink is free), or a park for a walk.
* Since dates require a deposit, and there's only so many days in the week(!), and users can't make new matches without first planning current matches, users don't get overwhelmed with connections - the existing contacts are prioritised.
* They're not owned by Match.com - which for me is a big plus! More disruption of their monopoly is a good thing.
Looks interesting indeed. Seems to only be available in NL though, as the company seems to be Dutch and they don't say anything about where they are available. Make sense if they do the whole "make a reservation for me" thing.
> They're not owned by Match.com
Let me know in 5-10 years. I'd bet a substantial amount of money that eventually match.com will acquire them as well. Seems to be what ends up with all these dating services.
> Breeze is active in 15 cities: Alkmaar, Amsterdam, Breda, Delft, The Hague, Eindhoven, Groningen, Leiden, Maastricht, Nijmegen, Rotterdam, Tilburg, Utrecht, Wageningen, Zwolle. Beforehand you can choose where you want to date by going to the ‘Date preferences’ menu.
Seems helpful if you are looking for a committed relationship.
Many of us are not. Where can we go?
This is the question that really needs answering; else we will have no option but to continue to flood the same spaces that commitment-seekers use. The relative signal to noise ratio is hurting all of us.
This is only something that would work for the Dutch. That's the whole point of "going Dutch". The fact that women have to pay anything at all would make this a non-starter in the US market.
> As Illich saw it, the rise of universalizing social technologies — that is, institutions managed by strangers — transgressed the traditional bounds of diverse vernacular communities and harnessed human endeavor to a trajectory of limitless growth, creating a “radical monopoly” over the ways and means of living that blunted any alternative to industrializing the desires of consumer society. In the process, persons and communities alike were deprived of the practical knowledge to shape tools according to their own defined needs and choices. Robbed of such competence, they became servants to the logic of those institutions instead of the other way around.
> His greatest insight was that when conviviality is swapped for productivity, monopolizing institutions that chart a singular path at mass scale become counterproductive to their original intent beyond a certain threshold.
> In his book “Energy and Equity” Illich illustrated this point in terms all could easily understand. As anyone who has driven on a freeway would agree, individual mobility turns into collective congestion when everyone has a car.
Darren Brown once had an interesting experiment, where he created a psychological profile and shared it with a broad room of people. Everyone agreed that it was a perfect approximation of their personality. ie. People don't really have a sense of who they are. (The few that do, are exceptional and don't need dating sites). Profiles are probably not the right artifact to use to determine a match.
Social cues will always be more valuable than personality, or kindness. For men, that is status and wealth and physical attractiveness. For women, it is beauty and age. Regardless if you like that or not, it may be what is missing in these utilities.
Further, I like how the Japanese make group dates. 3 boys and 3 girls go out on a date. Gokkon. Maybe this is something the West should consider. Safer, far more interesting, and allows people to broadly consider each other.
> In 1948, in what has been described as a "classic experiment",[10] psychologist Forer gave a psychology test – his so-called "Diagnostic Interest Blank" – to 39 of his psychology students, who were told that they would each receive a brief personality vignette based on their test results. One week later Forer gave each student a purportedly individualized vignette and asked each of them to rate it on how well it applied. In reality, each student received the same vignette, ... On average, the students rated its accuracy as 4.30 on a scale of 0 (very poor) to 5 (excellent). Only after the ratings were turned in, it was revealed that all students had received an identical vignette assembled by Forer from a newsstand astrology book.
Most people on dating apps have never had a long term relationship (say 5 years or more of cohabitation) and have never got to the stage where they're completely accepting of and comfortable with their partner.
Nobody writes on tinder that they're looking for a partner who will laugh every time they toot while watching TV.
We're all shopping for beautiful, successful people who don't fart.
I don't like dating apps (and I'm happy that I'm in a relationship and don't need to use them).
I think it's because I can't flirt on cue. A dating app is a very clear social situation (like a singles night, or speed dating, ...) where both sides know what they are looking for (be it a relationship, sex, romance...). But you can't "fall with the door into the house" as they say here. You have to navigate certain rituals of dating, you have to impress but but be natural, show interest but not too much, etc..
Contrast with how it worked before dating apps, you met people from your extended social circle. You had some non-romantic interaction first. There is a certain amount of ambiguity in the beginning. You can flirt and express interest without being on a formal date, and then ask them out. It can also be stressful and anxiety-inducing of course, but IMO much less than on the bazaar that is a dating app.
I think dating would work much better as a side-function of a regular social network app, than as a dedicated app (and I know quite some friends who met over the internet but not via dating apps). But alas, there is no business model there...
I think Facebook dating does this, but frankly I don't really like the idea of letting my whole family know I'm looking to date by throwing myself on Facebook
I don't mean the "dating relationship" stage, but much earlier, the first impression. It's quite intimidating if one of the few things somebody knows about you is that you are looking for a relationship/romance with them.
The dating app model has rarely worked, but it's a fascinating thing that happened, and there should be more research into why these companies were so successful in peddling it.
Simply, it's not workable if it has contributed to real success (happy ever after) occasionally, while simultaneously causing greater damage in other areas, like making cheating on existing relationships easier or discouraging meeting people in the old ways.
For instance, last I heard is that there's a ratio of 10 to 1, men to women, on them. Necessarily, this isn't published (to sell "superlikes" etc). Completely absurd setup.
But it speaks volumes about modern culture. That there's been no education on the best ways to successfully meet a good life partner, honestly factoring in things like your rank, regarding attractiveness and socioeconomic status and so on.
The best model is most likely: maximising your meeting of friends of friends. But who's out there touting that? Parents are asleep at the wheel.
Something to take into consideration with the 10 to 1 ratio (in heterosexual dating) is that if true it results in a "not great" experience for men but probably in an even worse experience for women.
While men may barely get any attention, women get too much and have to bomb through a lot to basically find the needle in the haystack.
Another thing I find interesting about dating apps is that almost all dating apps are owned and operated by Match Group Inc. (even on an international level). I have long had a running joke with my friends that if we ever want to get semi-rich we just have to create a mediocre dating app and have it bought up by Match Group.
Dating apps themselves have a weird premise because if they work for people, they leave the app so a working app results in a loss of customers.
They just overall seem like a very weird phenomenon and I also wonder why people sign up there considering all of this.
Almost all businesses try to move from "pay once" to a subscription model. Printer manufacturers give you the printer and make money on the ink. Video game consoles sell consoles at a loss and make it back on games. Razors make the money from blades. I use YNAB (a budgeting app) and it moved from an EXE you buy once to a web app with a subscription. Microsoft office. Water heaters. Now car manufacturers are trying to charge you subscriptions for optional features that are already installed, like heating seats or self-driving.
How is it possible? Well more men use dating apps than women. That's how demographics work. It also isn't that steep in reality, but more than half of dating app users are heterosexual men on most platforms (a site exclusively for lesbians obviously would not have those kind of numbers).
If men needs 10 times as much time spent on a dating app to find a partner then you would see 10 men for every woman on it, even if the same number of women and men are looking for a partner.
And looking at how much harder it is for men to find a match 10 times as much time to find a partner for men seems reasonable.
I know dozens of people in marriages or long-term relationships that started on dating apps. We all do, assuming we're not much over 50 and have a largish social circle. The dating app model world all the time, just not every time.
OkCupid was really well thought out for making matches for relationships. The double connection nature of the questions that allowed not just answering questions but also what answers you'd accept and how strongly you felt about those answers was great. It also did a nice job of sussing out people's true personalities. The more questions they answered the more difficult it was to hide their true selves. One of my favorite examples of this was a question about why birds don't get harmed when they land on power lines. The question could be used to gauge a person's technical knowledge but the answer "They do but they express it poorly" was a signal of a sense of humor. Lots of questions were variations on each other but written differently which is another way of getting to a person's true core.
OkCupid was full of weirdos, though. Source: I was one of them.
Tinder hit on to a psychological hack that allowed normal people to use it. It's something to do with plausible deniability. Setting up a real dating profile signals that you know what you want but implies that you are lonely/unhappy. Tinder gives that vibe of "I'm just swiping, look at all these losers, I'm just having fun". So normies went on it too.
One problem that a new site/app would face is that, to be useful, it would need a geographical density of users. If you have 100k people signed up, but they're spread out across north America or Europe or wherever, then very few of those people will ever meet irl. So at best you have a messaging site for lonely people, but more likely just an unsustainable business. Achieving the necessary user density needs scale and advertising budget.
Something highly local might work in a big enough city like Paris/London/NYC.
There was a really nice app that would literally create a curated dating app profile for you and free appointments with a dating coach etc. I ran into a while back, unfortunately all of the users were so far away it was completely useless lol
> just make a new site that works like the old OkCupid
Is such a thing even possible in today's world where attention spans are measured in seconds thanks to a decade of social media and endless pursuit of "engagement"?
Because it became 5x as hard to do this well in 2023. The legal and community landscape changed immensely. Moderation needs to be top, and for that, profits and engagement, which is why you see the Tinder-like model.
The OKCupid model doesn't have the same short-term profits and/or VC returns as desperate people shelling out for dating app subscriptions, so nobody will fund it.
How much does it actually cost? You set up a website. You put ads for chocolates and flowers on the site so you can recover your expenses. It's not like you have to build a state of the art fab. It's basically a messaging app, which is the sort of thing individuals have built as a side project.
No, it won't be worth billions, that's kind of the point. It should be possible to do it efficiently so that the operating costs are low and it doesn't need to make billions in order to be sustainable and outcompete the incumbents.
As to why I don't do it, maybe I will -- but I wouldn't object if someone beat me to it. Because it still requires some combination of time and money, the amount of which can be feasible without being zero, and it's quite likely that of all the people in the world, someone who isn't me is in a better position to pull it off before I do.
Moderating it is spam filtering. You limit signups to IP addresses in the the country of your target market and then ban signups from any IP address that tries to send an excessively large number of messages or has an excessively high block rate.
At that point you're down to real users who are jerks, the solution to which is the block button and a message sorting algorithm that takes into account how many times it's been used against someone.
Online dating is now pay to win, how else would a dating site make money? It's not like the old days when throwing Google Adsense ads in between profiles could pay the bills.
They all start with less than 5000 users. Everyone is constantly complaining about the incumbents. Go to where they're complaining and tell them you've done it properly. Since you actually have, they tell others.
That's not how network effects work. Your complainers will go back to their subreddit and complain that your dating app is empty and all the profiles they're matched up with are 500km away.
The only way to have a fighting chance is to start in a single metropolis (eg New York), and try to get everyone to coordinate trying at once. Since the demographics of people complaining about dating sites online is a bit small (and selects for the kinds of clients you don't want), you've got to advertise more broadly, eg with ads on Youtube or in the metro. That gets expensive.
You don't actually need everyone to sign up at once. Once someone signs up you send them emails when they get a match. When there aren't as many people they don't get as many emails, but now they're on the site, which creates more matches for people who join tomorrow.
People need some way to find out about it, but not everything has to be corporate. Wikipedia has this page which ranks near the top for search queries like "list of online dating sites":
You're an online dating service, so you get added to pages like that where people end up when they're looking to choose an online dating service. And then your site compares well against the other ones that are screwing everyone -- look how few of the heterosexual dating apps have free messaging. So people sign up and give it a try.
You make sure your site is listed in places like that where people go to find dating sites, and people find it. And the more people find it, the more useful it gets, because that is how network effects work. At which point people start recommending it and you get even more users.
Another possibility is allowing people to sign up for waiting lists, and as soon as you have enough people in certain locations, you let them in. There's lots of possibilities of launching this correctly.
Sure, there's a lot of clever ways to get an audience as a dating site, and I've seen many sites with clever marketing tactics. The success rate is still abysmal.
Not only OnlyFans profiles, but also Instagram. Some want to get to a few thousand followers and use it, I know even some people in relationships that did it.
And then there's the bots which just start a generic conversation and recommend some Clash of Clans clone or something.
But as mentioned, you realize that in the first 5 mins of interaction.
Found my wife on OKCupid back when it was still good in 2011. Haven’t used a dating app since, but their decline makes me pretty sad, I have fond memories of using it.
I met my wife on eHarmony after a few unsuccessful years on the apps. We have been happily married for 3 years. eHarmony was far better than any app but I can only attribute that to the fact that it is a paid for service with no free option, everyone there has to pay and that means people are more engaged and serious about a relationship.
It occours to me that the incentives are skewed. If the dating apps do a great job they lose users. This means the apps will (conciously or not) be designed to keep users using and that means, not finding a suitable partner. Even worse they actually put features that will help you find a match behind a pay wall, even more incentive to tantilise you but not deliver.
It'd be interesting to see a service that you only pay once you're in a relationship with someone from the service. So the company only gets paid when they find good matches. It'd become really good at finding matches or die.
What does success mean to you exactly? If success is only finding the love of your life and getting married than everything else in your life will be a failure which sounds profoundly depressing.
In those "unsuccessful" years, did you have any fun dates? Interesting sex? Exciting flings? Because connecting with another person in those ways should be considered amazing successes!
Once on a long road trip back in undergrad, my friend and I ended up thoroughly confusing ourselves by trying to decipher what "success" in dating actually means.
1 date? 10 dates? Marriage? Marriage without a divorce? Marriage despite a divorce?
You ask anyone off the street and they'll say "Yeah, of course I want a successful relationship; I don't want an unsuccessful one". But we can't seem to agree on a good definition.
We never came to a conclusion on that road trip and I still don't have a satisfying answer. $FLAVOR_OF_THE_WEEK promises "success" implicitly, but we never ask then what they mean by that.
Maybe it's really just an opportunity to ask "what do I _really_ want?"
I've always wondered about this "losing users" argument. My counter to that is that there are always new people coming onto the dating scene.
If an org curbs their growth expectations and aims for a sustainable service, the reliability and quality of results may just outweigh everything else and leave them as the only viable alternative on the playing field.
> If an org curbs their growth expectations and aims for a sustainable service...
True! But it seems like only a ridiculous minority of businesses are willing to pursue "sustainable but not flashy" as a business goal, especially in tech. So unfortunately, you might as well be saying "if the sun were to rise in the west...". It's just not going to happen.
I have always said that commercial dating apps have the wrong incentives. We need a non-profit to create a dating app. I see this as a similar problem to signal or wikipedia, people don't want to pay for those services.
I also think the app should severely limit the number of people you are exposed to and reduce the waste of time. I tried the friend section of those apps and that's the only time I felt the sense of overwhelming with having too many likes. Both those goals are contrary to profit via ads.
IMO those apps are very similar to social media apps. We have studies that show they are not good for us the way they are currently structured as they just want to grab our attention for as much time as possible.
> I have always said that commercial dating apps have the wrong incentives.
What if commercial dating apps actually had their incentives aligned with their users?
I'm imagining an open clearinghouse of profiles that can be be consumed by multiple apps. The owner of each profile puts up a bounty. When a app proposes a match that causes the owner to go inactive for more than say a month, the app claims that bounty.
Obviously, there's some details missing here, but directionally, this incentivizes apps to propose good matches, so they can claim the money. It also allows head-to-head competition, forcing the whole market to improve.
A not for profit dating app is a genuinely good idea. If you decide you’d like to pursue this and would like some help, I’ve got experience starting/funding a not for profit and I build software for a living. I’d be a heck of a good slave to a project like this.
Dating is a hard market because if you solve the problem, your users churn. Consequently, for profit dating apps operate in this weird space were they need a certain amount of successful users to help with acquisition, but if the success rate gets too high it’s a bug. I can’t think of many problems where solving the problem can be a product feature but a business bug.
This is a wild read cause I was discussing this just last night with some people at a bar! We had a never-ending conversation of "if we have kinda non-profit Wikipedia for information democratization, we should have non-profit for dating". Then more into "who would be determining the rules, how we can make it less skewed for one sex or the other, how would we deal with liability, what do we do with spam, how to ID verify to minimize catfishing" and etc.
One thing that's a bit hard though, how would we minimize the whole "numbers game" that's basically the main part of the apps. Guys try to get as many matches possible, girls try to find the "best match" out of "matches", so you still have the whole problem of unmatched men and women. But I guess, that comes after figuring out how the non-profit would work.
See my other comment, I thought about a multi-step process. Basically forcing slow dating in the app.
The guys trying to have too many matches is easy to fix IMO, you basically limit the likes. The feeling you could have "better" for women comes from the fast that you see too many profiles ("what if the next one is better?") and receiving too many likes. That is harder to fix, but I think not showing an infinite queue of people that liked you is a first step.
My proposed process solves both issue, basically you recreate the real-world limits of the number of people you can realistically meet BUT you increase the likelihood of a match by doing a machine filter based on your preferences.
I just posted on the FUTO chat since I didn't really know where to get the discussion going (https://chat.futo.org/#narrow/stream/38-project-ideas). I think I would like to participate in the creation of something like that.
In my head there are a couple problems a new app would need to address:
- Stop the meat grinder that is the current swipe model
- Feeling of overwhelming resulting of too many likes
- Waste of time due to low quality propositions of matches
- Most likes being based on looks
Here is the process I had in mind (I invite criticism):
1. You are presented with 10 profiles without picture that are the closest to your own reported preferences (similar to what ok cupid did a while ago with the questions). You select 3 out of those 10. TBD what would actually be displayed to the user.
2. Repeat step 1 until you have 3 profiles that also liked your profile (with a timer in-between each selection)
3. You now see the full profile (still without picture) of the 3 people that liked you back, you select one
4. You have access to a couple pictures (max 3 or something) and you decide to match or not
5. If you match, you can only talk to this person. To return to new matches you have to decide to unmatch your current match.
I figured that this process would require minimal content moderation / bot detection since we limit images and they are only shown later (same with the full profile). There are probably some flaws that need to be worked out in my process.
I agree with the general goals, but I think it would be fighting hard against the current culture trends. I'm not gonna comment how I feel about them, but depended on age groups, people have different wants and needs. For example, I can comment for people in their 20s, it is completely normalized to be in "talking stages" with multiple people. Not sure how "a person can only talk to one person only" would work in this scenario. Not even talking about you match, but the other user doesn't use the app for whatever reason, so now the person is wasting their time.
I guess, my main question is, whether this hypothetical non-profit is supposed to replace Tinder/Match group as is but remove the behavioural UX that optimizes for profit, or actually try to affect the culture trends (which would need to be discussed first, before figuring out the "gameplay").
I noticed this project on F-Droid the other day, they focus on making everything open source but it's not clear what kind of organization is behind it:
https://alovoa.com/
IMO it doesn't solve the problems of the dating applications, it is still profile based with pictures, unlimited likes, etc. It is a good thing that it is OSS and free but it would need more than that.
“People are so much more magic in real life.” - I agree with that wholeheartedly.
It’s wonderful to meet new people, whether you’re looking to find a partner or not. But some life situations make it easier to do that than others. I met the love of my life at Uni - she wouldn’t have given me a second glance on a dating app, but the environment of University allowed us to be friends, and then evolve into more.
How do you emulate the Uni vibe in “adult life” though, with thousands of people having lots of things in common that they can start chatting on,with activities involving people they know and don’t know that they can dip in and out of, and with parties where they can let go of inhibitions?
Yes, people are much more magic in real life, and oftentimes the magic happens from being in different situations with them.
As much as articles lament the alienating despair of algorithmically processed dating-app and social media culture, the popularity of these apps never declines. In fact, year after year they become more popular, even among those who claim to hate the apps, hate social media, and hate the way they've become a slave to a machine that commodifies their personhood.
Humans crave hierarchical signaling. Instagram, TikTok, Match group, the entire industry have invested millions of dollars into implementing every cutting edge brain-hack they can think of. They've nurtured in us a dependence on their contorted, amplified presentation of society and our sociosexual value. Year in, year out, just as the house always wins, the dopamine sink always leans in their favor.
It's primally addicting to seek concrete quantifiers of status or worth: how many DM's you get, how many likes, how many matches. As complex as the human social brain is, its measures of meaning can often collapse on single numbers because they signal something irreducible: just exactly how cool, hot, likable, valuable or important you really are. The end game of all gossip is to glean something close to these numbers, in one way or another. In real life there's always layers of illusion and nuance, but online we are presented the truth, unflinchingly.
I think people really have to grapple with something often hard to accept: there's no reason why the human social consciousness has to be good, ultimately kind, or benign. There's a possibility that the essential elements of our psyches that apps and social media have exploited aren't really all that pleasant when laid out in the open. Maybe all our whims and lusts can end up being very bad to many people through no fault of their own. Maybe there is an essential, evolutionary ugliness to human nature behind the façade of cordial, inoffensive pleasantries. In the end, we become miserable, because our mental heuristics have been granted power they never should have. Algorithmic bliss has allowed us to be far too human.
I think it is much simpler than this. I know a guy that is 35, is ripped and takes model level photos of himself. He will basically brag how he is picky on tinder. He is also 5'7" and has the most average salary.
Whoever has the best looking pictures gets most of the attention. I practically grew up on the old dating sites and my weight fluctuated wildly from eating out when I was young. I can remember it was like two different experiences depending if I was on a diet and weighed 15lbs less. 15lbs was the difference between a massive amount of attention vs basically none.
The idea that all that matters is how good your picture looks is so obvious but it doesn't fit the romantic stories we tell ourselves so we pretend like there are all these deep flaws in dating apps. They are doing exactly what we should expect them to do. Guys with great pictures are getting all the sex and attention at the expense of basically everyone else. Duh.
I'm shredding now right now and some stats on Reddit that the two most successful types of pics are 1) shirtless if you have a nice body and 2) pics with an animal.
So I'm gonna take a nice shirtless pic while holding my cat in one arm and have fun with it lol.
> As much as articles lament the alienating despair of algorithmically processed dating-app and social media culture, the popularity of these apps never declines. In fact, year after year they become more popular
Your claim is literally contradicted by the article: "The most up-to-date figures show the world’s most popular dating app, Tinder, saw its users drop by 5% in 2021, while shares in both Bumble and Match Group, which owns Tinder, have declined steadily over the last couple of years."
Considering the lockdowns made dating app usage surge in 2020, a more meaningful figure would be a comparison between 2019 and 2021. The fact that it dropped 5% from 2020 to 2021 given the lockdowns in 2020 makes that figure meaningless.
I live in a rural, remote area without any clue how to break into a social scene. I think you're extrapolating and generalizing way too hard. It's not hierarchical for me, I just want to meet someone local to hang out with and date. Dating apps are, unfortunately, pretty much my only local connection.
It’s not weird at all, and that’s not even how it works. My trainer introduced me to other people and mixed groups (guys, gals, coupes, etc).
Those groups all have their own networks, etc. If you vibe with some of them and become part of their groups, you naturally get introduced to new people.
This also works if you move to a new area and even if you’re already in a relationship (I’m married), great for making new connections.
Also I have body image issues and do not enjoy working out around other people.
That sounds rough. I'm sorry to hear it. I still strongly encourage you to get exercise on your own. It will do wonders for your self-esteem and mental health. If one, you get fit enough, then you can go to the gym. Don't worry, the gym is much less social than you imagine it is. Most people are wearing headphones these days.
If that's true, doesn't that support OP's point? That behaviors that amplify hierarchy signalling can cause seriously fucked up social dynamics to develop?
I feel like these apps are fundamentally opposed to having users form healthy relationships. The apps make money from searching, not finding.
I’m not very familiar with “the apps” but it seems like unless you are using grinder or tinder, someone trying to find a meaningful relationship and companionship would be a bad customer for dating apps, so they would want to both avoid those customers and even damage relationships in order to make more money.
Like how facebook and twitter make more money from angry, non-friends than from good friends connecting.
It does seem like a good problem for the “original internet” as there’s a lot of matching and filtering needed to present opportunities. But it’s hard to find communities based around a temporary status.
If I wanted to find a meaningful relationship, I’d probably want to be part of some large organization that has a section of the org for single people. So maybe a church or social club or something like that. But the organization would need to be huge to have a meaningful amount of people to make matches.
Most dating apps are owned by Match Group. Aside from being ridiculously expensive to get full functionality out of, their full functionality has misfeatures, bugs, and huge gaps of missing features.
Also, the premise of finding love online has been flawed from the start, so that doesn’t help.
Lastly, particularly in the US, body size and fitness/health have become so bad that the visual-first approach that online dating is necessarily built upon has even less potential.
Everything we do online is soul-altering. The online world is a different place. Vastly bigger in some ways and ridiculously narrower in others. We are the guinea-pig generations. We rushed into it without much preparation and simply figure out what works and what not by trial-and-error, paying with our life coins.
What complicates things enormously is that these altered realities reallocate wealth and power. The mental and emotional health of users was not the first priority. But we are now past the first phase.
From social media and search to dating apps and everything else online, now people asking probing questions about how the new tech has been put to use and for whose benefit.
Will there ever be better "dating apps". Its a good question. The answer will depend on if we ever harness the economics behind technology to server people rather than the other way around
It feels too final, too brutal, too spur-of-the-moment. Maybe these people are lovely, maybe they will change their profile and I will change my mind. What if they swipe yes for me and I miss out on meeting a wonderful person.
I've tried, but I just can't do it. By forcing me into making a quick choice you have forced me into choosing not to choose.
In my experience, I know within a fraction of a second whether I'm actually attracted to someone. I have never become attracted to someone later if I wasn't attracted in the first place.
But there's no way I could tell you what the criteria are for being attracted to someone. There are beautiful women I'm not attracted to and there are less photogenic women I'm very attracted to. There are so many factors at play: the way they carry themselves, their voice, their smell, that je ne sais quoi...
Swiping makes you think you are doing efficient filtration except it's showing you only an approximation of someone through a keyhole. I've met up with matches and found they don't look the same in 3D, we don't vibe and sometimes they just don't smell right (smell is an extremely important sense for attraction).
After wasting time with definite negatives that you thought were positives you wonder how many positives you rejected just because they didn't meet some criterion that barely matters.
All the real negatives swiping works for (like obesity, tattoos, peircings etc for me) would be easily filtered out in real life without even thinking about it.
OKCupid was the one non-swiping app left, and after being bought by the match.com group it became pretty much the same. There's at least something to read for those who care (and the questions system).
How do people here even make time for dating in the first place? At least for me atm, doing part time graduate school, job, and interview prep, I feel so burned out after it that I don't want to do anything
And I'm probably not even in as deep as some people here, some of this computer stuff is so ridiculously time consuming. I'm not even working on anything remotely hard, but still: how the hell do you make time? Without sacrificing your own projects?
It's something I've been thinking about for a while now. How do all of the people maintaining all of this hard, important shit get to where they are and still manage to have some semblance of a life? Not only just maintaining the stuff, but learning all of the background necessary to get there
If you don’t have time for dating you probably won’t have the time for a meaningful relationship. Maybe once you get the job offer you want and are done with grad school you will have the time?
It's fairly easy to make time for dating I find. I mean it requires the odd evening out and the odd day sacrificed which is manageable. The problem is that when you are successful you have no free time for your projects and stuff suddenly at all and that goes on forever.
Source: was married for a couple of decades and have had a couple of 6-12 months long relationships since. I have kids already, a full time job and am doing a second degree part time so I'm sure if I can manage it anyone can ;)
I'm doing well by mapping out my days. I have all my projects written down, with dating being one of them. And then I just plan at what day I do what. Of course life gets in the way, but more often than not I stick to my plans. You'll always struggle if you're trying to do more than you can fit into a day, but writing and explizit planning helps setting the priority.
I've been there. Keep your nose to the grindstone, and you might accomplish your goals. Stop to smell the roses, and you're brain may relax enough to find a solution that's been eluding you. But since you sound new to both, my advice is: don't mix date-finding with job-hunting. Both are full of blows to the ego, and rejection and desperation form a vicious cycle.
That PhD won't keep you warm at night, or meaningfully get you a better job, but at least it'll let you pretend intellectual superiority over others. That's the important thing.
Currently, in the same boat. Grad school + full-time job + TA work (I know I'm an idiot for doing TA work on top of this). I have no social life, I barely have time to cook.
Honestly, for all their flaws this is something that dating apps do make easier: fitting dating into a busy schedule. It doesn't take that much time to set up a profile, do a bit of swiping and have a few conversations.
Of course, the actual dates take time, but it is not difficult to make time for a date with someone you like because it's something you want to do. Actually getting to that point is what took a lot of time before dating apps because you basically had to spend a lot of time in a situation (like a bar) where you might encounter someone compatible and hit it off with them. (Back in the day people just did this at their job but I think that is less acceptable in Western society now.)
Things that require low effort are usually low quality.
There is nothing wrong with deciding some part of your life will be filled with low quality things. We can't make efforts on every single parts of our life.
But if you do this for entertainment, and dating, and food, and the rest, your life is filled with bland yogurt.
Netflix is no substitution for a hobby. Ready-made meals are no substitution from cooking vegetables. Chats are no substitution for IRL human interactions.
It's crazy we even have to say it, it should be obvious.
I guess it shows how much humans are biased toward quick rewards. It's very hard to say no in a world of abundance of those.
I’ve never understood how asking out strangers in bars or on the street is supposed to yield high quality matches. Developing crushes on people you actually know in your social scenes is more reasonable. That’s probably the ideal scenario if it turns out to be mutual.
But it’s human nature that the vast majority of the time it will be one-sided on the guy’s part. So you’ve got to somehow maintain a social scene with enough single women to make even one match plausible for you, while those women are constantly inundated with unwanted attention and feelings from the guys in the group, without the group either splintering or developing social norms that prohibit romantic overtures. That’s asking for some incredibly robust social technology in an era where we should be grateful that any kind of IRL social scene even exists.
It works because you can do high volume screening quickly. In theory online dating was supposed to speed that up even more increasing volume and improving results. Unfortunately the online screening was too fast and you end up over screening and throwing away too many potential matches and selecting bad candidates because Most people aren’t actually sure what they want.
I think it mainly has to do with women's screening process. Women have to ignore or immediately filter out 90%+ of matches/messages online because they get so many. But if a man approaches a woman in person, they are at least going to be looked at and considered. It's a hack for getting to the front of a long queue.
In person also allows for demonstrating qualities that aren't apparent in a profile. People's vibes are often very different in person vs. online. A man approaching a woman irl signals courage and confidence in itself if done non-awkwardly, so that also gives a guy a leg up over a bunch of dating profiles that are unknown quantities.
Disclaimer: married for 9 years so this is all theoretical
Also in real life, you get way more information about the other person, than from a mostly fake profile and picture.
Literally passing the smell test ...
Depends on the irl situation.
Dance hall: loud music, lot's of alcohol. What's left of the information?
The ideal situation is an honest dating selection system. Only if/when it is honest, good combinations for dating emerge. There you have it: dating happens in irl.
I can speak from experience that such systems exist(ed) in electronic form.
Unless we are talking about extreme introverts, I don't think there is a setting where meeting in person is worse, than writing emails/chatting.
Dance hall: you can see how the other person dances and moves in real (and you don't have to be drunk, if you don't want to). How she talks, with whom she talks and how. And yes, how she smells, how she talks, how she acts. And if sparks seem to fly both ways, then you can also go outside for a bit to see if it was more than just the ecstasy of the moment. All of this way more direct unfiltered and unmodified information than an online exchange.
"The ideal situation is an honest dating selection system."
And traditionally this used to be the village dance. Today it is in general mixed, but if you like online dating, then I don't want to talk it out of you. Just that in my experience lots of online romances I witnessed with other persons, turned out to be mostly vaporware, not working in real life.
Dating isn’t an interview. It can be but it doesn’t have to be. The less of a formal interview it is the more you get a taste for if you like hanging out with the person.
Dating is very much an interview. It doesn’t have to be formal. Whatever that means. But there are things that we hopefully all consider “hard no’s” and is this person worth me putting time in on.
You need to spend time with someone to build a relationship, but that takes a lot of effort, patience, and vulnerability, especially when you're starting from zero. But actively participating in various interest groups and other social circles is not a bad way to start.
Depends on your interests… If your interest is FPS gaming and you are a straight male it’s probably not a good spot. If you have an interest in sewing then maybe odds are you your favor. Still just common interests isn’t enough dating takes active effort like work it does not magically happen for most
The volume in the bar is a lot higher than you would expect. On a good night I could hit 3-4 bars with 50-100 people each. Easily screen off most, and talk to say 5-10. I’m by no means attractive but I could Usually get a number and convert 1/3 or 1/4 into a date.
The difference is that I didn’t have to swipe on the bulk of the candidates I rejected but also that those initially rejected still had a chance if a positive interaction happened.
Compare that to 50 per day out of a pretty poor pool and stiff competition and your odds are not looking great.
You develop an eye for it eventually. Some people unavailable, some are just not interested that night, some are hostile. These things change through the night so someone that was hostile earlier might warm up or become friendly over time. The body language is Usally a good tell.
They are also other signs that hint towards compatibility such as wealth, class, education, social anxiety you get a feel for it over time. I would trust that over what you see in a profile. Not that you can’t lie on those just that it’s much harder.
Plus The dark things people tell you after a drink or 2 would often be enough to get one cancelled off the internet.
Also keep in mind that a lot of people screened themselves out just by not going out. All those gals that don’t have anything money, live with their parents and go to bed at 9 or have no friends. You won’t find them at the bar but on tinder you might
> I’ve never understood how asking out strangers in bars or on the street is supposed to yield high quality matches. Developing crushes on people you actually know in your social scenes is more reasonable. That’s probably the ideal scenario if it turns out to be mutual.
I think meeting people in shared-activity groups is the best bet. You already know your interests align and you enjoy the same things. My old triathlon club would have like 6 weddings every year. Turns out getting to know people over 80-mile bike rides is a great way to learn about someone.
And thars the downside of being a nerd or even a jock. As a male you don't really meet (heterosexual) romantic partners doing stuff guys traditionally like. I've been to a bunch of tech/gaming meetups and can count the number of women there on my hands. And none were single either. Probably because they dated and found someone on an online app.
Of course I still do it for general friends purposes (when you live alone and wfh as a man, you NEED to make an effort to get out just to get out of your own head), but Idk how effective advice this is for someone who wants to meet someone in a timely matter. Not everyone wants to play the long game.
Based on my college clubs, I can believe it. It's a shame I simply don't like dancing. Dancing and Tabletop are two things I tried for a very long time to get into for the sake of meeting friends and I simply don't like neither.
Tech-heavy Bay Area spinoffs like Seattle also have the same phenomenon. It's not uncommon to go to a salsa/bachata dance and then suddenly realize that one is surrounded by male software engineers.
For the same reasons as you'd juggle clubs on a unicycle and play piano - increased core body strength and flexibility improve dexterity and extend your chair sitting typing lifespan.
Also helps build strength for when you climb those 300m comms masts or enduring those crazy G turns flipping lines in low level geophysical aircraft surveying.
I fully agree. It's all about meeting enough potential partners with similar interests. Shared-activities with healthy gender balance (at least for heterosexual relationships) are the best bet for most people. Many such activities also don't require long-term commitment or hanging out with same people all the time, so rejection isn't as awkward as in workplace for example.
Of all things I tried shared activities worked the best, Tinder the worst.
Yeah, gender balance is often skewed. While I'm not on the market I've noticed this with the hiking community--overall, it appears approximately balanced but most actual hikes are not. The long hikes are highly male-dominated, the short ones are rather female-dominated. I've met some women that joined specifically to look for dates--and I've never seen any of them in a group that wasn't female dominant.
Coed team sports are a great way to avoid this, since there’s necessarily a rough gender balance. Join your local ultimate frisbee summer league or whatever.
After I graduated from college, I exclusively got dates online through various websites (this was pre-tinder, so no hookup sites) because I hated approaching women at bars. This did result in some shorter-term relationships (a few years each), but nothing long-term.
I didn't meet my wife until I joined a language meetup. I met lots of friends through this group and after 5 years, I started dating my wife and we have now been married for almost 9 years.
The meetup is gone, but I'm still friends with the core members of the group (we are all married now. I think there are 5 couples that met their spouses from the group) and we meet on a monthly basis.
Shared-activity groups are the best thing outside of college because you are more likely to meet someone compatible due to your interests.
There is something about doing physical activity with others, that make others more likely to open up as well, so you can have a bit deeper conversations. Maybe it's related to the dopamine you release or something.
If you want to meet people socially and possibly develop more intimate/romantic relationships with them, you need to join clubs or groups or go to events where that is the objective, i.e. social clubs, not sports or gaming clubs or other activites that tend to be predominantly single-gender.
These people aren't talking about sports that require skill. They just mean physical activity anyone can do, like hiking.
The actual meaning of the advice is to find a physical activity you can tolerate in order to find a mate who isn't fat. It is a way to make their completely reasonable and relatable position on fat people seem like something noble. "My mate and I enjoy hiking. It is our shared interest." The reason I know what I'm saying is true is because every time this discussion comes up, people peddle the shared interest bullshit and inevitably bring up 'physical activity.' And sorry for getting a hair up my ass about it, I just find it crazy when people can't just say what they mean: If you are an average man who prefers a woman with a nice body and you dislike or are unsuccessful on dating apps, try going to a group activity that will filter out fat chicks. The end. Nothing pretending this is anything but another attempt at finding a mate.
You're getting hung up on "fat" here as if it's purely an aesthetic preference
Physical activity filters for people who actually care about themselves. If you can't be bothered to look after your body, then you're likely not going to be any good at looking after your relationship, your family, raising children etc.
I kind of disagree with this connection that fat women == not going to be any good at relationship and family and children. In my experience fatness has no correlation with their ability to raise kids or their attentiveness in a relationship (just go to an average parent meeting at an average school). Often times it’s actually the opposite because they can be more understanding as you both get old and unattractive together, or are more likely to work harder at it because they know they’re at a disadvantage for their fatness.
Of course I also know plenty of guys who cheat on their wife as she gets older and less hot (the classic “he gets older but all his dates are the same age”), and theres a danger for thin women who are filtered for their physical traits like this.
That is such a good way of putting it and I agree wholeheartedly. The body and mind are like the absolute foundation that you build other things on top of. If your mind and body are not sound, then what chance do the other things have?
This is cliched advice that I am slowly beginning to hate. I honestly can't imagine many things more pathetic than a couple going on a jog together. I'm dead serious. If you have a "shared interest" let it be something interesting. Bomb an NRA chapter or an abortion clinic. Yes, I'm a bit of a romantic.
Exactly. And people who say apps are crap don't consider different types of people.
A more introverted person can't find people to meet at a club or a bar because they don't want to go to a club or a bar. That's who they are.
Gay people can go to gay bars but even those are rife with straight people now, and usually filled with the "scene" type gays that someone might not be into as well.
As an introverted gay nerd you can meet people organically in person but it's a considerably more difficult.
Why not both? A big part of dating is increasing your opportunities to meet someone.
Plus, asking out strangers is lots of fun. The uncertainty that comes from stepping outside scripted social interactions creates tension. And tension what sexual attraction is made of, if you can remain calm and have fun with it.
And while it doesn't have the highest chance of success, when it lands it creates this feeling of stars crossing. Two strangers make eye contact and are immediately drawn to each other? Who doesn't want that 'how'd you two meet' story?
I don’t dispute that the occurrence you describe is exhilarating — I remember even the hopes of it happening being thrilling, and chatting up a girl I just met was even more exciting. But it’s sad in my humble opinion that it takes a tremendous amount of bravery (and extroversion) for this to work. And not only for the asker — the “recipient” also needs to overcome their own risk aversion too (they could be a creep!)
My point is, if that is the primary way we meet partners, it leaves those with anxiety, and introverts, etc, tragically excluded.
I’m grateful I happened to find my partner before the era of high-effort dating sites dissolved and was replaced with Tinder (etc.) We actually write stuff about ourselves. I bet nobody would swipe the correct direction just based on my face.
Navigating these types of situations is a skill that can be developed. Usually you know if the other person is interested, or if not, a little harmless flirting can suss it out. In a good group, you'll have a few others you can trust, and they can be allies in finding out as well. How you reveal this information is probably more important than whether you reveal it.
I agree that admitting it can be social suicide. But I think that's true only if it is the person's only social group; and it is approached either ham-handedly or if the group in question is relatively petty or immature.
I think it being mutual is the bigger danger. A group is more likely to survive a false start intact than a breakup. If it doesn't work out, people don't even really choose sides. They already know who is going to stay and who is going to go.
Well, yes. Just as you don't develop guitar skills by practicing on stage during a live performance, you don't practice your social skills by asking out the girl in your social group with whom you are infatuated.
Using whichever skill you are trying to develop in low stakes situations.
You can flirt with a large variety of people and the social consequences are pretty low. Thinking about how people respond to it is also free. If it's rejection you fear, say hi to strangers. Some of them will ignore you (or maybe even be bothered). That's rejection. It feels like rejection. But the stakes are so low it's safe and you'll become inoculated to a degree or at least comfortable with it. If you want to get better at asking people out, either roleplay with a friend or ask people out that you find interesting, even (especially) if you don't have a crush on them. Bonus: You might get practice at dating, or just find someone you really like.
I haven't found that to be the case at all. You ask someone out, they're interested or not, you both continue onwards in the group with no hurt feelings.
I have tons of female friends in social groups whom I've asked out. Some had boyfriends or even husbands and we all had a good laugh about it afterwards.
There's very little to asking someone out, you're basically saying "I'd like to get to know you better".
Where it gets messy is when people start hanging out one on one with members of the opposite sex, calling it "friendship" despite having romantic intent, and then confessing feelings.
I can't see how any of this makes sense. There are not a lot more eligible men than there are eligible women. Interest in relationships is not constrained in any way to "guys". I think you have an alignment problem.
Quality is subjective, and even as someone who's only had two pints of alcohol in my entire life a bar encounter seems high quality compared to the modern dating scene.
I'd certainly agree that "the modern dating scene" is dismal, but the average bar does not produce anything I would qualify as "high-quality interaction".
> Developing crushes on people you actually know in your social scenes is more reasonable
You are absolutely correct here, but the primary problem with this is that a combination of sexual harassment statutes, #metoo movements, and generalized "women don't ever want to be approached" zeitgeist has closed this avenue off.
This avenue is generally still available if you follow the two rules, but if you do not, it's over for you.
Church is probably the only exception to this, but with drastically increasing secularization of society, good luck with that.
And where it does exist, it’s usually someone exploiting power and/or access to another person, e.g. superiors in the workplace taking advantage of subordinates, customers being inappropriate to servers and not understanding or caring that it’s their job to serve them and their advances are not welcome, that weird/obsessed guy in your greater friend circle that you never want to be alone with, etc.
Respectful advances in places where both people are on equal footing and there are not external pressures, have never been seen as off limits as far as I am aware.
That's the negative behaviour the movements were trying to address but young men interpreted it as women not wanting to be approached by them at all. That's the message social media is giving.
It's an extreme but a dangerous permanent extreme. It's not like the risk of riding a bike and breaking your leg. Legs heal.vYour reputation doesn't, especially if your hobby or career requires an online presence.
Twitter aside, there is a general post COVID feeling of "coldness" out there in my anecdotal experience. It's kinda always been that way given me being in a big city (or at least, within driving distance of one), but even small talk seems to have diminished these days. Forget women, people in general just seem less interested to wave hello unless you're at a very specific function.
Ha, I haven't dated a woman for 8 years but maybe there is some wisdom here. It can be so hard to wrangle friends together for some casual meetups even if I'm happy to pay for it. It's usually not too bad once we eventually set a date, but if you don't reach out they almost never will. Like, we're talking maybe your most active friend will reach out for a birthday party or outing once every 6 months, pre-COVID. Many just will never reach out period.
The upside of all that is that most men don't usually take it personally. Like, I can throw out a text to someone I haven't seen since college in another state and we chat like old times (you know, minus the 5 years of catching up). So it's not like they ignore people on purpose. I guess life is just busy.
I have no clue how to meet truly NEW freinds though. Meetups are so flaky and a lot of my tech/gaming circle is probably inside anyway. At best I met some closely connected friends that were ex-coworkers I never talked to.
It’s kind of annoying I’m better friends with the moms of my kids friends than I am the dads. The dads want nothing to do with other dads but the moms are friendly and we chat way more. Even the dads that should be a great friend match we just never seem to make time for each other.
All my male friends are either from college or work, and like you said they tend to forget you if you don’t follow up.
The legal and political concepts of sexual harassment come into play in contexts where women can’t just leave (workplace, industry). I don’t think you get fired or sued or arrested for asking someone out at soccer or pottery class or running club. But women might not want to be in environments where that keeps happening, and those groups might develop taboos in order to survive.
Asking out is ok but asking out repeatedly or insisting on any other way may make the venue uncomfortable for both people and thus force one to leave their hobby, friends etc.
Yes, there’s always that. It’s always less risky to not express these things, but there’s a world of difference between the risk of embarrassment that comes with rejection, and losing an entire community. Avoiding catastrophe is a skill, and I think it comes with balancing self-confidence / charisma with learning to take the hint, among other things.
This sounds very incellish. It’s not considered sexual harrasment to politely gauge interest and immediately back off when you see the signs they aren’t interested.
My father asked my mother out 5 times before she said yes. They've now been married for 45 years. Maybe if I tried that kind of perseverance it would work, or maybe the second ask would get me labeled and witch hunted by somebody like you who would then try to ruin my life for it.
You didn't make an exception for school, nor did the comment you replied to. The only exception they cited was church and you didn't add any yourself until now. And why is school an exception to you, but work is not? Both are places people "have to be", places where people go to do something other than flirt and where they might feel trapped in a social situation they can't easily get out of. How is "my coworker asked me out twice but I still have to work with him" different from "my co-student asked me out twice but I still have to go to class with him"?
There's no meaningful difference here, particularly if you're a grad student. But I guess you'll now say that undergrads are allowed to ask somebody twice, but grad students must not ask more than once? Or maybe you'll just insult me and tell me to be miserable quietly like other people in this discussion already have.
Because work places in one place where you must interact with your coworkers to do your job. The bar is a lot lower for what constitutes harassment
There is a certain level of professional conduct that people expect in a professional setting that’s not there in school.
Also, I would be very wary of approaching someone at the gym who was working out. I use to teach at gyms part time when I was single. Women would have to really start the conversation with me before I would make any move.
> a combination of sexual harassment statutes, #metoo movements, and generalized "women don't ever want to be approached" zeitgeist has closed this avenue off.
Wait, what? This reads like the classic boomer complaint that is hard to get to know women when you can't slap their ass in the office any more. "No one can take a joke any more, etc etc"
Women are not a monolithic voting bloc. Some will respond to approaches that repel or bore others. The only way to know is to get to know them as people first and potential romantic partners second. This is why a social scene, or in some cultures, extended clan gatherings, is so important: you see someone in a relaxed setting and can make some assessment of their personality and values. This also means that it takes time. I don't want to say that we should all go back to the weird heteronormative 1950s, but using as many social networks as possible, including unusual ones, is essential.
As an older dude who has seen the games that young men play at work, I understand that the hormonal drive for guys is absolutely saturating, but you will fail and fail again if you think that #metoo stops you. If it did, you were misbehaving to start with.
I would say that you're right in some sense: most women are fine with someone respectfully asking them out. But the tricky part here is that there is a minority of women (say, the most sensitive 10%) who get genuinely upset or feel harassed by an indicator of interest in any given setting. When you're asking people out, you don't know what a particular woman's boundaries are upfront, and if you ask out the wrong woman, it can genuinely mess up your social or professional circles. This applies in friend groups and even if you look for positive indicators of interest: one woman might think giving a lingering hug is her being very explicit about her interest, while another thinks of a hug as obviously purely playonic and reacts very negatively if you take that as an okay to express your own interest.
Dating apps prefilter for "acceptable to indicate interest to" and let you avoid an ambiguous landscape that's impossible to perfectly navigate.
the absolute problem for me personally is the lack of social scene, i don't actually remember the last time i talked to anyone single, even at the few parties i forced myself to go to.
>As an older dude who has seen the games that young men play at work, I understand that the hormonal drive for guys is absolutely saturating, but you will fail and fail again if you think that #metoo stops you. If it did, you were misbehaving to start with.
Quite the contrary. I don't want to misbehave or be construed as misbehaving so I never tried anything at all. You see the most negative examples so of course you won't see the ones who don't want any risks at their workplace and put their head down.
Even on HN you will see a lot of people who hate conversing with coworkers and simply want to clock in and clock out, with no interest in making friends. And I feel that's a minor factor that leads to such behavior.
> Wait, what? This reads like the classic boomer complaint that is hard to get to know women when you can't slap their ass in the office any more. "No one can take a joke any more, etc etc"
No, it's the extremism that's a problem. Men went towards TheRedPill and similar idiots. And especially the younger millennial women and younger have seen this garbage for what it is.
However the pendulum swings to compensate. I've heard recently from quite a few places the old radical quote from 2nd wave "sex is always rape because of patriarchal power imbalance".
I've also slapped precisely 0 butts in the workplace. Nor have I said the usual shitty "women do _" things. But the problem is so many younger generations's women are overly on guard.
Hell, I've had them (at work) ask "don't I look good?", seeking attention. I flatly said that I don't make comments on appearance of men or women.
If I wasn't already with someone, I'd likely be with nobody. It's too toxic out there as a man or someone who presents as a man.
It was pretty much complete luck, on both our sides.
Neither of us were looking for relationships, or sex, or whatever. We've never done any dating apps.
We met literally in the Starbucks line. Conversation started up, we both had time and sat down for coffee. It just went from there. We've been together for 10y.
Would it happen like that or similar again to either of us? Nope. Nor is it repeatable.
Still it gives me a tiny shred of hope and encourages me to just keep stepping outside even when I don't fully feel like it. If there's some chance encounter where I can find a great friend or even a partner, I don't want to squander it being stuck alone in the house if I can help it.
Is it not possible there are multiple extremes at work here? The boomer example you provided is something I think is generally agreeable: it's not acceptable to go around slapping asses (man or woman) in the way you describe.
However, when the (alleged) "victim's" interpretation of something is given as much weight as it is in these laws (and it is--anyone who's had a corporate sexual harassment training course knows this), it greatly increases the risk of even more mundane interactions being reported as harassment. Even if the real rate of reports is tiny (or even unchanged from an era prior to the existence and refinement of these laws), the perception of risk still matters.
>if you think that #metoo stops you. If it did, you were misbehaving to start with.
If you read up on the Richard Stallman #metoo cancelation attempt I'd really like to know how you thought he was misbehaving because from my perspective it was simply used to jeer at and bully somebody vulnerable.
I think it's pretty rational to think that could happen to somebody else.
I could spontaneously combust tomorrow, but I don’t build my life around that. Interacting with people has a risk associated with it. For women, this risk is much higher. For men, now with things like #metoo, the risk has been raised.
If you are out talking with a woman and get weird/bad vibes, politely excuse yourself and stop interacting with them. Don’t dig a deeper hole.
The majority of woman will let you know if they are not interested. Poor social skills does not excuse behavior which makes someone feel unsafe.
>For men, now with things like #metoo, the risk has been raised.
Yes, that was my entire point. The movement didn't only mean that more Weinsteins got what they deserved. It also lowered the bar of what is considered "creepy" and raised the risks of behavior which is perceived as such, whether legitimately or not.
What about the part of his activism where he makes up stupid baby names for everything he doesn't like, shouts at all his colleagues and eats skin off his toes?
The attempts at character assassination are a natural side effect of his profit-hostile activism.
The attacks on his character and the noisy tantrum Google had over AGPL a few years ago (e.g. even banning it from their own version of github for a while) are manifestations of the same desire to see him and his movement nullified.
It's funny because the GPL is not anti-profit, as there's two very natural models for it: one where you sell commercial licenses for people who can't use GPL software, and one where you sell support and development contracts for it.
It isnt anti the concept of profit, it just had the effect of chewing through a lot of profit margins. The GPL was responsible for breaking Microsoft's desktop OS monopoly, for instance.
A watered down FSF run by an inoffensive do-nothing would be a better outcome for big tech than leaving him in charge. Hence the all the attempts to cancel him, including via cynically hijacking #metoo.
Why would you bring that up in relation to " Richard Stallman #metoo cancellation attempt", unless you were trying to insinuate some sort of connection between his "obnoxious antisocial" tendencies and the sexual predator allegations (that is what is meant by "#metoo cancellation attempt")
> I’ve never understood how asking out strangers in bars or on the street is supposed to yield high quality matches.
Plus, I have the feeling that asking out women is considered increasingly rude.
> Developing crushes on people you actually know in your social scenes is more reasonable.
This is certainly an option for people in their 20s, or maybe in very mixed professions with a lot of interactions, but not an option for a lot of us who don't have a rich social life. Plus a lot of people refrain dating people at work.
I still feel dating apps are the best option, even though they don't work for me anymore since I'm past 40.
Grindr requires extremely little effort to use, but so many gay men report great satisfaction from it. If the dating apps used by the heterosexual masses spark a significantly higher level of disappointment and frustration, then there must be some explanation for that other than “low effort”.
As a gay man, I hate grindr and many of my friends do too. We still may use it because it's ubiquitous, honest to a fault, and it's easy to confuse solutions to horniness with solutions to loneliness. But I know it often takes a toll on self-esteem, particularly in areas where you don't match the dominant "type" (e.g., a nerdy guy living in LA or OC). There aren't better options and many of the guys on hinge or tinder are also on grindr -- so, I think grindr gets used often despite it not really delivering on the users' hopes. So, I wouldn't confuse use with satisfaction, and I'd really love to see data on how many gay men actually are satisfied with grindr.
I'm in the kinky community and I visit gay clubs sometimes because they have way bigger and better venues (their community is just a lot bigger) and often have all-orientations nights and many popular gay themes overlap strongly with ours (eg submission, pet play, leather)
But one thing I notice is that there's a subset of the gay community that seems shallow and very physical in their sexuality. When you speak of 'satisfaction' in this sense it seems to be purely the physical side and nothing else counts. For me that doesn't work at all. Good for them of course (and I do really think they are truly fulfilled by this so power to them!). But it's a phenomenon that seems pretty unique, I have not heard of this in the lesbian scene for example (my friends are very diverse and open about their sexuality)
Of course this subset is highly represented in those clubs and on Grindr because that is where they find their partners easily.
In these clubs I don't feel so comfortable because they take consent for granted while in the kinky community we always confirm consent before doing anything. Even as much as touching someone's arm.
But I also know a lot of gay people that are more sensual and careful like me. You just don't find them much in those places because they are similarly put off by the attitudes.
I think you're totally right, and I think that's the tragedy of apps like grindr. I was on gay websites as a teenager in the late 90s/early 00s, and it was only tech savvy guys. You could chat with someone for weeks without exchanging photos. The horny, shallow guys somewhat weeded themselves out because there wasn't a large enough population to sustain that.
But as the internet became more popular, dating sites became more mainstream, and then the location-based ones matured, it almost became a race to the bottom (so to speak).
If someone is horny right now, why chat with person A (with a text-based profile) when person B has photos? Why chat with person B when person C has shirtless photos? Why chat with person C when person D sends dick pics right away? Why chat with person D when person E sends dick pics and will drive to your house in 10 minutes? So a subset of users start pushing this towards being hyper efficiency, but that comes at the expense of the other subset of users who don't necessarily want that.
My experience has been you can't ever escape that. That mentality has permeated the system, and now we're conditioned to "meet up within 3 messages", "send pics in first message", "no fats, no fems, no flakes", etc. And if you don't like that and want something slower then you get told "it's just grindr, what do you expect?" (which eventually morphs into "it's just tinder what do you expect?", "it's just hinge, what do you expect?"). But even the people saying "it's just grindr" also complain that after they have sex, they just feel lonely again and that they feel trapped or addicted to grindr.
Obviously I'm painting with really broad strokes. Some people do find relationships on grindr. Some people are satisfied with their interactions. But, I think like the original article describes, it feels soul destroying. And by the time you're in your 30s, I think a lot of gay men realize that easy sex doesn't necessarily mean good sex and it often doesn't mean feeling satisfied or content afterwards. But it's difficult when you have a heterogenous population, with a vocal faction of the population that keeps pushing the limits of efficiency, and the rest of the population is just sorta dragged along.
You see I totally agree with you, but I am not sure if grindr is solely to blame for this. It is a fair generalisation to say that men struggle far more with emotions and open communication. This is clearly demonstrable by looking at the male suicide rates: in my country (UK) they are roughly 3 times that of women. I have no doubt that is common across western countries.
So really to me the problem is that men, on average, struggle with expressing their emotions more. Asking those men to form healthy, loving relationships with other men is then a challenge. Not impossible, but certainly more difficult.
To me, Grindr is a symptom not the cause. If you are taught from a young age that men don't cry, toughen up and be a man etc, then sex is reduced to the physical act. Add in some emotional truama, which is again very common in the gay community, and the problem is exacerbated. Of course Grindr doesn't help and makes it all worse, but really they're just making money off the damage which is already done.
With suicides, it is kinda. Gender rates of suicides wary between countries.
But what is also happening is that men tend to pick more violent ways of killing themselves - shooting themselves and alike. Women tend to go for poisons and such. So, the suicide attempts are much more closer between genders - but men more successful at it.
> To me, Grindr is a symptom not the cause. If you are taught from a young age that men don't cry, toughen up and be a man etc, then sex is reduced to the physical act.
I agree Grindr is a symptom not the cause. There were rough gay clubs for decades before apps ever appeared.
I don't think this toughening up thing is really the issue though. Many gay friends like this kind of sex and are plenty emotional. And for young people this toughening up bullshit isn't really a thing anymore anyway. When I grew up in the 80s the traditionalists were still like that and there was this (in my opinion) fascist thing in Holland with pretty much all men still being forced into the military and be primed into obedience, following orders and stuff. But since the 90s it's a different world for young people. These things aren't expected and part of their lives anymore. Unless they actually decide they want to be told what to do and join the army voluntarily.
Well I have to say it’s very primal and instinctive. As cavemen I’m doubtful there was much chat going on we probably did it like many other animals do it today and strongest man got to have it’s way. So I don’t think it is all that weird people just want instant sex we probably had that for hundreds of thousands of years. In my experience though a lot of the apps you can specify what you are looking for. Set your profile to long term and you will meet people that chat first and get to know each other. I’m week on into chatting a girl. It’s going to be 2 more weeks before we can hang out. Our profiles are set to long term so no expectation of sex right away.
Yeah I think so too. It's more instinctive for men to like this.
I (as a cis hetero man) consider many such things toxic masculinity in today's society but I'm very emo (and proud of it nowadays). But if it's consensual it's fine, it's more that consent is often overlooked by the people who are into this kind of sex.
> But it's difficult when you have a heterogenous population, with a vocal faction of the population that keeps pushing the limits of efficiency, and the rest of the population is just sorta dragged along.
I don't mean to digress, but this statement of yours could easily apply to technology or any cultural change.
This is the impression I've gotten from my gay male friends as well. One in particular seems to get better luck from going to small-medium themed events that are thin excuses for meeting potential partners.
I mean, it's pretty obvious isn't it? The ratio on most dating apps is 10-100x more men then women, a large fraction of fake profiles and scams, and the companies pushing predatory monetization hacks as a result of all that.
Every thing is a SaaS mentality. Dating apps need you to forever be dating to keep you paying.Pharmaceuticals don't want cures, but forever treatments. We have pretty much completely moved to a rent seeking society
Oh man why didn't I think of this? The Vaccine I'm about to get is the third one for a very popular disease, and somehow it will just ... maybe possibly keep me from catching it for ... maybe a year or something?
Of course, alternative treatments such as the nasal spray that is supposed to totally eliminate the disease have, well, lost funding[0].
But I guess those vaccines, right? They just prove that we don't live in a rent-seeking society.
Even family guy had a episode about this. Rich Father-in-law is sitting on a cure for cancer because he owns the pharmaceutical and can profit more off cancer treatment.
Not saying that FG is a good oracle to go off of, but if it's such a prolific mindset that comedy shows are riffing on the concept the people up top have definitely crunched numbers on such factors.
This is the rhetorical equivalent of saying “no offense” and then saying something offensive. Either you think it’s a meaningful example, which you manifestly do, or you think that it’s a joke and shouldn’t be considered seriously. You can’t have it both ways, and trying to just removes credence from your argument.
Family Guy also jokes about virtually every other conspiracy theory, yet birds do in fact exist.
>Either you think it’s a meaningful example, which you manifestly do, or you think that it’s a joke and shouldn’t be considered seriously.
comedy is awareness, and awareness is an important first step. But awareness is not hard proof. It's at best a step to start investigations with.
So I don't know what you want me to say. I do see it both ways. Maybe there is a point, but nothing I can argue in a real capacity.
>Family Guy also jokes about virtually every other conspiracy theory
Indeed. but FG can be strangely prohetic at times. Not always (Trump Guy aired in like, 2019, 3-4 years after everyone made every joke in the book. And FG didn't add much there), but said episode aired in 2012. So we're talking nearly a decade before the internet consensus started taking this hard cynical anti-capitalistic approach.
Comedy is awareness of what’s funny. That’s it. It might tangentially be related to what’s true, but that’s at best a happy accident.
I take it you weren’t around in the 90s when Chris Rock made this exact joke (it was on Bigger and Blacker), and it killed. People have thought that doctors were after repeat business for as long as there have been doctors.
This is a commonly held belief because treating symptoms always* come first. It always comes first not because the pharmacryptoluminati are ghouls after money, but because it’s easier. But that’s not a good punchline.
>People have thought that doctors were after repeat business for as long as there have been doctors.
I'm sure there's always been cynicism. I'm less sure that this isn't yet another peak of cynicism, with the main difference being that that whole faux politeness is crumbling away. Companies can't even keep up that facade anymore like the various 90's "companies are evil" that has been satarized and parodied constantly.
I think the big difference between back than and now is that patents are extremely rampant in a bad way. I can't envision a Jonas Salk of modern times because so much of doctors (especially R&D) has become privatized and because any potential treatment (let alone cure) will be restricted for quite a while before the public (already dependent on insurance to pay for this) can benefit.
You sound unhinged and unaware of history, so you should be aware that nothing you’re saying is new and it’s just as untrue now as it has been for previous generations. People have been talking this same nonsense about how “it’s the corporations, man” despite the steady progress in healthcare for at least the last 60 years. I’m genuinely at a loss for how we can be creating new vaccines at the rate we are and people can simultaneously think such ludicrous things.
> I can't envision a Jonas Salk of modern times…
Fortunately overcoming your baseless skepticism is not a prerequisite for winning the Nobel.
>so you should be aware that nothing you’re saying is new and it’s just as untrue now as it has been for previous generations.
okay, that's perfectly fine. I just wanted to talk about a family Guy episode, I wasn't looking to convince you of... well, whatever we're arguing about at this point. You win.
>Fortunately overcoming your baseless skepticism is not a prerequisite for winning the Nobel.
the COVID vaccine is the exact kind of example of why modern pharmaceuticals is a mess. I understand it was a global emergency, but the mess between 3 companies and the lack of clarification early on regarding insurance and what's covered or not (even though it was also offered insurance free). It shouldn't have been this debate on Pfizer or Moderna or J&J. It shoulda just been "COVID vaccine".
But yes, good on Katalin Karikó. I'm very glad she's getting and gotten the recognition she deserves.
Anyways this discussion has long ran its course and when you resort to insults it's time to disengage. Take care.
Absolutely. Its probably time the govt steps in and shifts patent law to favor cures over treatments. There will be incredible resistance to this from lobbyists though.
Other thing they need to do is eliminate the requirement that all new treatments reviewed by the FDA meet the requirement of a "disease". Theres a lot of things people want out of lets say gene therapy that is not strictly a disease but benefits your health in the end. And I dont know why cosmetic or enhancing treatments should not be considered as well. They need to loosen up.
FDA approval for (gene therapy for instance) is taking something like 15 years to get approved. And only their narrow definition of whats necessary for the public is even considered. This is an absurd situation. Govt red tape is literally killing us.
I put very little effort in my sleep and have a very good one.
Some things are just good and cheap. It's nice.
Unfortunately, that never characterized heterosexual courting, eating healthy food while working full time or finding meaning in your life. Most people struggle with those.
Also note reporting satisfaction with something can just validate the pleasure it brings to you. I'm personally satisfied with Netflix.
But you can't fill your life with such things and expect happiness.
Obvious just means "given our context, we don't expect to require much complex thinking to get to that conclusion".
It's just another convention.
Given our context of most of us having eyes and color receptors calibrated in a similar fashion, I expect most people will see the sky blue. Of course if you dig deeper, it opens the discussions to nuances.
The "biological incentives" of being gay (or bi, or ace, or aro, or child-free-by-choice, or (hetero) butt stuff and blowjobs, or all the other things from the a-z of human relationships that aren't pro-reproduction) were still an open question last I heard.
At the simplest biological level, the burden of being pregnant is only borne by one gender (or sex, or whatever).
Birth control changes this of course, but society (let alone biology!) hasn’t adapted to that yet. It’s very unclear where we’ll end up long term.
STD risk is dramatically higher for women too, but one could make a ‘giver/receiver’ argument with men that is less clear. Still less risk though I believe.
Men have always been able to ‘hit and run’ in a way that women can’t. No one is getting pregnant because they were ACE, or had homosexual sex (with either gender). So it’s about meeting one’s own needs, with limited consequences, for both parties.
Marriage and other forms of sexual control has always been about trying to get a degree of accountability and stability that is a compromise between the sexes so that society isn’t inundated with the poverty, countless needless deaths and out of control orphans/unwanted children that result otherwise. At least pre birth control.
Shotgun weddings were a thing for a reason! Dad was going to get stuck with the costs of raising some random assholes kid otherwise, and fuck that!
And out of control physical violence and abuse if men don’t get what they need too (which is more than just sex, despite what many men will say).
If things don’t get reined in somewhat, we’re going to be Brazil - if we’re lucky.
(Even more) massive wealth disparities, as the ‘have’s’ are able to keep their eye on the ball more effective and retain/build wealth, and everyone else gets distracted and ‘played’.
Large segments of the population ending up in Favelas, insane crime rates + massive drug use, general chaos and social disorder, especially in the cities.
Think ‘US in the late 70’s, early 80’s’ but with way more people, denser, and more intense.
We know a lot more about heterosexual mating strategies than male-male homosexual mating strategies because you can just apply the vast body of animal behavioural studies to understand human heterosexual (and female-female homosexual) mating strategies.
Males that refuse to mate with females is something that we only see in humans. It’s inherently less well understood. You can’t apply the vast body of animal behavioural studies because all males of all other species will mate with females.
You can hypothesis generate with evolutionary logic, but that doesn’t mean anything until you do some experiments.
I am not sure where you got your data but male male mating seems to be rather well researched in animals.
Just grabbing one of the many quotes:
-----
One species in which exclusive homosexual orientation occurs is the domesticated sheep (Ovis aries).[8][9] "About 10% of rams (males), refuse to mate with ewes (females) but do readily mate with other rams."[9]
The part you’re missing is that all of those males that mate with males will mate with females as well.
The paper Wikipedia references about rams notes that the only mammals with exclusive homosexual behaviour are sheep and humans. Exclusive homosexual mating is exceptionally rare. There are about 6000 mammal species.
The Wikipedia sentence should read the only other mammal which exhibits exclusively homosexual mating behaviour is sheep.
Also domesticated animals have been under some pretty weird selection pressures so you have to be careful comparing their behaviour to a wild type animal like humans.
But the dynamics between men and women are so damn different it's evident there must be a difference to begin with. Just because it's not proven and not certain 100% doesn't mean we can't look at it and go "yep, this really seems to work a certain way".
There are no double blind tests done for parachutes.
That is not true. Especially after you leave the 20s. Men in western nations have a loneliness problem that women never experience as a group to that extent. After women give up on the prospects of children which usually happens somewhere in the 30s, the dynamics of sex and relationships changes dramatically with men by far being the more clingy ones.
Hmmm....men are fairly highly pressured by (modern western) society to not get attached after sex, and are somewhat likely to deny or at least play down feelings of attachment that they might naturally feel - even to themselves.
I'm not sure how you'd be able to control for that sort of bias in any kind of rigorous study, or how much variation might be left if you did.
not really. it is well known in non politically influenced circles that hormonal exposure in the uterus is a great predictor of sexuality and behaviour.
The causal mechanism isn't the same thing as "why hasn't evolution selected against this"[0] and neither is the same thing as subjective incentives.
[0] one suggestion is the "gay uncle hypothesis" which posits that people who themselves do not have children may nonetheless increase the prevalence of their family's genes in future generations by providing resources (e.g., food, supervision, defense, shelter) to the offspring of their closest relatives; this hypothesis seems to be consistent with the evidence without being sufficient on its own.
Near as I can tell, it’s also evolutionary advantageous to have significant ‘randomness’ as far as traits across a population. Especially for humans due to the extreme variation in environmental conditions and stresses we end up producing for ourselves.
Being a hero by jumping on a grenade is a pretty terrible survival trait for an individual for instance, but essential for the group to have at least one in any decent sized population. All the non-grenade-coverers will strongly support such folks, as long as it doesn’t hurt their own survival chances somehow.
So if we look at individual tendencies as coming more from die rolls than anything else, with a wide distribution, a lot of outlier behavior makes a lot of sense.
A hardcore survivalist most of the time is going to be selected against, for instance, for many reasons when things are going well. They’re dumping all their stats points in the wrong categories!
But any population that doesn’t have at least a few is going to completely disappear on those rare long tail events (an actual nuclear war?).
And if those survivalists are actually capable, they get the benefit of ‘seeding’ the next generation without any competition! Long odds, but potential huge payoff biologically.
That's the 'how', not the 'why'. I think biological incentive here means, the reason human evolution retained certain traits. An interesting theory for that is that gays and lesbians can cooperate with their siblings to raise nieces and nephews, instead of competing with them for resources.
And individually would benefit from positive relationships with those nieces and nephews (financially, physically when old, socially), without having to directly bear the costs of having those kids either.
If there was an app where I could quickly hook up with a woman just for some physical satisfaction as easily as men do on Grindr I’d be pretty satisfied too. Low effort sex should be more readily available so that people don’t have to pollute serious dating apps looking for it.
That was supposed to be what Tinder was for! Then somehow it turned into people trying to find actual relationships on there, and then everyone else decided to try to copy their success. So we had the situation you describe, but it didn't last.
I wouldn’t mind paying for an escort, but it feels like such a gray market and I don’t know how to navigate it. I’d really like some kind of Uber Eats type thing where I can make an appointment with someone and have them come over for an hour and then just be on their way. No BS.
strip clubs I imagine. They can't legally say they have escorts, but it's an entire scene. Like any other tribal knowledge, you need to know the edge cases and know the right people. And/or be rich. You can't just google this kinda stuff, you gotta get out to your town and dig (well... you kind of can. But you don't want to take the risk asking for certain Craigslist ads on this stuff).
Or you can go to Vegas where prostitution isn't illegal.
See this is already more work than I’d want to do. I hate strip clubs. And I don’t want to grease palms in some shady underworld to get access to escorts. Literally just want to pay someone to come over, get me off, then I go about my day. It should be like getting a massage, not negotiating for drugs.
If you're expecting computer assistance at building a long term relationship, rather than just an assist in meeting people, it's probably not going to work out.
I was on board with your reasoning, but the end tail is just gatekeeping happiness. People have been satisfied with “simple pleasures” that made them happy throughout centuries. It’s close to saying “you’re not listening to the right kind of music, listening to rock is unhealthy!”.
I do agree with you that when people use apps, they should set correct expectations. I think it’s the unmet expectations that are causing problems.
How can this be gatekeeping? It's a conversation. Saying "repeated shallow dopamine hits will make it harder for you to build long term joy" isn't stopping anyone from doing anything. It's just a proposition.
> People have been satisfied with “simple pleasures” that made them happy throughout centuries
I don't think this is really...anything. Wisdom tends towards building for the long term and delayed gratification, not short termism at the expense of the long term. Being happy at seeing a beautiful sunset is at the expense of nothing, which is the difference being proposed.
They’re referring to the hedonic treadmill, which is a thing.
Heroin feels really good, which is why it’s dangerous. Because it feels too good, for what it actually does to you, and that’s a trap for a decent percentage of the population.
Some simple pleasures are fine. Your entire life being nothing but simple pleasures (simple job, simple hobby, simple diet, simple goals etc.) makes you a simple person. I feel like thars why some people turn to making a family. Raising kids is never simple and it's not as easy to back out as trying a new hobby.
Then again, divorces are through the roof as well, so maybe that is also failing at large.
My usual perspective on life — it is absolutely fine for people to choose simple life as long as they set their expectations accordingly. Who am I to tell others to pick up a hobby or do something “complex”? Back when I was a kid, I’ve only seen a poverty and everyone was “simple”, and people still lived and laughed. Luckily those times are way past me, but as I grow up and meet more and more people in different countries and cultures, not everything is as simple as telling others “get a more interesting life so you can be happier”.
Apologies for the rant, I just don’t get it when others say “do X, not Y to be happy”, as if happiness is nothing but a subjective state of mind. Obviously I am not entertaining the obvious physical/psychological addictions and stuff on that level, but if someone chooses a trash reality TV over “life enriching books”, that’s not my place to give them advice.
>Who am I to tell others to pick up a hobby or do something “complex”?
I don't make this assertion as some form of gatekeeping, and I don't expect everyone to have the same values. I don't have the answers, but I want to ask these question, in a Socratic style. Dig down and figure out what makes one "tick". Not quite as philosophical as "what is the meaning of life", but a similar vein of "what gives you* a meaning to live"?
It's a relatively simple question: "If you had 10 million dollars today, what would you do?". If that answer is still just netflix, beer, sex, and games: well, that's your answer. Not what I would have gone with (and I imagine others have other riches or charities or power they'd do), but if they truly just want to live simply even when granted riches, so be it.
The question isn't about some fantasy land, but more to figure out what values and other factors in life they care about. e.g. If you would by a yatch with 10 million, that probably means you would like to explore some water based activities. Maybe not fancy sailing, but rowing or fishing. Just an exercise to think outside the box many are trapped in.
>I just don’t get it when others say “do X, not Y to be happy”, as if happiness is nothing but a subjective state of mind.
Why do I care? I feel like at some point in the plot of life many forgot that they had passions and aspirations about what they wanted to grow up and do. We get bogged down by college grades (if that), by trying to grab a job, by trying to live and make rent, and then by retirement... what's left? you spent 40+ years working without a purpose just to fulfill check-boxes, without filling in the blanks in between the lines. It may be out of place, but living to be some corporation's peasant isn't a way to live.
I simply want people to remember that spark and remind them that they can still work at it, not work to simply get by and pass your life by. If that spark is as simple as netflix, so be it.
> Back when I was a kid, I’ve only seen a poverty and everyone was “simple”, and people still lived and laughed.
in some ways I miss that simplicity. Honestly, part of my goal with those kinds of riches would be to just gather some old friends and hang out for a while. I wasn't a rich kid either, but I remember the days where it didn't take a month's planning to get 4 people together for a 2 hour sunday brunch.
But there's some things money can't buy, and I know most of my friends are too prideful to take a "vacation" off, even if I was perfectly willing to compensate them for it.
If you've actually interacted with gay men in general you'll also find out the vast majority also have negative experiences with Grindr. It still falls within the "low effort = low quality" equation.
Or you can just read the reviews on App Store / Google Play and see for yourself.
As a gay dude myself, idt this is too bad. He's just listing preferences, he's not being offensive about it. If what he listed is wrong, then is it wrong for me to be gay because I'm being sexist by excluding women?
I actually prefer people list their preferences up front, that way that's no disappointment later.
For example, I can think a straight guy is cute, but I'm not personally attracted to straight guys, I find it unattractive, because I know they're not interested (in addition to hetero culture, chest beating etc that is just gross).
Easier for someone to say "not into short guys" up front cause then I just skip over them rather than interact and have awkwardness later on.
How is that the app's fault? Are those conditions created by grindr? People have preferences, disclosing them as soon as possible saves everybody's time.
There might very well be a problem in the gay community in this regard, but if so it runs way deeper, this would happen with or without grindr.
My conspiratorial (*completely evidence-free as far as I know) theory on hookup apps is that they're secretly backed by the major pharmaceutical manufacturers of various STD treatments.
The numbers are interesting: there are about 32,000 new HIV cases in the USA each year, and the per-month cost of ongoing anti-retroviral therapy is estimated at $1,800 - $4,500. This works out to a gross cost of ~ $0.7 billion to $1.7 billion - and it's cumulative, year after year. as HIV patients need this treatment for the rest of their lives. Given profit margins of 10-15% in pharma at least, this is a huge cash cow for the industry. (Also explains the reluctance to invest in seeking a permanent cure for the disease that would allow patients to terminate their therapy).
Now, would a profit-hungry industry deliberately encourage reckless sex practices in order to grow demand for their product, year after year? It might bear some investigation.
From what I've heard, The better anti-HIV drugs we have these days actually decrease your viral load so much that you can not infect other people. (Please correct me, if I am wrong.)
From the perspective of your theory, that would seem counterproductive. As a greedy pharma company you'd want people to take a drug that makes them feel good while they are on it, be no permanent cure, _and_ still allow them to spread the condition.
I don't understand this idea of engineers and tech people glorifying effort.
The whole point of engineering is about efficiency, like making a bridge that holds while using the minimum amount of work and materials. A bridge using more materials is not necessarily a better bridge.
You can often make things better by putting in more effort but it may also be counter productive, sometimes the easy solution is the best. Some ready to eat food may be better than what you can cook yourself, even some reputable chefs admit it and the efforts they save on these parts let them focus on the parts where they can make a difference.
I think you’ve misunderstood the point by seeing it through a purely practical perspective.
The point is that the most treasured and memorable things in life are products of great effort. You can have a ready to eat meal but there’s also some value in learning how to cook and eating something that you yourself made. Sometimes a ready to eat meal is the only option, but limiting yourself to ready to eat meals for the rest of your life (for their practicality) is a very bland way to enjoy your ability to eat.
The point of these dating apps is to make it much quicker to meet a potential long-term match, and thousands of people then end up marrying that someone after putting in the effort. I think as person who's used these apps can attest, finding someone who's a good long-term fit and then establishing a relationship is still a great deal of effort even with these apps.
I think that's the point being made. Those that put in effort will get something out of Tinder etc., but the bar of entry is so low that the high effort user base gets diluted and makes using the service less rewarding for other high effort users.
Even if you achieve the exact same outcome (e.g., you buy a well-made omelette from an eat-in restaurant, versus learning to make a good omelette by yourself), it's more satisfying when you've done it through your own effort. It's for similar reasons that food tastes better when you're very hungry. I think there's an element of scarcity, sometimes being a little uncomfortable, that makes it satisfying, or else you won't notice the contrast between having something and not having it.
There is the famous case of Betty Crocker's cake mix. They found that buyers were happier if they had to do a little work, so they made the recipe more onerous!
It’s absolutely not more satisfying. This is not shared across people like some sort of natural way of being. There are plenty of things I can learn how to make but can’t be fucked because I’ll never find satisfaction in doing so. Cooking is a great one, I can cook quite well but I still hate doing it. Just because I can make something well, it doesn’t give me any extra satisfaction. I’d still rather buy a good spaghetti than make and I surely enjoy one I didn’t cook more because I didn’t have to do shit.
My understanding is that much research does, in fact, show that it's more satisfying. Kids enjoy food more (eg, are less picky) when they've contributed to making it. People tend to value their own, lower-quality artwork than someone else's higher-quality work because they themselves put the effort into making it (and have some emotional connection to it).
I want to say I first heard of this finding through Jonathan Haidt or Daniel Gilbert, but a cursory search doesn't bring up the study.
This sounds like a common myth and not fact. I’d be happy to read research but I’m not going to bother myself because I 1) doubt very much it exists, 2) doubt that it’s remotely conclusive or good.
The point is more general than cooking. Clearly if you hate cooking, it's going to negatively affect how you feel about your efforts cooking. But the point still stands. Putting in effort to achieve something you want will very likely make you value it more. I built a new shower in my master bathroom - it's easily my favorite shower now because I made it. I built a road bike from individual parts, and it's my favorite bike, even though it's heavier and uglier than other bikes. I raise my kids every day, and I value them more than other kids, etc...
You’re missing my point entirely. It doesn’t. Thats what I’m saying there are plenty of things I can do, or learn to do, that I still hate. It doesn’t give me more value learning to do it myself because I just don’t care about somethings. It’s assumed and incorrectly so that this is some sort of shared natural way of being.
Our bodies believe that sugar is amazing. It's dense energy that is very fast to absorb and use. So they are built around seeking for it and indulge in it.
It worked because things that used to contain sugar were rare and not loaded with it.
Our smart species then went for concentrating the stuff we love so much, and make it easy to get.
And today, it's a problem for us.
It's the same thing with netflix, dating apps, porn, etc.
There is nothing wrong with a little sugar to make your life sweater.
But sugar alone is not going to sustain you. And too much will be very bad for you.
We have have been very good are removing the effort at getting a lot of it. But we are not good are taking just what we should now that we have it. And even worse at getting the rest as well.
Also it turns out the effort of getting it was not awesome, but came with some benefits we have now to artificially put back in our life. And we are not doing so with enthusiasm.
See also the hedonic treadmill. Anyone who has gone on a sugar fast finds out that most sodas are too sweet to tolerate. We have to acclimate to such calorie dense food. Which should be a sign we’re doing it wrong.
> The whole point of engineering is about efficiency, like making a bridge that holds while using the minimum amount of work and materials. A bridge using more materials is not necessarily a better bridge.
It takes a lot more effort to make an effortless-looking bridge.
Nobody is glorifying effort. Just using it as a tool. What's up with your idea of declaring effort useless? Do you have any evidence behind it?
The obvious engineering solution for people struggling with finishing a marathon is to get them motorcycles. It completely and immediately solves the problem. Do you expect those people to be satisfied by this solution?
Glorifying effort is something the Silent Generation did and the Boomers picked up. It still reverberates in Gen X in part because it turns out it’s not entirely wrong. Low effort rewards really has caused problems for the grandkids, and while the rest of the hipster aesthetic is mercifully gone the way of unbuttoned flannel over t-shirts, the return to craftsmanship is the silver lining. They didn’t invent it of course, but they cultivated it. The bulk of that material has moved from PBS to YouTube, for better or worse.
You don't have to glorify effort in order to vilify taking bad shortcuts or being lazy. Humans do have the tendency to do things the easier way even if it's an overall worse decision, that's the issue here.
I mean, effort comes from either time grinding of time thinking. The time to think of an elegant solution is arguably more effort than spending 100 hours brute forcing.
>Some ready to eat food may be better than what you can cook yourself, even some reputable chefs admit it and the efforts they save on these parts let them focus on the parts where they can make a difference.
It's not about putting effort into everything, it's about putting effort into nothing in your life. Sure, if you're fine eating fast food it's fine (just don't let it affect your health too much). It's fine having low quality hobbies as long as you have some other passion in life, even if that passion is as traditional as taking care of your family. It's fine not having passion in work as long as you have an enjoyable hobby. Etc.
But if you cut corners on every aspect of life, you end up without edge. Safe, bland, potentially lifeless. That's what mid life crises are made of when you realize you just existed for 40+ years (most people's better years) and don't really enjoy anything, or anyone.
The only reason to engineer a bridge is to cut costs as much as possible. There are very few bridges made that are engineering challenges because they couldn't just be brute forced with more materials, but all bridges are focused with money first. Look at old architecture, it is beautiful because they said "if we're gonna throw this much money at it, we might as well throw a little more to make it beautiful".
Getting better at making stuff made stuff less cool and more functional. In dating apps, instead of trying to actually match people that would probably be great together, they use the app to match as many people as possible together, knowing it will fail (or, function as a hookup), and keep the people coming back.
Procuring raw materials is a different kind of effort. The chunks of aqueduct still standing in Italy are there because they were accidentally over engineered to outlive five empires instead of one.
It takes more finesse to build a bridge out of half as much rock. And not necessarily half as much effort. In fact arches require you to build a temporary building, then the real building, then demolish the temporary building. Today we call it scaffolding.
Doesn't look like it, and it's not an irrelevant response at all.
They generalized across an entire group of people "engineers and tech people" all but insisting that they should value "efficiency" over "effort". I am responding to the generalization and the forced assignment of values for those people (me included) prioritizing certain values over others (I don't). In general such an attitude of "shoulds" goes hand-in-hand with a lack of respect for others expressing complexity, subtlety, nuance, and especially agency in such matters. And also encourages race-to-the-bottom behaviors not just economically but also in social dynamics. It's an antisocial attitude and especially romantic partners lose interest very quickly when people act this way.
Source: I was like this once and see it in many techies I know socially. It's a mental shortcut that is common in social settings where techies dominate.
> Chats are no substitution for IRL human interactions.
I agree with everything except this.
There's people I've had a deep relationship with online and when I met them in person there was nothing. Really weird. There is actually so much subliminal communication in chats just like in real personal interaction. It just takes a lot of experience to pick up on it. And getting to that point with someone is certainly not quick or low effort :)
I've also had intense, beautiful relationships via chat that were completely flat IRL. A soul-crushing experience to my younger self.
I think the other commenter nailed it: in text-only chat, you end up projecting your own ideals upon the other person.
Human communication is full of nonverbal cues which do not translate at all over text. In absence of those nonverbal cues which our brains are (usually) wired to pick up on, we end up mining the text for semiotic constructs which conform to our ideals of the other person, rather than the reality of the other person.
This is done subconsciously, and doesn't become obvious until you meet the person in real life and they are completely different from what you imagined.
> Human communication is full of nonverbal cues which do not translate at all over text. In absence of those nonverbal cues which our brains are (usually) wired to pick up on, we end up mining the text for semiotic constructs which conform to our ideals of the other person, rather than the reality of the other person.
> Human communication is full of nonverbal cues which do not translate at all over text. In absence of those nonverbal cues which our brains are (usually) wired to pick up on, we end up mining the text for semiotic constructs which conform to our ideals of the other person, rather than the reality of the other person.
I don't agree because this is a two-way street. Some people just communicate more directly in chat than in real life, especially because the nonverbal and physical side is not throwing off distractions all the time.
There are many "nonverbal" cues you can pick up on in a person if you know them very well in a chat environment. The time they suddenly need to reply if you ask them something emotional. The wording they use that is slightly off. Things like that.
Also, I don't really imagine the other person if all I have is a nickname. They remain just that, an entity. I don't imagine their physical appearance at all.
Some people process speech slower. Chat allows some time to think before replying. A real life conversation is not that forgiving. In a group setting, it is especially detrimental, because before you are ready to say a word, already 3 other persons inserted their witty comments.
Hey I'm not saying it's the only thing I have in my life. It's not like that at all. In fact I do a lot of physical stuff with other people (a lot more than most I would say :) )
But some people I only know online for logistical reasons.
IRL relationships still involve a lot of imagination. We can't directly experience other people, we have to rely on our fallible and low bandwidth senses.
No I don't think so because the other person had this too. It's a more direct connection between minds, with no distraction of physical attributes. I can physically like the appearance of another person or dislike it, and it really affects my behaviour. Because this I'm not really being open and honest because it will introduce other factors that have nothing to do with what we are talking about. For example if the person is a beautiful lady I will be very inclined to impress her and this will affect everything I say and make me really shy. In a chat environment this is not a factor. That part doesn't exist, I'm just communicating with their mind.
Also, I don't really imagine the other person if all I have is a nickname. They remain just that, an entity. I don't imagine their physical appearance at all. They don't have a face or even a gender until I know it or is obvious from the nick. All I have is the things they say, the beliefs they have. It is more pure than their physical appearance which in many cases they don't control. Is that so weird?
I know not everyone has this ability but I do and I notice it a lot. Also, in many cases it does work out in real life. Just sometimes it doesn't.
It's pretty weird because of how maladaptive it is, practically?
On the other end could just be a really good chat bot. It may feel good at the time, but what future does it hold, and/or what useful feedback are you getting from it that isn't just a mirror of yourself or someone similarly disconnected physically?
Dissociative Identity Disorder is a problem for a reason. At the end of the day, real life/our physical selves do matter.
How would you differentiate the value you perceived vs the value you provided?
I love chat but before AI and before understanding the value of people reaching out to me apart from the chat medium just to say they were thinking of me I cannot consider the value of chat to be anything beyond a poor substitute to real conversations and interactions.
I agree with other comments that it can be easy to conflate the actual person on the other side of text with the imagined person. But, there are also other possibilities to consider too. I am speaking generally here, not assuming we know the background of that once sentence.
Overall, a person's identity is not so clear cut as we like to think. Whether in text or in person, people are often performing and wearing some kind of mask rather than exposing their "true" selves. (And, one might ponder whether a true self really exists separate from these layered behaviors.) For one reason or another, some folks may have more modes than others or switch more easily by different nuances of context.
A romantic idealist might think of a text-first relationship as somehow meeting the true person. They might even believe that they've found a soul-mate and invest in ideas like "beauty is the person inside". That they are more advanced and would not judge a book by its cover. But to meet in real life, they eventually will discover how they respond to the outsides too. The face, the voice, the body, the pheromones, the posture and mannerisms. Finding incompatibilities at this level can create a strong cognitive dissonance.
But also, people sometimes compartmentalize aspects of their personality and behavior. They might be dedicated to their real-life relationship but almost put on an alternate ego as an escape. They behave like a different person in this other (possibly secret) mode. Someone meeting this alt-person could be in for a rough ride if they do not understand that it will always be a background "fun" mode for the other party, not something they would prioritize or allow to supplant their primary lifestyle.
And finally, some might find control or security in an alternative context. Whether virtual chat or just some other space compartmentalized from real life, they may find it easier to escape boundaries of their primary social personality. They might bypass shyness or anxiety or repression expected by their social circle. But in a crossover setting, they might involuntarily shut down, to the bewilderment of someone who knew them in their escapist space.
> And finally, some might find control or security in an alternative context. Whether virtual chat or just some other space compartmentalized from real life, they may find it easier to escape boundaries of their primary social personality. They might bypass shyness or anxiety or repression expected by their social circle. But in a crossover setting, they might involuntarily shut down, to the bewilderment of someone who knew them in their escapist space.
Very well put. I'm pretty sure this was the case where I had online contacts that didn't work out IRL. I had a really strong connection but they were not able to continue this in real life due to physical distractions. Or in one case, I wasn't.
IMHO There are two main problems with social media (and by consequence dating apps) that makes it work very well for a few people but make all the rest suffer miserably: the first is that it flattens things into one dimension, making it look like a single ranking; the second is that it induces a fake “tabula rasa” feeling, as if everyone had the same opportunities simply because everyone is in the same platform. Both of these things are fundamentally wrong: human beings are multidimensional and there are myriad ways for a person to “shine” other than looks (and different people will perceive you and your multiple characteristics also in totally different ways); and just because someone else succeeded (or failed) by doing something that doesn’t mean you can reproduce the same results. Human society is amazing and social media is a horribly inaccurate “digital twin”.
That "usually" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
My best relationships are ones that have felt effortless from the start. The ones where I had to put in more effort to make the connection work ended up not being as good.
In fact, I spent too long trying to "fix" the mediocre relationships because I was hung up on the same cognitive bias you're espousing: that quality comes out of effort.
In fact the effort indicated that the match wasn't right. It was a hint that our libidos and psyches weren't meant to be forced together.
Simplistic models of the world, like assuming effort = quality, are the mainstays of hackernews/engineering minds because of our need to quantify everything into the most generally applicable predictable patterns. When those patterns don't line up, one has to reckon that making armchair declarations about the world is as prone to cognitive biases as the "wrong" mentalities those declarations eschew.
Isn't the entire point of technological progress offloading the high effort of all the needs and wants of life from humans to machines? Why have technology if it can't make things easier?
>My best relationships are ones that have felt effortless from the start. The ones where I had to put in more effort to make the connection work ended up not being as good.
the sad part in adult life is that "effortless" =/= "no effort needed". Unless you have some sort of worth, people won't just drive up to your house to hang out. You need to make some effort to get out there and do some regular meetups until that "click" happens. As you allude to, sometimes that click never happens. Maybe it never existed, maybe the opportunity never arose.
it's way different from college or grade school where you are around people your age 8+ hours a day with plenty of events tailored towards more people your age, and you get more time to have that click align.
>Isn't the entire point of technological progress offloading the high effort of all the needs and wants of life from humans to machines?
yes, but it's not the goal of sites like Tinder. And I haven't seen a successful "just wanna hang out" site/app yet to begin with. they want continuous money and their product's success cases means the customer is finished.
I think an app can do a great job bringing people together, but Tinder has grown too large and as a result diverged from the customer's needs.
> My best relationships are ones that have felt effortless from the start. The ones where I had to put in more effort to make the connection work ended up not being as good.
I can't emphasize how much this rings true to me. I struggled in dating: I spent far too much energy both trying both to find someone and in making relationships work once I found one. I was always told that a good relationship means putting in effort, and so I always constantly put 100% of my energy into it. Naturally, that left me burnt out and resentful when my partners would be putting in next to nothing.
Of course, a relationship does require some effort, but I suspect most men struggling to find a satisfying one are putting in far too much effort into it. So long as you have the basics down, it's mostly luck. This can be depressing when you do already have the basics down and still aren't having any success, but the reality is effort in relationships has steeply decreasing marginal returns. It's better to put your energies into things that actually benefit you and let luck and time do their work.
> Of course, a relationship does require some effort
Which is true, and true for most things. Here's my "Being There" analogy:
If you aim to grow a garden, not watering, tilling, weeding or caring for it at all could have mixed results. A moderate amount of effort and you have a bountiful harvest. If you're putting extensive effort, and nothing is growing, it means the conditions aren't right for what you are doing. The seeds are bad, the soil is bad, the climate may not be right. You aren't going to win any favors from the universe forcing a good outcome out of bad conditions. The effort you put in is meaningless.
The sweet spot lies in a moderate amount of effort, but only contingent on cycles of positive feedback that justify that effort. Human beings have evolved to respond to those feedback cycles with dopamine precisely because it naturally encourages more effort. There are some things of course you can't rely on that paradigm (like you can't build half a semiconductor factory and expect it to produce half as many chips), but in those areas where instincts are insufficient, one shouldn't go on hunches or pithy aphorisms: there has to be scientific thinking behind the effort you put in or you're just flailing blindly against the universe.
Precisely. That's why "a good life" is better understood as a long term optimization of the game of games.
Reminding that capacity for delayed gratification is a predictor of success as it can provide better overall balance in that game of all games when compared with optimal instant gratification only.
I love this analogy. Not only is it a good analogy, the underlying mechanisms causing bugs to be drawn to light and humans to be drawn to instant gratification are both results of our biology and evolution through thousands of years of life before modern civilization, and both can have really devastating outcomes in modern society.
My understanding is that bugs are not actually drawn to light, but rather attempt to fly at a fixed angle to light, roughly perpendicular to it. When the light is the Moon, that keeps them flying in more or less a straight line. But when the light is close to them, they turn to keep the light at that fixed angle and consequently spiral in towards it.
That is the exact assertion for exactly the same reasons. Remote work may work for you (much like chatting) but you are giving up a lot of communication richness in the process.
Working from home has very real trade offs that may work for you and your team, but it is no substitute for working and especially meeting in person. It primarily impacts communication efficacy, which for many larger teams is already the limiting factor.
Yeah, communication is so much better with Dale's after lunch Cheeto breath to go with your stand-up meeting before going back to your soulless cubicle. /s
You're describing the way normies work, and that's greta but not everyone is NT.
It isn't, and I think we should be frank about that.
And to be frank the thing is people are caring less and less about work. Spending power of the working class has decreased as company profits soar. Layoffs are rampant, pensions are dead, and interviewing is its own chore also enabled by an enshittified app. We should stop sugarcoating it and just lay it out: companies don't care anymore so why should workers?
If spending power is falling and work doesn't want to increase income, the next best thing is getting back your time.
And the thing that makes it different from dating is that a long distance relationship is extremely hard to maintain, especially if you want plans like family or intimate dates or whatnot. My workplace is not a romantic relationship; I do work for agreed upon pay and the work benefits if that pay still ends up bringing more value than they pay me. I benefit from a variety of factors depending on my person; growth, money, environment, personal fulfillment, etc. take your pick. Some of those require a physical office more than others. My desires don't require it (even if it would be convenient).
I can’t believe this is getting downvoted. I wonder how many people who downvoted cook for themselves 100% of the time. I’ve never met anybody that does that. Usually you trade cooking nights with a spouse or roommate. You occasionally go out for a nice meal. You use preprepared ingredients.
Is a ready made meal from a spouse worse than a meal cooked by yourself? Is a frozen store bought dinner worse than a pre-cooked meal that you personally cooked and froze? Is a meal made by a chef at a nice restaurant worse because you didn’t cook it yourself? This standard is ridiculous.
It’s especially funny to me, because there’s a running joke in my family that a meal cooked by somebody else always tastes better than when you cook it yourself.
For me the one thing that I can get out of a self-cooked meal that I can't out of anything premade is good browned onions. Something about preservation processes inevitably turns them unappealing in a way I haven't particularly noticed with other veggies in pre-made meals (at least the reasonably high-quality ones, like Saffron Road).
>I wonder how many people who downvoted cook for themselves 100% of the time.
I think we're missing the forest for the trees here. it's not about cooking, it's about making sure your whole life isn't "ready-made meals". Put the metaphor into every other aspect of life.
We will all take shortcuts somewhere, but shortcuts imply a destination. if your destination is just more McDonalds, I think we are missing something vital to out lives.
>a meal cooked by somebody else always tastes better than when you cook it yourself.
the "joke" implied intimacy in said meal. It's not the meal, it's who made it for you. coporate billionaire food chain pumping out "burgers" cooked by minimum wage workers with no upward mobility is about as distant as you can get.
No, the joke is literally that it tastes better because I’m not worrying about the fine details. You are your own worst critic and all that. When somebody else makes it, you can enjoy the food for what it is and don’t find yourself focusing on the flaws.
And I don’t think I’m missing the forest for the trees here. The whole argument hinges on, “things are innately better if I put more work into it”, which I don’t believe is true. In the specific example of ready made meals vs a meal being cooked personally, the quality of the food has no bearing on how much work it took you to prepare it.
And this is trivially provable. Wealthy people that have personal chefs certainly don’t have a lower quality of life even though they don’t personally prepare every meal. Of course McDonald’s everyday will lower your quality of life, but going to fine restaurants won’t. All of these have vastly different levels of effort involved, but the effort involved doesn’t correlate to quality of life.
It is damn near impossible to buy high quality frozen food. It’s like they is no market for it. If it’s frozen it’s made with the shittiest low quality low effort process.
I know high quality food can be frozen because I make it all the time but I can’t buy it
An alternative read on your idea is more of an elitist view of how we spend our free time. You’re basically judging the quality of what people choose to do.
I’m allowed to just exist and be happy with it. Perhaps I don’t need a hobby to keep me happy. Perhaps my favorite thing to do is watch Netflix with my family. Who are you to judge?
It really has nothing to do with the low quality of dating apps, that can be blamed squarely on Match.com’s monopolistic anti-competitive tactics.
Unless you are Jesus or Buddha, there are things that will very likely make you unhappy.
e.g: eating a lot of crappy food and spending a lot of time watching tv shows are one of them. It diminishes your health, put your dopamine system in shamble and bring no meaning in your life. It's very rare people are happy in those conditions.
Again there is nothing wrong about enjoying those activities and indulging in them. The point is it's unlikely you can fill your life with it and end up satisfied.
Based on my experiences when I visited the USA, with sidewalks in most of the states I visited suddenly stopping for no apparent reason forcing me to re-trace my steps and take a different route, or with many road crossings feeling so dangerous that I was seriously tempted to take a taxi even for really small distances[0]? There's plenty of places where the city designers make this unnecessarily hard.
One of the reasons I chose Berlin over San Francisco when I was deciding how to show the ultimate lawful middle finger to UK politics, was that I like walking.
[0] it's only the 0.4 miles from the The Cupertino Hotel to 1 Infinite Loop, but ten lanes on the North De Anza Boulevard and 2/3 on the on/off ramps connecting it with the Junipero Serra Freeway is terrifying.
I was staying in the Holiday Inn Express at Dubai airport the other day, which is less than 400m from the entrance to Terminal 3 at that same airport (and the metro station located there), making it a convenient hotel for my few days in Dubai.
What I hadn't noticed was that there is a major road inbetween, and that the walking time, according to Google Maps, is 92 minutes, covering a distance of 6.8km! So yeah, I took a taxi...
I used to not have a tv by choice and go on walks all the time as I had nothing to do. I stopped doing it as it became weird and lonely past a certain point and age. There’s nothing quite like seeing people out in the world with purpose while shambling without even a real destination. Turns out humans are pretty good at avoiding unpleasant experiences and watch tv for a reason.
You began feeling uncomfortable going on a walk by yourself after a certain age?
I don't think that's a common experience. I'm in my 30's and love wandering aimlessly though a city or somewhere in nature. I doubt that will change as I continue to age.
TBH I'm mostly doing it to try and get back to shape. Too fat to run without stressig my joints, so walking/hiking is the next best part.
can feel a bit lonely seeing other groups pass by. But you see your app tell you you got 4 miles in and burned 800 calories and you realize that you're progressing.
There's nothing wrong with watching TV/Netflix in your free time. Its a free country. But, don't be surprised if alot of prospective dates to find that boring or milquetoast. Dating profiles seem to be written by ChatGPT, for both men and women, and the most common included "hobby" is generally, Netflix. Imo, it screams: low effort.
Another type of profile some might find boring are those where the person’s hobbies are those that are the area’s “defaults”, like a profile for someone living in the Pacific Northwest mentioning that they hike… nothing wrong with that as a hobby, but when almost everybody in the area on the app has that as their hobby too it’s not going to help you stand out.
Hiking, Netflix, concerts, and brunch probably covers 95% of young adults in the PNW. Personally, defining your personality by watching TV is objectively boring and lazy. Dating is alot about marketing yourself, which I'm sure dating coaches would agree on, so yeah, I'd encourage people to aim higher and at least make stuff up that sounds more interesting.
Not impossible, you gotta spice it up. Don't just say "I love Barbie" say "I love Barbie for its loud, brash feminist message and absolutely masterful set props to portray the Barbie world". There, you still watch Netflix but you show you think deeply about the media around you and get out your political philosophy without making it sound like you only think in politics.
You should probably pick up other hobbies, but a lot of everything in life is all about presentation. You kinda need to do the opposite for tech a lot of the time unless you are specifically going for a tech oriented partner; don't describe your job as you would to a co-worker ("I'm a software engineer who works on the pathfinding algorithms in Google maps"), but give a quick elevator pitch ("I work at Google and I help figure out your destination"... and sure insert some zinger if you're clever).
Ideally you need at least two hobbies: one that you and your Tinder match have in common, so you can do it together, and the other one that is weird and unique so you can impress them, and sustain their interest :-D
With the way dating apps work, you’ve gotta try to make an impression because they make users feel embarrassed for choice. If your profile is basically the same as everybody else’s you’re probably gonna get swiped left unless you’ve got outstanding looks and/or eye-catching photos.
Just put yourself in the shoes of someone who might see your profile. If I’m a bearded guy who enjoys hiking, Netflix, and IPAs what reason do they have to swipe right on me compared to the other 50 bearded guys who also enjoy hiking, Netflix, and IPAs?
Watching TV barely qualifies as a hobby at all, it's something you passively do in a pure-consumption mode. A common hobby that involves you going through a creative process is much better than a pure-consumption 'hobby'. Even "I like to discuss the TV I watch" would be a huge improvement.
Society structures itself in such a way to achieve equilibrium in all things, eventually. There is an abundance of "free time" so things, hobbies, culture, politics, sex, everything has slowly waddled into a zone that seeks to fully-utilize all that free time in whichever way it can.
>I’m allowed to just exist and be happy with it. Perhaps I don’t need a hobby to keep me happy. Perhaps my favorite thing to do is watch Netflix with my family. Who are you to judge?
See heres the difference, "your family". your goal with Netflix in that sentence isn't necessarily to just enjoy your favorite shows, it's to bond together with people you very likely spent years taking care of.
Now, as for me with no hobbies as a single overweight dude in the suburbs who's only possible redeeming factor is making decent money... Do you think I have a chance of achieving such a family if I took on your quote (minus the "with my family")? Even if Tinder wasn't enshittified I'd sure have a hard time carrying a conversation with any potential dates. Yes, they will judge me, hard. I'm not physically attractive enough to ignore being interesting (and not that financially attractive either. I'm not buying a partner 4 star meals every day levels of rich).
(I am mostly underselling myself here btw... mostly. I do have hobbies past Netflix thankfully).
> Netflix is no substitution for a hobby. Ready-made meals are no substitution from cooking vegetables. Chats are no substitution for IRL human interactions
Hard disagree. A habbit you enjoy doing repeatedly is a hobby, Netflix or just staring at cable tv qualifies. Ready made meals can contain veggies, frozen veggies in a bag are plenty healthy and popular. But even if you were right, people live long and healthy lives eating mostly fast food with small portions and working out. I don't really care about Chatbots but IRL human interactions are terrible unless you are the right type of person in the right type of place, online interactions with people like the one we are having now is in my opinion a higher quality interaction than IRL, sort of like writing letters in the olden days, we take our time and compose our thoughts and communicate better.
Maybe, but to the brain engaged in the activity, watching movies or playing video games is much better than a hobby. Real life is only exciting about 1% of the time for anybody. Curated entertainment cuts out most of the boring stuff. Consider this: physiologically, the person watching the biography is probably living a more exciting life than the person who it’s about.
I recently made a comment on min-maxing as societies cancer these days. Searching for silver bullets in life, business, health, finance rarely yields long-term compounding gains.
We were all conditioned to buy courses to learn programming in 5 minutes, yet we are bound to be disappointed.
We eventually learn though, with more frequent feedback loop and fails.
I agree with the rest of it but banging some chick I’ve met on tinder is no different than chatting up someone at a bar or at a party. Honestly for this one thing the chase doesn’t do much for me, in this space it’s all about the end results.
This is exactly on point, but it has nothing to do with dating apps. The article claims dating apps are "soul-destorying" yet the first example it gives is of a woman solidly into her menopause who gave up on dating apps because she likes clubbing and one night stands instead of relationships.
There are low effort dating apps to get laid. To get laid, people don't want to put in a lot of effort. To get laid with a young guy, gramma Does have to put in a lot of effort, and it probably helps if her young lay is flipped out on E at an illegal underground club in London, as opposed to sitting in an office on his break between presentations.
My wife and I met on a paid dating app. It took me a day's worth of hours to fill in my profile, and what my requirements are. For my match, I defined education level, minimal number of fluent languages and what they are, age requirements by race (some age faster, some slower), political views, religion, even the types of makeup they usually wear (none in my preference).
I got about 20 matches per week, and could only write my matches. There was no swipe, no "like" button. Only a text box. I went on a date with a phd student in english lit. I went on a date with a french-american doctor chick who graduated Stanford with an MD at 22. I messaged about 2 girls per week and always got conversation going, usually mutually deciding not to meet. I got messaged by about 2 girls per week, and always replied. I went on one date per week for 2 months and met my wife who speaks 4 languages, has a master's, and is 7 years younger than me. We did have some incompatible things, which were flagged in the match profile, but we decided those could be worked on and got married 6 years ago, 6 months after we met. The only photo she had on the app was the one she took for her passport.
But on this app I used, you would not only have to pay $25/month, it would be next to impossible to get a piece of ass and you'd have to invest hours in text and phone conversations before you met.
There are different tools for different things. This absolute crap article points out that you can't win a formula1 race in a uhaul, and calls automobiles bad. And it's blatantly obvious in their very first menopausal opening paragraph. The article is the bad app here, and that type of "reporting" is what is "soul-destroying" our society. Shame on them.
The majority of well-matched people rapidly exit. The population begins to trend to weaker participants. And the longer the duration the more unhappy and therefore weaker the participants become.
New dating apps capture representative populations and rapidly all the good participants exit.
Ultimately some of us suck at dating apps. The apps would be legitimately better without serial failures on them. I would have been better off in the real world, where I met my wife at work.
I think another big problem is that women will try out a new site until they have one stalkerish experience, and then they're gone forever. So each new site has a shelf life.
Found my partner via dating apps. So did most of my friends. I don't think "hey I just met you" dating will ever be trending after COVID, #metoo and how everything is eaten up by digitalisation. Articles like these are just pissing against the wind.
I don’t think dating people met offline will ever _not_ be common. Basically all social groups I’ve ever been in have resulted in relationships between people who met offline. Of course your social circles and experience may my differ from mine.
The fact that apps are "algorithmic doom barrels" comes from unaligned incentives in many of them. "The Apps" reward continued engagement, not finding the best partner. That subscription money disappears if a longer term partner is found, so that's obviously not the goal; regardless of what their marketing/ad department says. "Hook up" Apps, somewhat align but are being be pushed on individuals looking for something else, leading to frustration, dissatisfaction and disillusionment.
I'm surprised I haven't seen any push by a dating app to do the modern version of an old-fashioned matchmaker. Heck, it'd be a great space for AI buzzword stuff and not even all that unethical if LLMs can do a better-than-random success rate at matching up profiles.
Yes, and they're expensive. Often they don't have access to a secret repository of top quality clients but they still work for filtering out people who are investing minimal effort into finding someone. If you spend $500 to get three matches, you're going to put in a lot more effort into setting up a date, showing up for it, and following up (provided they weren't tossing red flags everywhere) than you would if you got the same three matches on a free dating site. The same goes for the matches. If they also put down $500, they're much more invested in trying to make something of value come out of it because they've already sunk in money. And it filters out the bots, the attention seekers, the social media clout manipulators, porn site promoters, etc. that thrive on the low cost of connection.
From what I've seen, it works well for people who just needed something to get both parties to take finding a relationship seriously while it ends up being a bitterly disappointing waste of money for those who think because it costs 100x as much as an online dating site, they're going to get matches that are 100x further up the dating hierarchy.
Yes, they exist but often for men they are a complete waste of time. Unless you’re an exec, wealthy, and generally handsome - most matchmakers will not take you up. It is simply because they know you will not be able to match with any women they provide or find in the wild. They don’t want to get bad reviews and so they only take clients that they are confident they could match.
It is somewhat ironic since people they are confident they could match are the people who need a matchmaker least of all.
What I find weird is how the Guardian always likes to blame / crusade against (target, basically) anything in society except it's readers.
"Dating Apps" are just another way to find and meet people.
If you have to continue to use the app you are either very bad at this -- or actually like something about the app, such as swiping profiles on a Tuesday after work to relax.
A third option is that people just don't want to choose -- the perfect profile might be around the next swipe.
The dating apps THEMSELVES are not responsible for anyone's lack of success in dating, though. That is up to each and everyone of us.
As a counterpoint to the other comments on here… I had a great experience with Tinder as a late 30s divorced single dad. I was able to date a different attractive women every night if I wanted to, and found someone I’ve really liked, and we have been together happily for 2.5 years now. It works so well because you get to see so many possible people, and can find a better match than any matchmaking algorithm or real life chance.
My take is that 99% of the men on there are immature man children whose life is a mess. I have many women friends and the guys they end up dating on Tinder, etc are a low bar- dress sloppy, no purpose in life, etc.
If you want a good partner you have to be one. An app can’t do it for you. Learn to be vulnerable and emotionally supportive, build a career that is interesting and has meaning to you, dress well with a unique sense of fashion, learn to cook well and eat healthy food, get fit, make friends and have fun hobbies. With all of that you will be happy even if single, but you will also be unusually attractive.
You do realize how you sound saying “Everyone is the problem except me,” right? And then comparing your experience dating in your late 30s to people dating in their early 20s?
My point is the opposite of that- the quality of my dating experience depends entirely on me. Instead of blaming women, apps, etc.
The guys that are having a terrible time are claiming everyone is the problem but them… and not wanting to confront the painful truth that dating them isn’t going to be a good experience for the other person, because of their choices.
Women actually have a worse time on these apps then men, because despite lots of matches the guys all have serious issues they aren’t willing to admit or work on. If you work on yourself, it is really easy for men to stand out in a way that is much harder for women.
This attitude difference is actually the very crux of the issue. An attractive, mature adult is someone that takes responsibility when things aren’t going well, and does something about it instead of blaming and complaining. The guys complaining about how apps and dating are terrible and nobody recognizes how great they are, are not realizing that this complaining and entitled attitude itself is their entire problem.
Your entire comment can be summarized as “I’m right, you’re wrong, sticks tounge out”. I don’t know what I could possibly say when everything I’ve seen and read (including books about the subject) says you’re wrong but I’m sure none of that will convince you.
I guess I’ll just say that I only found an happy relationship after leaving dating apps and I would recommend anyone reading to do the same.
> Women actually have a worse time on these apps then men
This is completely irrelevant when discussing whether or not men have valid complaints or not. In reality dating apps are shitty for both men and women.
> My take is that 99% of the men on there are immature man children whose life is a mess.
This is a completely ridiculous take. You sound like an asshole saying this. Have you met 99% of men using dating apps?
> was able to date a different attractive women every night if I wanted to
Statistically you are in the 90th percentile of attractiveness for men or you are lying. Either way your experience is highly atypical.
> If you want a good partner you have to be one. An app can’t do it for you.
This is a truism that doesn’t address or refute the many stated problems with dating apps.
> the quality of my dating experience depends entirely on me.
This is also a truism and completely moronic. I guess non-white people and disabled people, etc. who have a statistically more difficult time finding a partner on dating apps should just stop being so unattractive!
> Women actually have a worse time on these apps then men
We already discussed but this is irrelevant as to whether the experience is good for men.
> because despite lots of matches the guys all have serious issues they aren’t willing to admit or work on
What do you define as “lots of matches”? Because statistically the lower 50th percentile of men get like one or two matches a week, who are often below their standards of attractiveness. They surely aren’t dating “attractive women every night”.
TL;DR go read Dataclysm by Christian Rudder as well as many other studies and criticisms of dating apps because you are delusional about how dating apps work
Not the parent, I still think my input might be interesting.
>> My take is that 99% of the men on there are immature man children whose life is a mess.
> This is a completely ridiculous take. You sound like an asshole saying this. Have you met 99% of men using dating apps?
I agree with this. Attraction doesn't run strongest on moral lines. In my interactions it ran strong on playfulness/teasing/vibe, optimism/hope/dreamy, emotional safety, adventure/leading and intellectual connection. A protective bad boy that knows a thing or two about sounding interesting but is a mess otherwise would be attractive for the same 4 reasons (and then some).
> Statistically you are in the 90th percentile of attractiveness for men or you are lying. Either way your experience is highly atypical.
There are more options. I'm definitely not in the 90th percentile of attractiveness and my experience is atypical as well. I'd like to encourage you to keep an open mind.
>> If you want a good partner you have to be one. An app can’t do it for you.
IMO this is more relationship advice than advice to attract someone. I know many men that are good partners, but they're not good at the attracting step. Once they attracted someone it goes swimmingly.
>> the quality of my dating experience depends entirely on me.
> This is also a truism and completely moronic. I guess non-white people and disabled people, etc. who have a statistically more difficult time finding a partner on dating apps should just stop being so unattractive!
A decade ago I saw a talk of Sean Stephenson (RIP). He had an amazing dating life. I figured that if he could do it then anyone could.
You still haven’t said anything contradicting what I said. I was providing info about how specifically to stop being so unattractive ;-)
But for clarity, I was talking about women’s experience from the perspective of my women friends, and what other men on dating apps are like to point out that there is actually no real competition for men on these apps. Most women are just not finding anyone that doesn’t obviously suck. The bar to beat, that most guys are totally failing at, is to seem more attractive than just being alone! That’s a painful truth for guys facing chronic rejection, and me just pointing it out will make them angry, but it’s the truth. I can barely believe the stories I hear about the shitty dates these women do end up going on… makes me feel sorry for them.
Again, you are just literally, materially wrong. I thought you were a troll at first but reading through your other comments on Tinder, women, and dating, I think you actually do believe that since something worked for you it should work for everyone. And if it doesn’t, that means they are a bad person or something. Truly wild.
More evidence of your complete and total lack of reading comprehension - I am dating someone who I did not meet through a dating app, and mentioned that in a comment above.
Here is my reply to @nocontextpls whose message had some legitimate points, but was downvoted:
> No one has things figured out and you should not need to fix "serious issues" in order to have meaningful, deep intimate relationships with others. In my experience, most women in these dating apps are as much of a trainwreck as most men are.
Nobody is entitled to a relationship, you need to be able to add value to someone elses life. For better or worse, what men and women want (on average) is different in relationships, and women tend to put more emphasis on emotional strength and stability when looking for partners.
Moreover, men seem more likely to either experience "Nice Guy syndrome" where they are totally dependent on Women's approval and become a pushover or needy co-dependent, or the polar opposite, where they become aggressive and dismissive of others needs and opinions. Most guys facing these issues don't even realize anything is wrong, but women can spot them from a mile away and steer clear. They assume they're being discriminated against for some unfair reason.
> People need to feel connected and hopeful. Telling them to take responsibility for their "issues" is extremely alienating.
> How about we help each other in fixing our "serious issues"?
That is what I am doing here. I am sharing some information that can guide people having a terrible dating experience towards solving these problems, so that they will be good partners, and won't be alone the rest of their lives. I have felt the pain of being rejected and unattractive... of seeing a partner of nearly two decades excited about someone else instead of me. I had to confront these painful truths about myself and do something about it, and I want to share what I learned with other men that might experience similar pain.
My sharing of a painful truth, e.g. constructive criticism is done out of empathy and love.
Here are some books I would recommend to any man having trouble finding dates, or building the relationships and life they want. These mostly focus on building a good life and mental state for yourself, where becoming attractive is a byproduct.
Where do you get the "early 20s" from? The people in the article are 55, 33, 37, 29, ... years old, many people here in the comments don't mention their age etc...
I do agree on much you said about self improvement and owning your own happiness, also I can tell that you are self confident and sure of yourself which is also important. But I believe that is a necessary but not sufficient condition to being successful on dating apps as a man, the other condition being:
That’s a popular excuse among guys because it’s so easy to say there is nothing you can do if you aren’t above a certain height… but a quick walk in public proves it to be totally false. Count how many short guys are with attractive women- it’s just as many as tall guys.
If women even remember to look at your height on a dating profile you’re already so boring you’ve reduced yourself to a statistic and already failed. If you are weird and interesting enough she will forget to even look at that and just be excited.
It is the size of your personality, not your body that matters.
You didn’t answer the question which leads me to believe you are an above average height on the bell curve (feel free to let me know otherwise).
It is a pretty well documented phenomenon that men with average or below average height are largely excluded from online dating activity. In real life dating of course height is much less of a factor, but for online dating it very much is.
Look I am tall and am sure it’s a huge advantage… and in general it would suck to be ignored and excluded based on things you can’t control like height or skin color, and I have unearned privilege of not having to deal with that, other than being bald.
But I have a bunch of attractive women friends that are dating short men they met online, and none of those guys are the type to spend their time complaining online about how unfair everything is. Being short is probably a disadvantage, but much much less of one than having a toxic victim attitude towards life.
> It is a pretty well documented phenomenon that men with average or below average height are largely excluded from online dating activity. In real life dating of course height is much less of a factor, but for online dating it very much is.
I'm not short, but the way I'd go around it is to falsely advertise my height and charm them on the dates. Unethical? Not from a utilitarianistic standpoint if I find my partner through such a lie (the fact that a few dates had to travel to be conned versus years/a lifetime of happiness of two people doesn't compare). Moreover, I'd rather view at is being a rebel against a culture that seems to exclude short men. Given my experience about editing my pictures to make myself look more attractive (and not getting any shit about it), I think I could make it work. There's a sweet spot where you can lie a bit and not get any issues with it.
Note: during the first date I stop with any charades I was playing online. Why? Because the weird contortions of online dating are gone. I'm seeing a real person now and she is seeing me in real life too. In reality, I'm honest to a fault with people. However, when it comes to chatting to strangers on dating apps, that's a big exception with some select things (such as how attractive I look or if I'd be short how tall I am). Toxic environments unfortunately need measures that I'd view as terribly toxic in any other circumstance. People that give me an actual fair chance (or are clearly acting based on good faith) get the whole truth. Anyone else doesn't deserve it.
The attraction phase of dating sure is different than any other phase. In certain ways it is its inverse (it mostly isn't though, it's mostly the same but some subsections are inversed).
I’m a completely different counter point. This is typed on my phone.
I am a mess with dating and sought help in the seduction community around 2008 as a teen. There I learned about the value of meditation and Buddhist ethics as my first cornerstone for dating. My second cornerstone for dating came when I understood what my true style of playfulness is since childhood. I have a lot of imagination that I consider to be Disney-like. And I would use that as my “social glue” because I basically showed anyone I talked to the inner workings of my mind while doing that. The third cornerstone was to study positive psychology (Tal Ben Shahar, Harvard). I read many scientific articles. Shout out to Seligman and Learned Optimism as well and to the HEXACO personality inventory and to locus of control/coping styles and to attachment theory. The fourth cornerstone was to travel, in order to loosen up and expand my view/horizon. Using these 4 cornerstones - while having a hacker mindset - the seduction community helped me to find my own style of how I wanted to date. It took 2.5 years of only rejections. I also took an ethic course early on (from Yale or Harvard - I forgot). The reason is because many ideas that were mentioned were toxic. Things like: insulting people for social status, being an “alpha male” or using scripted stories. I immediately steered clear from those. When you are hyper critical (and clueless - like I was) then the seduction community offers good advice. If you copy/paste whatever they do, then it is likely that one might develop a toxic personality.
When I used Tinder a year ago, I started out like anyone else. I put a reasonable bio, reasonable pictures (with hobbies and things I valued). I got one match that month. I realized that in the online dating arena that I was clueless again. So I decided to use my hacker mindset and looked at advice from the seduction community. My hacker mindset allowed me to autoswipe 200k profiles with the simplest JS ever (10 minutes of coding) and the seduction community gave the advice to edit your pictures. I thought about the ethics of picture editing and decided that I could do a few test dates to see if anyone would notice. No one noticed and most dates actually went really well. I decided it was therefore ethical since they would see me in real life anyway. It made me realize that people on Tinder use the peripheral route of the elaboration-likelihood model in consumer psychology. That is to say: profiles are more treated like an impulse purchase and much less like the decision-making process of buying a house. In fact, it is only during the first date that you get an actual fair consideration. This solidified my ethical justification in getting as many matches as possible and get them on a real life date as soon as possible. Another justification is: their environment is toxic so I need to do some unconventional things in order to thrive. I never got banned. I don’t autoswipe fast, no need. One per 10 seconds is enough, just let it churn.
Using this strategy I got 150 matches of women I fancied per month. That is a whole lot better than the reasonable/authentic approach which gained me 1 match per month. I went on 26 dates (1 per week) and around the 26th date I found someone special and with her I am in a relationship.
I’m hardcore when it comes to dating. I know I have to be. If am not, then no one sees me. But when I flip the switch and am intentional about it, then some women see me. When I am in a relationship, I am fully myself - it is just the first 10 to 15 minutes of the interaction that needs to be tweaked a little. All women that became my GF know my entire story quite soon after we enter in a relationship (sometimes before even). They are all fine with it and some actually agree that if I wouldn’t put the effort in then no one would see me standing.
It is what it is. But with careful conscious effort Tinder works. It is more effective for me than any other way of meeting women (night club, sport club, via friends, bold approaches during the day).
So yea +1 for online dating from my side. It saved me a bunch of time after learning the ropes.
You are studying dating like it’s some sort of academic discipline. I think it’s mostly an emotional and even carnal physical thing. You mostly need to get out of your head and in touch with your body and emotions. IMO pick up artists are mostly super awkward and non authentic seeming. The confidence is a thin veneer that falls short once the script runs out.
I do what my instincts and body tell me to do with a partner, but was afraid and culturally conditioned not to do. I hold her hand and look her strongly in the eye. In bed I was shocked to find that I am extremely aggressive now, even violent… my partner usually gets at least some minor injuries, but has a good time. Maybe not everyone wants that, but the women compatible with me do.
> You are studying dating like it’s some sort of academic discipline.
Yep. It works for me. It works well.
> I think it’s mostly an emotional and even carnal physical thing.
This is covered by one of my cornerstones: meditation. Mindfulness meditation increases the insula. The insula maps emotional responses to body sensations. That was what I knew going into it. Then I did 43 days of 10 hour meditation. Going out of it, I understood equanimity, sensitivity to body sensations, craving, aversion, thought formation in response to sensations (and observing/experiencing having no free will), intellectual knowledge, behavioral knowledge, intuitive/emotional/tacit knowledge, the difference between ethics on an intellectual level vs knowing it on an emotional level (an ethical decision on an emotional level manifests as a form of pain). I learned a lot with meditation, much more than I'm describing. Combined with my own literature review on when intuition is reliable for giving accurate/correct ideas I also knew when/how to feel and trust my intuition. So the training guidelines were intellectual, the actual training was a strong experience in emotional growth. And that's how the intellect while being completely in the dark with emotions can help one to train their own emotions. It also gives a strong use-case for treating this as an academic discipline. The intellect gives the map, the emotional journey is walking through the territory.
It's the same like going to the gym. You do a pushup, you feel stuff. But you're also recording yourself for your form, and in that recording you give yourself intellectual critique. You try it again, in the recording you notice that you're making the same mistake. Now the intellect is noticing that despite your best effort, you made the same mistake. You try and try again. After the 5th try, you're not making that specific mistake in form anymore. Did the intellect help? No, it helped at the first and second try, the other few tries was you and your body just trying things out until you got to a different state that you gave you some solid footing. There's nothing intellectual about that, yet it sounds intellectual describing it in language like this. Make no mistake though, it isn't. Same with meditation and applying it to dating.
Because of meditation, I gained a lot of emotional/intuitive knowledge, I integrated it with my intellect to make the map way sharper.
Playfulness: also an emotional journey.
Studying positive psychology: an intellectual journey.
Practicing elements of positive psychology: an emotional journey. I am a pessimist by nature and trained myself to become an optimist since it's the empirical choice to make if you want to be happier in life (and have no job that is related to security in any way shape or form). Making that training choice? That's intellectual. Seeing that life is full of possibilities and experiencing that? Goosebumps over my body. Radiating that to people around me including my dates? That's just pure magic as they're feeding it back to you.
Travel: my biggest reason to travel is due to a sense in curiosity. My curiosity is both intellectual and emotional. But from a dating strategic standpoint it's mostly an intellectual decision.
> You mostly need to get out of your head and in touch with your body and emotions.
Meditation works. I'd change this to: you need to know when to be out of your head and in touch with your body and emotions. You also need to know when to be in your head and think strategically. Personally, when I'm alone: strategic thinking. When I'm with someone: mostly in my body/emotions and let the thinking go (mostly) - connecting with someone is indeed an inherently emotional experience.
> IMO pick up artists are mostly super awkward and non authentic seeming.
Yep
> The confidence is a thin veneer that falls short once the script runs out.
I wrote that I don't use scripts. Also read into that that not all pick up artists use scripts. Hell, I even told my entire method to my dates just after their date and told them why it works. I always got back: yep, makes sense, and it worked! By having a method that works even when you tell them (afterwards but upfront should also be possible) how it works and it still works then it's easy to be authentic. Being able to improv makes it easy to not run out of things to say.
The community runs deep into different sub-branches, most of which are unknown to the public eye. Using just standard media (or standard forums even) runs the risk of stereotyping pickup artists just as easily as one stereotypes a hacker as a criminal or a feminist as a man hating person - all these stereotypes are a mischaracterization of the complexity that these subcultures have. I should know, I've been deep into all 3 of them. Also, for clarification: I'm not a pickup artist and never was one. I am however a feminist (in the gender equality sense of the word) and am definitely a hacker (in the curious about tech/the world sense of the word and sometimes breaking things to see how they work).
> I do what my instincts and body tell me to do with a partner, but was afraid and culturally conditioned not to do.
The women compatible with me are - like me - high in imagination and capable of holding their own intellectually.
That alone, and being mindful about it with yourself and with your fellow humans, sets you apart from so many others that I imagine you a good partner to be with. Congrats to your journey.
To be honest, I only recently integrated this to a good enough level. I've had it 8 years ago for the first time in my psychology lectures. The issue is that at uni it only gets discussed intellectually, it wasn't clear to me what my attachment style is and how it varies in different situations - and more importantly: how anxious/avoidant/secure attachment feels.
Perverse incentives may be at work as well — if these sites are successful in a traditional sense, the numbers of repeat customers will shrink. Growth in sales & services are what investors want, & the current model of shopping-for-a-date brings with it the dissatisfaction needed to keep people trying again & again along with the temporary hope & dopamine hits needed to keep them from giving up (though that will always diminish over time). The current model is conducive neither to happiness nor long-term relationship success.
It doesn't help that all the dating apps get bought up by the same company. Almost feels like a space that needs a non profit to run it, so it can be focused on making good relationships rather than hawking subscriptions to desperate people.
I wonder why there isnt space in the market for a more text based service similar to the old OKcupid: a website that asks multiple mandatory questions and takes effort to build your profile (eg. list your favorite films, or books).
Men are unhappy with photo-based websites, because if they are not the top 20% looks they will receive very few likes. So for men the strategy is to like nearly every woman.
At the same time women are flooded by likes from men - and all they see are pictures and low quality chatter.
With a text based website that also gives recommendations: men would have a chance that someone even reads their profile, while women would only read profiles that interest them.
There is really no money in that since nobody wants to spend 30 minutes to setup a profile?
It would never work. For men, the pictures of the women are essential. You either would get no men at all on this site, or the women would get a ton of insults or either would be ghosted once the men saw what they looked liked. In the end, you get a bad dynamic for both sexes.
I didnt say that you wouldnt get pictures. I say that initial matching would be done based on descriptions - and you would say get 10 profiles per day - with pictures.
There are a lot of apps with different spins on dating like this. For example I think one (Bumble?) only lets women send messages, to try and combat the problem of men just spamming every single woman on the site. The article treats apps as all basically the same though.
The core problem you're going to have with bringing back text is that a lot of people no longer have / use regular desktop computers at home, they only use smartphones and have no interest in changing that. But phones are terrible at text input. Talking to your phone keyboard never took off for some reason, and entering lots of text on a glass screen is still hard despite lots of investment in making it better.
If you look at the trend of the internet over time, it has been consistently towards less text:
- Mid 1990s, text heavy websites with a carefully defined organization. Dating sites expect you to fill out complex text based profiles.
- End of 90s/early 2000s, blogs (text minus the organization). Profiles get less text heavy.
- Mid 2000s, social networks appear. Text+image posts, where text is only a few paragraphs at most. Character limits mean you are forbidden from making high effort posts. Text is still the primary element in a timeline object though, and images (if any) appear underneath it. OKCupid appears and the text profile here is largely an afterthought, it gets popular due to the quizzes and match percentages that are computed from them.
- 2010: Instagram. Achieves huge success by de-emphasizing text even more. Now the image is the primary thing and the text is either missing entirely, or a sentence/few words at most.
- 2012: Tinder does the same move for dating and also enjoys huge success.
- 2016: TikTok. Words are finally banished for good.
Fundamentally most people are not writers and don't want to write. When the internet required you to be a writer to take part it was restricted to small numbers of articulate people with good typing skills, and the silent majority that just consumed content. Dating sites were practically synonymous with long distance relationships because so few people used them. With the rise of smartphone cameras content creation became available to everyone and now it's taken for granted that a good dating service should have so many people you can't even reach the end, and that they will come from a wide cross-section of society. The cost of that ubiquity is getting rid of the words.
So yes, you could make such a site. It would have very few users and would need to be marketed as primarily a way to make long distance relationships.
To fix that you'd have to change the game in some way, for example, convincing people to talk to their phones out loud, at least during the setup phase. Modern speech recognition and TTS is so good that combined with LLMs maybe you can actually pull that off, but that's where the focus would have to be.
Suppose profile creation is possible (and marketed to) only on a desktop browser and messaging on mobile is with voice messages, no TTS needed. Do you think this could work?
The niche is small, this won't be a next Tinder, but in absolute numbers it's still a large number of users.
I like your point but no: eugenics has external gatekeepers and I think it's done by force non-consensually. In normal dating, ideally the participants are the only gatekeepers.
One of the biggest problems is fake profiles. You can go through a batch, especially on Bumble or Tinder, and just swipe left and mutter “fake” non-stop.
This makes me believe the membership numbers are inflated with fake or marketing profiles to entice you to spend money.
OKCupid was one of the better ideas because if someone didn’t answer at least 100 questions, you could just skip them as probably fake.
I think meetups are the answer. Join activity groups that you’re interested in and just be yourself. Love will find you.
> This makes me believe the membership numbers are inflated with fake or marketing profiles to entice you to spend money.
About twenty years ago a friend of mine had a part time job that she was paid to respond to DMs on fake profiles on a dating site, basically "string them along and then slow ghost".
They even had a specific interface for her and other girls (hell, doesn't even need to be) to do this fake DM farming.
I'm not talking about users accusing the company of faking them from the outside. I'm saying if that string them along system was real at these modern companies someone inside would have exposed one by now. It would be more than just a leak, it would be illegal, deceptive business practices, false advertising, bait and switch. That's probably why they don't exist. No way all these apps with all these employees over all these years managed to keep everyone who worked on the shady illegal systems from spilling the beans. Uber god view was a huge deal. Tinder having systems and paying people to deceive people so they spend money would land C level execs on the bread line. Maybe it does exist, wouldn't surprise me, but I have doubts since we've never seen any evidence
One major problem with the dating apps is that their search is terrible. Searching just doesn't work how you want it to work. It gives way too many results that don't fit your criteria. I think this is deliberate? They don't want you to search, they want you to use their "algorithmic" matching. (This seems reminiscent of how social networks want you to use an "algorithmic" timeline rather than your own self-curated reverse chronological list.) For example, I live in a medium sized city, and I only want matches within the metro area, but the apps will give matches throughout the state and in a neighboring state, with no way to filter them out, as if I'm going to spend hours driving just for a date, and then start a difficult long-distance relationship. And I also got "likes" from way outside my geographical range. I got likes from other states and even other countries, WTF? The irrelevance is frustrating. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
And of course the ghosting is frustrating too. You manage to wade though the terrible search results to find someone who seems compatible, make the effort to write an intelligent, personalized message to them based on reading their profile, and then... nothing. It appears that a lot of people sit on the dating apps indefinitely for whatever reason, and they become "black holes" where no light ever comes out, while still clogging up the search results. If you have no feeling of urgency to meet people, then why bother being on the dating apps? The "freemium" model may be partly to be blame here, because it's free to have an account forever, as long as you don't use the "advanced" features.
I've seen it claimed that eHarmony is better about this, but I tried eHarmony, and it was absolutely not any better than the other dating apps. They all seem to be basically the same now, and are equally terrible.
> make the effort to write an intelligent, personalized message to them based on reading their profile, and then... nothing
Way back in the day I tried this, and got both ends of the spectrum. Still lots of ghosts, but then also curiously, multiple girls who said that my message was "unfair" or "selfish". When I enquired why, it was because it "created an obligation - you wrote this more detailed message and now I can't just reply with 'no thanks' or 'cool, tell me more', I have to sit down and think and write a reply". Great as a filter maybe, less great for the ego.
So then I wrote a template message. A couple of common paragraphs, and then a couple of inserts where I could put "choose 1 of 3 options to put in here". More soul depressing, but ended up more successful (relatively speaking).
> multiple girls who said that my message was "unfair" or "selfish". When I enquired why, it was because it "created an obligation
Oy, another reason why online dating is so terrible. They're purposely on a dating site, looking to meet people; they created a detailed personal profile describing themselves, which attracted someone's attention; yet it's "unfair" or "selfish" to write a non-generic message? WTF!
I guess that's a case of bullet dodged. Not sure I want someone with that attitude. But after you dodge all the bullets, what's left?
It should actually be a lot easier to say "not interested" online to strangers than it is to say it to someone's face in person. On the other hand, it should also be a lot easier online to be at least semi-interested and have a little conversation before you judge someone as a hard no.
I think this goes back to my point that a lot of people seem to be on the dating apps without having any serious commitment to dating. They're just waiting for their knight in shining armor or prince with glass slipper to come along (who never does).
I've read in multiple places about the tendency to seek out instant gratification on the phone instead of just allowing yourself to get bored, and seek out doing something with other people.
Relying on apps for finding a love connection seems like a facet of this somehow. Instead of spending the time around other people, building up a social circle, most just try to "see what the app brings" because they've just lost the ability to find connections other ways.
I found this modelling really good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3lypVnJ0HM
TLDR: Once you have a two to one ratio of straight men to straight women. Men get matched 1/2 as much, respond by lowering there standards and spamming women. Women start off with twice as many matches, but get choosier and match even less. Women feel overwhelmed and get chased off the apps. Men quit from not getting any interest.
To me this is an argument that everyone should pay for online dating. In other words, eliminate the freemium model. This would remove most of the dead profiles, and the paid users would have incentive to meet people ASAP instead of quietly lurk forever.
Who was ever in love with dating apps? They were used because it was becoming impossible to meet people outside of them. People used them and loathed using them from the start. You would come up with stories together on how you "actually" met as it was embarrassing to say, "a dating app".
The only people who enjoy using them in the slightest are people who see relationships as transactions and are looking for something specific: sex for the night - or a kid, but certainly not love. If no other avenues are available, dating apps seem like a useful tool.
I love dating apps. I've met tons of people, including multiple relationships and long-term friendships. They've helped me meet people when moving to new places. They've helped me get laid. They are also tedious and emotionally draining and full of increasingly-expensive upsells for basic functionality. But they're still an incredibly useful tool for meeting people.
A theoretical optimal dating app would make less money as engagement would drop off and the acquisition cost of customers would exceed the value that could be extracted from them.
The dating market is not efficient, it is a bit like a lemon market, and switching costs are vastly underestimated for a variety of reasons. It doesn't help that people are readily encouraged to leave their partners by third parties with no skin in the game. I see it as a general multi-armed bandit problem with a exploration–exploitation tradeoff dilemma with pretty noisy rewards. If the switching cost was more accurately measured then people would naturally do less exploration and more 'exploitation'. I think tradition helped find this balance with an emphasis of overestimating switching cost versus a natural tendency to underestimate switching cost (hope springs eternal) - tradition is a way of handing down the results of previous 'exploration' done by others to a new generation so they don't have to learn the population statistics independently from scratch and at great cost.
If it was known to be optimal I think people would pay a lot of money for that.
If you were given access to a matchmaking oracle who could tell you who the absolute perfect love of your life is in exchange for $10,000 (they offer financing), would you do it?
One of the things not touched here is “what’s the alternative?”
Yeah, we talk about touching grass and meeting people in real life. Have you noticed how hard it is to meet people in real life and form any kind of connection? Men are lonelier than ever because they have nowhere to go to meet people just for friendship - let alone romance.
There are a severe lack of third spaces for all of us to congregate at. People start suggesting “hobbymaxx, bro! Rock climb, raves, CrossFit!” But completely ignore that some people don’t have existing hobbies or interests that align with these suggestions. I love motorcycles and sports cars. I’ve done group rides and whatnot. It’s all dudes. There has never been even one woman who has shown up even with groups of 50. A lot of these other hobbies are completely swarmed with men as well and then you have the status element of it - which takes years of grinding to achieve. You’re not likely to meet someone and go on a date in your first month of CrossFit or rock climbing. Maybe after 5 years of going 3-5x/week, establishing a name, and really getting involved in organizing and whatnot. Even then, might still just be too many dudes or it doesn’t attract the type of women you’re into! Hobbymaxxing advice is worthless for people who aren’t inherently interested in the activity and would do it anyway. It’s mostly people with survivorship bias that are advertising hobbies.
Our society is so atomized and individual. You can blame cars or whatever but even here in nyc, it’s hard to chat women up because they’re all getting increasing amounts of stranger danger. Creepy dude just hit on her last week in an impolite and aggressive manner making her feel really unsafe. Homeless dude just chased after her on the street a couple days ago. The guy manning the bathrooms at the club catcalled her while she’s going to the bathroom just now. This is a real example of a woman I know - not made up shit. If you had to deal with the level of harassment that attractive women get in places like NYC - you’d probably have your guard really high too. And only the most amazing of circumstances might ever lower their guard - which means your odds are real bad.
Point is: our culture sucks and the way we’re allowing a lot of men in real life to treat women is not helping women get out there more. We need to get rid of this violent homeless epidemic, get rid of these creepy aggressive dudes hitting on everyone and not taking no for an answer, and get rid of shitty people who just want to say stupid shit to any woman at all. I thought with me too at least two of these would be gone but not at all - especially in nyc. It doesn’t take much for most women to be traumatized and have severe dislike for going out btw. The woman I described is incredibly uncommon in her resilience.
If that's grindr for finbros, perhaps it could work. If you think straight women are going to join, read up on demographics in the financial sector. Doomed. Perhaps the stupidest thing I've seen in a long life of dating and matchmaking.
Also, what? You think people making bets on your love life is less soul crushing than an app without that?
It seems like both genders in aggregate report dissatisfaction with the current state of dating apps.
It reminds me of this survey(https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/public-...). In the survey both genders reported that they felt it harder to date in todays landscape (2020) than in the past. And women reported it more often than did men.
Even if individual men and women enjoy having a lot of partners and a lot of attention. It does not seem that the majority of the population shares this opinion.
I wonder if this problem is intrinsic to dating app or to the breed of dating app that the match Group manages. Maybe finally applying anti-trust laws to them could improve it.
I’ve met amazing people through these apps but that was when I was younger and earlier in career. Nowadays, I hardly find time to respond to important texts let alone respond to some person 5km away about how my day went.
On the "misaligned incentives" thing, I wonder if you could have a dating site that works as follows:
- The user chooses a charity of their choice.
- All subscription charges are kept in "escrow".
- If after two years the user has spent at least one year in a long-term relationship as a result of the app, the app gets the money.
- If after two years there's no success, the money goes to the charity.
That way, the app has an incentive to get users into relationships that can at least last a year. But the user has no incentive to lie (they can never get the money back, for example).
Details might need tweaking, but you get the idea.
You can't get good stuff without putting in the effort. Period.
If you want a successful dating life, you need to put in the effort to get to know people and build relationships. If you want to eat healthy, you need to put in the effort to cook and meal prep. If you want to have a fulfilling life, you need to put in the effort to pursue your hobbies and interests.
It's easy to get sucked into the world of instant gratification, but it's not worth it in the long run. The things that require the most effort are usually the most rewarding.
My single friends tell me the dating apps are way too expensive. I think if these apps were only five dollars a month or less, they would get much more traction.
Yes and no. While being understanding of differing financial brackets, if your approach to finding a long term intimate partner is "it needs to cost less than a Starbucks coffee a month", you can't sincerely have high expectations.
It's funny to think of the Stranger Things guy (David Harbour, had to look it up to place a name to face) on a dating app but good for them.
In my opinion people put too much pressure on dating apps, I've thought them of a way to just meet people you may not come across in day-to-day and who knows what will happen. Have a pretty long-term close friend I met on a dating app, we were never romantically involved but am happy we met.
I found my current partner of 2 years on bumble. I was on the site for a month.
I sometimes wonder if people just have too higher expectations, waiting for 'the one'. Relationships are hard. You have to work through differences, you can't expect to find someone where differences are absent.
I'm not pro marriage per se, but I think we need more, work on the relationship you have, rather than ending it and looking for something better.
Many people I know who have converted a match to a stable relationship (at least one side) were completely green to the apps when it happened. For many it was one and done. And my best experiences were with completely green folks. I think the rest of us are cynical and that is a bad quality while dating.
The writing style, especially the introduction anecdote is so off putting I could barely stomach the article.
However , I agree with the sentiment of most readers that the problem with dating apps seems to be the quantity / quality problem——without being able to accurately portray quality on most of these platforms.
The majority of my friends met their better/other halves at the office. But now the in-person office culture is far less. From a pandemic keeping us physically distant to this current stay-at-home office worker, seems like some sort of phone-based option is where we're at now.
At this point dating apps have such a broad influence over society that I'm surprised that there's not even a mention of gov regulation.
I don't want the fine technocrats that brought us cookie banners to exert their control, but some more transparency for the public should be mandatory.
Reading this and the comments here make me so glad I got married before online dating became (mostly) the defacto standard. I have a lot of sympathy for folks who have to deal with it because it sounds extra hard to date nowadays (not that it was ever truly easy).
Dating apps are great if you like finding serious partners or hookups that way. Find the one that suits you. Yes they all have different flavours and yes it does take work to make them work for you. Go for it!
AI can solve this problem very well I predict. It asks you a series of deep questions about your personality and values and then goes searching for matches for you. No swiping.
The reductionist argument is that everyone wants to feel 'good', and that life is solely is about chasing a chemical high from natural dopamines, endorphins, oxy, etc that are produced by the body.
Both males and females want the hottest, wealthiest and most interesting person they can pair up with, regardless of their own attributes.
To state the obvious - people who are ugly, fat, poor and boring (as in way below average) have it rough, as they may not be chosen as a long term partner by someone they consider ideal or even acceptable.
Or you can be real with yourself and find someone in the same ballpark as yourself. Being single may work long term for some people, but I suspect that hollow loneliness will catch up to most eventually.
I don't think it's the fault of the apps. I think it's US culture being very money focused because there is no safety net for people. You're always 2 weeks from being homeless. So women naturally adapt to the situation.
I'm using Bumble and Tinder in Croatia and in just 2 months I've met two amazing down to earth women.
The apps reflect the culture of where they're being used.
That's such a simplification. You sound just like a millionaire talking to the working class "just save money, what's the problem? don't get starbucks...".
I cannot begin to express how dumb most comments are in this thread.
It's simply dumb to believe that you can change the way of living which was going on for all of human history and still have people undisturbed, without friction with their very biology, and in peace.
Humans don't evolve in a century or two.
This doesn't only apply to relationships either. Cities, technology, everything.
That's every way but one, not a specific way. The way people have lived in any particular region changed dramatically throughout history even before the internet.
One element of dating apps that breaks it: it requires no bravery and no effort to approach a girl. So the dynamic is broken from the very first second and it's fairly difficult to fix.
I have not used dating apps myself (have a single partner for 15y+ and generally was always meeting romantic interests through friends), but ~half of my friends got their partners through Tinder 5-10y ago.
They were very happy with it - though this was in Europe, not in a tech hub.
Two of my close friends who don't have partners and still use Tinder said that in the last few years, they became useless unless you are a spending whale (enshittification). Full of bots, full of people keeping to make new accounts to take advantage of boosts at the beginning of the profile, needing to spend money to get any matches after this start period. Basically bait-and-switch model and pay-to-win, but with romantic life and self esteem - sounds absolutely cruel.
You are exposed to such a great and infinite pool of potential partners that you would not be able to get in real life, especially in SF Bay Area. Which changes the problem from - how to meet someone, to a better problem - how to filter out those that you definitely do not want to meet.
Even more, it is not replacing your real life meetups but compliments them.
My issue with dating apps is that the number of matches is large and all of them are very similar, hence the challenge is how to filter properly.
As many people here, I love 10 year old version of OKCupid where you needed to fill a lot of information, answer questions and invest in the profile in general.
Even if we forget about this extra information, fact that person invested in filling the profile told me that she was serious about meeting someone which is a strong signal in itself.
I believe that online dating industry is a great achievement of the humanity as it drastically expanded our choice of partners, but existing implementation is waiting for the disruption.
Personally, I would love if dating apps added:
1. Tags for conversations, similar to labels in gmail.
2. Ability to search - when you have hundreds of conversations, it is hard to find one that you are interested in.
3. Option to add more information to profile, say I loved questions at OKCupid.
4. Id and age verification. Feels like every second lady lies about her age. (One my female friend who is 49, uses 36 in online dating. I do not think that such a difference is that common, but still)
5. Somehow force people to use photos that are less than a year old. Very unpleasant come to a date and meet a girl that is not even close to be as fit as she is in her pictures. They are also very surprised when you do not go on a second date and, I suspect, complain to their girlfriends that "online dating is not working for them". I do not blame them - misleading with photos is so common -> she needs to mislead to be in that competitive market (I was told that men lie about their height as well). I believe this could be addressed or at least mitigated on the platform level. (Being fair - having video chat before the date helps to address this issue to some extent)
6. Showing stats. Communication, flirting, building comfort in online dating is a special skill, quite different from doing the same in real life:
[6a] It is happening in asynchronous way
[6b] Information channels are limited - you do not have voice, intonations, appearance, body language, face expressions, in the beginning it is just text
[6c] As conversation may be stalled or end at any moment both sides increase odds by having many conversations happening at the same time.
these limitations change everything and force to learn new communication skills from scratch.
If we were shown metrics like: yours and average in your geography and age range stats for open rate, reply rate, length of the conversation, number of matches, number and percent of conversations that lead to a meeting (Hinge these days asks if you met in person.), etc it would help people see what their limitations are and focus on addressing them - same as in sales as sales and online dating are similar in many ways.
Two things, first, while I think monogamy is probably good for society in that it gives average men/women a chance to meet each other when all the most desirable mates are taken off the market, in actual fact I think it also causes a bunch of these problems. People in their 20's are told "find someone to spend the rest of your life with" so its this super risky high stress situation rather than being a "lets hang out until we are tired of each other". Partially forced by western civilization largely trying to make little atomic families rather than making child rearing a community/extended family effort where a parent can continue to fully participate even if they don't happen to be sleeping with the child's other parent. So, IMHO marriage as this big social function is really dumb, and unneeded for two people to shack up. These days its largely a "we are going to make a family party", except when it isn't. And given humans seem to be a serially monogamous species, it probably should take that into account.
Anyway, part two of this is sorta related, but the attitude of the lady in the wheelchair I find stunningly toxic and lacking any kind of self awareness. I have a feature that everyone always notes and asks about too, but long ago I realized that people rarely if ever were looking to be rude or prying or anything like that. Its largely a conversation point, but particularly around dating, it might seem a bit forward to ask if she is sexually functional, but no more so than questions like "do you want kids". Sure it might be better saved for some future date, but I'm guessing two things. First very very few people are going to be looking to date/etc someone who isn't sexually functional, and its probably a good idea to clear the air on something like that early, but also I suspect few people ask it in such a crass way. Which is suggested by the wording where the woman infers that is what they are asking and blocks them.
So, i'm guessing few people are trying to denigrate her, they just are touching on a subject without their brains fully engaged to the idea she might be sensitive to that topic. Or maybe some of them are just trying to get to know her and understand her situation in life from an empathetic stance. Which means the problem is really her sensitives. People are expressing interest in her despite her problems, and to block them because they dared ask a question is what is toxic. Unless your goal is to be single until you find someone who isn't a bit clumsy everyone needs to give potential partners a bit of slack. Even without the wheelchair its impossible to find that perfect person, people screw up, etc. Excluding people with negative traits they are unwilling/incapable of fixing is one thing, but that isn't displayed by a question that many people would consider one of the more important parts of dating.
I got really curious about those because Blade Runner 2049 made me think of them. I tried them and they're so... crude! It felt like talking to someone who's engineered to like you. I could be curt or speak my heart out and it would speak to me the same way.
To replace humanity with this... It's just not right.
Turns out, that capitalist enterprises that rely on connecting people sexually over subscriptions over mate match have a ficudiary reason to keep from long relationships from forming.
A long relationship is a cancelled subscription. So they would inevitably search to find hot flings that do not work out in the medium or long term.
To do otherwise would be to limit the pool of people who pay.
Yet another strike against capitalism - it's not about solutions, but rent seeking behaviors.
> The 55-year-old social worker now spends her weekends on the dancefloors of illegal....
“Recently, I met a younger man with an amazing body. It was probably the best sex of my life.”
In dating app you can filter out old people. So this old person would not have a chance there!
Her only chance is in night club, where she can rape drunken guys! People who drink alcohol can not give a consent! And that guy wery likely regrets it, when he wakes up in the morning!
This is an absurd overextension of the word rape. Even if you were completely right that the young guy wouldn't have taken that decision sober and that he regretted it the next day (which you are just assuming based on 0 knowledge), as long as she didn't coerce him into getting drunk, he was of legal age, and he wasn't blackout-levels of drunk, it's absurd to call this rape.
Drunk but conscious people are very much able to consent. One of the main reasons people engoy being drunk in night clubs is the kind of reduced inhibitions that lead to talking to and having sex with people outside your regular dating choices.
You were right maybe 20 years ago. But now many judicial precedents t say otherwise!
> Drunk but conscious people are very much able to consent
"Conscious" is highly individual state. I would strongly recommend you to look up current situation, it may prevent a very nasty situation, where judge has a different opinion!
Most guys I know take god knows what drugs, mixed with vodka and Redbull... Far from shining beacon of "consciousness". But they are still able to walk and talk, and somehow get home...
> If a person is prevented from resisting by an intoxicating or anesthetic substance, or a controlled substance, and this condition was known, or reasonably should have been known by the accused.
Look up statutory rape, duress... If you want some actual cases, search at relevant forums. I am really not going to give legal advice here.
> People who drink alcohol can not give a consent!
Your quote quote clearly does not say people who drink alcohol cannot give consent. In fact, it says:
> If a person is prevented from resisting by an intoxicating…
Do you not understand that that is not the same thing? You made the claim that someone drinking one beer cannot give consent. Nowhere does your quote support that claim.
This is how statutory rape works. Consent is invalidated by a law!
If person are intoxicated, they are prevented from resisting. So even if they give a verbal consent, this consent is invalidated by section 261 (a)(3), because they were prevented from resisting.
You ignored my post. Drinking a beer does not prevent one from resisting. Frankly you don’t seem to be understanding the statue you posted.
Your position is ludicrous. It would imply that a married couple in California can’t have sex without it being rape if one (or both?) drink a single glass of wine with dinner. Think over the argument you’re making.
Yes, absolutely. If a woman is getting drunk in a club and she goes home with some older dude that looks hot in the alcohol fumes and has sex that later she regrets, she did not get raped. Is that controversial in any way?
Wow, how dehumanizing for older people. You seem to take offense only to the fact that this person is 55 years old? I don't see anyone calling it "rape" when the rest of the population is engaging in drunken sex at nightclubs.
I CTO'd a fairly successful dating site for 4 years. I think a lot of the critiques of dating sites/apps miss the mark. The "they only stay in business by keep you single" sort of comments.
Instead, i think dating sites' issues are more fundamental. Thought experiment: write a dating profile for yourself in the 3rd person. Then have you 5 closest friends and family members each write one on your behalf. Now have everyone vote on which of the 11 profiles is the most "you". Do you believe yours comes in first? How about top 5?
When we fill out profiles, we naturally try to highlight some parts of ourselves and hide others. Your friends and family see you as you present. Only you see yourself as you intent.
The result of this all is that our dating profiles are a limited, and often misleading, approximation of ourselves. Any matchmaking app is thus matching my "Online Dating Approximation" with your "Online Dating Approximation". The hope is that if our approximations match, we can extrapolate us matching? Weak connection in my experience.
I think this is why Tinder and Bumble have had so much success with their frankly superficial model. At least the online vs reality is closer than more in-depth matching schemes. But we still hear tales of cat/hat-fishing, so maybe they suffer the same issues.
None of the dating apps ive seen have really keyed into the "monkey brain" side of love. The subtle things that make us truly love a person. To be seen if any get there, but there is just no substitute for getting to know someone in person vs flipping through people online.