[HN Gopher] 'It's quite soul-destroying': how we fell out of lov...
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'It's quite soul-destroying': how we fell out of love with dating
apps
Author : mindracer
Score : 326 points
Date : 2023-10-29 05:11 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| Thrir94994i wrote:
| > _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!
| tsimionescu wrote:
| 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.
| prartichoke wrote:
| Now try reading the post you replied to but with swapped
| genders. Would your reply be the same?
| gambiting wrote:
| Obviously yes? How can it not be the same?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| 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?
| Thrir94994i wrote:
| 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...
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > But now many judicial precedents t say otherwise!
|
| Please provide links to precedents supporting this claim of
| yours:
|
| > People who drink alcohol can not give a consent!
| Thrir94994i wrote:
| California Penal Code section 261 (a)(3)
|
| > _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.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| You said this:
|
| > 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.
| Thrir94994i wrote:
| 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.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Perhaps that is true in some places in the USA. I am quite
| confident it is nowhere close to true in most of the world.
| cersei wrote:
| 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.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Okcupid used to be really good, then they got bought out and
| turned into Tinder. Now it's just a wasteland out there,
| especially for guys.
| some_furry wrote:
| My hetero friends tell me a lot of people they meet on apps are
| more interested in gaining OnlyFans subscribers than meeting
| people.
|
| I don't know how prevalent this phenomenon is, but that's at
| least 0.9 on the Mad Max scale.
|
| (As a demi/gay man, online dating is incredibly alien to me.)
| snickerbockers wrote:
| It's true, at least 1/5 women on these sites is just trying
| to push a social media profile.
|
| Some of them don't even bother with a bio, it's just a few
| photos and a link.
| groestl wrote:
| They are really easy to spot though. The ones that have no
| intention to meet and just signed up because of boredom,
| that's harder and wastes time.
| whstl wrote:
| 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.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| 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.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Why doesn't someone just make a new site that works like the
| old OkCupid and isn't owned by Match Group?
| crooked-v wrote:
| 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.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| 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.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Building it is easy, moderating it is hard
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| 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.
| user_named wrote:
| The why don't you do it. It'll be worth billions right.
|
| Now tell me all the reasons you won't do it.
| rchaud wrote:
| > You put ads for chocolates and flowers on the site so
| you can recover your expenses
|
| This isn't going to be bring in anywhere near the amount
| of money you're thinking it will.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > 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"?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| People are all burned out on "engagement" and hankering for
| something legitimate.
| pydry wrote:
| Network effects. Your business could run the worlds most
| perfect dating app but it doesnt matter if it only has 10,000
| users globally.
|
| Dating apps were easier to bootstrap back in the day before
| the whole market was swallowed up.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| 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.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| 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.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| 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":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_dating
| _se...
|
| 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.
| whstl wrote:
| 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.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| 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.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| I doubt this is actually a problem. People seem to yearn
| for places to express themselves in that aren't run by
| parasites
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| 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.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| This is the reason the Childfree dating site I'm on is
| entirely useless. There are literally dozens of us! All
| spread out geographically.
| djaychela wrote:
| I believe they patented their matching system, so i guess
| you'd run into legal battles, and they would have deeper
| pockets.
|
| Edit: Match and others definitely did get patents, so I may
| be confusing them, but I guess no matter who, you'd get sued
| by someone.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| OkCupid is from 2004. Patents last 20 years. This can't be
| an excuse for much longer, and software patents are
| bullshit anyway.
| thfuran wrote:
| Why should it matter whether you implement your algorithm
| with atoms that are arranged into transistors or ones
| that are arranged otherwise?
| poisonborz wrote:
| 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.
| rchaud wrote:
| 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.
| Vicinity9635 wrote:
| Why don't we just break up Match Group? Never should have
| been allowed to buy any of its compeitors in the first place.
| donatj wrote:
| 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.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| 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.
| switch007 wrote:
| Doesn't the charity sector already exist? Join volunteer groups
| etc
| thfuran wrote:
| Is the volunteer group operating some kind of mechanical Turk
| dating app?
| liquidise wrote:
| > "people are more magic in real life"
|
| 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.
| chongli wrote:
| 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.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| 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
| HPsquared wrote:
| The time constant can be quite long, some people are on
| these things for months or years. It takes time to
| equilibrate.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 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.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| 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.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Rather I would say that Tinder is not hip any more, so the
| "normies" are out and the usual suspects of dating sites
| linger.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| The story is about how Tinder and Bumble are in decline.
|
| Yes, and they are probably being replaced with DMs in
| Instagram. I like to call Instagram the world's largest
| dating app.
| danhodgins wrote:
| Totally agree. An idealized journal of one's life over time
| on Instagram is way more interesting and revealing than any
| dating app could ever be.
| chongli wrote:
| 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.
| sadtoot wrote:
| >Tinder and Bumble are in decline
|
| 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
| efd6821b wrote:
| Match Group embraced, enshittified, and extinguished the
| entire online dating industry.
| geysersam wrote:
| 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.
| Jensson wrote:
| > 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.
| klyrs wrote:
| > 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.
| nicbou wrote:
| OkCupid was great in those years. I remember how each person
| felt like a nuanced individual and not like the elevator
| pitch of a person.
|
| Since then I've only been meeting people in real life. I
| agree that using tindr felt miserable and probably still
| does.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| 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).
| Animats wrote:
| > generic loser pile
|
| 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.
|
| Then there's the spam problem.
| poisonborz wrote:
| +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".
| nullc wrote:
| 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.
| Fricken wrote:
| 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.
| posix86 wrote:
| In case of dating apps, the issue is that match.com owns
| all of them.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| 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.
| theogravity wrote:
| Another +1 for okcupid. I met my wife through it.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Do you believe yours comes in first?
|
| 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.
| tempodox wrote:
| ChatGPT, write an attractive dating app profile for me!
| causality0 wrote:
| 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.
| imiric wrote:
| > 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.
| meiraleal wrote:
| > 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.
| solatic wrote:
| > 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.
| darkwater wrote:
| > 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.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| 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.
| liquidise wrote:
| 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| 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.
|
| PS I'm half joking half not.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| > the "monkey brain" side of love. The subtle things that make
| us truly love a person
|
| What kind of things should I imagine here?
| btbuildem wrote:
| 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.
| richbell wrote:
| 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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I think the reason is more prosaic: The Dead Sea Effect.
|
| People do meet partners on dating apps
| https://old.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/17fr0hy/anyone_who...
|
| 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.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| 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.
| leeeeeepw wrote:
| The tinder style AI Chatbot movement is really big now and
| basically replacing humans... https://tinder.netwrck.com
| nicbou wrote:
| 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.
| prartichoke wrote:
| It's literally the same as that one Futurama episode where
| they clone celebrities on the internet
| hereforcomments wrote:
| 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.
| lnsru wrote:
| Congrats! 10+ years is nice.
|
| 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.
| bertylicious wrote:
| You don't even realize how objectifying your wording is, do
| you?
| lnsru wrote:
| Picking a partner is not pink fall in love story. It's a
| hard work for many years. To have later much more happy
| years together.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| 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.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Intellectual compatibility is a fair goal in a relationship
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| Selecting for intelligence/education/creativity is
| objectifying? Boy that's a new one.
| doix wrote:
| 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 makes it much easier on my opinion.
| bradlys wrote:
| 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.
| rr808 wrote:
| This tweet was great
| https://twitter.com/lolennui/status/1484658321374076928
|
| "do married people watch gen z dating and feel like they caught
| the last chopper out of Nam"
| tropicalbeach wrote:
| 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.
| x86x87 wrote:
| 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.
| freddealmeida wrote:
| 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.
| eesmith wrote:
| That is the Barnum effect -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect .
|
| > 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.
| nly wrote:
| 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.
| _rm wrote:
| Group dates are comically awkward. Basically anything except
| your date being on the date is awkward. They've nothing of an
| improvement there.
| retube wrote:
| The site seems to be down now but mysinglefriend.com had a nice
| angle, you had to be recommended by other users.
|
| Or what about the old fashioned match maker that knows all their
| clients personally?
| dvh wrote:
| That's just eugenics for introverts
| ENGNR wrote:
| Isn't all dating eugenics?
| guerrilla wrote:
| 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.
| poisonborz wrote:
| 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.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| When was that? I found my previous partners on dating apps but
| today (in the last couple years) I can't.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| 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.
| michaelteter wrote:
| 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.
| justinclift wrote:
| > At least the online vs reality is closer ...
|
| "Filters". Also known as "electronic makeup" or "automatic
| photoshop" makes a severe mockery of that though.
| tomhoward wrote:
| 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.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| 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.
| sgu999 wrote:
| > 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".
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 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.
| valyagolev wrote:
| 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
| thfuran wrote:
| >In the west very likely yes, unless you're an
| "entrepreneur".
|
| I think you live in some weird startup-obsessed bubble or
| something because that is quite unlike my experience living
| in "the west"
| tomhoward wrote:
| 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.
| mvncleaninst wrote:
| > 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
| guerrilla wrote:
| > 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.
|
| No.
| mvncleaninst wrote:
| You're taking the word out of context and using a different
| definition of it
| ravishi wrote:
| 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.
| mvncleaninst wrote:
| 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
| ben_w wrote:
| 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. :)
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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.
| ben_w wrote:
| > a few minutes to twenty minutes.
|
| How about _minus_ one second and plus 169 minutes? (It
| was the first of the Hobbit trilogy).
| tomhoward wrote:
| 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).
| abrichr wrote:
| > 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
|
| Can you please recommend further reading?
| InSteady wrote:
| 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).
| Tarq0n wrote:
| Undoing self-sabotaging thought patterns is the essence of
| cognitive behavioral therapy though.
| InSteady wrote:
| 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.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| "Letting go" is suspiciously close to "be a doormat for
| others", it smells of BS.
|
| I've gone to therapy with the CBT method and it's total
| garbage meant to keep you meek and accepting of the
| bullshit people pile on you in life.
|
| The correct solution to abuse is a punch to the face. Civil
| actions and words have no effect.
| watwut wrote:
| > 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.
| moralestapia wrote:
| 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?
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| > 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.
| InSteady wrote:
| >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.
| tekla wrote:
| > You don't choose to be hurt and you don't choose the
| consequences of being hurt.
|
| Yes you do. You totally do.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| 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?
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| 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)
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| 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.
| User23 wrote:
| > 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.
| abracadaniel wrote:
| 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.
| kelipso wrote:
| If you think you're happy, you are happy.
|
| Filtering your sense of happiness through some quality of
| life lens is absurd if you think about it.
| abracadaniel wrote:
| 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.
| anthomtb wrote:
| > they ate well--real food they grew, raised, and hunted
|
| In a good year they might eat well. In a drought year,
| maybe not at all.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| 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.
| User23 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| [1]
| https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/12297/how-
| many-p...
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| My personal impression, from what I've seen of the "third
| world", has been that people there are at least as happy
| as those in the rich world.
| astrange wrote:
| 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.
| userinanother wrote:
| Umm have you seen pictures of what a share cropper looked
| like during the depression? Not much dissimilar to a
| concentration camp survivor
| tomhoward wrote:
| 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.)
| pas wrote:
| 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)?
| tomhoward wrote:
| 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).
| concordDance wrote:
| Are you actually aware of the evidence on these matters?
| There have been studies on adopted children and identical
| twins. What are the results?
|
| Here's a random study on criminality I was looking at a
| bit ago: https://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/frise
| ll2010.pdf
| astrange wrote:
| 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.)
| tomhoward wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3469457/
| #:~:tex....
| astrange wrote:
| 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.
|
| And the same goes for every other trait.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| 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.
| fullshark wrote:
| 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.
| yakubin wrote:
| Belief in personal growth was one of the pillars of
| Victorianism. Then there was the American Dream.
| WA wrote:
| 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".
| tomhoward wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| 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.
| jwells89 wrote:
| 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.
| gizmo wrote:
| 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.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| 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?
| boppo1 wrote:
| >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.
| atq2119 wrote:
| > 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.
| eru wrote:
| Bluey's parents, probably?
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Damn dude my example number two is o Brian and his wife
| in DS9.
|
| Star Trek and parodies are really coming in clutch for
| good examples of married life.
| riffraff wrote:
| > 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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 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.
| userinanother wrote:
| 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
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >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?
| poisonborz wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Before Sunrise trilogy comes to mind
| gedy wrote:
| That's like 28 years ago though.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| 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.
| deaddodo wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Come on. This entire argument is ridiculous.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > 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"?
| c0pium wrote:
| 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.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Ben runs for the house of representatives. That's an
| enabler?
| c0pium wrote:
| Congrats, you found the one. Except he runs because she
| badgers the shit out of him. If Leslie were a guy he'd be
| a narcissistic love-bomber.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=upkQ6XYe3dE
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| 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.
|
| Something is just very broken.
| standardUser wrote:
| 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".
| pschw wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Friday Night Lights
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| 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.
| mattigames wrote:
| 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.
| thfuran wrote:
| Why do you think that will happen soon? Absent extreme
| selection pressure, evolution tends to be quite slow.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's interesting you mention how much worse it was for women,
| because their reported life satisfaction keeps declining over
| the past many decades.
|
| https://docs.iza.org/dp4200.pdf
|
| 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.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| It's probably more a matter that women's lives have
| improved greatly, but not kept pace with rising hopes or
| expectations.
| gammarator wrote:
| If I look at the plot in the linked study I see essentially
| the same trend for men.
| sarchertech wrote:
| 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.
| krona wrote:
| p.7
|
| _> ...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)_
| sarchertech wrote:
| Unless you check that correlation at the beginning and
| end of the time period in question, it's meaningless.
| javajosh wrote:
| 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.
| sarchertech wrote:
| 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.
| krona wrote:
| 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.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Happy to take a look through anything you might want to
| point me to.
| obscurette wrote:
| 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?
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 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.
| Detrytus wrote:
| 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.
| kelipso wrote:
| It's still very rare even in Islamic countries. Look at
| this map.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-
| reads/2020/12/07/polygamy-...
|
| 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.
| sarchertech wrote:
| There's an argument that monogamy is a requirement for
| what we'd consider a stable society, specifically for
| that reason.
| Voultapher wrote:
| 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.
| userinanother wrote:
| The age math sucks for women too. If she wants a career
| she has a short window to get experience and find a
| spouse before she gets pregnant.
|
| If she wants a doctorate she has to be married before she
| enters the workforce.
|
| She has time for maybe 1-3 long term relationships before
| she ages out of childbearing age.
|
| So yes women have more options but they also have less
| time to pick the right one.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| > In the "good old days" dating was simpler
|
| "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."
|
| https://dustyoldthing.com/ad-looking-for-wife-in-1865/
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| The "of the female persuasion" part is where I burst out
| laughing. Apparently cringe is timeless.
| fakedang wrote:
| > besides a house and a barn.
|
| Still did better than most in the dating pool today.
| amlib wrote:
| This has Dwight Schrute energy written all over it
| rayiner wrote:
| And yet women's happiness has declined since the 1970s: https
| ://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intel...
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| 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.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| Or maybe the most probable explanation is that, for the
| average women, having a family, taking care of their
| beloved ones, is a lot more fulfilling than "having a
| carrer". I mean, it's generally not fulfilling for most
| men too, but the average men doesn't need the family part
| as much as the average women. Biology is destiny, people
| today just want to deny the obvious, that's it.
| miffel wrote:
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| 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.
| trealira wrote:
| > 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.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_burden
| Izkata wrote:
| Yep, hence the "tradwife" trend that Gen Z started.
| trealira wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_burden
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_for_housework
| UncleMeat wrote:
| 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."
| rayiner wrote:
| 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.
| boppo1 wrote:
| >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?
| poisonborz wrote:
| 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.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| 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.
| mynameishere wrote:
| 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.
| pcbro141 wrote:
| 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.
| halkony wrote:
| 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.
| XorNot wrote:
| > 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.
| boppo1 wrote:
| > 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.
| distances wrote:
| 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.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This is not secret information, people are just not
| likely to perfectly time the market (just like in
| financial markets).
|
| Who doesn't like to believe they are on an upward path so
| maybe they will be able to do better?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 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]).
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| AI Waifus are about to solve that problem, and women are
| going to be the most negatively impacted.
|
| Expect attempts to regulate out this industry led by
| mostly women's groups.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| spacemadness wrote:
| 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.
| astrange wrote:
| 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.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I've worked with a number of 35+ year old women who think
| they will get married and have kids.
|
| Yeah, right. It's too late. None of them did, and if they
| did, it would be at great risk to them and child.
|
| 35 + courtship period + marriage + 9 months = no kids.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| 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.
| underdeserver wrote:
| This is false. Many women conceive and give birth at 37,
| 38. In some rare cases even later. If you only want one
| or two kids, this is doable.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| 37 is a tight window if you meet someone at 35. And it's
| still risky to both mother and child:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4418963/
|
| 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.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| _Some_ can but _most_ won 't. https://images.theconversat
| ion.com/files/53777/original/2yc4...
|
| >If you only want one or two kids
|
| 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?
| userinanother wrote:
| People who have failed at relationships by 35 probably
| also bad at them or have other negative qualities. The
| pool isn't great for men or women.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| 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.
| intended wrote:
| 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.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| 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
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| 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).
| gizmo wrote:
| 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.
|
| Geez.
| standardUser wrote:
| You should get to know more women instead of crafting
| fictional models in your head.
| userinanother wrote:
| 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
| pcbro141 wrote:
| Exactly. They always talk about men as if we're all losers,
| and women are perfect.
|
| It's always about how men need to change to appease women's
| desires, and never about how women need to change in any
| way.
| pas wrote:
| 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.)
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| 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?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| 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.
|
| in fact you can do this in your 40s, 50s, 60s
|
| as long as you don't fall on hard times
| d0mine wrote:
| The interesting fact is that _most_ _most_ 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).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This is a joke made on Seinfeld, about men and women, 30
| years ago.
| d0mine wrote:
| The statistics is from a study. I don't remember the
| original but here's what google suggests <<women rate an
| incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium.>>
| http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/11/17/your-looks-
| and-...
|
| I guess 80% in 2009 is better than 95% that I remembered.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Try tallying the men you think are above bar on such a
| site on a female profile and see how it adjusts your
| thinking
| Detrytus wrote:
| 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.
| pcbro141 wrote:
| That does not explain why men and women rate
| attractiveness so differently. Both men and women watch
| TV and consume media.
| iteria wrote:
| 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.
| og_kalu wrote:
| 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".
| mcpackieh wrote:
| 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.
| supertofu wrote:
| 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.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| 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.
| Detrytus wrote:
| 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.
| halkony wrote:
| 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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.
| Detrytus wrote:
| I will add "Time traveler's wife": "Naked man in the bush
| talks to a little girl, knowing that he'll marry her some
| day"
| astrange wrote:
| It doesn't matter what women rated men on okcupid because
| "rating men" is not a useful outcome of a study. It costs
| nothing and doesn't mean anything.
| mikhael28 wrote:
| 'You are telling me that 95% of the population is
| complete undateable?' 'Undateable!' 'Then how are all
| these people getting together?' 'Alcohol.'
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Never tell me the odds.
| jeegsy wrote:
| > 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.
| iteria wrote:
| 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.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I was with you until this part:
|
| > 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.)
| saberience wrote:
| 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?
| doix wrote:
| 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.
| userinanother wrote:
| 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
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| > _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.
| lazide wrote:
| I meant pensions/retirement.
|
| Nothing is perfect of course. Lots of pensions
| destroyed/raided, and retirements screwed up by greed
| too.
|
| And going crazy in the other direction marriage wise
| definitely has very real downsides too!
|
| I'd be curious to see how the majority of cases went
| though, overall.
|
| We're discovering the downsides of going too far in our
| current direction now, and I suspect this winter is going
| to be a doozy.
|
| We currently are getting the worst of both worlds near as
| I can tell on both fronts (men and women), but it often
| gets worse before it gets better!
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| > Pay in now, (and keep him around)
|
| 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.
| fakedang wrote:
| > 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.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| > 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".
| lazide wrote:
| 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_.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| 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.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _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.
| gwervc wrote:
| > 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.
| userinanother wrote:
| 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.
| benopal64 wrote:
| I agree with you and the person you responded to.
|
| 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.
| userinanother wrote:
| Not limited to males. Most people have poor capacity for
| introspection and self improvement
| pcbro141 wrote:
| > 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?
| mikhael28 wrote:
| 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.
| pcbro141 wrote:
| I didn't say men are owed anything.
|
| 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.
| userinanother wrote:
| 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
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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.
| esafak wrote:
| If you scored the best girl in high school, you have
| little incentive to keep improving yourself, so the
| phenomenon is not altogether surprising.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| 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.
| gedy wrote:
| > quickly settle for an average guy
|
| These are average women too.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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.
| oarfish wrote:
| 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.
| mouzogu wrote:
| > contemporary life
|
| what you describing is human nature, the reality of it that
| people won't tell you directly.
|
| i don't think it's just something modern, most people have
| always been superficial, judgemental, tribal and so on.
| posix86 wrote:
| 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.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| 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.
| InSteady wrote:
| 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).
| low_tech_love wrote:
| 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.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| 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.
| tester756 wrote:
| >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).
|
| What makes you think so?
| crooked-v wrote:
| 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.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I would sign up for this right now, even paying. I think that'd
| be fun and refreshing even if it didn't work. Do matchmakers
| still exist?
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| 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.
| alexitorg wrote:
| 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.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| A similar dynamic was first suggested by the OkCupid blog in
| their famous article "Why you should never pay for online
| dating".
|
| Link:
| https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupid/whyyoushouldneverpa...
| lapcat wrote:
| 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.
| nologic01 wrote:
| 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
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| 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 facade 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.
| jurynulifcation wrote:
| 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.
| cpursley wrote:
| Church. Church ladies are algorithms that will use their
| network and even mesh to find you dates.
|
| Another one is gym membership with a trainer. The trainer
| will know lots of people and can make introductions.
| jurynulifcation wrote:
| I feel weird going to church. I get the idea but I'm not
| religious at all. I'm not even open to the possibility. I'd
| feel scummy.
|
| Also I have body image issues and do not enjoy working out
| around other people.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| The gym thing with a trainer is super weird dude. I've
| never heard of any trainer being like, "yeah, let me show
| you around to some chicks here."
|
| If you go to a CrossFit gym then there's a community vibe
| but at a typical gym - there isn't one at all.
| sgt101 wrote:
| People made similar arguments about slavery...
| zbentley wrote:
| 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?
| lapcat wrote:
| > 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."
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Because they are moving to other services/apps. Hinge in
| particular.
| lapcat wrote:
| Citation needed.
| whstl wrote:
| Hinge is also owned by Match Group.
| pm90 wrote:
| Still they're not the same app though and the OPs
| questioning of those numbers holds.
| maxlamb wrote:
| 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.
| brazz777 wrote:
| 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.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| 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.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| If you're below a certain threshold of physical
| attractiveness it's impossible to take "good" pictures.
| benj111 wrote:
| 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.
| wnolens wrote:
| 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.
| benj111 wrote:
| Would you say that the cynicism or just you, or a general
| thing?
|
| I stated my hypothesis as 'expecting too much' but I'm not
| particularly wedded to that specific hypothesis.
|
| It's just my observations suggest it isn't just the apps per
| se.
|
| I'm not blaming you btw. It's just you aren't going to find a
| solution if you're looking at the wrong thing.
| gadders wrote:
| I think they buried the lede a bit there:
|
| "The new rules of dating mean approaching strangers in public is
| more frowned upon than it was previously"
|
| I wonder if dating apps have helped promote this viewpoint to
| boost business?
| mvncleaninst wrote:
| 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
| rohith2506 wrote:
| It all boils down to priorities in life at that moment
| baz00 wrote:
| 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 ;)
| _rm wrote:
| Your battle is with yourself. You chose to impose grad school
| on yourself.
| mvncleaninst wrote:
| Yeah and I don't regret it either
| _rm wrote:
| 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.
| klyrs wrote:
| 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.
| maxlamb wrote:
| 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?
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| 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.)
| KingGeedorah wrote:
| 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.
| truculent wrote:
| Ivan Illich seems relevant, here:
|
| > 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.
|
| From https://www.noemamag.com/a-forgotten-prophet-whose-time-
| has-...
| Narciss wrote:
| "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.
| lapcat wrote:
| 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > 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).
| lapcat wrote:
| > 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).
| _rm wrote:
| 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.
| sureglymop wrote:
| 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.
| _rm wrote:
| Because desperation.
|
| After all, did you get "how to get a good husband/wife"
| subject in high school?
|
| They teach only that which is useless.
| thfuran wrote:
| >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.
|
| That's not nearly so weird as you make it out to be. Plenty
| of businesses that sell durable goods could be described much
| the same way.
| jowea wrote:
| And then we get planned obsolescence and new pseudo-
| features that are just excuses to turn it into a
| subscription service.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| 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.
| Tycho wrote:
| How is it possible that there is a ten to one ratio? What's the
| explanation for that?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| 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).
| Tycho wrote:
| Well "more than half" is a completely different proposition
| to "9 out of 10".
| Jensson wrote:
| 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.
| standardUser wrote:
| > The dating app model has rarely worked
|
| 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.
| sambeau wrote:
| Swiping killed dating apps for me.
|
| 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.
| urlwolf wrote:
| 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).
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| I agree dating apps are soul-destroying, especially for those of
| us who want a serious relationship but don't want children.
|
| Here's an alternative I saw today: Manifold markets launched a
| dating app, so markets crowdsource on which couple would last 6
| months.
|
| http://manifold.love
| klyrs wrote:
| 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?
| flenserboy wrote:
| 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.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| It's not just the dating apps.
|
| 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.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| 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".
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's a low effort app for low effort sex. Expecting to build
| a long term relationship on an app is not typically going to
| work out.
| progne wrote:
| 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.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Meeting with very specific expectations, I might add.
|
| My gay friends using grinder don't expect it to be full-
| filling, they expect it to be pleasurable.
|
| Pleasure is nice, but it doesn't sustain happiness.
|
| And intense pleasures that are easy to have regularly
| mess up with your dopamine system.
|
| It's fine if you only have one part of your life like
| this. The rest balance it out. And we all need fun.
|
| E.G: one of my friends is deeply involved in teaching
| kids, another one is a very dedicated doctor, and so
| forth.
|
| In that case it's healthy.
| kredd wrote:
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > but the end tail is just gatekeeping happiness
|
| 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.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Not, it's not about the nature of pleasure.
|
| Netflix in itself is not a problem.
|
| Filling your life with it is.
|
| Which is easy to do because it's intense dopamine effects
| for little effort.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| poisonborz wrote:
| > Expecting to build a long term relationship on an app
|
| What? All of these apps exist merely to organise the first
| meeting. Those users will not interact with each other on
| the platform after that.
| userinanother wrote:
| It's actually a high effort app trying to pass as a low
| effort app. The worst of both worlds
| loveparade wrote:
| 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.
| trident5000 wrote:
| "predatory monetization"
|
| Yeah...the goal of these dating apps is not to have you
| happily be in a relationship and stop paying them money.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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
| trident5000 wrote:
| 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.
| c0pium wrote:
| > Pharmaceuticals don't want cures, but forever
| treatments
|
| You don't have to look very hard to realize this trope is
| totally wrong, just google "vaccine".
| ctoth wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0]: The End of Vaccines at 'Warp Speed'
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/health/covid-nasal-
| vaccin...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| ilkke wrote:
| Very true. Then again, vaccines do now come with DLC
| booster packs
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| True. Hence the "usually".
|
| 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.
| bobmaxup wrote:
| How can something be obvious and also nuanced?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| The sky is obviously blue, but there are a lot of shades
| of blue in it. And clouds. And it changes at night and
| during sunset. Etc.
| bobmaxup wrote:
| Okay, but in plain language, it wouldn't really make
| sense to say something is obvious and then to say there
| are many exceptions, no?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Obvious doesn't exist. Everything is learned.
|
| 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.
|
| It's the same here.
|
| Nothing wrong with that.
| besse wrote:
| It's obvious yet complex that the obvious can also be
| complex
| swagempire wrote:
| The explanation is obvious here and the very existential crux
| of heterosexual dating.
| reureu wrote:
| 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 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.
| reureu wrote:
| 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.
| 14 wrote:
| 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 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.
| morbia wrote:
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > 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.
| kedean wrote:
| 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.
| jeegsy wrote:
| Well, clearly, the groups want very different things
| photochemsyn wrote:
| 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.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Can you not just trace the investments and find out either
| way?
| eru wrote:
| 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.
| c0pium wrote:
| Moderna is in trials with an HIV vaccine based on mRNA
| tech.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36454825/
|
| https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05854381
| lazide wrote:
| Heterosexual women and men have fundamentally different
| biological incentives. Gay men don't.
| ben_w wrote:
| 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.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| 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.
| ben_w wrote:
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| desertrider12 wrote:
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| esafak wrote:
| JBS Haldane: I would be willing to lay down my life for
| two brothers or eight cousins.
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| Could you elaborate on what Brazil is in this context?
| lazide wrote:
| (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.
| sjducb wrote:
| 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.
| suzjzzu172 wrote:
| >>Males that refuse to mate with females is something
| that we only see in humans
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_anim
| als
|
| 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]
| sjducb wrote:
| Male-male mating is super common.
|
| 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.
| ilkke wrote:
| Anecdotal, but all humans I ever met are very much
| domesticated.
| petra wrote:
| Still, females usually get more attached after sex , and
| that's biological.
| iteria wrote:
| 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.
| Karellen wrote:
| 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.
| xwdv wrote:
| 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.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| These apps exist, but you're paying for an escort
| xwdv wrote:
| 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.
| ambicapter wrote:
| That sounds exactly like an escort with a fancy app.
| xwdv wrote:
| How else is one supposed to find an escort? People are
| always saying "just hire an escort" casually like if this
| was some common knowledge.
|
| Plus maybe you don't need an escort if you are a match
| with someone else looking for the same thing as you.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Feels like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UifycM6lBvQ
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| You know why this is. Gay men are far more promiscuous than
| straight women are.
| polartx wrote:
| Or they're just less affected by the public's perception of
| their promiscuity
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Idk about less affected. Especially these days where
| trying to call a woman that is almost as bad as sexual
| assault in many's eyes.
|
| Gay stuff is just more underground. You're never going to
| just walk into a gay club, for instance. Nor wander into
| an LGBT meetup by surprise.
| Redoubts wrote:
| > so many gay men report great satisfaction from it.
|
| Yeah man, love this app, who wouldn't...
|
| https://imgur.com/a/Ff0qaPn
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| 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.
| dangus wrote:
| 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.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I wish it were true, but no.
|
| 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.
| dangus wrote:
| I wish your comment were true, but no. I'm right and you're
| wrong.
|
| The happiness police has determined that you are the one
| who is unhappy.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| It's one of the rare instance where biology, sociology,
| philosophy and religion kinda agree.
|
| You can share your own opinion as usual, but it's going
| to be a hard sale.
|
| It's not about forcing the idea on you, rather it's
| reporting what a lot of humanity have found to be true on
| the long run.
| lazide wrote:
| Is someone forcing anyone to sit down and do those things?
| Could they go for a walk instead?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| That's what I meant about human being biased to that
| attitude.
|
| We technically have a choice, but practically, our
| biology and social context make one path very attractive.
| ben_w wrote:
| "Going for a walk" is great, when you can do it.
|
| 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_.
| lazide wrote:
| Very true, especially in the specifics IMO. The friction
| getting to a park is non trivial in that area too.
| agent327 wrote:
| 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...
| ardourdev wrote:
| Agreed about Cupertino but San Francisco is very
| walkable!
| dasudasu wrote:
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| Opiate of the masses is descriptive. Lately it seems more
| like amphetamines though.
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| 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.
| Eumenes wrote:
| 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.
| jwells89 wrote:
| 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.
| dangus wrote:
| Wow so not only am I being told to get myself a hobby but
| it has to be so unique that nobody else is doing it?
|
| It's no wonder these dating apps aren't working when
| standards are so high!
| Detrytus wrote:
| 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
| jwells89 wrote:
| 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?
| mcpackieh wrote:
| 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.
| zer0-c00l wrote:
| Why is this a surprise? Dating app success is about your
| ability to market yourself and stand out from the crowd.
| Eumenes wrote:
| 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.
| zo1 wrote:
| 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.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Ready-made meals are no substitution from cooking vegetables.
|
| Yes, they are.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| 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.
| userinanother wrote:
| 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
| crooked-v wrote:
| 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).
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Convenience (instant reward) is to humans, what light is to
| bugs.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| That's a very poignant analogy. Especially since we all
| looked down on bugs for being so stupid to die burnt on a
| lamp.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| 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.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transverse_orientation
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Chats are no substitution for IRL human interactions.
|
| Careful... are you going to suggest next that Remote work is no
| substitution for office work?
| supertofu wrote:
| In-person interaction fulfills our innate biological desire
| for community.
|
| Remote work is just a means of earning income.
|
| You are comparing apples to oranges by assuming there is some
| relation between online chatting and remote working.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| That's a "Behold a man" kinda problem, isn't it?
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| 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.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > 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 :)
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| > There's people I've had a deep relationship with online and
| when I met them in person there was nothing.
|
| I can't help but feel there's a serious issue somewhere in
| the reality described in this sentence.
| saltcured wrote:
| 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > 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.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| People are catfishing you whether they intend to or not.
| Everybody has max confidence online.
| lazide wrote:
| I think what you're saying is you had a really deep
| relationship with your imagination, what seemed to be with
| another person?
| eru wrote:
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| Real life is orders of magnitude more bandwidth than
| anything online. Online allows a lot more/easier
| maladaptive disconnection.
|
| But yes, many (most?) in person relationships are also
| 'imagination' driven. Some very pathologically so (NPD,
| BPD, DID, etc.).
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 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.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| You are confusing one instance with a general behavior.
|
| Chatting is fine.
|
| Getting most of your meaningful social interactions out of
| chatting is, however, a good way to feel depressed.
|
| Very few people are actually wired to never be touched, to
| never smell humans, to not be part of group dynamic.
|
| Even introverts, which pay a great price for IRL social
| interactions, also pay a price for not having them enough.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 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.
| supertofu wrote:
| 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.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Fantastic explanation.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > 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.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| 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.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| 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.
| fullshark wrote:
| Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
| claytongulick wrote:
| Or take a Holiday in Cambodia
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Be careful not to suffer vertigo from the dizzying heights of
| that horse you're on.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| 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".
| GuB-42 wrote:
| 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.
| uoaei wrote:
| Do you shove everyone into such tiny, restrictive boxes?
| Romantic partners certainly don't like being told what they
| should or shouldn't be and do.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Did the poster above you edit their comment? Asking because
| your reply is a complete non sequitur.
| uoaei wrote:
| 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.
| lvass wrote:
| 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.
| plutoh28 wrote:
| 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.
| trealira wrote:
| 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.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| 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.
| trealira wrote:
| I hadn't considered that not everyone would agree with
| what I said; thanks for telling me what you think.
| mynameisash wrote:
| 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.
| xedrac wrote:
| 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...
| esafak wrote:
| 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!
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inside-the-
| box/20140...
| trealira wrote:
| That's an interesting thing to learn; thanks for sharing
| it.
| maxlamb wrote:
| 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.
| PierreProstata wrote:
| 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.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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?
| hinkley wrote:
| 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.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| If you can get the same thing for less effort that's a no
| brainer.
|
| If you can get a similar thing that is of lower quality for
| significantly less effort, that may be worth it.
|
| But sometimes, it's worth the extra effort for the extra
| quality.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > 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.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| 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.
| hinkley wrote:
| 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.
| hinkley wrote:
| 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.
| tester756 wrote:
| >I don't understand this idea of engineers and tech people
| glorifying effort.
|
| Because context matters, just like effort matters and easy
| solution in relationship doesn't seem to work often
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| closeparen wrote:
| 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.
| caeril wrote:
| > 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.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| > 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.
| pierat wrote:
| > 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >If I wasn't already with someone, I'd likely be with
| nobody.
|
| How did you end up getting with someone in that case?
| pierat wrote:
| 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.
| satokema wrote:
| 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.
| pydry wrote:
| >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.
| fsociety wrote:
| 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.
| pydry wrote:
| >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.
| pacija wrote:
| A lot of people basically don't have strong enough urge
| to fcuk. Something is skrewed with the chemistry. Social
| aspects are just noise around it.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| What right does society have to demand that men act
| docile? Nobody cares an iota for our SAFETY, let alone
| our comfort.
|
| A society that isn't built on reciprocation is not a
| society worthy of my respect.
| astrange wrote:
| Approximately everything RMS has done in his life is
| "misbehaving". That's why the FSF is famously ultra-
| combative.
| pydry wrote:
| His activism is quite bad for profits and that makes some
| people angry at him.
|
| This indirectly led to him being accused of being a
| sexual predator but it doesnt mean he actually is one.
| astrange wrote:
| 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?
| pydry wrote:
| 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.
| astrange wrote:
| 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.
| pydry wrote:
| It isnt anti the concept of profit, it just had the
| effect of chewing through a lot of profit margins. The
| GPL is responsible for breaking Microsoft's desktop OS
| monopoly, for instance.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| None of that makes him a sexual predator. You're using
| "he's a weirdo" to imply "he's dangerous". Obvious
| bullshit.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >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.
| sidlls wrote:
| 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.
| scarmig wrote:
| 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.
| closeparen wrote:
| 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.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| 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.
| tester756 wrote:
| >#metoo movements, and generalized "women don't ever want
| to be approached" zeitgeist
|
| It (the extreme of what you're writing about) exists only
| on the internet.
|
| Just turn off twitter and you'll realize those things do
| not exist at the scale that you think
| samtho wrote:
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| userinanother wrote:
| As a straight male I've always found dating men for
| friendship was a lot harder than dating women
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| userinanother wrote:
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| The issue of sexual harassment, including the bosses
| pushing you for sex existed before internet.
|
| If anything, the blow up is massively an improvement at
| least we do not have to pretend it does not exists.
| electrondood wrote:
| This sounds like a toxic incel point of view.
|
| If you talk to women like they're human beings instead of
| bizarre creatures that you need to manipulate into mating,
| this doesn't actually happen.
| episiarch wrote:
| 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.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| The situation for men and women in dating isn't symmetric.
| gtech1 wrote:
| Of course not. Alpha males command the most attention
| userinanother wrote:
| 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.
| xedrac wrote:
| 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.
| userinanother wrote:
| 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
| danenania wrote:
| 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
| willcipriano wrote:
| It's not a hack it's a message. All of the other guys are
| shyly waiting in line for their "turn" you on the other
| hand are far more bold.
| userinanother wrote:
| Higher effort threshold yields less competition.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| The bigger problem is that you are arbitrarily _limited_ on
| the amount of profiles you can swipe through each day.
|
| Tinder promised to help me with the numbers game, then
| built their entire business on scarcity.
| userinanother wrote:
| 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.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| How did you screen off most? I would think it happened
| very similar to swiping?
| userinanother wrote:
| 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
| hutzlibu wrote:
| 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 ...
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| 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.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Depends on the irl situation."
|
| 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.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah. They *used to* exist, but they're more work and the
| companies can't extract as many dollars so they were
| eaten and destroyed.
| userinanother wrote:
| 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.
| randycupertino wrote:
| > 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.
| capableweb wrote:
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Lots of tech people in the dance scene (west coast swing,
| lindy hop, zouk, etc.) -- and lots of women too
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I've been told the Bay Area is the only place where there
| are more men than women in the social dance scene.
| cloudier wrote:
| Making tech and gaming more inclusive for women isn't
| something that just benefits women -- as your comment
| shows it can benefit men as well.
| letrowekwel wrote:
| 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.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| 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.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > 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.
| watwut wrote:
| Ok, but if someone avoided social life and worked in gender
| segregated environment in the past, they would had zero
| romantic partners in the past too.
| omginternets wrote:
| >I've never understood how asking out strangers in bars or on
| the street is supposed to yield high quality matches.
|
| You're providing yet more examples of low-effort interaction,
| albeit offline.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| jlos wrote:
| 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?
| xp84 wrote:
| 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.
| oriolid wrote:
| > Developing crushes on people you actually know in your
| social scenes is more reasonable.
|
| And if it is not mutual, admitting it can be a total social
| suicide.
| cgriswald wrote:
| 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.
| oriolid wrote:
| > Navigating these types of situations is a skill that
| can be developed.
|
| It's difficult to practice something where failure means
| disaster.
| cgriswald wrote:
| 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.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Those crushes... they can be quite crushing if not mutual,
| or if the counterpart is in a relationship, and that
| happens more than not.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| 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.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| 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?
| scarmig wrote:
| > 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.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| > 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.
| 31337Logic wrote:
| Comment of the Year, right here. Thank you.
| user_named wrote:
| The people are a way worse problem than the apps. I've gotten
| hundreds of dates and three sort of relationships.
|
| And they all fucked me over.
| rvba wrote:
| 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?
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| 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.
| rvba wrote:
| 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.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| 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.
| rvba wrote:
| I wrote about matchmaking based on a questionaire.
| iambateman wrote:
| Just to say the obvious...dating apps have a massive incentive
| problem.
|
| If two people get matched on the app and get married, they
| "churn" out of the dating app.
|
| Dating apps are structurally incentivized to help people go on
| lots of dates (MAU++!) but NOT to help them get married.
|
| We shouldn't be surprised when people on apps find themselves in
| a seemingly endless cycle of dates which go nowhere.
| posix86 wrote:
| Related: The Tyranny of the Marginal User [1]
|
| A possible explanation on why dating apps suck.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37509507
| swagempire wrote:
| 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.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I think the better take is not to focus on the apps, but on the
| phenomenon of using apps for that.
|
| You don't get out. You don't socialize. You don't take risks.
| You don't exchange much.
|
| But it's easy, and it provides an alternative paths for timid
| people, and increase your range and reach.
| swagempire wrote:
| Right, I see your point. But the idea is to go and take it
| offline at some point no? Meet IRL so to speak?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| It's certainly more efficient for the end goal of getting
| to a date, in a the way food delivery is an efficient way
| of addressing your hunger.
|
| I approve both.
|
| But I would not recommend eating food delivery every day.
| majikaja wrote:
| Maybe it's not the apps, maybe it's just the users?
|
| Let me know when tech turns everyone into models
| underseacables wrote:
| 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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.
| Sytten wrote:
| 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.
| hluska wrote:
| 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.
|
| A not for profit might be able to flip that.
| kredd wrote:
| 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.
| Sytten wrote:
| 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.
| Sytten wrote:
| 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.
| kredd wrote:
| 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").
| RunningDroid wrote:
| > We need a non-profit to create a dating app.
|
| 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/
| Sytten wrote:
| 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.
| decohen wrote:
| > 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.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| 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.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| 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.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| 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?
| groestl wrote:
| 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...
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| 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.
| mettamage wrote:
| 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.
| groestl wrote:
| > attachment theory
|
| 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.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| 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.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| 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:
|
| How tall are you?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| 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.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| 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.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| 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.
| KapKap66 wrote:
| How tall are you again?
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| 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.
| thfuran wrote:
| >It's simply dumb to believe that you can change the way of
| living which was going on for all of human history
|
| Which way is that?
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| The way without modern organization-dependent technology.
|
| Read some Ted Kaczynski.
| thfuran wrote:
| 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.
| nicgrev103 wrote:
| 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.
| btbuildem wrote:
| 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.
| thfuran wrote:
| Yeah, there's over 100 million people born a year, and most
| relationships don't last till death anyways.
| standardUser wrote:
| "after a few unsuccessful years on the apps"
|
| 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!
| prepend wrote:
| 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.
| INTPenis wrote:
| 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.
| eru wrote:
| You know that people are allowed to save money and take out
| insurance? Even in the US.
| kukkeliskuu wrote:
| 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.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> 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.
| xkekjrktllss wrote:
| Yes, this is unquestionably a fact. I am 6'1" so not exactly
| complaining but it's definitely the reality we live in.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| 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
| claytongulick wrote:
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > 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".
| claytongulick wrote:
| That's absolutely correct - but 5' 8" is nearly average
| in my age group (50ish male).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sorry, I completely glossed over you writing "my age
| group" in your original comment.
| warner25 wrote:
| 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?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| 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.
| warner25 wrote:
| 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.
| analog31 wrote:
| 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.
| groestl wrote:
| On some apps where height is not part of the profile, you
| find taller women only mentioning their height and nothing
| else. That's telling.
| intelVISA wrote:
| Interesting, what is third? System design?
| lvass wrote:
| Choice of Emacs or vi.
| ipqk wrote:
| 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).
| warner25 wrote:
| 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.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Social pressure to commit to monogamous relationships is the
| only possible solution to this.
| geysersam wrote:
| Or, men could accept that they don't have a right to a
| romantic relationship with a woman.
| civilitty wrote:
| 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.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So what is your proposal?
| civilitty wrote:
| 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.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And how would that help? Women are still going to filter
| for tall, successful fit men.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| 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.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Do we really want the government regulating how people
| meet or even worse the government knowing every time you
| meet someone?
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Personally I don't believe it would help, but I do think
| I understand civilitty's reason for suggesting it.
| civilitty wrote:
| Do you really think I'm proposing giving anyone
| regulatory powers over _dating_? How would that even work
| outside an episode of Handmaid's Tale?
| agent327 wrote:
| 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.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| What's wrong with expecting you to pay for a service?
| agent327 wrote:
| Nothing, but if your only goal is to frustrate people,
| maybe that's a level of 'service' you should not be
| offering in the first place.
| ip26 wrote:
| 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.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| 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.
| ip26 wrote:
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| 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?
| agent327 wrote:
| Great rant. Now explain why it is different with taxes.
| Spivak wrote:
| 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.
| geysersam wrote:
| 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).
| agent327 wrote:
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| 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.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > "you don't have a right to a meal"
|
| People are perfectly happy to say that in all sorts of
| places including this very forum.
| geysersam wrote:
| Difference is it's widely accepted that people _do have a
| right_ to a meal. It 's internationally recognized as a
| human right.
| pavlov wrote:
| 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.
| agent327 wrote:
| As far as I can tell it's the women that are complaining
| about the lack of available men, not the reverse.
| moffkalast wrote:
| 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.
| agent327 wrote:
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| s/available/acceptable and you have it.
|
| 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.
| 4bpp wrote:
| 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?
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| 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".
| 4bpp wrote:
| 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?
| geysersam wrote:
| 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.
| vhcr wrote:
| 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.
| kibwen wrote:
| 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.
| lvass wrote:
| I don't think this has much to do with dating apps, AFAIK among
| the best analysis on this topic is still DOI:
| 10.1207/s15327957pspr0804_2 from 2004.
| geraldhh wrote:
| https://sci-hub.st/10.1207/s15327957pspr0804_2
| claytongulick wrote:
| 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.
| InSteady wrote:
| 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.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Marketplace economics like those done in the paper don't
| apply well when both parties are buyers.
|
| They also rest on concepts of resource scarcity, which is
| an artificial construct in the context of post birth
| control sex.
|
| Artificial scarcity rarely lasts long in markets, it can
| only be propped up by industry collusion.
|
| The 50's model of "precious chastity" sexual relations
| just doesn't apply to current interpersonal dynamics.
|
| The risk factors that drove that model are very different
| today and have freed both women and men in different
| ways.
| vivekd wrote:
| 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.
| groestl wrote:
| 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.
| vivekd wrote:
| 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
| groestl wrote:
| It just does not add up for me.
|
| > 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.
|
| It's the same on Bumble.
| nickff wrote:
| 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.
| fredthedeadhead wrote:
| The blog was removed after OkCupid was acquired by
| Match.com, which is another problem in online dating apps
| that isn't often mentioned. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Match_Group#Dating_services_...
|
| 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.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Do you happen to know what book?
| wbobeirne wrote:
| 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.
| officehero wrote:
| 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.
| vivekd wrote:
| 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
| captainmuon wrote:
| 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.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > 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.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I would rather have an app that would help me deal with the lows
| of a marriage - trust me, EVERY married couple has those.
| justinator wrote:
| 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.
| standardUser wrote:
| 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.
| captainmuon wrote:
| 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...
| closeparen wrote:
| I dunno, I credit the explicit "this is a dating relationship"
| context setting with making things possible for me that would
| not be otherwise.
| captainmuon wrote:
| 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.
| bartwr wrote:
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| 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.
| euroderf wrote:
| Ya gotta put yourself out there. Get some evening hobbies that
| get you out of the house.
| pierat wrote:
| 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.
| danhodgins wrote:
| 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.
|
| For those people, single is better than settling.
| xedrac wrote:
| 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.
| fredthedeadhead wrote:
| I'm pretty interested in Breeze as an alternative
| https://breeze.social/
|
| * 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.
| capableweb wrote:
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| > In which cities is Breeze available?
|
| > 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.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| 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.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| 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.
| josefrichter wrote:
| 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.
| almatabata wrote:
| 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.
| dieselgate wrote:
| 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.
| s-mon wrote:
| 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.
| andirk wrote:
| 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.
| mr_tristan wrote:
| This seems like the fear/problems of dating apps are just another
| aspect of how modern communication systems are alienating us.
|
| Social circles are indeed shrinking:
| https://www.americansurveycenter.org/why-mens-social-circles...
|
| 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.
| Inward wrote:
| 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.
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