I don't think tech or porn is the main culprit. It's that people now have way more entertainment options other than sex. Of course, a lot for those entertainment options are being driven by tech.
Back in my dad's days, they were poor so the only entertainment options in their free time was drinking cheap home made alcohol, dancing and sex, while now we have gaming, Netflix, tic-tok, porn, traveling to the infinite Instagramable places around the world, plus the grind of keeping up with spiraling living and real estate costs, which IMHO, is the real bummer here.
Also, adult dating and meeting people for the post-college working professionals, has largely moved from clubs/bars/the office to online dating apps, or lonely depression in your apartment, eating or drinking your feelings away, for those without success in the WFH, remote-everything, online dating world. Especially with the lockdowns.
That, and most are still holding people in their 20s to the same standards as generations able to start a family with the credentials of Homer Simpson.
"People" meaning banks really. The games with credit are effectively driving the housing shortage by making buying the small number of already built homes effectively more affordable than building new ones in the massive amount of permissibly zoned empty space we have. We're only exacerbating it by bringing in tons of legal and illegal immigrants and having the government pay for their housing. It's not surprising there's a conspiracy theory about intentional replacement of the native population with that going on.
Combine that with the value extraction from rent/debt (everyone has to own a car and since they probably can't afford to just buy one most are in debt over it) and no one can afford sex.
The awful part of all this is that young people blame women. Women are just the messengers.
> already built homes effectively more affordable than building new ones
The reason people buy instead of build is that the house is already there, whereas building anew takes a lot of time.
As interest rates grow, it becomes more expensive to do so, and waiting starts paying off.
But inflation is still high in spite of the high interest rates. And then, maybe the central banks will overshoot the interest rate, which will lead to another crash...
Other than that, living in a walkable area has its advantages, and codes are much stricter in high densities, so you can't build.
I actually meant the people, not banks. Banks exacerbate the problem, but you don't need to hold everyone to the same standards as 30 years ago. People in family homes in Southern Europe date, too. Many Japanese people get married before they leave the parental home. This was pretty standard in most of Europe and America a little less than a century ago.
>The awful part of all this is that young people blame women.
I don't want to blame women in particular, but from personal anecdotes, women in particular place huge importance on a guy having his own car and place, despite both being massive wastes of money here and actively hurting one's ability to get housing later. The opposite, not so much. This in a country where even rent is now mostly a dual-income market.
The Japanese buy and large aren't having sex, so I'd disagree with you that they're a good example of women having lower standards. Their desire for men to have things and a stable life is probably biological and immutable.
You can see their role as messengers of the truth pretty often. I saw this one video that I thought was pretty great where a group of three women were out. The videographer/interviewer had the two friends call up the first's boyfriend and ask to "hang out" behind her back as a sort of joke. The first woman then freaked out, not at her boyfriend for wanting to cheat but at her friends for showing it. If you watch carefully this sort of thing happens pretty often.
>The Japanese buy and large aren't having sex, so I'd disagree with you that they're a good example of women having lower standards.
This is a phenomenon in most of young generation US and EU too. Both housing and the ability to get on with someone are far cheaper and easier in Tokyo in particular, than most metropolises in the developed world. If that doesn't tell you there's more going on than "just your own place bro", I don't know what will. If women are continuously taught and telling each other that a guy must have their own place or they are bad / deadbeat, the entire thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Given our species as a whole has been procreating with less for most of our existence, I'm more eager to place my bets it's a cultural phenomenon rather than "biologically hardwired".
>You can see their role as messengers of the truth pretty often.
You can just as well say men are "messengers of truth" because they don't want to marry single moms. The only thing you're showing is that their words mean jack compared to their actions, as is the case with every human being under the sun.
>You can just as well say men are "messengers of truth" because they don't want to marry single moms. The only thing you're showing is that their words mean jack compared to their actions, as is the case with every human being under the sun.
People in their 20s having their own digs is, I think, a decidedly American phenomenon. In most of the poorer parts of the world (including, for example, Central and Eastern Europe), 30+ years ago younger crowd managed to have sex just fine, using dorm rooms, snatching time while parents were away, etc. My 2c.
Aren't we talking about people in their 20s? You seem to be describing teenagers. For people in their 20s, it's always been quite normal to have a job, a home, and, at some point during their 20s, to get married.
I strongly doubt that. It was quite common in western Europe too. My parents got married in 1970 and did briefly live with my grandparents (who had a gigantic house that was still dirt cheap when they got married directly after WW2), but moved out soon after that.
As far as I know, people moved out either when they married, or when they went to a university in a different city. Around 1990 I knew one guy who had a job and still lived with his parents, and I thought that was odd (he spent all his money on fancy audiophile equipment).
A job -- sure. But a common situation in cities would be for a 20-something to live with their parents until (and sometimes after) they got married due to the very limited housing. When I came to the US in my mid-20s I was absolutely stunned that it was possible for someone working an unskilled job (which is what I did for my first year) to rent a small apartment of one's own (in a sketchy part of the town, sure) and invite whoever I please whenever I want.
There was socialism in CEE back then. So nobody and much less people in their 20s could afford their own home. After my parents got married, they lived in a 3-room apartment (+ kitchen, 65m2 in total) together with both parents of my mother, her grandmother, and her sister (who had a child) also sometimes showed up.
By CEE do you mean the European Economic Community? Or are you referring to eastern European communism? I don't know how the situation was there, but in western Europe, people could absolutely afford to at least rent in their 20s. My grandparents, who weren't rich at all (my granddad was a nurse) could afford a very large house, and my parents could afford to buy a fairly large house when they were 34. And I know that in Germany (central Europe), houses tend to be cheaper (at least today; not sure if it was the same back then).
Fair enough. But communist countries, especially towards the 1980s when they were basically bankrupt, is rather a special case. In western, northern and much of central Europe, the situation was quite different.
> People in their 20s having their own digs is, I think, a decidedly American phenomenon. In most of the poorer parts of the world (including, for example, Central and Eastern Europe), 30+ years ago younger crowd managed to have sex just fine, using dorm rooms, snatching time while parents were away, etc. My 2c.
is true then. It's only talking about the situation in the poorer parts of the world and not elsewhere, and gives CEE in 1980s as an example.
Only partially. It's not decidedly American, because it's also true in western, central and northern Europe. And probably many parts of the world. Most of the world is not communist.
Again in the United States and to a lesser extent in the rest of the developed world. It's very common in many parts of the world for kids to live at home until they get married, unless they have to move for work.
I am 29 and was finally able to purchase my first home. I am one of if not the only person in my large friend group to purchase a home without assistance from parents
If you think people in their 20s are buying homes and starting families en-masse well I've got bad news for you
But that is now. I'm talking about how it used to be. Look at the GP. Here's what I'm responding to:
> People in their 20s having their own digs is, I think, a decidedly American phenomenon. In most of the poorer parts of the world (including, for example, Central and Eastern Europe), 30+ years ago younger crowd managed to have sex just fine, using dorm rooms, snatching time while parents were away, etc.
I think them not having their own digs is much more an American phenomenon, at least recently. Though houses have gotten ridiculously expensive in a lot of countries. Still, back when I was in my 20s, it was quite common in Europe for people to at least rent their own place, and possibly even buy a small apartment. I've got an entire branch of my family where everybody married at 21 and moved out at that age. In my parents' time, it was not much different, though they did live in my grandparents' massive house briefly after their marriage, and bought their first home when they were 34. But it was definitely common for people to move out of their parents' home when they got married. Once going to university got more common, that became the time they moved out.
Apologies - you're absolutely correct. I think it was standard practice prior to everything going down-hill. The only reason I even have this ability is through my career. I think most people are not so fortunate and are fed up so the cycle of not trying starts to kick in.
Because now you get a lifetime label as a registered sex offender if you get caught.
Additionally, those of us who grew up in the 80's had the absolute fear of AIDS drilled into us. IMO, the AIDS epidemic blunted the libido of at least one generation.
It's not a big deal, we know that now. In the 80's when I was a teenager, the fear-tactics and abstinence only education were strong - I'd even say at their peak. Those patterns get embedded in your brain.
I’ll never forget seeing Oprah on tv in 1987, "Hello, everybody. AIDS has both sexes running scared. Research studies now project that one in five--listen to me, hard to believe--one if five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years. That's by 1990. One in five. It is no longer just a gay disease. Believe me."
By the time I was a teenager that fear had subsided, but that’s was a pretty dramatic thing to hear at a young age.
We know that now because it's true now. In the late 80s it was a very big deal and an almost certain death sentence. We had no treatment options for years.
The idea that HIV/AIDS is primarily of concern only to gay men is completely false. At the Whitman-Walker clinic in Washington, DC, which was for years primarily an HIV/AIDS clinic serving mostly gay men, the majority of new HIV/AIDS patients has for some time been straight African-American women. Every sexually active adult needs to be concerned about HIV and take appropriate precautions.
Maybe at one particular clinic? But that's not true in the general case. I remember when I first discovered that AIDS was both rare and overwhelmingly affecting the gay community (where I live). I was pretty upset because having grown up in the 80s and 90s I'd been left with the impression that HIV was everywhere and even just one heterosexual hookup was a gamble (condom or not). But that's not an accurate view given the tiny, tiny number of people who have HIV.
Looking back at the 80s/90s AIDS hysteria now, it was the same as COVID hysteria. Same people even, guys like Fauci. They were telling people you could get AIDS from drinking water fountains and similar crap. No wonder people were crazy about it.
Incidentally the whole concept of a virus that primarily targets gay people doesn't make much biological sense, does it? Nothing the size of a virus can detect your sexuality, nor is there any evolutionary reason to select for such a thing even if it could. That's why the 'experts' predicted it would quickly stop being primarily a gay disease. Nope. That rather makes the theory that a lot of AIDS cases were driven by drug abuse more plausible, doesn't it, especially because this preference for gay men mysteriously vanishes in Africa.
At any rate, the public health community has pretty consistently and for a long time misled heterosexual people about the risks of any disease that's known to primarily affect the gay community. They're doing it again now with monkeypox. It almost exclusively affects gay men which is why the official CDC guidance is to - no kidding - hold socially distanced gay sex parties. But to listen to the early announcements about this you'd not have suspected this reality. There is of course no question of the state enforcing any measures against the at-risk community to "crush the curve", like banning pride week sex parties: the LGBT community is special. For the rest of us, we get lockdowns. For them, nothing. It's this sort of thing that destroys the credibility of public health (not that they had any left after COVID). It's just one long string of ideological driven "science".
I do wonder if the act of dating has gotten substantially less fun than it was in the past. At least if you go to a bar/concert/activity you may have fun and make plutonic friends, messaging random people on a dating site seems much more depressing.
It is very un fun, one of the big things I've noticed is online dating is very different experience for men and women.
Both have their negatives and positives, but it create a weird dynamic of how people date.
You seriously can't imagine being bombarded with messages from horny and desperate women is a great time? That having hundreds if not thousands to choose from is a grea time?
It's better than nothing? And from what I can tell there is usually a handful of good dates in the massive pile, and it's not too hard to find them. But then (as a woman) you could just not bother and go to a bar.
I'm not straight or a man, or a woman, and I was basing that on actual, real women I've talked to about their experiences with dating apps. It's a miserable experience.
possibly related. When you are forced to look at someones data sheet to decide on them rather than see them in public being themselves - it seems natural to get sucked into coming up with check-lists on a bunch of qualities you otherwise would not have actually cared about as a means of simplifying your choosing process
Entertainment has entered a tyranny of choice. I see it personally. I can watch nearly every show and movie that was ever created but I still flip through Netflix and RT endlessly, often times choosing not to watch anything. When I was younger I would just watch Seinfeld re-runs, with commercials and all. Am I more "entertained" today than I was when I was growing up? I'm not convinced.
The weirdest thing is I don't remember what I used to talk to my friends about when I was in high school. We didn't have much shared media to talk about (e.g. periodic TV shows people obsess about today). None of us so much picked up a newspaper at the time so current events were out. None of us had that many specific interests and the interests we had weren't shared. But somehow we spent hours talking about something. I wish I could be a fly on the wall of my prom table to just take in what was discussed.
Podcasts changed the game for me on this. Now there are entire days where I never turn the TV on. A bonus is that I can get basic chores done while listening or workout. It really freed me from the couch potato routine. A bonus is that many of them are educational and released weekly, so "binge" isn't really an option. There are certainly "junk food" podcasts that I listen to but the ratio of informative to junk compared to video content(movies, tv shows, etc) is way better. Though I will say YouTube has some excellent channels for learning.
Podcasts are similar to books though, you have to dig through a bit of garbage to find one that works for you. Here's my list:
- crime in sports
- Linux unplugged
- software engineering radio
- the knowledge project
- coinsec
- persona
- ten percent happier
- quanta podcast
- physics world weekly
- ologies
- darknet diaries
- stuff you should know
- the joy of why
- fall of civilizations
- smartless
- money talks
- planet money
- small town murder
- offensive security
- the journal
- programming throwdown
- timesuck
- Conan O'Brien needs a friend
- philosophize this
- against the odds
- levar Burton reads (no longer running)
- curiosity daily
- science weekly
- future of journalism
- wtf
- broken record
- idea cast
- swindled
- malicious life
- views room
- behind the bastards
- the exchange
- stuff to blow your mind
And for the "junk" I listen to just about every comedian podcast that exists: Bill Burr, Bobby Lee, Chris destefano, Stavros!, Tom Segura, (this list goes on a while...)
On a serious note they helped me learn to be content with being alone or at least not worry about "looking" for it via dating apps, and I would say not playing that game (dating apps) is what is "ruining" my sex life (or lack of).
Savage Love really improved my wife's and my relationship (physical and otherwise). I highly recommend it, but if you're not familiar with Dan Savage, be prepared for some varsity-level discussions.
I too love podcasts but I don't think the educational ones necessarily teach me much. Listening is too passive, especially if you're doing other things. If I'm not following a book or paying close attention, I'll put the book down. But its easy with well produced podcasts and audio to just continue listening while zoning out. I've listened to hours on a subject but if you were to quiz me on that subject I would be clueless. I don't think the same would be true if I had spent hours reading a book on a topic.
For sure my retention is better with text on a page. I kept a journal for a while about what I learned that day and that worked somewhat well. For the computer ones it's really just a starting point to find things I wasn't even aware of and dive deeper.
For the same reason I don't do audio books. I tried listening in the car during low overhead highway driving and quickly realized my attention faded in and out too much.
Along the same lines, I also came to theorize that books that were written to be read don't make good audio candidates. Yes, doable. But I found lectures and speeches to be better suited for listening (as it was their original and intended medium).
I disagree to the degree that a whole lot of people in the world are walking around without a lot of knowledge about their own sexuality. They often don’t even understand what their gas and brakes really are - which is often not even directly connected to sexual function (but that’s a topic for sex therapy).
That said, my gut impression is that people are less sociable and less socialized than we used to be. I believe we simply spend less time around other people, and we are less adept at building relationships. It’s easier to remain sexually, socially, financially, and resource independent from other people - so we do and sexual relationships become less frequent.
You are discussing others as generalizations, and my argument is that our tendency to attach ourselves to discussions of generalizations itself is the thing that intrudes as it is the absolute opposite of having sex. Fucking is an act that takes place entirely in the concrete present. Our ability to continuously dissociate into intangible abstractions has made us lose touch with our bodies. The discussion of podcasts and identities and all these other archetypes and mediums that divorce us from our physicality are ground zero of this loss.
Perhaps, but we are not operating in a pure vacuum of naturalism and some amount of relationship building typically precedes sex. We are not merely coupling on a grassy plain by natural raw instinct. That might be a loss - but culture, sexual identity, religion have commandeered the natural sexual energies of mankind since… just about as long as we can tell.
If you are fully immersed in your raw, human sexuality - that’s great. For many, sex and sexuality is more nuanced than mere fucking.
Not sure how this plays into the back and forth, but my reasons are pretty simple. People use apps to find partners now, and I don't want to be on the apps. Of course I still meet people, and of course I'll find a partner. It just won't be through the primary mediums used by most. To me a dating app profile feels like looking for a partner by standing naked in the middle of a stadium and having everyone in the audience hold up a sign to rate you. I'll persue the people I like that I meet, and it will take longer. And I'm okay with that. Podcasts have helped me rekindle a life of my own. I believe too much TV and too much movie can give people the same feelings as too much Facebook or TikTok. You see all these sitcoms and reality shows and people's highlights and these relationships and feel like you're lacking. But TV and movies are fake, and so is most of social media. Stepping into the world of podcasts let me keep the entertainment without the depression of "why not me!?". That's my 2 cents anyway.
[META] List posts this long shouldn't be allowed, or at the very least be for exceptional circumstances only. Gratuitous use of screen space that could have been served perfectly fine with commas.
Thanks for the list of podcasts. I will check these out. And yeah, I've generally steered away from podcasts because of all the garbage. Also, I tried listening to podcasts while I run on the weekends, thinking it would be a good use of time for about 2 hours. Not so. My brain completely shuts down when I run; it's difficult to stay engaged in anything, so listening to a podcast felt like extra effort.
I love my list of podcasts, but I can't help but worry that I use it as a crutch for not having a ton of friends in my life. I remember being devastated when one of my favorites kind of abruptly ended (luckily they were just leaving the company they were at to start their own thing). I'm not saying all podcasts cause the listeners to form parasocial relationships, but I've found that ends up being the appeal for a lot of shows. Maybe it's just me, but the substitution for real relationships seems to be a huge part of why podcasts have become so popular.
Not only entertainment suffers from a tyranny of choice, but also sex and relationships.
I heard in an interview that 50 years ago, people used to basically used to fall in love with heir neighbours and coworkers. Modern dating means browsing hundreds of other people in your city like they're products on a store shelf, always with the feeling there might be someone better just a couple swipes away.
And that lack of initial investment also makes it harder to bridge gaps, as would normally happen. In the context of OLD, it also puts emphasis on very specific strengths whereas others are not visible until meeting up or spending more time.
I see this explanation of the grind of online dating a lot, and I think it misses a more fundamental point: people fundamentally are pretty terrible at talking to strangers. Without conversational skills, a vast majority of online dating conversations simply fizzle out; often times simply due to disinterest, but I think almost always due to a lack of ability to hold a conversation and be both interesting and interested.
I find there's actually a lot of success to be had online dating, if you just know how to talk to people and learn about them! It seems like such a tautology but I think it really is that simple.
If it were just a matter of people being terrible at talking to strangers, you'd see the same issues that affect straight dating apps affect gay dating ones. They don't. (That also applies to the comment you're replying to).
Any explanation of the shittiness of straight dating apps has to center gender norms and roles.
I won't claim to speak for an entire community, but among my many queer friends this seems to be a common thru line! Of course like anything social there's never one clear explanation to any phenomenon.
Dating apps don't want you to have a successful relationship because then they lose you as a customer. They want you to at most have a short fling and come back. But having no success and scrolling endlessly is also fine by them.
I’m good at conversation and getting to know people and I had no success with online dating (as opposed to acceptable success with serendipitous dating). I always thought it was because it’s hard to integrate them into your life. They’ve come from out of nowhere, your friend circles don’t overlap, and your daily paths don’t cross. It’s extra effort to make that stuff happen after the fact, and even then it doesn’t feel real somehow. I suppose it depends on certain aspects of your personality, and what makes you feel close to people.
For every relationship I ever had, I had the opportunity to observe them, get to know them in person, maybe flirt, sometimes be friends. Sometimes for weeks. Sometimes for years, without any express intent. With online dating you’re both saying upfront that you’re evaluating each other as dating material, knowing only the fluff they wrote about themselves, or I take it with this generation only what they look like. All that will probably always feel too weird for me.
That's definitely true! It's so much easier to date in person from a logistical standpoint, and I think your comment also hints at what I think is kind of a paradox: in today's social spaces, being a kind and conscientious individual often means giving strangers their space, especially in places that used to be centers of socialization; gyms, coffee shops, parks etc. But by doing this, your opportunities for organic relationships dry up significantly, especially if you're not consistent about being in those spaces. So often times people feel forced into online dating as one of the few "sanctioned" spaces where it's still considered okay to flirt with strangers.
> So often times people feel forced into online dating as one of the few "sanctioned" spaces where it's still considered okay to flirt with strangers.
This has been the story of my life. I think there is a certain type of person - physical attractiveness is part of it, but charisma is even bigger – who can "get away with" flirting in unsanctioned spaces. It's a combination of being confident enough to break taboo, perceptive enough to read subtle interest cues, and being attractive enough for those interest cues to be non-zero.
I've tried to be that person from time to time, but it almost always breaks down on one of those axes, thus consigning most of my dating efforts to the soul-crushing grind of dating sites/apps.
See I think there are no "unsanctioned places" except for maybe a mosque or a funeral.
I think the real unwritten rule is, don't flirt with someone unless you're reasonably confident that they'd like to be flirted with. Some people might be able to figure that out in a matter of minutes, and others might need to get to know someone over the course of weeks or months in a casual group setting to figure it out.
I am sorry to say, but I think people who believe flirting is not allowed probably have not put in the effort to be able to read social cues, don't have an aptitude for it, or never learned to flirt in a non-offputting way.
This is because learning comes from failing and getting better. And young people can not do this easily because there is a lot of stigma associated with being the "creep" who flirts badly or when not wanted.
How much of that is real and how much of it is in young people's heads?
I think people have been dealing with rejection forever. Everyone has to start out awkward, and most people get over it.
Maybe that is one place where technology hurts us. Maybe 30 years ago, a young person would have tried and struck out, and then they would have gotten over it and tried again. Whereas maybe today people try and fail, and then they can retreat into video games and online communities, which offer a superficial sense of success or belonging without the same risk of direct rejection.
I think the important bit here that maybe I didn't make clear is that, at least in the context of men flirting with women, sometimes women are kind and polite without actually being comfortable (social conditioning), which many men incorrectly take as a sign of interest.
I agree that if you're charming and fun, flirting with strangers is pretty straightforward, and I especially agree with the point about getting to know people over a longer period of time before trying to gauge potential interest. Worst case, you get a cute friend!
> the context of men flirting with women, sometimes women are kind and polite without actually being comfortable (social conditioning), which many men incorrectly take as a sign of interest.
That's totally true! But that's one thing about flirting, it can be very light and non-committal.
If she is being extra friendly, smiling a lot, and giving you a little extra eye contact, you can do the same and see how she responds. If she gives you a positive feedback, take it one step farther. If she gives you negative feedback, just forget about it no harm done.
Maybe she was smiling at you in the first place because she also doesn't know if she wants to flirt with you and she's testing the waters.
I think where people get into trouble is they see someone go from 0 to 1, and they jump straight to step 7 which comes off as aggressive and off-putting.
> if you just know how to talk to people and learn about them!
dating is a two way street. If the other party just gives one line answers and does nothing to try to move a conversation forward, then it just becomes a job interview. You can't just magically get someone to open up when they refuse.
It doesn't help that, at least from a guy's perspective, it seems about 80% of women are really just trying to get instagram followers.
Dating also becomes a problem once you finally meet. You will never be more interesting than the smartphone in front of the other person. That person has the entire world in their hand. You can't possibly compete with TikTok or Tinder. You go to the restroom and the other person will go swiping on Tinder.
I really do believe humanity is doomed. Like really, actually, doomed. The internet is too much for our monkey brain.
> 80% of women are really just trying to get instagram followers.
These days they aren't even trying for of subscribers or ig followers, they just straight up put their cashapp in their bio. I have friends who have done that and made 100s of $ before their accounts got banned. And some didn't even get banned.
It's also true that a lot of people are on there but not realy to date. Like just to get compliments/validation. Not all girls either, just guys it doesn't work as well. Instead, a lot of us are on there just to look at/rate girls. At parties these days you will sometimes see a group of guys looking around somebody's phone "rating" girls on tinder.
> I heard in an interview that 50 years ago, people used to basically used to fall in love with heir neighbours and coworkers.
Dating coworkers is now forbidden in many companies, especially if there are differences in hierarchy. In some countries it becomes a possible legal liability for the one in the higher position.
Some large organizations that require traveling even forbid dating the “local population” when deployed abroad.
I've noticed the same thing. Honestly, as much as I hate ads, I've recently discovered Pluto TV on Google TV. It feels a lot like cable used to! You can pick from "channels" and you get what you get. There's no pausing, no rewinding, and your choices are limited to what's on.
I would have laughed if someone had told me that I'd be turning it on, but I frequently do. Basically whenever I'm not sure what to watch, I flip to that and throw on one of the channels.
I watch Pluto-TV for the exact same reason: it reminds me of old school cable-TV. I turn it on and "veg out", just like when I was a teenager. I tend to watch it before I go to sleep when I'm trying to shut down anyway.
The movie, The Big Short, was on heavy rotation about a year ago. Good movie. They have an entire channel dedicated to Narcos, so I'm basically fluent in Spanish now - well, "drug dealer Spanish", at least.
I had to stay once in an old hotel in a small town. It had an old CRT analog tv with analog cable. It brought back memories. Like the TV tuner changing channels really fast.
Fast channel surfing is something I hadn’t been able to do since switching to a digital tvs and digital cable about a decade ago.
> I don't remember what I used to talk to my friends about when I was in high school.
Gossip, mostly. Talking about your peers, who said what, how terrible teachers are for making us actually do work, commenting on style or the lack thereof, etc. Also, while there were fewer TV series, they still existed. Star Trek, B5, Knight Rider, Airwolf, etc.
> I can watch nearly every show and movie that was ever created
I think this is an illusion. When I check some films with awards (let's say "do the right thing", not a blockbuster but a well-known film) I cannot find them in any streaming service (maybe criterion collection). I can definitely think of tons of tv shows I cannot find on dvd, let alone on streaming platforms. Not even on torrent networks.
This idea that the internet has everything is fine for some topics (like programming), but I believe it does not apply to some contents, and films are one of them.
My HS era was pre-Internet as well. My circle of friends talked about sports, and girls. And Star Wars every now and then, and then back to sports and girls. Every once in a while nuclear annihilation would come up (Reagan 80's baby!), but eventually existential dread would dissipate until it was time to talk about college.
there is inflation with everything since we are connected to everyone in the world. All programmers work at FAANG, all artists are superhumanly taleneted, all business owners make million dollar unicorns and look like actors, etc. Average is slowly being filtered out
Well you can't really get laid if you spend day and night playing video games and binge watching series.
Every time I broke up I was mildly welcoming some time for myself but never managed to be single more than a handful of weeks. And I don't consider myself particularly more attractive/interesting than everybody out there.
I don't play video games, and I don't binge watch series, but why would this exlude women/gender-non-binary? They can and do enjoy both. And they could enjoy both with someone else. After all, what is the meaning of "Netflix and Chill"? I know many women who wish to do the same with another person, and that person need not look like Brad Pitt, et al.
Perhaps I am reading too deep, but you make it sound like someone needs to make some great effort to meet someone else. No, just a slight hiccup in their daily routine can introduce them to another person whom has very similar, low energy interests. Think: Buzzfeed dating videos from 5 years ago.
Low energy people are inherently boring. The vast majority of people would rather have a SO with some sort of interest than someone who just sits around passing time while the world moves on without them. Most folks require the freedom to be alone at times for their own sanity's sake. Being a complete homebody who does nothing but sit at home all the time deprives both parties independence of action and thought. It's not healthy.
>The vast majority of people would rather have a SO with some sort of interest than someone who just sits around passing time while the world moves on without them
Really? Tell me where these people are! The vast, vast majority of couples I know just coast through life and sometimes they "hang out" and sometimes they take some photo and sometimes they partecipate in some friend's celebrations and so on and on. If they asked each other about their interest they would not have any.
I'm not surprised when you look at the quality of 20ish year old males. They expect sex to just fall in their laps without doing anything like learning to socialize or being interesting.
Speaking about sex to fall in their laps. I remember 2009 or so even sort of cute guys were having girls approach them.
Now the looks required for that have basically skyrocketed. Being kinda cute doesn't cut it nowadays. You have to be tall broad shouldered and have a decent career.
This is why it pays to socialize. Live your entire life behind a keyboard or phone screen and you are giving people objective reasons to dismiss you out of hand. Most people do not want to live with shut-ins. Tinder is a dating tool, not a replacement for socialization.
Have you ever questioned if 20 years old females are as desirable as they think they are? Because they are not.
Pretty handy to make all the fault of "males" while never ask them what desires they have, what they want in the other person while constantly emphasize females' desires. Have we ever question women about their own standard? Are they too high? Are they what men want? Do they bring something on the table or it's the usual "I'm a passive princess: entertain me, jester!", because if it is I prefer porn, it usually doesn't ask to pay for a date.
Let's not insult the intelligence of literally anyone by suggesting that most women have high standards. Some do. Most just want a warm, presentable body with a steady job and decent hygiene... and most still end up married by age 35. Not dating. Married. And the focus is on men because it's men who are complaining about not being able to find a date while sequestered behind their phone screen.
I think that all the things you listed are definitely culprits, but I wouldn't be so quick to discount porn.
Anecdotally, I myself and many otherwise healthy, sociable young men I know have pretty serious porn addictions. I really wish there would be more research done on the negative impacts of pornography, especially on young men and teens/pre-teens.
I know typically any anti-porn sentiment is met with "Oh you're just being a puritan", but the reality couldn't be further from the truth.
On social issues, I'm very liberal. Yet so much porn during my developmental years has done so much damage that as an adult I'm just now really understanding the full extent of it, and breaking that addiction is incredibly difficult
Yeah, but porn addiction is a consequence I think. If all men could get laid whenever they'd feel like it with a willing partner, then porn use would plummet.
I haven't met many women into porn, probably because a one night stand is just a zero effort tinder swipe away, from the comfort of your pijamas in your living room.
As a man, you end up turning to porn or paying for sex, or drinking or doing drugs, to compensate the lack of intimacy in your personal life, as that just leads to depression and lack of any self worth.
I do not think an “addiction” is the problem. Obviously, everyone prefers the real thing to porn.
What has changed is the availability of porn introducing an extremely low cost alternative to sex, reducing the impetus for making the effort to find a partner (relative to previous times). Maybe even reducing the impetus to putting in the effort to seduce an existing partner!
Of course, it is not uniform across all men of course. I suspect those who are able to attract/interact with partners more easily will opt to do that, and those that are not will opt for the easier, lower cost option (even though there may be other long term costs).
> Obviously, everyone prefers the real thing to porn.
That makes intuitive sense, but is far from the reality. Many men, even in otherwise healthy relationships, prefer porn.
Again I really wish more data was collected on this but anecdotally I've seen hundreds on online discussions from both women who are concerned about their partner and declining sex life and from men who want to quit using porn to better service the needs of their partner.
Porn addiction is real, serious, and more common than you may think.
I think what I am trying to convey is that it is not an addiction like nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, heroine, where the brain wants the substance itself.
With porn, it is the brain making a cost benefit calculation that putting in the effort for the real thing is not worth the cost relative to cost/benefit ratio of porn.
As in do I make all the effort to get my wife in the mood, or do I open a website and be done with it. Or do I control my diet and exercise, or do I open a website and be done with it.
I understand what you're trying to convey and I'm sorry but it's just not true.
Brain scans show the pathways for porn addiction are very similar to those found in cocain and amphetamine addicts. Perhaps this is true for you, but don't discredit porn addiction as not a "real addiction" when it's an established fact that it is one on par with substance abuse.
Almost every single drug addict and alcoholic has an emotional basis for their addiction. Be it childhood trauma, a predisposition to anxiety/depression, etc.
The fact that these reasons exist doesn't make the addiction any less of an addiction. It's often a reason why rehab centers try to take a holistic approach and not only tackle the addiction, but the surrounding lifestyle choices that further enable the addiction.
It's not "addiction is a masked emotional needs problem" it's, "addiction is often accompanied by emotional needs problems". Subtly different, but different nonetheless.
Established fact? You are trying to make a porn addiction appear as bad as a meth addiction and that is just not based in reality. The outcomes and damage of substance abuse are more severe and should not be conflated.
The established fact is that porn addiction utilizes the same nuerological pathways as substance addiction.
I said nothing of the outcomes, though I wouldn't be so sure. We don't have any data on the outcomes of porn addiction. I wonder how many young men have committed suicide in large part due to their porn addiction, or how many have lost their jobs. It's certainly a non-zero number.
>Again I really wish more data was collected on this but anecdotally I've seen hundreds on online discussions from both women who are concerned about their partner and declining sex life and from men who want to quit using porn to better service the needs of their partner.
> Again I really wish more data was collected on this
You obviously know the answer to your question since I repeatedly stressed my lack of data and how it was anecdotal.
We don't have any data either supporting or debunking that claim, I only am repeating what I've seen play out hundreds of time in various digital spaces. Some phenomena just haven't been studied in good enough detail to have hard data in either direction. A lack of data for an assertion doesn't disprove that assertion, it just makes it temporarily unprovable.
I'm sure the majority of men in healthy relationship prefer sex with their partner to porn. I'm also sure there are a non-trivial amount who do prefer porn.
Saying you wish there was more data doesn't imply that there is no data, so I figured I'd ask if there was something.
I think anecdotally you may be right. But preference is a very hard thing to determine. It's unfair to compare porn to sex the same way it is unfair to compare watching a sport to playing it. One requires very little effort, the other monumental effort comparatively.
Ive experienced the effects of porn addiction, and/or viewing from a young age, from both sides.
I have pretty niche tastes since i started watching in my very early teens, and though i find men very attractive its harder to finish with them.
Ive been with several partners who preferred porn to me. The latest had very, very unrealistic standards. They objectified my body, hard, and I swear their porn use affected their capacity for empathy. They said and did things that made me feel like a replaceable thing, they compared my to porn stars (and found me lacking).
They would collect massive amounts of porn and run off to use it multiple times a day… which wouldve honestly been fine, except for the fact that it did really affect their ability to connect with me. After theyd use porn their mood and empathy / behavior towards me would markedly change for the worse.
I am a fairly attractive, _very_ willing and attentive partner.
These experiences have honestly really damaged my self esteem and willingness to date.
I have also since stopped using porn a) to fix the first line and b) i cannot watch it without being reminded of my experiences with these men and their criticisms of my body.
I think that "probably" could make due with some nuance. A Tinder swipe away is a very high-risk way of having sex. There's so many men out there that truly do not treat women well, and that one wouldn't want to have sex with. Yet, nothing inhibits them from having very well-curated Tinder profiles.
But there's so many men out there that woman can probably find someone, at least in a normal-ish city. Most men get zilch. I think we're seeing some of the less obvious effects of that now. Men don't get to have a sexual exploration or slut phase and this is... who knows, stunting their emotional growth? Among other things. As each sex gets older, women tend to accumulate more experience, and mock men who may be lacking it.
The statistics disagree. Men on average have sex earlier[1] and with more people during their lifetime[2][3] and a higher percentage of people find theres negative stigma surrounding women having a high number of partners than men having a low number[4].
I've found either matching numbers, small difference (as you seem to be citing?), or skew in favor of women having more partners for 90s-00s cohorts. The stigma surrounding people with a high number of partners is something I've seen applied to both, and statistically, it does seem to invert marriage length.
I don't believe that's it. Plenty of men in relationships with a "willing partner" use heaps of porn, and in many circumstances prefer using porn to sex.
And yes, having _sex_ is only a swipe away for women. But having decent sex that you enjoy and is another matter altogether. And that's before thinking about safety.
If I was looking for reasons why fewer women seem to be into porn, I'd say it's because the vast majority of porn is explicitly made to cater to male desires.
You need to put more nuance on what a "willing partner" means, as it's incredibly important. Many stories I hear regarding "willing partner left aside for porn" boil down to a passive person expecting their partner to just pick up on clues while having a history of being denied and making zero effort to overcome it. Or worse, a passive, submissive person expecting men to just push their way through any resistance and keep trying, when men are actively taught to respect a woman's boundaries.
For many of these "porn addiction" cases, there's more going on than just "he is addicted to porn and now he won't have sex with me". Communication is a two-way street and women are a little eager to play the 'passive princess who can do no wrong' without realizing most of society is training men to avoid making assumptions.
> Or worse, a passive, submissive person expecting men to just push their way through any resistance and keep trying, when men are actively taught to respect a woman's boundaries.
Not to go into too much detail, but I've had to seriously recalibrate my "respect women" upbringing to make my wife happy. And I'm not even talking sub/dom stuff or outright rape-fantasy things like I've heard tell of from my (somewhat shell-shocked) unattached and actively-dating friends.
You are unfortunately a victim of propaganda; many men today are. Women did not magically in the last 50 years override all biological instinct and traditional desires that they have had for millennia, even though media would like you to believe otherwise
whenever someone says "the media" has a single monolithic view, it seems to be that person demonstrating a persecution complex
I've seen tons of "the media" contradicting your point, but I guess if you said "some people say this, others don't", your point wouldn't be as compelling
I said media, not "the media". And like my post would indicate by saying media, the large majority of popular media does just what I've said. Can you point out any popular media outlet that advocates for traditional gender roles? How about any targeted toward under 30s? Because I can point out literally dozens of unique, popular publications such as HP, WP, Vox which have published articles of the reverse viewpoint.
Whenever someone pretends that modern mass media is not overwhelmingly in favor of the current zeitgeist, it seems to me that person is either arguing in bad faith, or is startlingly naive. Finding one minute counterexample of a publication that no one has ever heard of does not imply an overall balanced media landscape. It would be as strange as arguing that western 'the media' doesn't support Ukraine over Russia; just absurdly incorrect to a cursory inspection.
> Can you point out any popular media outlet that advocates for traditional gender roles? How about any targeted toward under 30s?
yes, literally dozens, like fox, OANN, breitbart (I will happily continue to follow suit if you want to as well)
> Whenever someone pretends that modern mass media is not overwhelmingly in favor of the current zeitgeist
modern mass media is a product of the people, who determine the zeitgeist, so it is pretty unsurprising that the attitudes of media overall reflect the attitudes of people overall
similarly, we would obviously expect to see less content advocating extreme views that society largely rejects like "all abortion should be illegal", compared to content conforming with social norms
but let's get off this tangent and back on topic: whether you say "the media" or "media", my original response remains true: "media" says plenty to the opposite of what you claim it says, and you're simply cherry picking observations that fit your own narrative around "media" itself
but I guess "media says this sometimes, and sometimes the opposite" doesn't make for as compelling of a narrative
This is very common, which is why I called out the other commenter. Sex is complicated, fantasies even more so. Men are pushed to be less proactive and more reactive, but women are still primarily passive when it comes to working these things out. It certainly is 'safer' for society to not have every guy be proactive, but it creates a lot of mismatches in sexual expectations partners have of one another.
That's not to mention the onus of taking charge is still put onto men, while men are actively punished for making a mistake, and women tend to get off without social repercussions despite continuing to play passive. We're already seeing the cracks forming.
It’s worth pointing out that women may have higher rates of their testosterone levels being lower compared to men because of birth control, stress, or sleep.
Women are into different porn. Textual erotic works, spanning the gamut from romance novels to fanfiction, have been incredibly popular with women since the Victorian era. I'm not convinced at all that women are less interested in porn, simply because ao3 exists! It's that their usage isn't captured in a survey of video porn sites.
Women consume shitloads of porn—they just prefer to read it, rather than watch. It goes by the euphemism "romance novel". (yes, some don't have explicit sex, but... lots do, and they're quite popular)
Women have different sexual desires that aren't met by the simple act of fucking, so just watching two people fucking is far less gratifying. For them, sexual desire is much more bound up with psychology and the unfolding of a relationship -- especially with a handsome, powerful, dangerous person. Power and danger are to women what big tits are to men, hence the thriving market in vampire/werewolf/billionaire/pirate/surgeon erotica which does play into women's desires in ways most visual porn does not.
I wish there’s some discovery on another planet that makes people venture out like in the old days.
Fuck it I’ll lead or be part of a crew to get on a space ship and maybe never come back. Being stuck at a laptop all day is so fucking boring now because work from home means I’d rather not.
I want to be out and about. Not stuck inside ALL day (along with everyone else).
People do venture out like the old days, there's never any shortage, of, say, people wanting to establish a new home across the Atlantic because they are fleeing religious or ethnic persecution, or just trying to migrate for better economic opportunities.
We don't want them here, though, which is why they can't do it. If pre-contact America/Australia had strong passport controls, Europeans wouldn't have been 'venturing out to it', either.
I meant facing the unknown. I can find all the information about moving across the Atlantic because it’s not anything new or novel at this point. But five hundred years ago that was a journey of a lifetime and at the end were either riches or death.
Worst case scenario if I move across the Atlantic is that I don’t go bankrupt because I had a medical emergency. You know what? That doesn’t sound so bad.
Whenever I see these "women don't need porn cause they can just go on tinder and get laid" arguments I always find they are kind of unempathetic and do a bad job recognizing the reality of sex and pornography for both genders.
A one night stand is way way more risky for women in most ways whether with regard to the risk of being assaulted or catching STIs or unplanned pregnancy. On top of that, society heavily views sexually promiscuous women more negatively than the same behaviour in men. All of this means women can't treat no-strings sex as flippantly as men can and you shouldn't discount those risks and costs by saying sex is a swipe away for them. It is very much like if I were to say any man could get laid whenever they want by hiring a sex worker while ignoring the risks and costs involved.
These arguments also seem to ignore that the vast majority of women are not so universally attractive that getting on a dating site immediately results in a plethora of matches that they would want to have sex with (even ignoring my first point). If they lacked any standards and were willing to have sex with anyone yes it would be very easy to find a partner, but thats true for the vast majority of men as well.
The fact is most people, quite reasonably, only want to have sex with people they find attractive in situations where they feel safe, even when its only meant for physical pleasure, and this limiting factor greatly reduces the number of opportunities that are available regardless of the person's gender.
These arguments also don't fit with the real world statistics. In the US men on average have sex sooner than women[1] and have sex with more partners during their lifetime[2][3]. It differs by country and its possible to find studies and demographics where the more promiscuous gender switches, but the numbers never align with an assertion like "women don't like porn cause they can just go have real sex instead".
While its true a larger percentage of men consume porn, its very clear a large number of women do as well. You likely think you haven't met women that enjoy it because of stigma making them unwilling to discuss it openly. The biggest pornographic video site finds more than 1/3rd of their visitors are female[4].
Its also possibly because most discussions you see use a too narrow definition of "pornography". For instance, academic analyses often do not include types of pornography heavily preferred by women. When they do include things such as written erotica and not just images or video they find a majority (60%) of women enjoy porn[5].
And hopefully its clear I'm not trying to attack you personally. One study I came across while digging up the numbers found American men think women on average have 27 and men 21 sexual partners in their lifetime while the real numbers they found were 12 for women and 20 for men[3]. The perception that women have more sex is quite common and shared by a large number of men despite not being true. I simply hope my wasting an hour of my life writing all this up with citations will do a bit to change that.
You list men as the reason why people have less sex, but unless women is having a lot of more sex with other women to compensate the numbers, it is both women and men that is having less sex and it could be either gender or both that is causing the trend. It is jumping to conclusions to assume that only men determine if the world population is going to have sex or not.
Personally I would blame social media much more than porn, especially on young women and teens/pre-teens. Porn addictions, if such things exists (WHO is currently undecided on that fact), seems a minor issue compared to addictions caused by social media. Remove access to internet for a large group of teens and lets observe which kind of withdraws will firsts pop up.
The source for the article cites both women and men. That said, if it is also true that fewer men are sleeping with more women then the cause of this can also be attributed to the choice of the women than the choice of men.
If we look at Japan as an example, the observation I would make is how much people interacts with computer that simulates or replaces physical social interactions with a computer facilitated one. Be that a social networks, traditional media, movies, tvs, but also practical every day activities like work, shopping and entertainment. This interferes on a psychological level how people form emotional bonds, which changes behavior in both men and women.
If we observe that women are choosing from a smaller pool of men, one way to describe that would be that women turning into more tournament-like in their strategy for reproduction and away from pair bonding. Tournament and pair bonding strategies have both benefits and drawbacks, and both are related and possible influenced by perceived social status of potential mates.
I’m not against porn, but believe for some (many?) people it can develop into an addiction, and/or warp their view of normal bodies, and reduce their capacity to relate / be intimate / empathetic.
For some people, I think viewing porn is mostly harmless; for others, they are not able to consume it without negative effects on themselves and their potential partners…
I’m also very progressive, sex positive; i find its hard to discuss this with friends or strangers because theres such a stigma against decrying porn. It’s difficult to discuss with nuance.
> Also, adult dating and meeting people for the post-college working professionals, has largely moved from clubs/bars/the office to online dating apps, or lonely depression in your apartment, eating or drinking your feelings away, for those without success in the WFH, remote-everything, online dating world. Especially with the lockdowns.
And those "dating" apps can hardly be called dating apps in most cases. They're designed to mess with the underlying sexual dynamic of men and women. If they were meant for romance, they'd have more mechanisms in place to help strangers actually date and get to know each other. Instead, they're a meat market, and the sad thing is more and more people are growing up in a world where they know no different. If you think about it, dating apps have no incentive to try and get people to actually meet in real life. Not only does that raise the potential for liability, but that means fewer eyeballs on their product at any given time.
Tinder knows very well that their product is selling attention to women and the promise of sex to countless men they know have next to zero chance based on their looks alone. As OK Cupid was losing its position as a dating app, I remember them putting out an advertising campaign featuring the initialism "DTF", which tells you all you need to know. They might even still be doing it, for all I know. I remember it from billboards and posters in Santa Monica.
> I don't think tech or porn is the main culprit. It's that people now have way more entertainment options other than sex. Of course, a lot for those entertainment options are being driven by tech.
I don't buy this one bit. The number of entertainment options is correlative, but who has demonstrated that it's causative? Yes, there is a chance that the proliferation of entertainment options is the primary cause, but unless a double-blind study has or will be done to test whether the sex drive is actually in competition with entertainment, I have very sincere doubts.
Furthermore, the porn industry is in no way declining. If people were losing an instinctive interest in sex, why would they be watching porn? What if people actually want sex, but they are too ill equipped to obtain it IRL?
And we haven't even brought up declining androgen levels in males.
Sex isn't going out of fashion. If anything, we are hypersexualized. The goal of sex isn't merely to propagate genes, but to propagate selected genes. Our current environment allows us to select our mates to such an extent that even more people are seleced out of the gene pool for a variety of reasons. Either we're perpetually thinking we can do better, or that we're never good enough or are too ugly, or are totally clueless because Boomer and Gen X parenting have been a disaster.
Dating apps have no incentive to encourage long term relationships, because if you are in a long term relationship you are far less likely to use a dating app. Given the prevalence of dark pattern research to maximize "engagement" in the social media space, I would not be surprised if the most successful dating apps are actively optimized to encourage a meat market dynamic because it maximizes engagement with the app.
This is analogous to how regular social networks actively encourage unreasonable maximally-controversial discourse because it maximizes engagement, to the detriment of rational discussion of social and political issues. If people can reach a solution to issues like tradition vs. personal freedom, abortion, guns, etc., then they might spend less time on social media debating them and trolling and fighting about them and social media engagement might decline.
As far as porn goes, it's absolutely a substitute for sex for some people. It's less fulfilling but it's enough to get off and have the desire go away and it requires far less effort.
Another thing about porn I haven't seen mentioned much in this thread is how unrealistic it is and how people raised with a lot of porn probably have really unrealistic ideas about what sex is like. If they try to literally act out porn in the bedroom with their partner, it's likely not to go that well. In some cases they might go right for things many partners won't be interested in or would only be interested in after establishing a lot of trust and a real relationship.
> Dating apps have no incentive to encourage long term relationships
Yes. This is absolutely a fundamental problem not just with dating apps but with any business whose employees and/or customers have surpassed Dunbar's number. It's not so much a problem of money or capitalism as it is with the dehumanization of financial transaction.
> As far as porn goes, it's absolutely a substitute for sex for some people. It's less fulfilling but it's enough to get off and have the desire go away and it requires far less effort.
It is a substitute as far as it can surpass the cost/benefit of meatspace. If too many people are ill prepared to be self-reliant adults and attract the other sex, and thereby unable to be sufficiently attracted or aroused by their peers, then porn completely makes sense. The proliferation of isolation only further encourages porn use, as it does with any form of escapism.
But this is coming from the standpoint that I have which is that far too many adults from my generation onward are objectively less self-reliant and have more pathologies than their proximal ancestors. Not everyone agrees with this, but I know enough Millennials and have enough Gen Z and Alpha family members that my experience is informing me that said generations aren't destined for greater success than the previous.
My point being that I think if more people were socially functional and able to make themselves attracted to whichever sex(es) they are attracted to, porn might not be quite as normalized as it currently is. (it would still be normalized by virtue of the internet)
> Another thing about porn I haven't seen mentioned much in this thread is how unrealistic it is and how people raised with a lot of porn probably have really unrealistic ideas about what sex is like. If they try to literally act out porn in the bedroom with their partner, it's likely not to go that well. In some cases they might go right for things many partners won't be interested in or would only be interested in after establishing a lot of trust and a real relationship.
I generally agree... it can set people up to have expectations that lead to disappointment and even personal failure that leads to poor self esteem, animosity, and lack of fulfillment.
I almost want sex-ed classes to find a way to teach about this, but that's a whole can of worms that I ultimately think would backfire and be a bad idea. My intentions are good, though. :)
However, I don't entirely agree with the use of the word "unrealistic." Putting aside the theatrics in porn, telling people that porn is unrealistic can give them the impression that their particular sexual interests are abnormal and can't be lived out in real life with consensual partners, which is by no means true. I'm not sure I know what the best alternative is, but there's got to be some way to communicate that. It's actually a very nuanced point of discussion, I think.
> If they try to literally act out porn in the bedroom with their partner, it's likely not to go that well. In some cases they might go right for things many partners won't be interested in or would only be interested in after establishing a lot of trust and a real relationship.
Yes. I think this is where parents (and unfortunately probably teachers of some kind) are going to have to grow the cajones to actually talk about these issues with their kids at an appropriate age. We can't pretend like we live in a world where young people can't watch explicit material online instantly and for free. The "birds and the bees" doesn't cut it anymore.
On a related note, I've found it interesting that apparently girls get way more sexual education from their mothers than boys do from their dads. My dad tried... not well, but he tried. And it was way too late. I already knew what he was trying to say by tip-toeing around the words. Most of the men I know have told me their fathers didn't tell them anything about sex or girls at all. The most advice my best friend got from his dad was to "wear a condom."
This is a bit too conspiratorial: I've spoken to people who work at these companies, and there's not a team of analysts trying to figure out how to minimize the number of successful relationships that come from using the app. An app that has a reputation for "I met my last partner on X, and we're getting married next week!" will get far more users and recurring revenue through word of mouth.
The bigger issue is that figuring out good matchings is a crapshoot and users' self-described desires and priorities aren't actually in-line with what will make them happy. Everyone wants someone hot (almost by definition), and so the hot people get a lot of interest: the ones actually interested in relationships quickly end up off the market, and those remaining are more than capable of soaking up all the available interest.
Really? I worked on the biggest dating app in the world and there are so many dark patterns at play to keep people paying while in reality the way those features work is correct only from a vague reading of the perks. They not only have analysts but legal involved. End of the day they want money like any other business, their goal is to maximize users and revenue, and keep more and more people engaged. The goal of finding love is something crafted by marketing. It may have been the founders vision, but then they got millions in funding lol.
> This is a bit too conspiratorial: I've spoken to people who work at these companies, and there's not a team of analysts trying to figure out how to minimize the number of successful relationships that come from using the app.
I think the effect can be true without anyone having ill intent. The dating app companies are generally trying to make as much money as they can, which will indrectly lead to decisions that optimize for serial dating.
As a parallel I don't think Facebook is full of evil people who want to increase the amount of hate and anger in the world, but it does have a lot of people who just want to make money and encouraging negative reactions happens to be an effective way of doing that, so that's what we get.
Obesity was much lower and bodies were much healthier and more vigorous. Erectile dysfunction was much less common, and average serum testosterone levels were higher.
I guess it's uncouth to suggest that physical acts are more enjoyable with more physically attractive and capable populations, but I don't think it's something that should be discounted.
I have no doubt that self-reports of erectile dysfunction were probably less common at that time.
I will say that information about it was certainly less common, and the stigma associated to it was stronger and more prevalent.
> I guess it's uncouth to suggest that physical acts are more enjoyable with more physically attractive and capable populations
On "capable": Erectile dysfunction can be caused by low levels of testosterone, as well as sexual desire. However, sexual prowess doesn't orbit around the male penis as much as our fathers thought. That is but one dimension.
On the subject of attractiveness: I question that men with high levels of testosterone are actually more attractive to women. High testosterone has some obvious advantages (higher strength, bigger muscles, stronger sexual desire) but it also bring some things that are not so universally appraised (more body hair, less head hair, stronger body smell, mode violent behavior, less empathy). That group of traits, and the fact that we live in a more informed society, might be making high-testosterone males less attractive to women, overall.
Perhaps that is what is making the testosterone levels go down - the same thing that is making us taller: artificial selection. My (totally unverified) impression is that this is what happens in Japan. Most famous male Japanese actors tend to look "effeminate" to me, as an European. There seems to be very little "strong jaw, big muscles" amongst that group, compared to Europeans or Americans.
> That group of traits, and the fact that we live in a more informed society, might be making high-testosterone males less attractive to women, overall.
I believe Cicero, in one of his speeches, complained about women being into young clean-shaven men, and not the robust full-bearded patrician look.
Tech, porn, and social media/lack of community are what I think the issues are. And your comment which I mostly agree with seems to contradict your first sentence. Everything you said (Gaming, endless video-on-demand, porn, social media, online dating, remote work) is enabled by technology. Ergo, tech /is/ the main culprit. Now, onto the post I originally typed:
I wonder if younger people know what it's like to go a week or two without orgasm. I don't know many teens/young adults, much less well enough to ask about sex culture. I came of age in the 2000s, when online porn was a thing, but not ubiquitous, not HD, and still taboo. I do know that deprivation of orgasm makes it that much better when it does happen, and it changes your mind in both increase of sexual drive, and for me, increase in the desire for true intimacy, rather than just an anxious need to get off. When I kick the habit, my interest in talking to women goes higher than normal, and not "simply" because I'd like sex - it's because my entire mind is changed to wanting intimacy and to meet people.
So ubiquity of porn and its normalization is a big factor in people not seeking true human contact.
I think that people are also becoming more and more shy/anxious in general, at least by my flawed observations. Between rapidly changing social cues/acceptable behavior, being constantly connected, etc., it is difficult for people to connect and disconnect appropriately.
I think about the pre-Internet era when people could maybe date or hook up, and if it didn't work, it was out of sight, out of mind. Now with social media, I see people staying connected despite falling out. Maybe out of curiosity, maybe thinking they can still be friends, but I think that the inability to have a clear head/fresh start makes things difficult.
At least in my area/life, there isn't a huge sense of community. It takes a lot of effort to find non-bar oriented things to do that has a decently high number of people attending, who are all interested in the same things, and where it's likely to find a person to date. Say what you want about religion, but church really does serve a valuable purpose when not used to direct people toward bigotry.
Gotta run to a meeting, this was a bit of a braindump, but the topic of human interaction and macro loneliness is an interesting topic, and a serious one that truly scares the shit out of me for my society and myself.
We've also forgotten what sex is for in a relationship, doubtless because it is inconvenient when stacked against all of our favorite soma.
Watching most people continue to be addicted to systems that take more than they give (social media) is difficult. And it affects the people around them deeply, too. It doesn't happen in a vacuum; the emotional un-presence is palpable. It is so common it feels very difficult to bring up.
Another thing to consider: It might just be, that sex being more of an taboo (without the internet being there to inform yourself!) made it more interesting.
Sex is beautiful, but I would always prefer a meaningful human relationship with common interests and good communications without sex over an sex-filled relationship without the rest. Or to put it simply: Love without sex is greater than sex without love. Prefarably both, but it is a thing two people need to want : )
This understates the proliferation and impact of porn, but as with most things, there's usually more than one factor. What you mentioned as novel activities today share one thing in common: they're sedentary. A sedentary lifestyle leads to lower sex drive.
> people now have way more entertainment options other than sex
Another way to consider this is that people find it easier to divert themselves than to exert themselves only to be disappointed. (Think of the universal pain of the characters in "Marty". [1])
Even though the cost to "view" people has been cheapened by technology, what we find is that disappointment remains the likeliest outcome.
The article is written for humour, but it is worth noting that although "sex" cannot go out of fashion, the illusions of Bernaysian manipulation [2] certainly can. And, as a society with a changing set of prevailing group behaviours, the delights of companionship can certainly be lost.
An enjoyable sexual relationship isn't just a matter of presenting (or hunting for) some pastiche of beauty: people must want to charm and please one another. This cultural trait definitely has gone "out of fashion" in Western society.
Add to these discouraging considerations the fact that the financial calculation of a relationship (even if children are not planned) has much more risk today than even just 10 years ago.
> Another way to consider this is that people find it easier to divert themselves than to exert themselves only to be dissappointed.
This is an exceptionally succinct description of the problem, thank you. A societal shift from exertion to diversion. Creation to consumption. Scary stuff.
> the illusions of Bernaysian manipulation [2] certainly can
What do you mean here, in reference to Bernays? For context, I’m familiar with his work and legacy — the documentary ‘The Century of the Self’[1] is still perhaps the most important piece of media I’ve ever consumed.
By "Bernaysian" I mean much of what is discussed in that documentary by Adam Curtis. The out-sized notion of self in pursuit of the baubles, bangles, and beads of a glorified pageant of passion and love.
When two such highly-conditioned specimens meet, they probably will reject each other. Or if not, they will test each other's endurance in the illusion.
The subtlety is that the hyper stimuli of modern porn streaming, while lascivious on the inside, is leading to something that looks like puritanism on the outside, hence the drop in actual sex.
No. What is ironic is thinking being against porn is puritanical. It's not all black and white.
Like many people outside of the US, I am as far from puritanism as possible, yet I maintain that porn is a cancer. We should have more sex instead. The hippies were onto something.
It is in fact possible to be further from puritanism, because you could not be against porn. There's nothing wrong with sex and there's nothing wrong with filming it or otherwise making money off of it.
If you think the opposite of puritanism is PornHub, you have a pretty distorted view of sexuality. Both are degenerate, but they're not on the same axis at all. The fact that both replies to my comment share this view shows how unhealthy is our society's approach to sexuality.
Free, healthy, frequent consensual sex with real people for fun or otherwise, is miles better than either, and doesn't fit in any of the two black and white categories you have identified.
I thought it was a decent book, seemed to cite a good number of sources, but I'm no scientician. But Gary makes a pretty rational argument -- If you're finding yourself in a certain situation[1], without a known underlying medical cause (as ruled out by a doctor), then cutting out porn never killed anyone, and anecdotally has cured many. So why not just give it a try?
[1]: I'll keep it PG here, but the book is clear what this situation is
I am yet to read a convincing study about these supposed detrimental effects of porn. All these texts start from the assumption that it is bad without anything like a root cause analysis.
For example, yes, single people tend to watch more porn. But are they single because they watch porn (demonstrating that porn is a social inhibitor)? Or do they watch more porn because they are single (in which case porn is just a way to get some of the pleasure they would otherwise have with a partner)?
Same for depression, which does not help going out and meet people. Should we then deduct that porn causes depression? Of course not, and yet this is the starting point of a lot of anti-porn rants.
These arguments also fit too well with puritanical and repressive world views, which makes me very suspicious as motivated reasoning is pervasive in these discussions.
> anecdotally has cured many
That’s the thing, anecdotes are not data. I also have anecdotes of people who have a healthy life and watch porn regularly. Without an epidemiological study it does not mean much. From my experience, “watching porn never killed anyway, and anecdotally has cured many” is just as true as your assertion.
Actually anecdotes are data and they're one manner in which we find, for example, unexpected side effects of treatments https://vaers.hhs.gov/ . I say this not to specifically boost Gary's claims, but to encourage us to not wholesale discount anecdotes. They're too often clues to the right path to be ignored.
I found the book to be pretty clear in it's wording saying essentially (to paraphrase) If you're not having any problems, then you don'd need a cure. But if you're experiencing these symptoms then here's what has worked for 100s, and by simple rationale there's no cost or danger to trying it (eliminating porn for a time). That's the part I found particularly compelling the simple deduction of "It might work, costs nothing, has no risk, so why not try it?"
> I say this not to specifically boost Gary's claims, but to encourage us to not wholesale discount anecdotes. They're too often clues to the right path to be ignored.
Right, but there are plenty of plainly stupid ones (“my kid is autistic and, surprise, surprise, had a vaccine weeks before being diagnosed”), and there are plenty of conflicting ones (like on the current subject, but also on things like CBD, though the picture is getting clearer on that front).
They are also unverifiable most of the time, and are commonly just made up.
The only way of knowing whether the anecdotes are significant is to verify them and do some statistical analysis, at which point they are data that we can analyse quantitatively or qualitatively, and not anecdotes anymore.
“Trust my anecdotes” is an argument one makes when reality is inconsistent with one’s position.
> I found the book to be pretty clear in it's wording saying essentially (to paraphrase) If you're not having any problems, then you don'd need a cure.
Which does sound reasonable. But that was not the OP’s message, which was based on the same book. There is no reason to assume that stoping watching porn will help with anything. It’s like homeopathy: sure, trying costs nothing, but it’s still stupid and can occasionally backfire.
Again, watching porn also never killed anyone, costs nothing and has no risk. So why not simply say “do whatever you want to do” and consider those anti-porn arguments for what they are: pseudo-science?
The real culprit isn’t porn, it is mainly the change in societal expectations and the ease of changing your baseline expectations. Our relationships have become extremely disposable. You are one Instagram DM away from moving onto the next one. Dating websites and apps largely have the same problems.
I'd bet that how much money you have (beyond a low bar of "enough") matters a lot less for the American dating pool than being able to make somebody laugh.
One hypothesis of a contributor to falling marriage rates is that as women's income potential has risen there's still a standard (whether cultural or innate) for them to marry "up" economically. Therefore, there's a growing demographic shortage of economically attractive male partners in the U.S. marriage market.
To me a rather more reasonable take than "women are coached or born to flock to money" is "the world is going to hell, economic precarity is making it scarier to tie two people to a particular geography for work, and the future looks grim enough that having kids is probably a bad idea, so why get married?".
The HN age demographic seems older than most online communities.
If they aren't using apps for quick thrills, they are moving to the Villages and using an upside-down pineapple as an ironic bat signal for some fruitless copulation.
Even as a mid-30s male HN reader I've been able to get another relationship months after my previous one failed. I'm sick of it, though. I don't want to lose this one. I didn't want to lose the last one either.
IMO this is a different issue. If you change your partner say every week it doesnt mean that you have less sex. Also in my (limited) experience the "swinger" type people who constantly cheat (=more sex) or just have one night relationships (=more sex) are a small subset of the population.
I mean, I have sex with my wife on average 3-5 times a week. It's not daily but it comes close. It only changes when she's recovering from giving birth or one of us is sick.
They just say that until they realize that when you don't have sex for a week, you want it every day, but after you have sex, the need fades for a while. And of course sex drive decreases with age, from an extremely horny peak around ~20.
At least for me it was very different. I never had a problem with women attention and two of them were frank enough to spell it out for me (this was very unexpected). Still in both cases I just refused the opportunity.
There are three things that are lacking from the article completely as a reason for lower sexual activity: a lack of time, a place and money:
- With people working ridiculous overtimes, "double shifts" or working two jobs just to make ends meet, there is simply no time to maintain a relationship. That one is offset a bit by Tinder and other "casual sex" opportunities, but nevertheless it's going to impact people.
- With rents being ridiculously high, a majority of young adults are forced to live at their parents', a record number not seen in many decades. And without one's own place, it's hard to even enter a relationship, much less have sex.
- to expand on that point, maintaining a relationship or having casual sex requires money, which a lot of people simply don't have available. Cinema tickets, going eating out to a restaurant, other joint activities... you get the drift, no money means no dates means no sex.
- Especially for the US: as sex can result in children, even when using condoms, the pill or IUDs, many women elect to abstain from sexual activity entirely since the access to abortion is under ever more and more attacks.
- Additionally, the cost of giving birth [2] and raising a child [3] is prohibitively expensive for many people, further reducing the amount of people willing to search for a partner in the first place.
Articles like this are often mostly focused on the male side of cisgendered male-female relationships. Have things not changed for women? Or how about among other types of people? Is gay sex going out of fashion too?
Young people in general are having less sex but young men are having a noteworthy amount less than young women. And the delta between the two groups is a new thing within the last 10 years or so.
I doubt the ratio is that extreme, but if the delta exists isn't the logical conclusion that a smaller subset of the men are having sex with a larger percentage of the women?
A quick stab in the dark is a sugar daddy, older man, more established with more free disposable income. My only evidence to back this up is anecdotal, I have young parents. I am 28 and my dad is 46. Parents divorced a few years ago. My Dad works sales and makes a good chunk of money. He recently stopped going to bars because all the 20-some year old girls would hit on him and get a little too close for his comfort, which grosses him out because my sister is 26.
Edit: I found it funny when he was complaining to me about it because all I could thing of is that these girls probably don't know they are hitting on a guy with grandkids.
Glad you pointed this out. As a bisexual guy, I'd like to give some input. Sex between homosexual men is definitely not getting out of fashion. As a lot of these dating apps encourage short-lived relationships, it incentivizes a lot of these men to not commit in relationships and just have "fun." On the other hand (note that this is only based on my experience), a lot of women seem to have set higher and higher expectations within these dating apps similar to how it is in a typical social media platform like Instagram. I can't blame them though, it's part of human nature to aspire for more.
>I can't blame them though, it's part of human nature to aspire for more.
I don’t even think it’s any kind of aspiration, it’s just that women are completely overloaded with matches. All the claims of “women pass 99% of the time” really don’t paint the whole picture, because in my experience men swipe right 99% of the time. Wouldn’t you also only pick the best of the best if you had hundreds of options?
As another bi guy, dating apps have been a godsend for the LGBT community (though they've cannibalized other valuable parts of the culture, like gay and lesbian bars). It's exactly what I think most straight men imagine dating apps to be before their naivette is crushed: you hop on, exchange a couple messages with someone, and then meet up. It's pretty pleasant, and there's no sense that you have to hold onto someone forever on the basis that if you don't, it'll be months or years before you meet another person even vaguely interested. Different people have more or less success, but very few people have no success, and it's never a painful experience requiring dozens of hours of emotional labor to even meet with someone.
The contrast in experience on them versus heterosexual apps is shocking. Apps are kind of ideally suited for a relatively homogeneous population of gay men, but the bifurcated population that uses heterosexual dating apps leads to pretty bad outcomes. Particularly for men, but for women as well.
No. Many men are turning to gay sex because they can’t get any women. Lots of guys are “bi” but it’s like 10% gay 90% straight attraction. Getting a guy is 100x easier than a woman so even though they’re mostly straight, they become gay in practice. I expect that 50% of all sex will be between men within the next few decades.
Yeah, I guess the bigger point being missed (by the article and most of the comments) is that there is a whole generation of people having sex but not having kids due to concerns for the future. (Myself included)
The future is still looking pretty bright relative to the rest of human history, unless the subset of people who are very concerned about the future choose not to have kids, in which case not so much.
Yeah it's even weirder when you realize that a teenage boy really just wants a baby. Deep down his sex drive is leading him to having a baby and reproducing.
Population implosion is going to be the biggest problem of our lives. It is one of those issues that creeps up progressively (like Global Warming), but will have cataclysmic impacts. Sex is a precursor to relationships and kids, if people don't have sex...
Imagine 80% of the population is elderly and retired (or want to be retired) - that is where the world is heading by the end of the century.
Depends on the scale you look at it. It's going to be a shit show for a few generations. Especially in all the countries relying on the working force to pay for the elderly through tax &co
> Especially in all the countries relying on the working force to pay for the elderly through tax &co
I don't think it makes much of a difference in practice for this scenario if retirement is funded by savings/investments of the elderly or through taxes and other transfers from the working population. As much of the population is retired the value of the investments will go down as now now people are selling than buying new investment. It would become a indirect transfer.
The problem (mostly) isn't fewer people, it's an ever-increasing proportion of elderly. As long as total fertility is below replacement the proportion of elderly to working-age people increases /forever/.
I think the point isn't that a contraction is bad in general, it's that too fast of a contraction leaves an inverted demographic pyramid, which has all kinds of very bad implications.
You need a certain tax base to keep services funded. Then at some point on the curve, you start running out of service workers for the care industry.
I think automation will help to a degree but healthcare services is right at that sweet spot of both physically intricate and nonroutine that is so hard to automate.
That argument is in line with the "Thank God for the pandemic! all people are locked at home and pollution is decreasing! also less people in the planet!"
I don't know who are "we" and if they can afford it. I suspect most don't know either and think they "afford" part is not their part or imagine it's having one less latte/month in exchange for less traffic.
And yet people used to worry about overpopulation. Several countries already depend on immigrants to fill vital jobs, despite there sometimes being quite a bit of xenophobia towards those immigrants.
In the past, some people argued for a much smaller world population (however they imagine we could possibly get there), but now that it might happen, we realise our economies run on young people.
And yet we don't pay young people enough and we don't give them the opportunity to start families. Much of this is definitely also a policy problem: make sure young people can buy a house and start a family, can afford to raise kids, have time off with their family, etc.
But surely as societies enter the later parts of the demographic transition phases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition) something like that is bound to happen - you cannot have infinitely growing populations and eventually mortality will decrease (due to healthcare improvements and increased living standards) to a point where a non-insignificant part of your population will be of an advanced age.
So in a sense, that's inevitable, isn't it?
The alternative would be to ensure that birth rates are such that the population distribution across ages is always vaguely balanced, but due to the changing socioeconomic conditions, I doubt that's viable. So all that can be done for the most part is just to have social safety nets and support for the older people in the forms of affordable housing, discounts, pensions and other such systems.
Here in Latvia a certain part of each salary is put towards our retirement funds, be it through a privately managed set of funds (typically through one of the banks) or otherwise. The sizes of pensions and living expenses are still a hotly debated topic, given that those still aren't always sufficient for a comfortable lifestyle, but the idea of accumulating enough money for when you age seems like a sane approach to the problem at hand.
It's inevitable, but it's also not really something society has dealt with or addressed.
Money in a retirement fund is just an IOU. The actual labour of your retirement - the bartender serving you drinks, the doctor performing surgery, the carer taking you to the toilet - is done by young people. If there's not enough of them around, the money will very quickly inflate towards worthlessness.
I am very, very excited about this. We are absolutely culpable for the absolute havoc we have wrought on the environment. Mindless consumption and endless growth cannot continue forever.
An early litmus test for this is to look at college admission counts. Universities are very concerned right now over projected admissions from now through 2025.
There’s simply fewer high school graduates available, so enrollment counts will go down and universities will have to fight harder or lower admission requirements to keep the same number of students year over year.
It could also be that young people today simply don’t want to pay the high cost of college, and honestly I get that. But even cheaper or budget colleges are seeing enrollment dips.
I'm not quite joking. They're some of the best farmers on the planet and they have huge families. I suspect, if you do the math, they smoothly replace the rest of us as we "grey out" so to speak. ;)
> Population implosion is going to be the biggest problem of our lives.
While some current projections do predict a steep decline in population growth - it's still gonna take roughly a hundred years, just to reach zero growth. Which means we are looking at another 100 years of population actually still growing.
If the trend continues unchanged, and population growth goes negative, it would take another 100 years just to return to exactly the same population numbers that we do have today.
If the growth then grew even more negative for another 100 years, that's when you'd be able to talk about an population implosion - 300 years down the line. So no, I don't think there will be any implosion within our lives.
The problems you describe though - that's not implosion, but population aging and the economic problems that causes down the line. Those issues have been around in some countries for multiple decades already - and yes they are going to get worse. Still, growing population numbers to levels beyond what this planet can sustain just to keep the economy afloat does not seem like a well thought-through plan to me.
We will have to achieve zero population growth - and if the world economy can't take that... we really need to radically change the economy, not increase population growth again.
It's not a long term problem. To be utterly dispassionate about it, people who don't reproduce are voluntarily selecting themselves out of the gene pool, leaving behind those who genetically have a stronger drive to reproduce even under adverse circumstances. There's no moral or philosophical dimension to it; it's simply how the unfeeling mechanics of how nature works.
The issue is that most of the countries from which the US draws immigrants are going through the demographic transition themselves. The US will remain a relatively desired destination for immigration, but there will be many fewer migrants. And as the demographic transition happens in those countries, the demand for would-be migrants' labor will be higher, resulting in improved compensation and less reason to emigrate.
“It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
- Michel Houellebecq, Whatever
Have you heard about contraception and abortion? Amount of sex had does not correlate with birth rates, with the exception of literally 0 sex. You can have sex daily all your life and not have any kids, and have sex just one time and get pregnant.
first sentence:
"With every fetish having a dedicated subreddit and every vagina a Gwyneth Paltrow candle scent, it's hard to believe sex isn't the most popular of all the cardinal sins..."
Or every good Christian having children is commiting sin when procreating? How do Christians procreate without sex, through the prayer and then some holy mother come to their house and bring child?
You can have lust without sex, though it's quite unplesant to have sex without lust.
The reversion to the mean here just reminds me of stuff I would read on 4chan back in the day as a high school student.
Many of my friends in those environments grew up, figured out how to navigate society a bit better, and stopped saying this kind of stuff. But these threads are a reminder that loads of people didn’t.
I dunno, don't discount that maybe there's a number of high schoolers on here. I forget sometimes that anyone can be on the other side of these posts.
That very few people are mentioning things like the AIDS epidemic (and the abstinence only education that came from it), plus the conservative effort to censor sex positive media from organizations in the 80s-90s like moral majority, PTC (probably in response to the free love of the 70s), etc., is telling that they didn't live through it.
Or maybe they're just intentionally ignoring it, I dunno, but young adults today are a product of this.
Reading HN almost always makes me want to read HN less, but you’re right. I have no idea what most of this thread is on about. I’m hoping it’s just my age (40s). Almost nothing in this thread resembles any subset of my total sex life.
I don't know why but there seems to be some outsized group of people that thrives on reducing social interactions to numbers. I remember seeing a lot of this in self-destructive subreddits (eg MGTOW). Maybe it's so they can write off self-improvement (you can't argue with math!)?
MGTOW's major proponents will go out of their way to demonize women whenever they can. It's common for these people to turn towards things like RealDolls (the supposedly lifelike sex dolls) and anime starring under-aged girls. Raging Golden Eagle on YouTube is the poster boy of this kind of MGTOW advocate.
Self-improvement isn't at odds with pursuing healthy relationships with the opposite sex.
I've noticed most of those types of groups essentially use self-improvement as the vector to ship the hate message. Which is pretty classic cult behaviour in the end: build a support network, isolate people from other networks (by making them evangelists for you) and then threaten to cut them off if they don't go long with the rest of the message.
This is also how non-hate groups rope people in -- Scientology, for example, literally starts with the premise that they can help you improve yourself from t=0.
Self-improvement definitely isn't at odds with pursuing healthy relationships with the opposite sex. But from what I gathered MGTOW is(was?) simply a movement that wanted to improve their lives by being comfortable without being in a relationship for various reasons.
I never got a misogynistic vibe from them. But it's literally years ago I had read about them. They could very well have gone the Incel route over time. Which was a non-toxic movement in the beginning as well.
That's never what the MGTOW people asserted in any serious way. From the jump it was "the world is 'sexually prejudiced' against us men [or capital-M Men when they were being extra weird] and so we should separate from it entirely." It immediately leapt right into what would today be called "cope" how even if you do get married she'll just divorce you for a studly chad and take all your stuff, the fear of feminists (hiss! never mind that mainstream feminist study is pretty in on the assertion "this is bad for dudes too"! hiss!), all that. As a side effect of this insularity, for some people trapped in it there were definitely some self-improvement vibes. But that was never the goal of the people developing its, for lack of a better term, theory.
I used to study online right-wing and fascist movements as they evolved. The incel and MGTOW crowds absolutely went towards a fearful, hard-right-wing view of the world as fast as they could be led towards it. It is difficult to gin up another reading of the core stuff that doesn't depend on being super, super credulous.
ETA: 'XorNot, in a sibling reply to yours, raises a really good and thoughtful point about the self-improvement gimmick being a good way to rope suckers into your movement, and it's worth thinking about.
There doesn't seem to be any weird stuff there but I'm not a social scientist so I will have to take your word for it. I'm not so invested to start a heated discussion about this anyway.
If you go forward a few days or months you will start to see rabid hatred of women pop up from time to time. Frequently enough for the sub to earn its reputation.
From time to time is very different from being a hate movement. In any large group of people weird stuff pops up from time to time. I think you can only classify something as a hate movement if the hate is inherent to the large majority that make up the group, which didn't used to be the case for MGTOW.
Given you say you didn't see the misogynistic content I'm not sure you spent much time looking in to what was going on in the subreddit -- you may have missed how hateful its members were, especially in the latter years.
Like I said I didn't check the site for years so I didn't know it evolved into a hate group. The only thing I'm saying that at the very least they didn't used to be like that.
It was that from day one. These groups notoriously prey on those with low social and rhetorical literacy by pretending to be anodyne until they are not. That you did not see the okeydoke does not mean it was not there.
Most right-wing movements of which I am aware would definitely like to be seen as apolitical (and thus reduce the critical eye aimed at them). But the line you can draw from there (and similarly from "apolitical" rage-movements like GamerGate) to the current state of things is a straight one.
This seems at odds with Stephen Colbert's famous quote "Reality has a well known liberal bias". Regardless, there isn't anything in MGTOW that indicates either left or right wing views as far as I can tell
It didn't. In this pipeline, the incels are an earlier stage; MGTOW is for the incels that (ostensibly) are giving up on women entirely. Of course in practice they do no such thing - instead they focus even harder on blaming women for their problems.
No not really. As a person that nominally fits the label as stated, those MGTOW dudes are just toxic women haters. They have some kind of fucked up unresolved issues with women but it's all couched in some self-justifying logic.
Personally I'm just a lazy, irresponsible, and selfish person, so I think a life of relationships and children is not appropriate for me, so I don't pursue those things. That does not appear to be the case for most of the men who adopt the label. There seems to be genuine hate there.
While I agree MGTOW is cringe, dating is initially a numbers game. I have way more matches in a densely populated area such as SF Bay area. Timing and luck play in to it as well, multiple people in my social circle would have dated me if they weren't LTR'd prior.
The thing is, you may dislike the takes but they are in response to a real problem normies don't think about or would have any advice to give.
The solutions may be seen as bad or the takes as not good, but the problem still is very real, and for many people bad solutions are better than no solutions or the advice people give that doesn't work at all. Things like this should alert you to the fact something is wrong, not make you recoil from all the bad people.
I totally acknowledge and sympathize with people (nerds) who strugge with finding love and sex. I don't recoil, I was a similar situation as a teenager. My point is mostly that it's far from a global population wide phenomenon. Plenty of people are having sex - it's alive and well - and it's not really going out of fashion would be my clarified expanded argument.
My feminine instincts should have kept me out of here.
Turns out that despite all my achievements and failures, despite all my joys and pains, despite all my loves and losses, despite everything in my mind and body that makes me 'me', I've ever only truly been motivated by the desire to find a strong provider and reproduce before my eggs expire.
"Oh, but not you, you're different" - hears every women in a male-dominated field at some point or another. Nope, I'm not. No different brain-chemicals, no differently testosterone. Not in denial of my gender identity nor my sexuality. Just a plain old human slob like the rest of you.
The fact that commenters are just taking the author at their word is something else that makes me want to read HN less.
There's one claim about the amount of sex people may or may not be having, GRANDPAS HAD MORE ACTION IN THEIR TIME, but it is totally unqualified in any real way. Today's Grandpas could have been born in the 80s-90s... What time are we actually talking about?
The next sentence talks about boomers having more kids, and the next sentence assumes they only had marital sex. If that's the only evidence given for having sex, then this is nothing more than a thinly veiled think piece from the religious right (and the subsequent casual racism doesn't help), and I fail to see how that meets any of HN's standards, either.
Obesity epidemic. I mean, when so many people are that unattractive, it's not exactly rocket science why we're having less sex.
EDIT -
The number of replies by people in denial that being horribly out of shape and having excessive body fat isn't related to attractiveness and sexual enjoyment is... well not surprising. Though it is indicative of how in denial our infantilizing culture is and how effectively it enables people to live out slothful, narcissistic, and self-destructive lifestyles, while blaming others for not accepting them.
Attractiveness is relative, we adjust our standards all the time. Also, history has shown that we, collectively as a species, will have sex with everything we can.
Now, obesity might possible lower sex drive, but that would be a completely different mechanism.
The obesity epidemic is also a significant contributing factor. Fat reduces testosterone levels, endurance levels, makes it harder to maintain an erection, and directly steals length off the base of the penis. Combine fat men with fat women and a lot of positions are effectively untenable due to length, flexibility, and obstruction issues. Fat sex is just worth way less effort than fit sex. I know this first-hand.
Specifically the avoirdupois pound is used in the United States, which is 0.45359237 kg, except if you weighting precious metals, then sometimes the troy pound is used, which is 0.3732417216 kg.
These threads are always fun, because they often say more about us commenters than the subject matter.
Personally, I find the article's supernatural stimulus theory compelling.
Sex takes a lot of time if you aren't being selfish about it. It's also boring, compared with other forms of entertainment and creative pursuits, pornographic or not.
I'm not sure this is all that new, either. Jokes about the declining frequency of sex after marriage have been around for longer than I have. Maybe we're just hitting that wall sooner as the entertainment that we fall asleep to becomes more compelling.
If you do find sex to be the most fulfilling part of your life, it might be worth asking where that sense of fulfillment comes from. It's probably a "who", not a "what".
Right. If its the only entertainment one ever has it could get boring. But its far more entertaining that... Most other forms of entertainment. That being said it shouldnt be the most fulfilling part of ones life.
There's a whole lot of real estate between "most fulfilling part of your life" and "boring".
If you find sex boring, you probably need to take a look at yourself or maybe find a different partner. Sex is rarely mind-blowingly great after your first few times but I can't say I've ever been bored by it.
Could be a way of coping with the fact that they never had good sex. Sex can be pretty terrible, awkward and not fun at all if you happen to be with the wrong partner that night.
95% of Tinder swipes by women are passes compared to 47% for men. Women tend to date up. Online dating apps are rigged for men. These apps are search engines optimized to match women with the top 5% of men. These apps are designed for women. Being average or even above average will almost never result in a date. Tinder was designed like a slot machine which will ruin your self-esteem from constant rejection but your hope of a large reward will keep you going for ages. You will have a much higher success rate as an average guy simply with a completely cold approach. That is how bad online dating is for men.
As an example, a slightly above average man who generates 16561 swipes on Tinder will generate 7666 likes and 8675 dislikes. Out of these there will be 290 matches and 7596 no-match. A rate of 2.5 matches per day and an overall 3.7% match rate. Out of 290 matches he will send 87 messages and receive 12. 191 matches will never result in a message. Of the 99 messages 31 will be left on read or never even opened the initial message, resulting in 68 conversations. 40 of these women ghosted him, and our subject gave up on 17 of them. Ultimately this resulted in getting 11 phone numbers. These 11 phone numbers in 4 months led to 3 dates and 8 gave up on texting, declined the dating offer, or our subject simply gave up on them. All 3 dates did not materialize into anything long term. It was a complete waste of time. Considering that online dating is the most common method used to find a date these days, the options are grim for men who are less than very appealing if they use these online platforms.
The sad thing about this particular disenfranchised social group is the disenfranchisement is re-enforced by the group. Contrast with other support groups that help their members learn how to live a healthy and fulfilling life while coping with or managing whatever disenfranchised them.
I would not sooner hook up with a gang of Christians than incels. Some of us are just better off with smaller groups aligned by positive interests rather than a sense of collective victimhood.
@shadowgovt I agree that many communities labled as such engage in self-destructive behavior. It may even be psychologically similar to the mentality of a suicide bomber.
i'm not sure i would compare a person coached to despair so hard that they would sacrifice their life to a person seduced by their cope club into staying in the cope club.
I don't know. I will speculate that they will go on dates with attractive men but because the top tier of men by appearance attract so many women there is little incentive to stay in a long term relationship for the man. If this is true then there is a very narrow middle ground between the extremes which could explain why fewer meaningful relationships are formed via online dating relative to a cold approach.
My understanding is that average women get a lot more matches and messages, but start about the same number of conversations. The filtering step just happens later
80% are not struggling with women. Most dating frustration is due to unrealistic expectations and a lack of effort. Some of the ugliest men I know have gotten married and have maintained relationships because they put in the effort to be interesting, listened to their SOs, found common interests, kept up with personal hygiene, and maintained the relationship long-term... which includes both sharing time together and giving each other space.
Are their SOs conventionally attractive? Not really, but I think their intimacy with their best friend makes up for it.
Speaking as not the most attractive guy in the world, and also a prior user of dating apps.
I don't think it's as one sided as you make out. Yes women probably want to trade up, but so do men but then if you actually want a relationship those things aren't really important so it's more a case of filtering the dross to find someone who actually wants a relationship. I'm not sure that would be easier as an 'attractive' male or female, your still going to get all the dross.
To add to your 1 data point, I'm currently in a long term relationship with someone I met online.
I'll second this comment- I'm definitely not in the top quartile of men in terms of attractiveness but on Hinge I regularly get dates, in no small part to being able to write messages when liking. Tinder and Bumble are meat markets, definitely, but Hinge (and probably others, I haven't tried that many more) do work with some effort put into crafting a thoughtful introduction message.
Jumping on here too.
It's a lot of work, and can feel demoralizing.. but at the end of the day I go on way more dates than I ever did without apps.
I attribute it to being able to display more about myself in a quick snapshot for women to peruse. Rather than just see my average face, they get the sense from my profile that I am interesting.
Plus one to this. I think it's both true that the app-based dating world is demoralising and heavily biased towards a privileged minority of users and that the pre-app world was even worse.
Apps that introduce scarcity are the best at matching. Bumble and Hinge only let you "heart" three people a day(unless you pay). Certainly as a woman there is a sense of scarcity in cold approaching. An attractive woman may have one man flirt with her and ask her on a date once per day.
I had to delete Bumble as the app repeatedly told me a photo of myself wasn't me, meanwhile I could upload a black square and it would take it days to flag it.
Get of these apps.
I think many men who use apps, do so because they are too afraid to approach a woman they find attractive if the situation is appropriate.
They don't bite, if you make a move with enough respect and confidence.
In my opinion while convenient, they should be last resort.
They are only worth using as a man if you are ranked in the top 10% of superficial appearances. Those guys are going on dates with different women daily with these apps. If you don't believe me look up any YouTube video going undercover on Tinder masquerading as an attractive man.
The thing is Tinder has 75 million active users. If we assume 75% of these active users are men, and only the top 10% of men will reliably match, approximately 51 million men are gambling their time away (75×.75×0.9=50.625)
While I don’t disagree that it’s probably hard for your average straight guy to get a date on Tinder, I encourage you to stop thinking about attractiveness as something objective that everyone agrees on.
There’s no such thing as a 1-10 scale everyone falls on. We all have types, and sometimes those types run counter to the mainstream definition of “attractive”.
The trick is to figure out what type you are, and try to become the best version of that.
There were some really interesting analyses presented by a dating app several years ago (I don't remember which; they had a blog and I'm worried it's now buried outside of Google's apparent time window). One of the most interesting things was that there was a mismatch between men and women in interest versus openness and confidence. I don't remember the details, but I think the problem was something like women were more interested in a wider range than you'd think, because they were more afraid to approach/make contact with men they were attracted to, and men were more picky about attractiveness but also more assertive about contacting women. The net result of it all was that there were these attractiveness ranges that were being neglected not because of attractiveness per se but because of complicated dynamics in confidence of approaching at different levels and how different genders on average acted on perceived attractiveness.
The analyses were like gender x attractiveness x willingness to approach x receptiveness to being approached. It looked like all four variables interacted at some level.
Maybe it wouldn't generalize and maybe I'm remembering it incorrectly but it was something like that.
I am willing to approach a woman I find attractive if the situation is appropriate. Unfortunately, most situations you come across attractive women are rarely appropriate. You end up having to go to events and things you don’t normally do just to gain exposure to women. It is a miserable reason to participate in these things when your only interest is in the women, not the event or hobby. And often the things you really want to do are of little interest to attractive women.
Back in the day, we used to call participating in new things you might not enjoy on the off chance that you would either learn something or meet somebody interesting "living."
I'm not sure when that changed, but the comments in the thread don't suggest to me it changed for the better.
> You end up having to go to events and things you don’t normally do just to gain exposure to women.
That's how it was for a long time. And, IMHO, it was not a bad setup.
I certainly would not call it a miserable reason to participate in those events. For example as a youth I went to dances (which, not knowing how to dance felt very uncomfortable), "intellectual" movies and classical concerts (which, for a small-city oaf who only thought about science, were way out of depth), but looking back I think I got a very good return on the time I spent on those.
Maybe it’s good if you’re just looking to rail some ass but what if you do find someone you like but now they will only be with you if you keep doing those things you don’t care about? Are you supposed to just live your whole life that way. No way. Not sustainable.
> Get of these apps. I think many men who use apps, do so because they are too afraid to approach a woman they find attractive if the situation is appropriate.
Yes. I couldn't agree more. Spent 2-3 frustrating years on Tinder without much success. At the start of the pandemic, I was done with being alone in my apartment and decided to try to approach women on the street. My takeaways:
1. Heart rate goes over 130 (according to the Garmin smartwatch)
2. It's **much** more fun to be rejected. Instead of being ignored, you get cool stories like me asking "Hey, you look nice. Would you like to chat?" and getting as response "Uhm... No, I'll continue walking".
3. Get inspiration/courage from watching lots and lots of YouTube videos from people who do nice approaches. I personally liked ThatWasEpic a lot. See for example https://youtu.be/cj9tvIFcUeU.
4. It's much more effective in my case. I'm with my girlfriend for 2 years now and she was the 6th person that I approached... I'm not kidding. After years of Tinder.
So, delete dating apps and go out and talk to people.
>Get inspiration/courage from watching lots and lots of YouTube videos from people who do nice approaches. I personally liked ThatWasEpic a lot. See for example https://youtu.be/cj9tvIFcUeU.
And if the cops show up then what? I couldn't get them to show up for a blatant hit and run in Texas or assault in Washington D.C. If you are lucky enough for a cop to show up do you think a man will stick around waiting for them to show up? Do you think cops will pursue in these instances? Have you ever called the police? Do you know what the response time is for the type of report you are filing? Even in the most wealthy countries in the world the police won't take you seriously if you tell them "this man is talking to me, creeping me out, and scaring me"
I don't know where you live but in my country it's not illegal to talk to strangers.
If you follow her around, especially after being asked to leave her alone, then we're getting into harassment territory. But if she calls the cops because you talked to her, she's 100x more crazy than you are creepy.
I've been using Hinge for the past year and half with a good bit of success, I can regularly go on 1-3 dates per week and have managed to keep that consistency pretty much all year.
IMO success comes down to 3 key things: profile, conversation and managing expectations.
First your profile, take high quality photos and weave in a story about your life in there. Guys think that it's the shirtless 6 pack that will get dates and while that's true, what I found is you have to build an "attractive lifestyle" through your profile. All my photos are of me doing things, on boats, outside, etc and all my prompts are things like "We should go kayaking together" and stories about travel. It's not one thing on my profile, it's the entire thing that builds a persona of a person that likes going outside alot and traveling, women find that very attractive in my experience.
Second is the conversation. You have to get good at actually "closing" a girl on a first date. There's a ton of "science" that guys will spew but it comes down to practice. The first couple of girls you talk to you will probably fuck it up, keep going and you will get better. My strategy here is to talk "lifestyle", where are you traveling, what shows have you seen, and NEVER EVER EVER BRING UP SEX.
Finally it's managing expectations. Most of these girls "fall through" not at the matching/conversation stage, but after the first couple of dates. Most of the time it's not something either person did, rather us realizing that we are just not right for each other. At this stage it's very easy to get bitter, the key is to keep going and not get bitter, and understand that if you're going to be playing the "online dating game", you're going to get a shit load of rejections.
At this point I do not even consider the "1st date" to be a real "1st date", rather I consider it to be a magic "0 date" that only applies to online dating. Usually on a first day you've already had one interaction with that person to figure out that they are worth going out with; however, with online dating you don't have that. So I consider the first time we meet to be more of a screener date, don't expect to go home with the girl, don't even expect a kiss, just make sure you like them and think if you would like to see them again. For these dates I usually go to a coffee shop mid-day, if it goes well we can schedule a longer dinner/activity date, but if it goes off the rails you can cordially end the date in about 15 minutes.
> I can regularly go on 1-3 dates per week and have managed to keep that consistency pretty much all year.
The difficulty for most men is getting those 1-3 dates per week, not the follow-through. As much as you might want to attribute your success to your charm and conversation, even getting a match per week, let alone enough to turn into 1-3 dates, is the barrier. And anyone who's getting 1-3 dates per week is likely going to be able to find a relationship if they're looking for one after a couple months.
Quality of pictures and persona certainly plays a role, but there are immutable traits that apps prioritize that radically reduce the amount of inbound interest. Getting off the apps as suggested in the parent comment is the only real way to deal with that.
In fact, it gets repeated so frequently in threads/topics like this one, that I wonder if the true origin of this "statistic" is in fact some of the... more interesting corners of Reddit/4chan.
Reading stuff like this makes me really glad that I married my first girlfriend.
We've been married for over 10 years now. She was really out of my league.
I did compromise on many things including age gap (she is older), past baggage and the fact that I have to let her win every argument and do everything she says but I'm glad because she was the opportunity of my life and I took it and I've never been so lucky since about anything since.
If you don't mind me asking, what are some things you like that you feel make it worth being with this person? (since you mentioned past baggage and having to 'let her win every argument' - that doesn't sound too nice)
Good looks and strong character. Also, we are comfortable to tell each other everything.
Also, it helps that she has a very unusual taste in men and I happen to meet her requirements.
It used to be difficult when we started dating but now not so much. She keeps getting better over time. She just can't control her emotions when things get heated. I'm basically the opposite; it's easy for me to detach from my emotions and take a step back.
With such a dismal acceptance rate there is no point in swiping left as a man yet men will still on average swipe left about 50% of the time.
To throw another wrench in the process, swiping excessively to the right may further derank your profile, causing a positive feedback loop. It's an insane system.
Because it hardly takes more than 2-3 seconds to swipe, and there were so few matches you couldn't probably waste too much time on handling them, it looks like about 5 hours of work gets you 1 date. I think it's more than OK. A date itself takes more time and more money. This is efficient.
Went nowhere in the sense: did not result in sex? Then it's certainly something the guy was doing wrong, the girls are going for Tinder dates specifically with that goal. The OP said they they "did not result in anything serious", so i assumed it meant "no relationship", but this is simply not what Tinder is for. Yes i know a lady who built relationship from Tinder, but she had to do about 500 dates over 3 years go be able to pick the right guy, it was exhausting and not an efficient way to do it for sure.
Spending 15 hours to get 3 hookups is good. One could do more swipes to get more, spending proportionally more time, if the city they live in is good enough (and yes Tinder is a numbers game so it works for guys only in big cities)
While I agree that the matching experience is completely different for men and women, I think (many) women find them just as disappointing (and abusive) as men. Tinder pressures women to expose themselves to strangers who primarily are looking for sex and will just swipe if they aren't satisfied.
Is there even anybody who wouldn't be positively affected by some limitation on sexualised content and online dating?
I completely agree with you. It can be difficult to find meaningful long term relationships on Tinder for women as well. There is no denying that. I think the chances are best with a cold approach or a warm introduction.
But many women on Tinder and Bumble aren’t looking for a relationship. When I fill in the “Looking For” parameter with “Relationship” instead of leaving it blank on Bumble, my incoming like count would drop by 40% percent. When I’d remove that parameter, my likes would go back up.
Well not completely wrong, this is a very pessimistic take.
> You will have a much higher success rate as an average guy simply with a completely cold approach
This is where I think you're wrong.
First, I'm probably never going to cold approach in public and neither are most men I know. It's not a matter of "growing a pair", it would require a personality change or being disingenuous.
Second, cold approach is a terrible way to meet someone. It's like a tinder swipe where both parties have only 1-2 photos and no profile. Dating like this is a strict needle and haystack approach to finding a compatible partner.
> These 11 phone numbers in 4 months led to 3 dates
Before apps I was at 1-2/year. Now 1-2/week is possible, though time and energy keeps me at 1-3/month.
I liked OkCupid a lot more than Tinder. You could write more about yourself and personality played more of a role in matching. I had an ex out of OkCupid. Tinder on the other hand values looks over everything and Bumble feels like LinkedIn dating. A pessimistic part of me feels like people are optimizing their personalities and lives to be Tinder or Bumble successful. Focusing on cool photos, looks and having a nice job title over having a personality or unique values.
As a guy, OkCupid was pretty much a complete waste of time for me. The only date I readily remember going on, the woman showed up 1.5 hours late for lunch, absolutely reeked of flower perfume, and brought up astrology as a topic in a non-flirty way. Oh, there was also a woman with a toddler that was ready for me to be her baby's daddy by the 3rd date.
I dug up some SLR photos of me with buzz cut hair and a nice shirt, and tried out Tinder. I actually went out on some quality dates once in a while. It was even then still a time sink, and after thinking through the algorithm a bit, I started just blindly swiping right. A month or so later I was in a relationship with my eventual wife.
I wonder what number of suicides each year can be attributed to disenfranchisement on dating apps. They can rob an above average man of his self esteem, self worth, and self value from past accomplishments and cause depression.
75.8% of Android Tinder app users are male and 24.2% are female. (Tankovska, 2021)
By 2023, the number of dating app users in the US is forecast to reach 25.7 million. (Tankovska, 2021; Kats, 2020)
Just imagine the scale of the psychopathology if 17 million of these men are essentially living in a casino in just one country.
If these dating apps are used by a large group of women to date a comparatively tinier group of men, then it makes no sense for men to even bother unless they're part of that small group of men that gets all the attention.
Likewise, unless these women plan to date for the rest of their lives and never settle down, they can't all end up marrying that small group of men, so they will end up marrying "down".
Then the strategy becomes clear: ditch the dating apps and look to meet women who are ready to settle. Easier said than done, sure, but it sure looks like dating apps are useless to all but the top percentile of men, so why bother?
I'm not saying that in the sense of "10% of some gender has sex with 90% the other gender due to [tinder/bumble/hinge]", but rather that in my countries - dating apps have become the de-facto way to hook up with others. And these apps have sort of redefined that scene - mainly because women have pretty much endless choices, but also because the opposite is absolutely not true for most guys on these apps.
With that said, the old ways are still working. People do go out and meet people, but I think most of my peers (late 20-somethings to early 30-somethings) mostly use a bunch of different dating apps for that initial screening. You are exposed to people that you'd NEVER meet in the more traditional sense.
Also, as other people have mentioned - there are more options for entertainment today - even for poor people / those in the lower classes.
Sex toys are also becoming way better and more advanced for all sexes. If your _only_ goal is to chase an orgasm, lots of modern toys will give you a better shot at that than some random hookup.
> You are exposed to people that you'd NEVER meet in the more traditional sense.
I’ve never used a dating app, but I’m curious about this. My assumption has been that people filter pretty heavily on politics and religion, which are less advertised in person. Meeting people at a party or through social activities seemed to moderate people’s views long term because an initial attraction could lead to encounters with really different sorts of personalities and backgrounds and counter reinforcement of naive views of the world.
For instance, more couples used to realize their votes cancelled out, so they would make a deal to just stay home and have sex instead of heading the the polls.
I'm not sure what your age/location is, but as a young American, young people filter for politics and religion in person just as fast as they do on a dating app. It is considered that compatible political and religious views are table stakes for a serious (non-hookup) relationship.
For example, in my extended friend-aquaintance group, there's not a single young woman who would consider dating a conservative. Obviously conservative women exist, I have seen many on dating apps, the point is that the natural social circles have already formed strong bubbles such that hanging out let alone dating outside the tribe is unheard of.
I'm not really complaining about this either, I'm not going to get along with a conservative in a normal sort of idle chatter situation. We could work or play a sport or videogame together but beers aren't going to be enjoyable once they start talking about wokeness poisoning the country.
> For example, in my extended friend-aquaintance group, there's not a single young woman who would consider dating a conservative. Obviously conservative women exist, I have seen many on dating apps, the point is that the natural social circles have already formed strong bubbles such that hanging out let alone dating outside the tribe is unheard of.
This is also a recent "feature", at least in the USA. My older extended family (parents, aunts, uncles) have political views all over the map, including between married couples, and it's no big deal. Back when they all got together, people weren't so much wrapping their entire identities into their political views. It was more taboo for a Protestant to marry a Catholic than for a Democrat to marry a Republican. Today, it seems people have replaced their religion with their political party, to the point where they consider "the other side" to be totally off-limits for dating or even friendship.
I've got friends on both sides and it just seems so ridiculous to me, but I guess tribes gotta tribe.
it seems the country has grown less tolerant of intolerant political philosophies (ones which directly attack people, like saying they should have fewer rights, or die, etc.)
IMHO, that has been a result of said philosophies pushing harder than ever on said viewpoints, angry that yelling them louder is failing to convince most people they don't suck
> You are exposed to people that you'd NEVER meet in the more traditional sense.
On one hand, this is great! Unfortunately, text conversations between strangers who's only cues are a handful of photos and snippet of text are miserable.
Im almost sure if I had met someone I've met in dating apps in more traditional environments, I'd at least have more friends.
Can this be quantified somehow? Show some evidence people in some place that has been studied are having sex less often now or in the recent past compared to some more distant past?
I spent about 20 minutes trying to find some series of historical surveys somewhere, and meanwhile 65 comments popped up with their own personal beliefs on why people are having less sex, but none of those comments and the article itself don't present any actual evidence that people are having less sex. What they do show is people, at least in the US and most OECD nations, are having fewer lifetime children. But that is clearly explainable by widespread availability and use of contraceptives and protected sex or even by the increasing popularity of anal sex. It doesn't require that people not have sex at all.
I'm not saying this claim is wrong necessarily, but if this is going to be discussed, shouldn't we have some evidence allowing us to quantify to what extent there has actually been a decrease, where this has happened, and over what span of time it has happened?
Some extent, a society that grows probably looks like a society of growth along many aspects. That means down to the mindsets of populace. But just age characteristics will tell you the population characteristics skew towards the elderly for the next couple to few decades. And at least in the US those same people seem to have a stranglehold on all forms of political process. That’s not what a vibrant, growing society looks like.
Edit-consider the decades that led to the baby booming period of the 50s-60s. The world had ended WWII on the anti-fascist/pro-democracy side. And a Cold War started over the path the world would take. There were housing programs and I build affordable housing for the war vets. Energy was cheap and nuclear would eventually make metering it unneeded-more indicative of mindset than reality of course.
I think it's simply that the generation for whom the sex was a "forbidden fruit", has become old, the one after them, had enormous amount of sex just because they now could, and for the subsequent ones, sex is nothing special. It is too easy to get - guys who are now 70 year old, had to "win" girls when they were 20, now 20-year old girls are just sitting on Tinder waiting to hook up. It is as uncool as buying canned tuna vs going fishing. If anyone can do it and it's nothing to be proud about, what's the point?
This article assumes a premise and then goes on to discuss it. It doesn't in any way attempt to provide evidence for its premise. I personally don't believe it to be true, and me saying that is exactly as authoritative as what that author has written.
I'd say the explosion of mental health and anxiety is playing a huge part in it as well. My wife and I would have a child if we knew we were stable and able to look after them properly. Also, with the wars, global warming and everything else that's happening right now, why would you want to bring a child into this?
Well compared to the past we live in one of the most peaceful and prosperous times in human history one only need look at rising life expectancy to see that.
The world has never been more prosperous, safer, and more able to address the issues of its day, ever. Wars have been a near constant factor of human history for nearly all written history, and yet today we enjoy more peace as a species than any other era. In the past few decades we've seen extreme poverty decline dramatically. And we've never had so many viable options for decarbonization.
When your parents had you, the world was decisively a worse place. Especially if you were born prior to 1989. Why wouldn't you want to bring a child into the objectively best times of human existence to date?
Its interesting that one of the most guaranteed ways to get down-voted online is to say the world isn't as bad as it seems, I would really like to understand the psychology behind that.
I think it's because comments like that are over-simplified and don't accurately describe the world as it is across the distributions of people.
For a hypothetical "Worldwide Average Person," things are quite better today than at any point in history. There are a lot of people who were dirt poor yesterday and are now less dirt poor today. For a small number of very well-off people, things are exponentially better today than ever. But for a significant number of people who had it really good in, let's say the 1950s and 1960s, things are noticeably and measurably worse in all ways today. If you're one of these people, the "Well that average person over there in Indonesia is better off" argument isn't convincing.
> Also, with the wars, global warming and everything else that's happening right now,
My thinking is there will always be something. Our parents could have said the same thing about Vietnam and the Cold War. My litmus test is: "is this issue affecting you". Global warming and wars may make you anxious when reading the news, but does it _actually_ affect your life.
Disagree. I've found living this way is actually quite nice. What am I going to do about these "global events" anyway? I can't impact them so I don't see why I should worry about them. I'll just deal with their downstream impact and let others worry about the events themselves.
You can do that but it's incredibly lazy and selfish. But hey if you don't care and you think you are that useless to the world, that's fine, there's no convincing you otherwise.
Global warming will eventually effect everyone, which is the point. It's already effecting many people and people they know... That's a weird one to pick considering how much it already effect people and will definitely effect people in the future. The war in Ukraine is also massively effecting us when it comes to energy prices and a large component of the remainder of the inflation (partly hard scarcity in many commodities and partly due to uncertainty.) This is the weirdest comment, like you're totally out of touch with what's going on somehow...
Market homogenization (because of the apps) leads to a larger scale of 'winner takes all' dynamics, ie increasing inequality.
The top players in the market are probably getting way more offers than they can, um, service, and for anyone in the lower ranks, the effort/reward is uneconomic.
This does happen, but mostly for men. The most successful men are seeing a different girl 5 nights a week. Typically women will tend to try a few men out, then stick with a favorite or two.
Men at the bottom get absolutely nothing, while women at the bottom mostly end up going on bad dates or getting used for sex.
Why do you think they are getting used for sex? If they have sex on the first date it is free will or bad judgement... players will not go on 5 dates withgirl just to have sex if they can have it easier. Woman either want sex and then they are both using each other, which is fine. Or they need to update their filter. And yes, sometimes bad shit happens, when guy dumps you after couple dates and sex. But the same happens to guys.
Women at the bottom are generally desperate and horny, and so even if they want to try and filter out players their ability to say no to someone slightly out of their league who is being affectionate is pretty limited, so they will lie to themselves with thoughts like "this time will be different" and "we really like each other."
Dating sites also disincentivize most people from being honest about what they want in their profile, since women who state that marriage and children are a must and men who just want sex both get way way fewer views and contacts than people with more open interests. As a result, people tend to keep their interest "open" with the idea that they'll "convert" the person to their desires after they start dating.
Uneconomic? It's laziness. If you went up to any guy in the 90s and told them that you had a device with a 1/50 chance of pairing them up with a woman that wanted to have sex with them every night that they spent 15 minutes on said device, they'd beg you to sell it to them for any price.
Now, those odds are apparently not good enough for the men of the 2020s. It's insane - these men just don't want sex enough if they're not willing to spend 15 mindless minutes a night swiping and messaging.
Touching the poop in these threads is always a bad idea. And this is more to the passer-by who might be reading and thinking that the person to whom I am replying is onto something (edited; I don't think 'csee is being disingenuous). In these sorts of claims, "the top few percent" is never actually defined, and it means that folks who do quite well for themselves but aren't unironically studly chads have to be cut out of their narrative.
It is easier to assume that it's everyone's fault rather than your own, but I found that I did a lot better (not just romantically but--well--everywhere) when I worked on having reasons to like myself before I wanted other people to. The people who go on about "the top few percent of men" are most frequently so bitter that it can be detected from space, and that's a them problem. It was, for a while, a me problem. It requires concerted effort and desire to unscrew your head and to make yourself somebody you like, but it is doable. Therapy helps. So do honest friends who aren't in the same shitty boat you're in.
I am not fit, I am affluent but not rich, but I try to be decent and patient and kind (which is different from being needy), and I do pretty well for myself. Saying "just do X" would be lying because of the "just" part, but--you can do okay for yourself too. You probably have to work at it some.
You give good advice but I was commenting on the well documented asymmetry and inequality in outcomes that cut across gender lines which are likely magnified by these dating apps. It's not bitterness to point out objective facts that are highly relevant to the topic of conversation. "Improve yourself" is always the healthiest mindset on a personal level but that's not exactly deep analysis on the impact that these apps are having on our society or the lives of lower ranked men.
I dunno, from where I stand what you are defining as the problems of "lower ranked men" are symptoms of living in a late-capitalist society problems. It's not the app's fault that people respond to incentives; the way out, if "out" is to be defined as to find people who want to interact with you, to "not settle" or whatever, is to improve oneself. It can both suck and be the only option. Fortunately, it's a lot easier to be interesting than it is to be rich.
That is the only way out on a local, personal level, since that's all we have much control over. But how is it not the app's fault? When Twitter and Facebook create social dynamics that encourage outrage and division, I blame them (or at least I blame the incentives and systems that cause them to do this). Ditto for the impact that these dating apps are having.
How is it? Like, okay, what's the alternative? I genuinely don't understand the criticism beyond "well, self-described low-status men are getting passed over because people have options." Should they not be getting passed over? Should people be taking one for the team for these self-described low-status men and dating them despite themselves? There have always been lonely people, and some so for good reasons and some for not. I am not sure that there's a way to substantiate that there are proportionally more of the latter group now or that dating apps etc. are accentuating it for this population.
These apps do suck, don't get me wrong--they're gacha games, and they're structured like it--but the mode of criticism matters. As near as I can tell, the It's A Wonderful Life of this is "nothing", not "something theoretically better for self-described low-status men". It's not like people would be going to church to meet and then obligatorily marry Goody Marshall's cousin's son were it not for Tinder.
The alternative is the way things were 15 years ago, where people found mates via their physical networks, work, family, hobbies, religion, and day to day life.
The criticism is similar in nature to the criticism of Twitter and Facebook. These apps play to and encourage the worst side of humans in the way that their social dynamics are designed, which distorts relations between people for the worse.
In the case of dating apps, it's because the "first meeting" is viewing someone's curated digital profile instead of getting to know their full self in the real world, they strongly encourage selection based on trivialities like height, hip to waist ratio, income and other signals. You also encourage the same narcissistic performance games that Instagram encourages. It's also the sheer deluge of profiles. Like, our dopamine system isn't designed for that, and nor is it a fully free choice when the app has exploited that evolved system to hook users. And what's going to be the impact of designing a system that makes it easy for people to self select into opposing political tribes?
Of course most of this stuff happened to an extent 15 years ago too. But as with Facebook and their tendency to stoke outrage and division, the problem is how the app has turbocharged our worse tendencies while also creating dilemma like incentives that make it tricky to opt out from.
My point about low status men is that they often aren't bad mates. They're low status through the prism of hyper gamified dating apps that magnify the importance of trivialities. There's no question that there's people who've had it worse in this regard in the pre-dating app era (various low-caste/untouchables types in different societies), my point isn't that we are at rock bottom, just that dating apps are a pretty large step in the wrong direction.
I think I notionally agree with a lot of what you're saying. Where I think we disagree--and this is me maybe not being the most optimistic person in the universe--is in the alternative. I think the fracturing we are seeing right now doesn't mean the alternative is "find mates at work and through other physical networks". I think it's "don't find anybody."
To that end, I think these are awful, but perhaps not the darkest timeline.
>I genuinely don't understand the criticism beyond "well, self-described low-status men are getting passed over because people have options." Should they not be getting passed over?
You seem to miss that outcomes are not only getting worse for men.
I don't think that that's true. I'm not particularly attractive. I'm not tall. I'm not fit. And yet I do all right. I do have a great dog, but I don't think that makes up for it. But I do think that people can detect a shitty vibe pretty quickly even through a couple photos and a bio, and Not Being That is a significant step up.
> But I do think that people can detect a shitty vibe pretty quickly even through a couple photos and a bio, and Not Being That is a significant step up.
As a matter of fact due to the halo effect attractive people are just considered to have better personalities and no women don't have supernatural abilities to detect "shitty vibes" it's basically just about looks.
I think you’re just bad at describing yourself here and your outcomes. It’s also locale dependent.
Where I am in SF - it’s purgatory. Even when I change to NYC - it’s incredibly difficult. The main reason? So much choice for the women. Why date sideways or down when it seems like you could always date up? There’s endless options available - whether they’ll stick around… not likely.
> the well documented asymmetry and inequality in outcomes that cut across gender lines which are likely magnified by these dating apps
Or only specific to these apps? I'd like to see the documentation on the "well-documented asymmetry" to believe otherwise, because that's not what I observed.
It's not just on the apps. Evolutionary psychologists have a bunch of empirical studies that tease this out. We also see this in our genetic lineage, more female ancestors than male ancestors. The evolutionary theory behind it is pretty well worked out and supported by a lot of data.
It's not a personal issue. OKCupid has published a lot of data on this. The top 20% of men as rated by women are having overwhelmingly more sex through online dating than anyone else. It's not close; it's more of a cliff than a curve. It doesn't matter how much you "like yourself", you will be swiped left if you're not physically attractive.
I am not saying this as sour grapes. I have had sex with dozens of women from Tinder, putting me in the top success percentiles of male users. The reality for average men online is extremely bleak. Denying this, giving advice to "like yourself" or to do therapy, or the ever common "you have to be happy alone first", are entirely fabricated coping mechanisms.
If you are even getting a handful of dates from the app from which to test your personality theories, you never had the problem at all.
If you're a man and you don't have self esteem issues trying online dating is an excellent way to develop them. I tried it for maybe half a year. I'm decent looking, I have a good career, I'm tall enough that I get through most of the filters a lot of women put on height, I put effort into my profile and pictures. After all that I was ecstatic if I got even one match a week (and this was across three different apps). Maybe 25% of those resulted in conversations, none of those resulted in meeting up in real life.
Outside of online dating where are you even supposed to meet women now? I see women saying all the time they don't want to be approached in public. COVID decimated my already fairly meager pool of friends that I see regularly so opportunities to meet people through friends are few and far between. On top of that most women near my age (mid 30s) are already in long term relationships. At this point I've mostly given up, now I'm trying to accept that I'll likely spend the rest of my life alone. It sucks.
> Outside of online dating where are you even supposed to meet women now? I see women saying all the time they don't want to be approached in public.
I would be careful with letting a few anecdotes from a minority of women drive your behavior so much. There's nothing wrong with approaching people in public. Especially if you go to eg a bar, many women will be open to having conversations. I met my current partner this very way.
This is pretty sparse on citations/evidence compared to the usual HN trending fare. Some commenters are suggesting TFA is equating declining birth rate to declining sex. I don't particularly see it, they seem to be suggesting both are declining (it doesn't typically take much unprotected sex to procreate, modulo fertility issues), but either way, that's still a veridical statement that deserves data.
There might be some confusion between fashion and reality. You can never be to rich or too thin, but obese and broke is an extremely common combination. Sex may be waning under the stress of modern living, but that doesn't necessarily make it unfashionable.
Why all this talk about sex for "entertainment"? Am I in the minority since I have sex because I have an urge to do it? It's never been about entertainment in my brain.
Generally yes, I eat for "entertainment". If I was eating to just continue living, I'd live off Huel[0]. But since flavor and diversity add a great amount of joy and -entertainment-, a vast majority of my meals are designed and prepared for entertainment.
Uhm, the lower birthrates in developed countries is because of better access to birth control, and because it's hard to raise a gaggle of kids when both parents work full-time.
Neuropsychology offers a nigh-insultingly simple, drab explanation. Sex isn't simply a matter of stimulation. Sexual arousal is controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system, which becomes more active when the organism is relaxed. Everything is stimulating, nobody is comfortable.
I could spend all day listing possible culprits. It's not hard to turn this into an opportunity to take shots at the left, or the right, for any of a thousand petty reasons. But that would miss the point: stop being mean.
Stop gossiping, stop leering, stop groping, stop cajoling your partner to try that thing you read about, stop comparing people to each other, stop being a show-off, stop being "provocative", stop imputing sexual insecurity in every third argument, stop putting naked models in advertising, stop writing songs glorifying exploitation, stop cheating, stop lying, stop cat-calling, and stop making jokes about rape, literally, for fuck's sake.
There are so many incel type comments in this thread and anytime this subject comes up.
Online dating definitely isn’t fun but it’s not the shit show people here seem to make out.
All of my friends met their long terms partners on dating apps. None of these men are particularly attractive. All are average looking at best.
Personally I went from never dating to going on dates with a handful of people over a 6 month period (all found on dating apps) to finding my long term partner. Everyone I met in person was nice and looking for a long term relationship. They were all attractive (to me at least) but objectively of average appearance or slightly below. I’m overweight and average looking at best.
If you are really struggling on these apps I’d suggest losing the negative attitude and lowering your standards in terms of partners appearance. There are lots of wonderful people out there but you aren’t going to meet them when you swipe right on everyone, complain that women have it too easy, and expect a supermodel to swipe right on you.
I'm going to be real with you, this sounds similar to the "the job market isn't that bad, yes it's bad but I got a job right out of college" spiel bypassing evidence that many people send hundreds of job applications before they ever get a job.
Studies show most people meet online. Studies show most people struggle in dating markets. These are not mutually exclusive. But unlike jobs, one doesn't need to date to live, even if having a partner is a major point of fulfillment to most.
I can see your comparison but I disagree. In a normal job market most people can come out of a college a get a job. It just might not be the flashy job they think they deserve. Maybe they have to wash dishes or stick shelves when they’re trained for something else. Dating is similar. You can get a date if you’re willing to compromise on looks. Some people just won’t even entertain that idea or won’t entertain the idea that they might have to aim even lower than they expected.
I hope I don't need to tell you why this comparison is incredibly flawed. If you treat dating the same way as jobhunting and your answer is "just get a dead end job", you're encouraging people to enter a lot of bad relationships and a lot of breaking hearts. Not to mention many people do not consider "just a date" a net positive, or even "just a date and sex".
Beyond that, you still haven't addressed the elephant in the room: jobs are necessary to survive for most people, whereas celibacy doesn't kill.
There's lots of nice people out there trying to meet. You just need to know what you want, be actually ready to take the leap, and are realistic about your value (sorry to phrase it like that but it IS a market)
Totally agree. If you’re struggling to succeed on dating apps you need to reassess your value. It sounds a bit horrible but better to be realistic and eventually happy, than to demonise the people who aren’t picking you and turn angry at the world.
There's also some very weird survivorship bias going on.
Everyone you meet is the child of people who have sex. Even if they had the child via in vitro or adopted or whatever. Your parents fuck.
So your parents fuck. Your friends' parents fuck. That asshole who bullies you in high school. Their parents fuck. It really does seem like everyone is fucking all the time. You live in a neighborhood where most people will also have kids. All those people? Fucking.
You know what happens to people who don't fuck? They don't have families. You never get to really interact with them until you or your friends become those people later in life. And it makes you wonder why you aren't fucking because when you were growing up, it seemed like everyone was. But it was only a very specific subset of people that made up your circle.
Right. But if you aren't having sex, you aren't having kids. Growing up, you grow up in family. You grow up around families. You grow up around a group of adults who have all had sex.
The more you grow up and become independent and your circle deviates from those of your parents, the more likely it is you will start running into people who haven't had sex. Or don't have as many opportunities to do so. You may even become one of those people.
You think they're rarer than they are because you grow up surrounded by people who have sex. People with kids is a very specific subset.
So people like the article's author think people are having less sex when the reality is that he just knows more people who aren't having as much sex as his parents and their circle did.
I'm going to out myself a bit by making this comment, but I want to just say that you dismissing these comments as being "incel type" and saying that it's much ado about nothing is unfair and inaccurate. You are missing important context, and likely have a varied experience compared to these other people.
I was a home-owner at 26, make an outsized income compared to both the national average and my local average, am well-traveled, educated, and by conventional standards am at average or slightly above average attractiveness. Despite all of this, I had an absolutely horrible time with dating until I was in my 30s. I am now married to a wonderful woman I met 5 years ago through a dating app, after years of frustration.
The main thing I discovered in this journey is:
1. Older men (but not too old, 30s/40s) get better traction than younger men (teens, 20s), even if you are an outlier in success as a younger man
2. Women have a vastly different assessment of attractiveness than men do. There is TONS of data to support this, and it's basically incontrovertible at this point. I don't know if dating apps caused it, or it just revealed it, but women basically have a Pareto distribution of how they judge attractiveness. Only 20% of men pass the filter, the remaining 80% are never going to get a response. Men have a much more normal distribution (follows a bell curve) in how they view attractiveness.
3. The two things above mean that a (relatively) small number of men have success, and don't see the problem, while a (relatively) large amount of men are left out in the cold.
You might think my 3 points above sound "incel type", yet I'm a married guy who absolutely supports the rights of women and their equality in society. This is not about politics, this is not about misogyny, this is not about frustration turning to anger. This is about the facts and the lived experience of millions of people, especially younger people, and how it drives societal trends. I watch many of friends who also work in tech struggling still even in their 30s because they are conventionally less attractive than I am, despite being better than me in other ways (smarter, more financially successful), and these are by the general standards of the day successful and stable people who cannot find a relationship. People who are farther down the income and intelligence curve struggle even further. This article didn't come out of nowhere, and this issue isn't only in the US. All over the OECD we are seeing falling birth rates, falling marriage rates, and self-reported reductions in sexual activity and relationships.
What this means for society and our future, I don't know, but it will certainly mean a change of some kind. Sticking your head in the sand and deriding the people stating these things clearly does not do anything to understand or address this situation. If you personally faced no challenges in using online dating, then I would put forward that you are probably privileged in some way you don't realize and that your experience is unusual, rather than being the norm.
One challenge many people haven't even mentioned yet in these comment threads is that online dating is fundamentally not a very good way to approach finding a relationship, and there is a different between "dating" for hookups and dating for finding a relationship. Most people are not satisfied with hookups, even when they can get them, and would prefer the more meaningful relationship. There are thankfully a few better apps in that direction, but as a general case an app is not a good basis for selecting someone to know on a deeper level, as apps emphasize the most shallow and curated view of people rather than the process of meeting people organically through shared activities. When I was dating, I found far more success organically meeting people vs using apps, despite the fact that I ended up meeting my wife through an app.
This doesn't just affect dating, it effects all sorts of relationships. We've decided somehow as a society to intermediate a screen between us and other people in nearly every single situation, and this form of communication is inherently lossy and biased towards appearances over realities, and it has caused a structural loss of community and the actual social skills in people necessary to meet and create connections. To look at our society as it currently sits, see the trend line of where it's going, and then to deride the people pointing it out as "incel type" seems deeply naive if not pernicious.
I will second this. I am a late-30s recently divorced man, that got back on the dating 'market' about a year and a half ago after nearly two decades into a frustrating sexless marriage. I have a history of shyness/social anxiety, am very nerdy, balding, and struggle with weight issues- I am probably average or below average realistically. Yet I had a great time on Tinder- I was able to have sex with different women several times a week, and also found women would cold approach me at restaurants and in public places once I sorted myself out (see below).
I am convinced the actual negative attitude that you can't get any interest is the major reason guys don't- this victim/complaining/entitled attitude is the most unattractive thing to women.
Here are some of the things I did that worked for me:
* Heavy strength/weight training 3-4x/week
* Take the time to carefully build a Tinder profile that shows me having fun doing things I like (outdoor activities) but dressed well, with great lighting, etc.
* Practice emotional vulnerability (read Mark Manson: Models), especially saying out loud to girls anything I was afraid to say, that I was worried would turn them off
* Make really solid eye contact with women when talking and listening to them, in an even borderline creepy way - make them look away first
* Stop trying to 'win approval' or entertain women but just try to have fun myself, and enjoy the conversations, and sex
* Drive a 20+ year old 'exotic' sports car that looks impressive but cost less than most people spend annually on a smartphone, maintain it myself
* Wear nice clothes, and develop my own unusual sense of style (shows confidence)
* Intermittent fasting to keep weight somewhat under control
* Have a lot of hobbies, friends, and activities that make it almost hard for interested women to schedule enough time with me- don't hang around them with nothing to do
* Be confident in sharing my desires and interests, especially sexually (see vulnerability above)
* Be willing to lower standards really low at first- have sex with whoever is interested, even if they are older or a bit overweight. As I built confidence and experience, I gradually was able to date more and more attractive women over time.
* Live in a major metropolitan area with a lot of dating options.
* Develop a mindset of abundance and self-esteem: realize the truth that I am the only guy these girls are likely to find that has my life together this well, and they are very lucky to get to go on a date with me despite my shortcomings
Ultimately, I didn't find casual sex very fulfilling but really enjoy sex itself, with someone I have feelings for. I ended up deciding to enter a long term relationship with a girl from Tinder, and we have sex at least once a day, and are always pushing the limits and trying new things sexually.
I know we're not supposed to make this kind of comment but I have to say your username matches your comment quite well.
The sad truth though is that a lot of quite normal men will never be able to do most of that, and for those suffering from anxiety, autism or something like that (it seems like quite a few here), they're quite disadvantaged if not fucked.
Ultimately - a lot of this advice is decent but only works if you are already on the taller side, physically attractive to begin with (good face), and are willing to date down.
Generally, if you're not willing to date down - you will have a bad time as a man on these apps. It also depends on what you're looking for - as you're late 30's, you might not be looking for women in their 20's anymore. If you're looking for a childless relationship with a woman in their 30's and 40's - it's not as difficult. The difficulty rises exponentially when you want kids and the woman is in her 20's (even if it's 29.9). This bracket only gets more difficult as you age, not easier.
> Be willing to lower standards really low at first- have sex with whoever is interested, even if they are older or a bit overweight. As I built confidence and experience, I gradually was able to date more and more attractive women over time.
Also this literally has no effect on your ability to date online. Fucking ugly women isn't going to help you with online dating. It's all about your profile and that's it.
You also just... don't have to do online dating. Go to a place that you're interested in being in and meet people there. If there are no women there, then you don't have to cancel that interest, but maybe it's not the thing to do to meet them. Save it for your bucket list of stuff you want to do when you've found someone but need some time away from the house.
Another factor: Casual sex has a high chance of resulting in legal entanglements, sooner or later. "Consent" can be withdrawn whenever convenient; making a quick fling into sexual assault.
You are saying that rape was a large portion of sex, and is going out of fashion? That would be both distressing (for the past), and encouraging for the future.
I think more of thoughtful physical intimacy (not porn) in relationships would be a massive treatment for the depression epidemic modern world seems to suffer from.
A contemporary poet and philosopher from my country considered eroticism the key to what he calls "ecological asceticism": physical intimacy and tenderness requires "no more energy than digging in your planting bed", but it forces us to attune to another person, another human being.
This is probably the main reason I fear that people who give up having children or (rather) long-term relationships to "save the planet" are digging a hole for themselves. I mean... isn't this a bit too tough, brutal even? Only a handful of us probably really succeed in not being a social animal. Or, not requiring any meaningful physical closeness.
I can’t speak for others, but I do know that I thought I could survive without others. I was completely mistaken and totally unaware of myself.
I’m introverted and well-suited to long stints of being alone, but ultimately that is nothing compared to a lifetime of being alone.
When I meet people who can’t articulate why they don’t want kids or a community or whatever, I worry they’re just as clueless as I was.
As with anything, I try to remind myself that I’m not an exception. The standard American diet tends to cause illness and disease faster than a whole food, plant based diet for example. I am not an exception to that rule; if I eat that way, I will suffer too. I’m not special. When humans are alone, they tend to die earlier and lead a lower quality of life (particularly later in life though, with evidence of higher quality earlier in life). I’m not an exception, in any case. We all want to believe we’re exceptions.
Note: Just skimming through the research and living a socially isolated life has mortality outcomes comparable to being obese. That’s incredible.
People saying they're lonely doesn't typically result in others being able to do something about it though. I mean, certainly more empathy is needed towards people who feel that they need more intimacy. The other side of the coin is getting people to desire them though.
I'm not sure I am understanding. I am not having kids with my fiancée because the world currently feels like a shithole that I myself would not want to be born into.
We're still at the feudalism stage sprinkled with iPhones/Technology.
I am just not understanding how that choice means I am dooming myself with less.. intimacy? I don't follow. Explain please - (Genuinely curious not trying to argue)
I don't think the data they have is really as compelling as they think. It's self-reported from the National Opinion Research Center mostly. The trouble with self-reporting on things like sex is that (a) people lie about sex a lot and (b) social attitudes determine in what way people lie about sex.
If you watch a sitcom from the 90s or early noughties, the idea that someone mightn't have had sex for _a few months_ is a funny, funny joke, as opposed to, well, just normal variation. I think the idea that not having sex all the time is a problem is a significantly smaller part of the culture these days, and thus people will feel the need to exaggerate less.
This "article" is an example of highly motivated reasoning. The first potential cause that he proposes of this "decades long 'phenomenon'" (yes, I'm doubing up on air quotes, sue me) is social distancing.
Since the actual text is nonsense, I think it is reasonable to substitute it with the subtext, "Men aren't men and haven't been since 1950, and it's because of the democrats". He's free to write an article about this, I suppose, but its definitely not "signal", as the mission statement of HN demands.
yeah, the whole "affirmative consent is too difficult for men these days" angle seems like projection from someone upset that consent is necessary for sex
Just want to point out two things when it comes towards viewing the 'recent' past in terms of 'manly men'.
1) Smoking increase testosterone levels in men [0]. As smoking levels have dropped, it is resonable to conclude that testosterone levels have too. It will be interesting to see the results of vaping on testosterone levels.
2) Obesity lowers testosterone. As the obesity epidemic clocks onward, testosterone levels will continue to fall.
I'm not going to claim that lower testosterone levels are population wide, or that smoking should come back, or that obesity doesn't have other effects. But I am claiming that there is something there and that it's not all smoke and mirrors (pardon the pun).
Our perceptions that 'manly men' have gone away in living memory are ... maybe true.
I think gender equality may be a big culprit. Take the US for example: women will dominate the college educated class soon if they haven't already, and with that economic freedom comes more optionality in choosing a partner, there are more choices to be had and there will be a self selection of the most desirable men (typically college educated as it correlates to income).
This is not to blame women in any sense, it's a great thing that we're achieving a more equal society, but with a industrial well educated society more optionality with partners will lead to less sex imo.
Most men don't care about how much a woman makes. It might be a nice thing to have, but it's surely not a requirement. All other things equal, a rich woman has less options than a poor woman, because women typically don't want to settle for a guy who makes less money than them. Women date up or equal to them in regards to status and wealth and, of course, there are exceptions like everything in life.
You are forgetting the strong anti-male sentiment throughout the education system. Toxic masculinity this, male privilege that.
Women get graduated thinking that investing your time in your own family and kids is slavery, but living paycheck-to-paycheck in a rented condo, ready to be laid off on a whim is true freedom.
Yes, it is quite paradoxical. They argue for equality but then you become the very thing that oppresses you. I would have wished for an overall increase in freedom.
Just to nitpick, it sounds like you mean "women in the workforce" and not (broader term) "gender equality" as being the reason for the decrease in sex.
It should be fair to say that careerism has resulted in less free time for family and less time for chores which also puts a damper on the bedroom when everyone argues over all the work that has to get done.
The article doesn't really mention if the numbers are related to sexual partners or number of times the deed is performed. Many years ago, I remember my friend having "encounters" with many different women usually lasting one night. While I had only a few partners, but had much higher deeds.
I've noticed "the youth" in general are kind of like my friend. Not into settling down, but rather going for the variety. However, it takes a lot to hook up, even with apps like Tinder. Hence I think people are having less sex.
I’m the same. I’ve had a large volume of sex but only with 3 women. Obviously I have a libido, but it gets overridden often by “this person is awful and I don’t want to bang them” as well as good old social anxiety/the tism.
I think for the majority of guys, the rigmarole around getting hookups was always a delicate calculus involving tradeoffs in money and time, for an uncertain payoff: a good lay if you’re lucky and bragging rights.
Now the economy is tighter and society has made bragging about conquests a bit less acceptable, so I think our pattern of just having deep (and free) sex with a loving partner is much more appealing.
"Ctrl-F Marriage" gives no results. Surely decrease in marriages is the biggest driver. It's a lot easier to have sex with someone if you live with them. A straight person isn't going to find multiple new partners to sleep with per week and even if you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, unless you are cohabitating you probably only see them a few days per week.
The median American has ~5 sexual partners. So unless they're having a lot of sex with those partners when they're dating, marriage is still the biggest driver. I would bet the median person has had sex more often with their spouse than with all other partners combined.
Perhaps because the stereotype is wrong? Or rather, it depends on the relationship you have with your partner. Intimacy will mirror the rest of your relationship.
Isn't this an expected outcome of the real estate squeeze? I read once women don't typically have children unless circumstances are right and they aren't for most of us regular folk. Of course there is a difference between making children and sex but it's not a huge jump.
Housing and material wealth keeps coming up but we’ve survived and thrived after a good chunk of Europe was razed, critical infrastructure missing and entire countries needing to be rebuilt. Peoples wants and needs weren’t that different from ours, we just have more of them, but we desire them as much as any period of time before us.
We don’t, unfortunately, have many first hand accounts of how people survived during these times.
I do remember a poignant scene in Saving Private Ryan as Tom Hanks and the squad are moving through a shelled European city. I think it’s in France, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen the film.
In that scene they come across a mother and daughter living in an apartment, with no real hope of a better life as most of the city has been bombed. They invite themselves in for tea. A young Private catches the eye of the daughter, and vice versa. Tom Hanks, the mother, and rest of the squad pretend that they’re having tea and talking and laughing while the two young people go to a different room (subtext being to have a discussion of their own). Tom Hanks looks at the mother and gives her a warm smile. Everyone has a stupid-grin look on their face, acting ignorant. The scene, out of place though it may be, acknowledges the needs of young people, and that older generations sometimes literally have to play a part, and move out of the way and let the young people do what they desire to do and to not strip them of or take away their opportunities.
Cool? If you're not making a baby, sex is mostly a meaningless waste of time. Would rather be focused on a productive pursuit, as opposed to how I can get someone to squish their body against my body for endorphins.
I mean, when you get down to it, if the point of sex is 'cuz it feels good', why not just take drugs, or skydive, or eat an entire pepperoni pizza? Less chance of disease, you don't have to make yourself attractive, you can have it any time you want. If we could eliminate the sex drive, imagine how much less strife there'd be in the world, how much less consumerism. How much more of our time could be spent bettering ourselves and the world without the object of mating. Imagine how much psychological and physical damage has been caused around the world due to shame or abuse surrounding sex. Sex might be one of the worst motivating principles of humanity. Maybe it's time for us to evolve past it.
I am not sure how you can compare eating a pepperoni pizza and sex, but anyway, sex is not always about pleasuring yourself. It can be an intimate moment you share with someone you love. You can give pleasure too. It’s definitely not a waste of time.
You don't seem to understand what it's fore. It isn't just for procreation, or for 'endorphins', as you say. Interpersonal connection is important. Closeness with another person.
Pull the foil off your windows, go outside, and make a connection with another human. It's good for you.
Yep, to the extent the content was hard to discern. I am unclear what point the article is even trying to make.
The second paragraph was eye-watering:
> Say what you want about old people but they've merited the historical "Baby Boom" through sheer sexual prowess
The "Baby Boomers" were the product of the baby boom, not the instigators of it. The ones having the baby boom sex were their parents, the "Greatest Generation", who are now almost all dead.
> Now generations have to be named after backside alphabet letters cause everyone is focusing on their careers.
I assume this is a reference to "Generation Alpha". In what sense is Greek a "backside alphabet"? More confusingly, are they claiming a lack of sex has something to do with running out of Roman alphabet characters? I'm pretty sure no amount of procreation will make more letters.
Yeah this was insufferable. I can only hope it was upvoted to talk about the subject and not for what the author actually said (the one time I'm glad for this bad habit of HN's).
A lot of sex is not that great and therefore any overall reduction of sex may be a good thing, depending on which kind of sex we're having less of. Maybe a lot more married women are not having sex with their husbands, which traditionally was not always an option. Maybe young people are rushing less into big relationships, and so without a steady partner regular opportunities for sex are reduced while at the same time more bad relationships (and marriages) are avoided. Maybe people are engaging more in non-intercourse sexual activity now that access to information about kinks and fetishes is universal.
I say, let's stop stressing over the quantity of sex and instead focus on the quality of sex. We should want people to find partners where they can have open communication, and where they have similar desires and where they can share in enthusiastic consent. But this idea that "more penis in vagina = good" doesn't hold up to any scrutiny.
For people with enough free time and no kids this might be the case, but I think once sex happens less than once a week it does become a quantity/intimacy problem in couples.
I agree, the idea that we should focus on numbers isn't necessarily good. What I care about more is people are having sex and are enjoying it with their partners. Having lots of sex is great, but blindly jabbing holes with a penis doesn't mean anything spectacular or have any existential meaning. Are people have consensual sex in ways that they want and enjoy with the people they enjoy it with? Is it with the same person over and over or with a different partner every week? Does it matter?
It's not just sex that is decreasing though, it's all forms of physical contact. Social interactions are decreasing in real life, so it's deeper than what your reply suggests.
> We should want people to find partners
> where they have similar desires and where they can share in enthusiastic consent
Why?
This just all reads from a somewhat monogamous point of view when that’s not the point of the research. Quality is important but their is a significant amount of people in most western countries that wouldn’t define quality sex how you just did.
Wonder if this is related to the lack of personal relationships in general, especially friendships. There is an epidemic of loneliness in the world. So many ways to communicate and all we can do is post memes and upvote influencers.
I am happily married but have zero friends. I met my wife through my friend group in college. If I heaven forbid got a divorce tomorrow, not sure where I would meet someone new. Guess I would have to try online dating. Would things get strange if I hit it off with someone and she asked to meet my friends and I said I have none?
Humanity is going through a very real loss of social interaction and replacing it with doom scrolling, porn and endless streaming options. I think social media is one aspect of this but specifically pay per click advertising is the root and is also the driver of our political division. It has become so adept at capturing our attention we have abandoned living.
Edit:
Remote work absolutely compounds this and while it makes it easier to manage personal chores and family it absolutely removes all social interaction and the daily experience of just having a normal in person conversation. Working remotely my coworkers are just names on a zoom call in a 30 minute standup. Have created mental blocks now where I wonder how I could handle the kids and chores while working in an office but millions of people do it every day.
"""
The Screen and the Job have displaced almost everything else is our lives. Loneliness is just a primary symptom.
The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions. This manifests itself in things like SitComs on TV (just a bunch of friends or family hanging out) or Social Media on phones. It’s very easy to fill the social needs of right now with a Screen. But under even a minuscule amount of self reflection these are revealed as hollow substitutes for real human interaction.
The Job has completely taken over as a driving force in evaluating choices. The average person has to consider all options in the light of both the current employer and the specter of tomorrow’s. Moving across the country for a high paying job? Great! Moving to be closer to friends? That’s a career killer.
No wonder we are lonely. We make choices in the short term that optimize happiness, often at the expense of our relationships. Ghosting is not just for dates now. Then turn around and make choices in the long term that optimize employability at the expense of all else.
"""
> Ghosting is not just for dates now. Then turn around and make choices in the long term that optimize employability at the expense of all else.
This resonates with me (on both receiving and dealing ends). The lack of physical immediacy that IRL communities offer means it's easier to let relationships die off.
One way to combat this that I've taken: Whenever I have a fond memory of someone I don't talk to as much as you used to, drop them a line. Send an email/DM, check-up on them, maybe share the memory. Then, have a call to action. If they're in your vicinity, invite them for a pint/warm beverage.
If I don't have the courage or time at the moment, I make a calendar event in the near future.
The key is to treat it as something important. Even if catching up doesn't mean you'll be meeting up every weekend or have a lively chat, you've reduced the friction of starting up a conversation then next time you feel like reaching out.
The major discovery I made is that in every single case, no matter how long its been, I've never regretted this. Things have never been weird or awkward between friends. After I finished my master's degree, I realised there was a host of friends I'd left behind for over 3 years while I focused on my studies. My fear was that the ship had sailed with them, that they had moved on. I was so crazy wrong.
With real connections, every time you pick up the phone, you just pick up where you left off.
I saw them "virtually" for the first 4 years of my career because I was the one who left, but then the pandemic happened. Lived with my parents for the first two years of it so I'd have someone to talk to, but the fully remote work life either changed me or gave me new perspective.
Maybe it was going into the pandemic having just turned 27 and spending the previous year having a blast and coming out of it having the "almost 30" anxiety, but after the vaccines I started seeing friends regularly I hadn't seen in years. Eventually decided to just stay back. My employer had an office up here so I "transferred" even though I'm still by and large a remote employee.
I stayed inside playing video games for a number of reasons as my primary hobby during the first few years out of college. It was mainly me being depressed about not having any physically local friends, unfounded health anxiety, etc. Either way, 2019 (age 26) felt like a new dawn. I started making drastically more money, I started travelling - sometimes alone and sometimes with friends, etc. Started going to meetups. Then the damn pandemic. Next two years locked inside. Then I started regretting all those weekends spent inside.
So I got an apartment with an old college buddy around a dozen or more friends and am finally having a good time again. Not going to use video games as a replacement for a real social life. I'll keep playing them with remote friends, but it's a supplement to a healthy social life, rather than the only outlet.
Well, not entirely. I moved to be able to have a family (more child-friendly & car-friendly environment) and found a better job.
But then I realize I'm extremely privileged as a programmer and that most people don't have that choice (and even for me, the choices are limited, NYC > London > Zürich > Ljubljana with each step at least 2x difference in compensation)
Can I ask what Ljubljana is doing on that list? Every Slovene dev I met was driving 2h/day to work in Austria at a 50k/year job, so the local market must be really depressing if that's what they're willing to go through.
Low salary and miserably low bonuses aren’t the only issues; others are high taxes and poor healthcare (no private insurance).
Though from a local perspective even a “modest” salary of 2500€/month net enables an average quality of life, which is actually very high compared to other European countries (provided you own property, which many people do).
Interestingly Ljubljana is on my shortlist of livable cities. I didn't mention it in my original comment but car-dependent suburban design patterns also increase isolation, I think. When I lived in a flat in the middle of Dublin I became friends with several of my neighbours. Where I am now (which is admittedly countryside, not suburban) not so much.
Great insight! Another thing I came to realise is that current "social" media is extremely de-personalized (lack of a better term): back in the 80s and 90s, I participated in many public online places (I have always been shy in person). Those places (irc channels, WBS.net, ICQ, BBSs) were actually very social in that you actually made friendships. I travelled half the country after being invited to a Linux User Group!
Nowadays must public "social" media interactions do not promote that sort of affinity. Like, I'm replying to you... but not really, I'm just replying to your comment in this page. It is very rare to establish even a loose relationship with people in today's online pages.
And it doesn't have to be super close. I still have 2 acquaintances I made in the 90s, one is a girl that we happened to stumble upon in WBS chat, we were from different countries so it was exciting to chat. We just say hi from time to time.
The second is a person in Norway with which we shared metal music joy. We met after we both signed a "guest book" , shared Live Messenger accounts and sporadically chatted.
Even a cursory view of subreddits like /suicidewatch were people are supposed to be close, you read a lot of comments like "I care for you friend" which are hollow.
Small dedicated communities where people know each other by (user)name are still around, but you have to hunt a little more.
The bigger issue is seemingly any community made up of nice people eventually pushes them all out when identity politics cry-bullies show up. It's happened to multiple communities I've been part of.
Especially with BBSs there was a lot broader focus than on the thing they were formally about. For years I was active on a retrogaming forum. The forum of course had topic areas related to retro gaming, but more than half of them had nothing to do with that. We had movies, video games, quizzes, music, off-topic and probably a bunch more that I cannot remember. I think that led to people to actually form a community rather than only interacting on a narrow subject where you are supposed to stay on topic. I learned so much random stuff about people there. There of course were get togethers every other year or so. I think things have gotten too focused and purpose-driven. Seems like a continuation of a general trend in society
> I think things have gotten to focused and purpose-driven.
If you are looking at something like a subreddit, yeah, it's pretty focussed. On other hand, sites that have their own forums, despite often nominally being as focussed or more than a single subreddit in terms of the nature of the community, are often open in the same way BBS’s were, because they can have multiple forums tied to the same community. Consider r/rpg vs. https://www.rpg.net for instance.
Those interactions moved to discord (and telegram, although that's second-hand info).
I fully understand what you describe, and once I realized the truly abysmal return on time spent I cut my time on public social media by ~100x. It's just not worth it beyond an occasional comment.
"The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions." this is very true and the most terrifying part is I see it in my kids, addicted to their video games. They play online games with their friends and actively communicate but I when I tell them no games today they have lost the ability to entertain themselves. They just kind of hang around hoping I am going to let them play. Its pretty sad and I working on figuring it out but also trapped in my own screen working 9 - 10 hours a day.
I (along with many others) have been saying it for a while; there just isn't the same infrastructure for physical community as their once was. The church, the mall, the rotary club... these were bumping hot beds of socialisation.
I'm the last person to denigrate the importance of online communities, most of my closest friends don't live in my city. There is, however, a very real and important role for communities tied to your geography.
For one, the "self-sorting" effect is less exaggerated in IRL communities. Sharing a space with people, not because you are similar, but because you live near by and perhaps share the same interests, anchors you to your physical reality. Now, that comes with hardy cons as well as pros (especially if you are like to be discriminated against), but the cons of aggressively self-sorting online are pernicious as well.
If this resonates with you, I have a humble suggestion. If you can mentally/physically afford it, join _any_ IRL community. Volunteering is a good way to do this, organised sports, join a amateur radio club, go to a hackerspace meet-up. If you're in NA and most places in the EU, COVID restrictions might make this more possible than you think.
All of this so much. My problem though is that I just don't know which IRL community to join. I've tried a few, it was not for me. Our hackerspace is heavily into identity politics, which I'm not. So I end up reading books, which is fine too I guess. I'm just not really part of society.
I’m also going through this and there are a lot of (weird) spaces out there, latest example: archery club. I’m currently looking into what it takes to break into 24h of Lemons which is dirt cheap amateur car racing and partying with nerds who like cars.
> Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is a 2000 nonfiction book by Robert D. Putnam. It was developed from his 1995 essay entitled "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital". Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that this undermines the active civil engagement which a strong democracy requires from its citizens.
Are you sure this is entirely the modern lifestyle's fault? When I look deeply into my past I realize I messed up high school and college a bit socially (for various reasons) and that's the time most people acquire their best friends. I have 1-2 good friends but I'm pretty sure it's on me its not more than that.
Perhaps you went through something similar?
The real annoying thing is making friends after mid 30s is very difficult. I am very choosy about who I want to meet because I'm a parent and my time is valuable and I put up with less bullshit than when I was young. Alas, all "older" folk are like me - so we barely try to create friendships.
Its probably my fault. Once I had kids I completely lost the ability to manage them and a social life. I felt bad just leaving my wife to go hang out with friends and then as they got older I have replaced IRL friends with doom scrolling. Definitely a mental thing I need to fix. I did delete twitter the other day so that's one small step :)
I am not at the dumb phone point yet, really just for the maps feature on smart phones. Even typing that out make me realize how pervasive technology is. I don't know how to navigate anywhere without my phone because I never had to learn because I could always rely on the voice in the phone to tell me. I am going out to buy a little table this weekend to keep my phone on in the entry way. Phone lives there when my kids and wife are awake. There is nothing happening online that wont be there after they are asleep. The internet is not going anywhere.
I'm a parent of a 2.5yo. What I've learned from other parents around me is to make _sure_ both parents maintain their social lives. I strongly encourage my spouse to call a friend and get out the house at least once every couple weeks, and then I do the same.
It's so easy to forget that relationships require maintenance and having them keeps us both sane - especially when things get hard.
I don’t know… I had really, really good friends in high school and college… but then after I graduated, we all just drifted apart. We moved to different places, got married, had kids… the things that brought us together during college weren’t there anymore.
I wonder what solution autocratic centralized societies will leverage so as not to collapse? Import populations ala US, or somehow "motivate" locals to reproduce?
Singapore and Japan have been unsuccessful at getting people to voluntarily engage in producing larger families.
They may have to do some serious "motivation". Because not just is having and raising kids a big burden, they also force a lifestyle change a lot. Especially if you do not want to shove them off to daycare.
We're nineteen years into the project of digitally reifying human relationships - one that's snowballing into an unmitigated catastrophe.
Social media circa 2003 began as a codification of existing human relationships. One's first digital friends records generally were a product of social relations, but as the marginal cost of digital reproduction tends toward zero, so did the cost of digital records of friendship untethered from the supervenience of social reality.
The digitization of friendship as a signifier of the friendship replaced the latter forming a simulacrum - the signifier replaced the signified. “the simulacrum is never that which conceals truth – it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.”[1] It's this very digital simulacrum completely detatched from social reality that leads to "Would things get strange if I hit it off with someone and she asked to meet my friends and I said I have none?"
While a reflexive, "log off. go outside. touch grass. meet people," is easy to respond with, it ignores the real problem with the magnitude of the problem: there are few people doing the same - the world's social energy is hoovered up and mediated by the systems of digital social capitalization. There isn't a surplus left to interact with.
What's even worse is that offline interactions themselves are mediated by the online. The process of initiating friendships itself has been digitally systematized either implicitly by digital chance encounters or explicitly in the form of friend finding apps. The online world gatekeeps the offline world. The world has undergone a psychic migration and the former world is in ruins. Truly "we have abandoned living."
Very insightful comment... however, I'd argue that there are still people out there that aren't social media users, and you can find these communities and regain this as an individual, even though it is massively less available than it once was
I agree that those communities exist, but a person who has been digitally domesticated faces not only a greater challenge finding them, but also of in integrating with them. Digital domestication represents not only cultural gap, but a social gap in skills, perception, norms, and values that makes social integration a multifaceted issue. I think we both agree the benefits associated with doing so while being aware of the unique challenges. Live and drink, friend.
"The digitization of friendship as a signifier of the friendship replaced the latter forming a simulacrum - the signifier replaced the signified". We've moved our lives onchain and exchanged real connections for a social media nft.
I'm happy to announce that I'm minting my social relations as non-fungible tokens. Get in early for the best relationship airdrops. Lucky participants may even be able to snap a mom, dad, or poppop token.
I think remote work has an enormous effect on this. I've been working remotely for over 20 years and this is one of the biggest reasons I've remained in major cities throughout. Don't get me wrong, I _love_ the city, but more importantly, without the city, I would have almost no in-person social life. I wouldn't have met my wife, or all the friends I've made over the years - most of whom don't really know what I do for a living.
I've found that I prefer this life - where I choose my friends rather than having acquaintances thrust upon me by my occupation, as they were in school.
I'm hoping that with a shift to significantly more remote work, the options open up for more ways to meet people outside of work - which is seriously one of the _worst_ ways to meet people; Especially in a romantic sense.
It's become more of our own responsibility to meet people. That can be hard. But it also means that we can be more selective about the kind of people we meet. Don't like talking about work? Don't meet people who do what you do. Don't like to drink? Find meet-ups where alcohol isn't the main event. Love [whatever]? Find [whatever]. Cities tend to be great for this.
I have schizotypal personality disorder, so I love solitude 90% of the time, but even I'm starting to miss having friends. I watch shows like Derry Girls or Detectorists and I'm thinking damn I know my childhood and teenage friends were just "friendships of convenience", but I miss being part of a group or posse with "no holds barred" friendships. The relationships with colleagues at work aren't the same... always seem to have some kind of "wall"; I guess it's because the friendship going badly will have a detrimental impact at work and you have to interact with these people every day whether you want to or not.
It's crazy how hard it is to not only make friends, but keep them. My wife and I meet another couple that even have kids the same age as ours. We get along very well, they like us and we like them. We managed to have dinner once and we see each other occasionally at outings or birthdays. We have fun each time, but then we go months in-between without any communication. It's like there's some kind of threshold or tolerance preventing us from making it a more permanent bond.
EDIT: after thinking on it a little bit, I can't remember my parents nor friend's parents having friendships either. That makes me second-guess the technological influences on loneliness. I'm sure technology is making it worse, but I don't think we can point at it and say "this is the cause" because the loneliness epidemic seems to have started even before my generation.
> I guess it's because the friendship going badly will have a detrimental impact at work and you have to interact with these people every day whether you want to or not.
The book Impro characterizes friendship as a relationship in which one can freely and safely play "status games" without any actual stakes or chance of status-shifts. If that's true, then it's definitely more challenging to have a "real" friendship with a co-worker.
[EDIT]
> EDIT: after thinking on it a little bit, I can't remember my parents nor friend's parents having friendships either. That makes me second-guess the technological influences on loneliness. I'm sure technology is making it worse, but I don't think we can point at it and say "this is the cause" because the loneliness epidemic seems to have started even before my generation.
Bowling Alone[1] was published in 2000 and is an expansion of a 1995 essay, which makes it about 27 years old now. It was not observing a new trend, but one that had been going on for decades, when it was published.
The harsh reality is that around 30% of men are completely unfuckable. They only got action because women needed to be married because they couldn’t support themselves. Ugly men have 0 value in the dating market beyond money.
Spoken like a true man. Clearly you have no idea the additional things women have to do on a day to day basis to merely appear as if they are putting in "no effort"
To those struggling with online dating: stop and get out in the real world. It's easier, trust me. Don't believe the people who are trying to tell you otherwise. Not only you don't need these apps, they are likely the reason you're not getting much sex.
Recently, I tried watching How I met your father. Felt like an ad for a certain online dating service. It was absolutely horrible in every conceivable way. Don't surrender to those people.
I appreciate my experiences are wildly different from a straight person's, but I would be very careful in advertising 'real world dating' as just easier. Often I've seen guys (straight and gay) who struggle with dating do so because their mental health is not in the right state (desperation is not sexy gents). People should focus on sorting that first (exercise, sleep, eating properly etc) before going out on the dating scene.
What I would say people should be careful about with apps is to always consider that the motivations of the business do not necessarily align with yours. Tinder wants you to engage with the app as much as possible to drive revenue, they don't want you find the love of your life because then the revenue stream stops. I see it like alcohol though, a little bit of alcohol is a great social lubricant, too much ends in misery.
Couldn't agree more on the "go into the real world" point. It's insane to me, I can be on a dating app swiping through tens or even hundreds of profiles and never get a match. Yet I'm almost guaranteed that if I try to strike up a conversation a couple of times out & about, it only takes me a handful to get to a compelling interaction.
Maybe it’s because all these dating apps emphasize short term or hookup relationships. Aka little to zero substance outcomes that will keep you coming back (and hopefully paying!).
A lot of people want to have actual relationships, but those types of people are rare on dating sites. IMO you meet those people by going out and doing activities. If you happen to meet someone there chances are it will go better than being number x match on the list of 30 matches this week.
I’m just speaking as a man and as a engineer who worked on a dating app. It is a numbers game and one that most men will not place anywhere close to the top.
And from my anecdotal experience talking to women who worked on the app as well as just friends, they seem to view these apps as entertainment more than anything serious.
Just find a irl hobby and join groups that do those things. It will be slower but if your goal is a meaningful relationship then that’s your best shot imo.
I think the wide spread use of opioids has some to do with it too.(Mouse Utopia) Definitely kills your sex drive.. Low testosterone kills it. Getting old.. Partner not keeping up their physique.. Chronic pain.. Lots to do with it.. I still find the same attributes attractive as I did when I was 18, now being over 40/married/chronic pain/long term opioid use... it has degraded the pool of possibilities and who I would want to with also.. I've got kids.. Grandkids.. I've done my part for my genetic lineage. It's will continue on for generations to come. That's all it was meant to do anyways.. Now I'm just waiting to die. Trying not to suffer too much in the interim.
It's funny that the article starts with drawing the line to the "old days". It makes me think the true reason is basically people moving far away eventually - and it's by all means desirable. At the same time many aren't interested in starting a family, divorce rates are high anyway.
The article explores the negatives but maybe not enough on the potential positives.
Potential benefits:
1) Fewer forced relationships based on the need for physical gratification
2) better adjusted next generation of kids as a result of fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer divorces
3) lower birth rate (solve over-population) related issues
Honestly lack of in person time with anyone to meet kills it for me. Online dating sucks and I’m a reasonably attractive 28yo guy it just feels entirely artificial and chemistry over text is non existent for me.
I had a bad relationship that I was finally over in 2019 and then the pandemic hit so online was really the only option which meant I wasn’t picking anyone up for sex. I recently went to California for a vacation and within the first day of being around people I had a date lined up.
I think it’s the same for a lot of guys at least, no in person time means no sex because online dating is ridiculously uncomfortable/unnatural.
Courtship has been out of fashion for years, so it's not much of a surprise that sex has followed suit. Once upon a time before the age of the internet, people had a limited amount of interests to pursue, popular culture was limited to 4 TV channels and about 10 radio stations, and they kept in mind the fact that being in a relationship requires both parties to find mutual interests to enjoy together. You shouldn't expect sex from another person if you can't even figure out how to be friends with them, and you shouldn't HAVE sex with them if you don't enjoy each other's company on a regular basis.
Nowadays we have funkopop wielding weebs trying to find their perfect waifu while girls are obsessing over Korean boy bands who barely speak their own language. There's no interest overlap. People don't even try.
People are simultaneously too picky and not picky enough. I know a woman who will date a man across the country but won't date one who is under 5'11" or over 6'3". The reasoning? She's 5'8" and wants to be able to wear heels.
And while I will never set foot in a church again unless it's for a wedding or funeral, denominational association did a decent job of figuring out what the foundations of people's morality and culture is. It's hard for a Southern Baptist to understand the whats and whys of Roman Catholicism, for example. By the same token, part of the reason that we've culturally evolved rites of inclusion is so that people feel included... and we are now abandoning them because it's easy to sit in a cave staring at a tiny screen while ordering from doordash and amazon than it is to deal with our fellow humans.
This is a good thing. This is largely driven by people having more options and more things to do with their time. People have an endless array of video games and netflix shows, online political debates, they can learn to play the violin from youtube videos.
This is also partly driven by the destigmatization of being single, and the acceptance of asexuality (temporary or permanent). People aren't pressured into sex if they don't want it, but it's still available if they someday do.
When I started messing around (the 90s), all my partners were on the pill since high school and HPV wasn't even in their vocabulary.
We had access to porn on VHS and for us nerds via BBSes/dialup, if anything that just increased the drive to find the real thing. You don't lose interest in eating your dinner just because you saw pictures of it on the menu when ordering. Especially when it's still all totally new experiences and hormones are raging.
But what was also true in the 90s was men still largely controlled access to resources. That alone puts significant pressure on women to subject themselves to men, just to have people to drive them around and take them out to dinner or on vacations, or pay the rent in a first apartment. Combine that with a seemingly total ignorance of facts like practically all cervical cancers are caused by HPV, and casual sex can easily be common.
Today it's very different. Just the other day I read an article about GEICO being sued for their insured negligently giving a woman HPV during car sex [0]. I have the impression that women are simply better educated and have better options today, and that's A Good Thing.
Having said that though, the last time I tried online dating, which was before it all pivoted to mobile, the few dates I went on were very obviously women seeking free dinners. So at least within my age group, things seemed to still be more of the same in that regard.
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