So you find yourself in this situation where everyone is so nice and polite, so sophisticated and accepting, so inclusive, but for some reason nobody gives a single ** about having a romantic relationship with you. How’s that possible? Well it’s possible because it’s all fake. Deep inside, in our intimacy and our inner circles, we’re the same as we were a thousand years ago. The apps simply make it obvious and pull it to the surface.

Part of this is also because apps like tinder put the focus so much on looks too, whereas meeting people in other places allow other attributes to shine. So many young people are now spending a lot of time at the gym to compete in this new arms race.

Let's not forget today's obesity rates on the other end either, a lot more people are considered completely unattractive by their potential mates than in decades past.

(Pretty good, slightly cringey, video on how apps use the language of capitalism https://youtube.com/watch?v=-bcKRd_lfAg )

On a broader note, maybe dating was never sustainable in the first place. The concept of dating is, for the most part, a 20th century invention. In any earlier time, it would have been considered low-key prostitution. As a man, the expectation that I pay for anything regardless of how well I know the other person or how the date goes always felt kinda dirty. Which is why I stopped doing that a long time ago, even before I quit dating all together. Dating can't be untangled from the inertia of technology, and it was inevitable that dating just wouldn't scale well.

We're never going back to some hypothetical time where dating actually worked, but I do think there are pathways that can at least lead to better tradeoffs:

1. Far more people should be open to making acquaintances offline and be willing to introduce friends they think would be compatible.

2. We need to drop the pretense that the only places left for men and women to meet each other after college is at bars, and any context outside of that would be harassment.

3. Everyone is unique, but people need to consider whether their idiosyncrasies are ultimately working against them. As far as the United States is concerned, we've gone way too far in the direction of everybody thinking they can get everything their way, yet few actually do. For instance, if you're perpetually single but you're turning down people for liking Starbucks, maybe you should rethink whether you're the fool for not just accepting the coffee others like.

4. Call a spade a spade and just start calling all dating apps "hookup" apps, because that's what they're best suited for. We should reject the idea that there isn't something inherently salacious about apps like Tinder, and that attitude needs to be a part of the culture.

She still gets on them occasionally, because there's no alternative now.

Guys in the post-#metoo era just won't approach a girl at a bar the way they used to.

If I had to take a (very uneducated) guess I'd say as a society we're currently experiencing an epidemic of unhappiness, especially amongst young people, and what the article describes is just one of many symptoms.

Have you seen these "conventionally unattractive" men that you describe succeed in a totally open and free dating market as young 20-somethings, or are there extenuating circumstances (early 30s, string of failed relationships, etc.). I will fully admit that you are observing something I am not observing and that my rationale must be flawed if you're witnessing 5'4" nerdy, goofy men lacking in charisma and stature experience consistent success in real life dating between 18-26. Of those I saw who did achieve some success, I've witnessed a lot of them get cheated on by their "girlfriends", but I haven't witnessed a lot of them experience free-market success and dating freedom of choice, at least not compared to the 6' high-power athletes I know.

I disagree with you on a few other counts here, but most strongly with the statement "dating will emerge naturally as you get better at making friends". That is patently false. Dating will emerge naturally as the peer-relative superior status of your reproductive and companionship potential becomes obvious. Dating is not a process by which to make friends, it is a process to determine who will have a chance at impregnating whom. "Getting better at making friends" will net you a fraction of the returns that "getting muscles that show through a t-shirt" will, all other things being considered equal.

Overall, I do agree with you that men who fail on dating apps need to try different approaches in real life, though.

There are low effort dating apps to get laid. To get laid, people don't want to put in a lot of effort. To get laid with a young guy, gramma Does have to put in a lot of effort, and it probably helps if her young lay is flipped out on E at an illegal underground club in London, as opposed to sitting in an office on his break between presentations.

My wife and I met on a paid dating app. It took me a day's worth of hours to fill in my profile, and what my requirements are. For my match, I defined education level, minimal number of fluent languages and what they are, age requirements by race (some age faster, some slower), political views, religion, even the types of makeup they usually wear (none in my preference).

I got about 20 matches per week, and could only write my matches. There was no swipe, no "like" button. Only a text box. I went on a date with a phd student in english lit. I went on a date with a french-american doctor chick who graduated Stanford with an MD at 22. I messaged about 2 girls per week and always got conversation going, usually mutually deciding not to meet. I got messaged by about 2 girls per week, and always replied. I went on one date per week for 2 months and met my wife who speaks 4 languages, has a master's, and is 7 years younger than me. We did have some incompatible things, which were flagged in the match profile, but we decided those could be worked on and got married 6 years ago, 6 months after we met. The only photo she had on the app was the one she took for her passport.

But on this app I used, you would not only have to pay $25/month, it would be next to impossible to get a piece of ass and you'd have to invest hours in text and phone conversations before you met.

There are different tools for different things. This absolute crap article points out that you can't win a formula1 race in a uhaul, and calls automobiles bad. And it's blatantly obvious in their very first menopausal opening paragraph. The article is the bad app here, and that type of "reporting" is what is "soul-destroying" our society. Shame on them.

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.

Before that, we went out and met people in meat space. Often at bars, because as bad as that was, it still beat the dating apps of the day.

I think at this point people are getting paralyzed by an overabundance of choice in many cases, and the illusion of the possibility of infinite pickiness (coupled with the ability to pick out flaws before you ever encounter redeeming qualities in a person).

When you look at human history, for most of it, marriages were arranged. Then for the last few centuries, they were arrived at by "love" (aka, raging hormonal passions, and the occasional chemically altered decision making). Now, people are making this match making thing about finding the perfect person. May as well make it about finding a martian for how successful that's likely to be, by anyone who bothers to take a second to look at it.

Humans are messy. Two humans are messier than one. Relationships aren't about perfectly compatible people, they're about learning to work together despite the fact that you're going to have reason to clash on a regular, if not constant basis. And if that prospect is too exhausting, then yea, people should expect to be alone more. If THAT prospect is unacceptable, perhaps consider rebalancing your life to make room for basic human intimacy. There's no such thing as mustering 150% of your available resources.

I, personally, do not like the dystopia tech has built. I don't like 20 spam calls a day, ubiquitous tracking, insane "social media" or the fact that nitwits conduct witch hunts on the internet based on "facecrime." It sucks. Drugging yourself to put up with it seems to be standard operating procedure.

I wonder, if this is a dating app phenomenon, if there's anything that can be done thats healthier for our society. Banning the apps isn't the right way, but is there some means of adding balance?

Now, as a young man who has gone through counseling, I have begun to have success in dating within the last two years. I've gone on about 25 dates last year, more than my entire life put together before. I even had sex twice last year, which I had never had before. One time was horrible, but the other time was genuinely wonderful. I loved cuddling in eachother's arms and talking about what was deep and meaningful and lovely within our own lives.

I remember the feelings of worthlessness, looking at statistics from online dating websites and population studies, remembering the hundreds of women who weren't interested, comparing myself with other men who were genuinely horrible, cowardly, and lazy people being very successful sexually from a young age, speaking with friends who were girls who complained that their lives were hard because they hadn't had sex in so long (2 months). Add onto this, there is a stigma of being extra-broken or unclean or an 'incel' if you have these problems.

The reality is this: most of the dating advice, from various sources, given to young men now doesn't work. Young men are given few other options other than rehashed 'self improvement' lectures, dating-game philosophies from pua, or arranged marriages. It's no wonder to me why young men my age are buying into some crazy nutcase ideas like government-given girlfriends. The reality is that no other genuinely dating-helpful options are being given to young men.

What helped me was slowly loving my life whether or not there was a lady present, not really caring about what people I don't know think about me, and most importantly getting out more and interacting with more people. I am not sure that this would work as well for everyone I know though.

Dating is still extremely hard for many young men. Counselors need to be ready to deal with this as an increasing issue. Solutions and answers need to be found and given to young men rather than casting them out or patronizing them.