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Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• pavlov 11y ago
  But others lament the way the extreme casualness of sex in the age of Tinder leaves many women feeling de-valued. “It’s rare for a woman of our generation to meet a man who treats her like a priority instead of an option,” wrote Erica Gordon on the Gen Y Web site Elite Daily, in 2014. If a woman doesn't want to feel like an option, shouldn't she stay far away from Tinder? It's not like there isn't a million other ways for women to meet men, if she has the slightest inclination.
  • jandrese 11y ago
    A woman's value shouldn't be measured by what is between her legs. If you are trying to get a sense of value to your life via hookups, you're doing it all wrong.
    • CyberDildonics 11y ago
      What does that string of cliches have to do with the original post?
    • bithive123 11y ago
      By the same token if you are dating using an app intended for hooking up, it's silly to complain that most of the dating pool is only looking to hook up.
  • Zikes 11y ago
    Men face the same value issues as well, that door definitely swings both ways.
    • enraged_camel 11y ago
      Yep, I have several attractive female friends who keep multiple guys round as "options." The guys of course don't realize they're being led on and they believe they have a real shot at something more meaningful. Sex and sexuality are ultimately about power. People who have high sexual value can totally let that power get to their heads and start taking advantage of others. This isn't gender-specific, but simply the way the world works.
      • storgendibal 11y ago
        This. There is another double-standard at play that is often ignored. Women are just as capable (and willing) as men at keeping options, having backups, and upgrading to something better. A number of my female friends are constantly complaining about not being able to meet a guy who wants a relationship, and then continue to spend most of their dating energy on Tinder, while also keeping open several options constantly. This article is super one-sided and makes it sound like all these women in New York have no choice but to be on Tinder. Can't have it both ways.
        • mcantelon 11y ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy
    • pavlov 11y ago
      Absolutely. Anyone who doesn't want to feel like a commodity product that gets evaluated in two seconds should not be on Tinder. But I find it strange that the women are apparently such willing participants. If they don't want to get dick pics from the "fuckboys" (as the article calls them), why are they hanging out online with these people?
      • mycroft-holmes 11y ago
        People like to complain even when they create their own problems.
  • Yhippa 11y ago
    I have been thinking about why Tinder seems like a bad deal for my lady friends. It seems that women used to hold the power in online dating but for whatever reason Tinder has turned into a site that reduces the cost (time investment and biological risk) to sleep with strangers. It seems that as that's picked up the new norm is a "race to the bottom" for women who want traditional relationships.
    • bradford 11y ago
      You say that Tinder reduces the "time investment and biological risk" of [sex]. I'm not a Tinder user, how does it reduce the biological risk? wouldn't the risk of an STD be just as great, if not greater, than the status quo?
      • Yhippa 11y ago
        Just a theory of mine. I feel that the odds would be greater going to a bar and doing the usual pick up routine vs vetting them ahead of time.
        • dethstar 11y ago
          You really can't know though, unless it's explicitly stated in their profile which I doubt it's very common.
        • deleted 11y ago
          [deleted]
        • curiousjorge 11y ago
          there's no free lunch, if it reduces the cost of meeting strangers looking for cheap thrills, then it certainly must certainly raise the risks of contracting disease from the very people which it has allowed to freely enter and leave as they please.
        • fredkbloggs 11y ago
          The only barriers to entry are having a smartphone and being able to push a couple buttons and swipe. That's not creating an environment that's even remotely exclusive, and there's zero reason to believe the few people who are excluded by it are more likely than others to have an STI. And vetting them how, anyway? You might be able to find out whether someone is a felon, but I have no idea how I would (legally) find out whether someone has a transmissible STI. This seems like a product of some kind of cognitive bias.
  • rrss1122 11y ago
    Possibly, but presumably they would join Tinder because those other ways didn't produce results.
    • lqdc13 11y ago
      Other ways require more energy. Many people don't like answering questions about themselves or filling out a profile so they flock to the quick meet app. Honestly, I think it's completely their fault for expecting a long term relationship from Tinder.
      • pyre 11y ago
        Well, Tinder doesn't even position itself as a place to find long-term relationships, so trying to make it work in such a way is an uphill battle from the get go.
    • ljk 11y ago
      Not a Tinder user so I might be wrong, isn't Tinder used for a hookup app so people shouldn't really complain about how it's bad for dating?
  • Kenji 11y ago
    Not only that. The sense of entitlement is incredible. who treats her like a priority instead of an option Well I'm sorry but that's what humans are, options on legs. Be it on a job application or in dating. There's fierce competition, you gotta be good or at least better than your competition. This is the normal state of being, and nobody, not even girls (and especially not guys), is above it. If you want real, emotional bonding, get off tinder and fancy clubs. Such bonds can form in places you least expect them and it cannot be forced.
    • walterbell 11y ago
      > that's what humans are, options on legs Saved for future robot-training dataset, thanks.
      • Kenji 11y ago
        Hehe, I guess you just blew my cover. I-I can solve captchas though! Don't shut me down!
  • cJ0th 11y ago
    > If a woman doesn't want to feel like an option, shouldn't she stay far away from Tinder? Maybe but I think the problem is more general. It is not just women who get de-valued. Human relationships of all kinds suffer from a society that sees people more and more as means to an end thanks to the redundancy that social online networks of all kind enable. For example, it seems to me that people these days accept several private invitations that take place simultaneously only to decide last minute which of the available options they like best. I think this is rather sad. But then again I entered the world of grown ups not so long ago. Maybe society hasn't changed that much after all?
  • curiousjorge 11y ago
    contraception has empowered women on the same level as men, who traditionally always had the pick of the litter, still carry the artifacts of oppression, slut shaming, etc. it's not a stretch to say that contraception technology has directly catapulted women's rights and are becoming more equal to the male counterpart.
  • justboxing 11y ago
    > If a woman doesn't want to feel like an option, shouldn't she stay far away from Tinder? Yes she could, or better still, she could get Bumble, which is the female version of Tinder, where the women get to keep guys as options :) http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/02/bumble-is-exactly-like-tinder-except-girls-are-in-charge/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/02/bumble-is-exactly-like-tind...
    • mjevans 11y ago
      Reversing the sides of the table does not make the 'game' fair.
      • chongli 11y ago
        It doesn't really reverse the sides of the table though. The power will always be in the hands of those who are most attractive and with the least need for commitment.
    • drcross 11y ago
      >female version of Tinder. I think you have things very mixed up.
  • fezz 11y ago
    "The next best thing" You're either someone's option right now until the next better option comes along or you yourself are doing that to someone else. Tinder amplifies being "next best". You're never "the best" option and the best option for you becomes elusive. It's the uncanny valley of dating.
    • grehce 11y ago
      Sadly, I don't believe it is really about the "Next Best Thing" as much as it is about a reluctance for struggle. Real relationships take work and the newness in dating doesn't allow some of our uglier, vulnerable traits to surface. We opt for convenience over depth because investment in another person requires acknowledging the risk of a temporal imbalance in the relationship that most people today are extremely uncomfortable with -- to a point, where I believe some choose polyamorous relationships over monogamous ones because there is a perception of de-risking loss. Hopefully, Tinder will be a fad because even the most beautiful will age and by then maybe aspire for something more meaningful as the tedium of "dating" wears.
  • malandrew 11y ago
    Let's be honest here, feelings of being devalued have everything to do with putting capital ahead of personality. Capital comes in many forms and in the case of Tinder, from the heterosexual male perspective, the goal is to acquire sexual capital (i.e. "fuck hot chicks"). However, as someone said, the door swings both ways, but the way women devalue men is far more subtle. From the perspective of the heterosexual female, the goal is to acquire mating capital (i.e. "catch a husband or sugar daddy"). What's mating capital? It's a man who is an ideal mate: good genes and conditions to be a provider (good job/career or money/power). A guy being primarily interested in a woman because she has a great body and a pretty face is really no different than a woman being interested in a financially stable guy with a good job that is taller than her. The double standard in articles like the one posted is that somehow it's bad if heterosexual men are out to acquire sexual capital but somehow it's totally acceptable for women to seek out mating capital. How often do you see that it's perfectly acceptable for a women to reject a guy based on his height or the fact that he might be showing early signs of male pattern baldness. I'm tall and still have my hair, so I benefit from such "de-valuing", but I also recognize that for the same crap that guys get judged negatively for. I recently came out of a relationship where I was clearly not a good fit long term for my partner because we had different values, life goals and lifestyle preferences. For example, I'm poly and she was monogamous. I eventually persuaded her to date another guy, who ended up meeting her needs in all the ways I didn't. Yet she still preferred me because I "had my shit together" and was a better option when it comes to raising a child. Because of that she couldn't imagine being with the other guy. At the end of the day, heterosexual women treat men as options too. The difference is that the capital that heterosexual women seek in men needs to be far more "durable" value than that which heterosexual men seek in women.
• rjurney 11y ago
  This is why I use okcupid. People there actually want to get to know other people.
  • Navarr 11y ago
    Some. And some just want to have sex. That's the way it's always worked online.
    • LanceH 11y ago
      and in person.
    • hackinthebochs 11y ago
      The problem is that our access used to be constrained by proximity, and so there was a natural limit to the number of people we could reasonably entertain the notion of a relationship with. With apps like tinder come an unprecedented level of access. What happens to dating mores once it becomes the norm to have "access" to tens of thousands of people within an X mile radius? Considering how we judge worthiness of a partner is related to social factors and quantity of access (e.g. someone with access to many people like a college student is going to have higher standards), what will it look like when every potential partner is judged through the lens of the last 10 thousand tinder swipes? We've seen what modern media can do to self esteem, particularly in young women. What happens when we're all now literally competing with the nearest ten thousand most attractive people in your state? I predict that the effects these apps will have on self-esteem, dating, social values, and even the institution of marriage will be catastrophic.
      • Navarr 11y ago
        Blah at the institution of marriage. The institution of marriage hasn't had any sanctity for the last x years (divorce skyrocketing). Which is perhaps fine, a single partner for one's entire life isn't cut out for everyone. (It's cut out for me, though, and I am happily married). The "Tinder problem" does exist though, and perhaps it'll lead to a segregation of those who want something meaningful and those who don't. Not sure if that will be a good or a bad thing.
• meatysnapper 11y ago
  God I wish I was in NYC. The stories I've heard from buddies there! West coast scene is not like this at all, especially not in Man-Francisco or Man-Jose (unless you like men of course).
  • stared 11y ago
    This is very on spot: http://thecooperreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/NYCSFc10.png http://thecooperreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/NYCSFc... (from http://thecooperreview.com/difference-between-living-in-new-york-and-san-francisco/ http://thecooperreview.com/difference-between-living-in-new-...)
  • yarou 11y ago
    It's the same game, there are just different players and rules. Sometimes the best choice is to not play at all.
    • CyberDildonics 11y ago
      > Sometimes the best choice is to not play at all. You might be preaching to the choir here.
      • stephancoral 11y ago
        Relevant username? Do you work in the teledildonics space?
        • CyberDildonics 11y ago
          They are cheap knockoffs of CyberDildonics, don't buy into the second rate experience of teledildonics.
  • frame_perfect 11y ago
    Seriously. I flew out to NYC for a job interview. Was there for just 2 days and I got laid. I wasn't even trying at all, I was just there for an interview! And this was after a 2.5 year dry streak in SF. My god I want to go back.
• pekk 11y ago
  Speaking as a happily ugly old person who has never used Tinder: whether you are a man or a woman, it is your decision to date someone or not. Nobody is putting a gun to your head. When both sides get to say yea or nay without coercion, this is one situation which is actually symmetrical. So if you feel like you are getting a bad deal on the dating scene because you are hooking up with people you really don't like and your life is a constant churn, that should tell you that you are being too desperate. Put on the brakes. Let the people who are impatient, demanding and rude move along. Learn to live by yourself and to relate to people non-sexually. Then apply those skills to develop more meaningful relationships. Otherwise, you're just putting convenience first - then complaining that the result was optimized for convenience over other priorities. Other people you'd never think about can't even get any dates, and you're bitching that being non-selective doesn't give you all the results of being selective. This is a first-world problem for beautiful people with ample disposable income. In many parts of the world, including New York, you might be lucky if you can pick strawberries or make clothes for $2/hr to support a large family you didn't choose to have. Most people who ever existed had no option to participate in "hookup culture."
• deleted 11y ago
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• jokoon 11y ago
  The hardest part of making those websites work is attracting women on it, and it's not easy. Men are natural predators. In 2008/9 I used a french website "adopt a guy" (adopte un mec). It was really disruptive because it gave women much more powers. Men can only "charm" women, and women must "adopt" men if they want to talk to them. To be honest I was really surprised, it worked so much better. Women were more confident and it showed, I was having more discussions. Granted, I had to be patient, but the experience was much better. Obviously dating websites should not treat men and women equally.
  • static_noise 11y ago
    What you are saying is that not every human is created equal?
    • bilbo0s 11y ago
      Heh... I think it'd be more accurate to say that he feels that not every human is TREATED equally. Especially where sex and intimate relationships are concerned. When I was younger, a lot of guys wondered how so many really scummy guys could get lots and lots of beautiful women ??? I did too. After many years I've come to realize that... well... sex and intimate relationships just might work differently than polite society believes they do. There are probably entire industries built on exploiting the chasm between propriety and desire.
    • tomp 11y ago
      Obviously not, when it comes to sex. Men pay for sex, women get paid for sex. That's all you need to know about the demand and supply dynamics in the sexual "market" (which Tinder embodies).
      • dublinclontarf 11y ago
        > Men pay for sex, women get paid for sex Some.
        • 11y ago
• GuiA 11y ago
  For the most part, I find that most online social media just degrades human interaction. Twitter encourages short shallow quips, Facebook shows me my friends arguing angrily and pointlessly over random articles, dating apps encourage some of the behaviors described in the article. Heck, even HN encourages a certain kind of attitude that I don't find that great, all in all. I know that it's not black or white, and that you get out of these things what you put in them - but more often than not, those systems are designed in such a way to tap into primal human drives (the need for sex, validation, novelty, etc.) that makes it very hard to have constant good self discipline. As I've realized this over the past few months (a big factor was reading the biographies of some of my heroes, e.g. Dirac, Feynman, etc., and realizing that they spent a lot of their time working alone in their offices uninterrupted, and communicating with people either in real life over meals, walks, etc. or by postal mail), I've been trying to pull out of most technological communications; using text only for coordinating/logistics ("want to grab dinner tomorrow night?") and email for longer form communication. Then instead of dicking around on Reddit for an hour or chatting with people on Jabber, I go hang out in a local bookstore, read a book in a coffee shop, grab a beer (without my phone) alone at the local bar, go have a meal with a friend. I've had interesting encounters and great conversations with complete strangers; I was the first surprised, given that I'm not particularly gregarious and it's hard for me to strike up conversation with a stranger. But it turns out that there are plenty of people out there who will happily talk to you for a bit. I just recently moved to a new place, and have been thinking about how I can structure my living space to encourage good habits (e.g. practicing music regularly, reading books, working on electronic projects) and discourage bad ones (e.g. spending too much time on social media, reading superficial online articles, etc.). One of the things I did was not connecting my iMac (which I still use for composing music in Ableton, programming, reading PDFs, etc.) to the internet; if I need to look up restaurant times or something, I'll use my phone. I do try to leave my phone in a drawer out of sight most of the time, and have removed most of the distracting apps on it. It's only been a week, but I like what it's doing so far. I'm in the second half of my 20s, I work in tech, so I don't think I'm a case of a grumpy old luddite. I'm just starting to realize that technology makes things like hooking up easier, but certain things aren't meant to be made easier. People designing those social apps and sites have, for the vast majority, no regard for your time and your attention - so maybe you just shouldn't give it to them. I remember reading an article a long time ago (http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/ http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/) about the misconception we have about the Amish refusing to use technology. We think that the Amish refuse to use ALL technology; but really, it's that our society accepts technology unconditionally as soon as it's available, whereas Amish society accepts it only after it's proven a clear benefit, and that they understand how to use it in a way that won't disrupt their community. For instance, they found that phones are useful: if someone hurts themselves, it's good to be able to call the hospital. But if you put a phone in every home, then people start using it a lot, and local community ties suffer. Their solution to that is to have a single phone booth per village, a couple minutes' walk out. Another example is vehicles: it's very useful to have a tractor to work on the farm, but then people start using them as vehicles to go spend time outside of the village, again weakening community ties. Their solution to that is to have tractors with steel wheels so that they can only drive in the fields, not the open road. Of course you can push that philosophy as strongly as you want to the point of the absurd, and there are many things you can criticize about it. But overall, I do find that mindset very refreshing and interesting, and that's what I'm trying to bring to my life.
• kltpzyxm 11y ago
  I imagine Twine would suit those who prefer a similar service for a dissimilar crowd. I do wonder what actual experiences are like, since I'm attached and have never encountered any males who use it.
  • steve-howard 11y ago
    Is that because you've only heard from women, or you just don't know anyone who's used it?
    • kltpzyxm 11y ago
      The former.
• s_baby 11y ago
  >“For young women the problem in navigating sexuality and relationships is still gender inequality,” says Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan who specializes in sexuality and gender. “Young women complain that young men still have the power to decide when something is going to be serious and when something is not—they can go, ‘She’s girlfriend material, she’s hookup material.’ That's just as much a reflection of what women are looking for. If a woman is attracted to a guy who is "high value" relative to her then she is attracted to a guy who has options. She is attracted to guys she has a power differential with. These women could choose to settle for a relationship where they have the options and power but that's not what they want.
  • meatysnapper 11y ago
    90% of women want to sleep with 10% of men. Men are far less picky. Even the best looking of men has been a whale-rider in his time. Women: Is he rich? Good looking? Do other women want him? Men: Will she sleep with me? Once you understand that, all of the rest of this makes sense.
    • chippy 11y ago
      > 90% of women want to sleep with 10% of men. I hope people are not confused when they see that 90% + 10% = 100%. They are measuring different things, that phrase (and it's probably incorrect for this very reason) is misleading in that it implies there is a 100%, that it encompasses all the women and all the men. (edits - another comment in this thread gives 80% and 20% with a reference) A possible less misleading phrase would be 90% of women do not want to sleep with 90% of men.
    • bilbo0s 11y ago
      "...Even the best looking of men has been a whale-rider in his time..." Just... wow. Do people really think like this ??? I mean... this isn't even true. For instance, I can, pretty much, guarantee that even when he was a QB and Captain in High School and at the University of Michigan... Tom Brady was NEVER as indiscriminate as you intimate. His women were ALWAYS top 1% of those available. That's just how the world works. I know it's unfair... but that's reality. The best looking men and the supermodels NEVER have to "settle". Now they may not be altogether "happy" in their choice of life partners... but they are DEFINITELY not out "settling".
• onewaystreet 11y ago
  There's the old story of the guy that walks around asking every women if they want to have sex. Eventually one always says yes. On Tinder a guy can do that without getting slapped 100 times.
  • jen729w 11y ago
    I went to university with that guy. I genuinely did. It was unbelievable to watch, he was so brazen. He just didn't give a damn about rejection.
    • cpncrunch 11y ago
      Did he get laid eventually?
      • _sh 11y ago
        The guy at my Uni would stand stand at the door when they closed the Uni bar every Friday night and proposition every girl as they filed out the door. Every one. Never failed to score. He had no standards, but was amazing to watch. He was Danish, we called it the 'Scando Sweep'.
        • akshat_h 11y ago
          Did he actually bluntly ask "Will you have sex with me?".
          • emp_zealoth 11y ago
            Richard Feynman (in Surely you must be joking, mr Feynman) actually mentions doing exactly just that - he wrote he later gave it up because it was too easy and too effective
          • beachstartup 11y ago
            this actually works. i've gotten laid this way. women are human, they want to get drunk and fuck. if you don't believe it, it's probably because you've been raised/brainwashed with false beliefs about women and have a set of skewed expectations.
• lqdc13 11y ago
  This should be in the onion. Women use an "I'm not going to be serious" app and complain that all the men on it don't want to be serious.
  • benatkin 11y ago
    I'm surprised this wasn't an nytimes article. This is very typical of them.
• deleted 11y ago
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• hedgew 11y ago
  It's a problem of overvaluation. Men are less selective about who they have casual sex with, so the most attractive men consistently and constantly meet up with women they'd never actually date. For the few men it works great. For most women it works well for a while, but ends in disappointment. For the vast majority of men, the deal is the worst; they are considered unsuitable because women can do better (in 10 minutes, for 10 minutes).
  • Balgair 11y ago
    This is nothing new for Humans either: http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/neolithic-culture-may-have-kept-most-men-from-mating/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/neolithic-culture-may...
  • hkmurakami 11y ago
    One of the most compelling theories of why there are so many young single men in Japan was exactly this.
  • storgendibal 11y ago
    This. Tinder has tremendously magnified the advantage of the most attractive men. These same men, in a bar or club, would not spend the effort to pick up a lot of these women - they would spend their time and energy on the most attractive women in the bar or club. But with Tinder, there's no effort, so these women have more and better options, but not for anything serious.
• deleted 11y ago
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• beatpanda 11y ago
  Boy, that sure is a parallel universe. Did you know striking up a conversation with a stranger in real life can still get you laid? Less efficient, I know, but if you're already saving so much time replacing food with Soylent you should have some wiggle room.
  • bm1362 11y ago
    I found that Google Hangouts through my Glass allow me to date casually and launch my startup with no time deficit.
• curiousjorge 11y ago
  http://www.icrw.org/media/news/commentary-does-access-contraception-empower-women http://www.icrw.org/media/news/commentary-does-access-contra...
  • deleted 11y ago
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  • koconder 11y ago
    Yup... here we go again!
• psycr 11y ago
  Does anyone else have a feeling of total alienation from the people and behaviours described in this article? I certainly do.
  • davnicwil 11y ago
    Yes, thank you! I've read a lot of the comments on here and you're the only one who's (seemingly) raised the question of whether what's written in this article is actually accurate in any general sense. To me, it feels very sensational, exaggerated and very selective in its use of interviewees and their quotes to describe a specific type of online dating experience, and then projects that as if it's the average experience. It isn't. I've used online dating, and a lot of my friends have and do - including tinder. Obviously you come across a few odd situations and people, just as you do in 'real life' but I have never come close to experiencing anything like what's described in this piece. It paints an utterly depressing scene which just doesn't match up with my experience of online dating at all. For people who've never used Tinder, it's basically nothing like this, and it's not just my own experience or the way I use it - I've never seen any of my friends use it like the people in this article describe. It's basically just another way to get chatting with people. I'm not saying people like the people in this article don't exist, but they're rare, and if you want nothing to do with people like this, all you have to do is not engage with them in the first place. If you do engage with them, then know that the consequences will probably be as depressing as this article makes out they will be. The broad conclusions the people in this article draw about 'the online dating world' are simply not true for most people - they're only true for those who subject themselves to it. If that's not what you want, just don't, and you'll be fine. Problem solved.
    • d23 11y ago
      > For people who've never used Tinder, it's basically nothing like this, and it's not just my own experience or the way I use it - I've never seen any of my friends use it like the people in this article describe. Same. Most of the people I've talked to that use it experience a typical "funnel": a bunch of available people, a smaller pool that you're interested in, a smaller pool that's also interested in you, and finally a few dates that go from there. Not an orgyastic meat-market where all your wildest sex dreams come true. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a piece crafted by a PR team hired by Tinder.
• notahacker 11y ago
  Meanwhile, in the gay community, Tinder's occupies the niche of the somewhat less sex-obsessed alternative to Grindr, the purely gay hookup app that even Tinder's name seems to have been inspired by... I'm not sure whether the author of the article would be more shocked by the revelation that many Tinder dates actually don't end in sex[1] or the revelation that ten years ago, the same demographic of men was bragging about the ease of chatting to multiple potential one night stands per night in bars [1]especially ones with men that consider getting a female phone number (with emojis!) to be a major accomplishment
  • thisrod 11y ago
    There might be a broader point here. It's now OK for gay men to act like gay men in public, and straight people are starting to do it too.
• michaelchisari 11y ago
  This article makes a big assumption that women only use sex to get to relationships, and men only use relationships to get to sex. Plenty of women casually date with no interest in serious relationships, for the same reasons that men do: They value their independence, they're focused on their careers, they like to be able to travel or meet new people. It's antiquated to think that women who go on Tinder are hopelessly pining for love and commitment, and it's equally antiquated to think that there aren't men out there who want those exact things, but can't get them because the women they're dating aren't interested. In fact, I'll posit that there's a much more positive outlook on this: People nowadays are much more suspicious of moving too fast, of losing parts of your identity and independence for the sake of just being in a relationship. The warning signs are more visible, and we act on them with less hesitation, instead of letting resentment of a bad situation fester into something awful. We break up easier, divorce easier, and refuse to live unhappy lives because the idea of being alone is no longer terrifying.
  • sheepmullet 11y ago
    > We break up easier, divorce easier, and refuse to live unhappy lives because the idea of being alone is no longer terrifying. And funnily enough we seem to be a hell of a lot less happy.
    • pyre 11y ago
      The cost of a bad marriage seems like "less" so some people are less discriminating in deciding to take the plunge.
      • sheepmullet 11y ago
        People also seem to invest a lot less in their partners. And it makes everyone worse off.
    • malandrew 11y ago
      That's a broad sweeping generalization. Does it have any basis in fact? Are people more depressed today than 10-20 years ago, or do we diagnose more people as depressed because we like labels? And if we actually are more unhappy today, is that cause attributable to dating issues, or is it attributable to some other shifts in society like the changing nature of jobs and financial stability?
• dataker 11y ago
  When most women think " Ew, a dadbod" ,it's expected they will encounter the most "despicable" kind of men. Such paradigm is not a consequence of a misogyny; quite the other way around. Downvoting me won't change this.
  • cpncrunch 11y ago
    I don't think it's either "way around". Both the men and women on Tinder are shallow people who are mostly just interested in sex.
• zxcvvcxz 11y ago
  > “For young women the problem in navigating sexuality and relationships is still gender inequality,” says Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan who specializes in sexuality and gender. “Young women complain that young men still have the power to decide when something is going to be serious and when something is not—they can go, ‘She’s girlfriend material, she’s hookup material.’ … There is still a pervasive double standard. Women try and find the best man they can possibly get. Just because 50% of the population is female and 50% is male doesn't mean that they're going to pair off equally. Women want the top 20%! [1] There are evolutionary reasons for this that push our species forward, mating always has and always will be a competition. Now think of the perspective of these top 20% guys. They get all the sex and need not give out their exclusive commitment. And why would they? From an economic perspective, they can maximize their sexual strategy this way (spread the seed, as it were). Monogamy just slows that down. Furthering the economics analogy, these dating apps increase the liquidity and efficiency of the market. Want Chad, the good looking investment banker guy? Keep swiping, you'll find him. No need to wait around for Bobby from your programming class to finally ask you out (he probably doesn't even lift weights). There are two groups clearly disadvantaged by this current setup: 1) Those 80% of "below average" males. Because one of the top males can satisfy many young women (you read the story, some guys sleep with 100+ girls a year), these men get left out. Traditionally, marriage existed as an incentive for the vast majority of men to be productive in exchange for reproduction opportunities. I'm sure the discerning reader wouldn't be surprised to learn that a girl sleeping with a bunch of top 20% dudes and later "settling down" has a harder time staying in a happy marriage [2]. 2) Which leads us to #2, unmarried women entering their 30s, or whatever arbitrary later age makes them less attractive to the top 20% men. The reality of male preference for physical attractiveness necessarily means that women who engaged in hook-up culture during their earlier years will have to lower their standards. We had a period of time where strict monogamy throughout adulthood dominated, and now that's becoming less so (hugely declining marriage rates as one indicator, [3]). The question is whether or not this is a natural evolution for our society, or a sign of decline. --- [1] - "As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. " http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/ http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dati... [2] - "They claim this finding is especially true for women, writing in the report, "We further found that the more sexual partners a woman had had before marriage, the less happy she reported her marriage to be."" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/more-sexual-partners-unhappy-marriage_n_5698440.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/more-sexual-partner... [3] - http://national.deseretnews.com/article/4535/US-marriage-rate-hits-new-low-and-may-continue-to-decline.html http://national.deseretnews.com/article/4535/US-marriage-rat...
• austenallred 11y ago
  >“Tinder sucks,” they say. But they don’t stop swiping. Well... stop swiping?
• pmcpinto 11y ago
  "...the game is out there, and it's either play or get played..." - Omar, The Wire Nowadays, if a single guy doesn't use Tinder and other apps, it's missing a huge pool of single girls available to meet for a drink (or other things). It's never been so easy to meet new people, so guys don't value so much the girls they met like before, but it's the same for girls. If the pool of single girls it's huge, imagine the pool of single guys on this apps. I know a lot of girls who uses Tinder only to inflate their ego and play with guys. They have never met one guy through Tinder. Sometimes they even mark a date with a guy and "disappear" before that just for fun.
  • curiousjorge 11y ago
    I think people who aren't using Tinder aren't missing out much at all based on what you described. It sort of feels like a pool for people that just want large quantities of cheap commodity, and if you are into that then it totally makes sense. Fortunately, there still exists descent people with desires to be with high quality people. I think it would be quite tragic if someone with decency caved in to societal pressure and joined Tinder, looking for that special snowflake and becoming heart broken when they realize what they've become.
    • pmcpinto 11y ago
      I know that and that's true. In the middle of that pool of people there are some high quality people, but most of them doesn't stay longer in the app. Probably most of the people aren't going to find a man/woman for the life on Tinder but if you put a little effort on your matches you will find interesting people. The problem is that after some time and some "tinder scars" people put less and less effort in meeting better their matches.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • Balgair 11y ago
    Reminds me of one of the best scenes about the Iraq war from Hurt Locker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PgbNQU3cYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PgbNQU3cYo
• rhino369 11y ago
  People have been writing about the casual sex explosion for ever since the internet hit mainstream but reports also say millenials have less partners than their baby boomer parents did. Hard to say what is accurate.
  • CmonDev 11y ago
    It's like app store 20% get the 80%. The subj article was focusing exclusively on 20%. Let's hear the "dad bod"'s story.
• jrdnmadrid 11y ago
  This article bothers me for several reasons, mostly given the interviews are all based in NY and are a focal point of the article. As a 24-yr old coming from outside Portland, OR, I don't see this trend much at all with my coworkers or friends. Most have used it once or twice, but not as serious as they make it out to believe. A lot of my friends are in committed relationships or are looking for them. Maybe I am an outlier, but I think outside SF, LA or NY, these dating apps aren't as prevalent as they seem.
  • davidcelis 11y ago
    I'm also in Portland, OR and have used OkCupid/Hinge/Tinder/etc. Thousands of people here use these apps. They're in no way limited to SF/LA/NYC for heavy use.
    • jrdnmadrid 11y ago
      Yup, makes sense. I was just speaking from my PoV (which of course can't be extrapolated)
  • meatysnapper 11y ago
    Previous to PDX have only confirmed what my friends from their have said- friendly, attractive and "welcoming" women. Contrary to the parent post, people in PDX have lots of casual sex too.
  • fossuser 11y ago
    I remember reading something a while ago about ratio imbalances and what men/women want in a relationship. In NYC where there are a lot more single women than men, men when interviewed were generally not interested in long term relationships and I think there was more casual sex (there were a lot more single mothers too I think). In the west coast where there are a lot more single men than women both women and men converged on wanting a long term relationship. I'll try and find whatever this was - thought it was interesting.
    • flinty 11y ago
• ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  The big issue with Tinder (and a lot of other dating apps) is that they have a really shitty incentive structure for revealing your matching preferences. For Tinder specifically, you can't reveal your preferences, save by "is this better than nothing" and how much effort you put into initial messages. Compare this to a ranking + deferred acceptance system, where you can match every guy and every girl such that there's no alternate pairing that both the guy and the girl would both prefer. The end result is a lot of wasted effort and low signal-to-noise. The alternative is something that looks a lot like ranking a bunch of potential matches, and magically getting the best coffee or dinner date you can each night. Much more efficient. Unfortunately, efficient marketplaces don't automatically out-compete thick ones. It's why I haven't done anything about the problem - the difficult part of Tinder's success to reproduce isn't the app or the matching algorithms or the UI, but rather convincing enough people to participate on their platform.
  • walterbell 11y ago
    Are there marketplaces, in any industry, which take your approach to improving efficiency of matching?
    • ThrustVectoring 11y ago
      Sorry for the late reply, but yes, there are examples. The most famous is the matching market between new doctors and hospitals. I highly recommend this book for more information on the topic: smile.amazon.com/Who-Gets-What-Why-Matchmaking/dp/0544291131
      • walterbell 11y ago
        Thanks for the book rec.
• pervycreeper 11y ago
  Surprised they're still quoting Christopher Ryan, who has no scientific credibility and whose work has been entirely debunked. He's essentially just some kook proselytizing his own sexual perversions.
• benten10 11y ago
  There's been a lot of talk of the decrease in 'cost' of sex, etc in this thread. I want to chip in as someone who has spent a LOT of time on tinder. Last month, I was spending SEVERAL hours a day swiping on friends' behalf on Tinder. We'd swipe till our eyes hurt, and we'd swipe again. You get a limited number of swipes (and total 'targets') per day, so once someone ran out of their daily quota, I'd swipe for someone else. The process is TIRING! -- looking at attractive/ people at their best putting on their best show is tiring! It's doesn't seem to be screen fatigue -- there's likely an upper boundary on how many faces/people you can process in a day. We'd end up not checking people's profiles and swipe based on the amount of skin showed on profile pictures. It sounds ridiculous, but being judgmental of people's face/facial features apparently gets tiring at some point. This leads me to believe that the interactions don't come for free -- they may be cheap, but the costs exist. So as someone who spent all that time on Tinder, it is not clear to me what 'friction' Tinder removes as compared to dating sites say, 10 years ago. Having a hookup app on your lap, and on your cellphone is not that different. Or sites on the desktop 15 years ago. I know people who think 'mobile' hookup apps are the most godawful things to have happened in the world (and that because, as a lot of people have said here, because they reduce the cost of interaction), but that's not significantly different from say, 10/15 years ago, is it? If 'hookup stats' are really higher, it could be because not everyone agrees on the definition. For a lot of my friends, going over to sleep at someone's house constitutes a hookup. I'd imagine something like that would have happened 20 years ago anyway in an offline setting, but you'd have met the person in a bar, or a club or what have you. That you happened to have met them on Tinder doesn't make it an 'apocalypse' for the dating type. All the friends I swiped for ended up going on multiple dates, some in the same week. Two ended in a committed relationship, and one who never wanted to be in a relationship was almost dragged into one. I mention this because without tinder, he would never have been out their anyway. So here's my theory: tinder is bringing out all the 'marginals' -- people on the relationship margin who would otherwise not have been 'out there' anyway. Since their ratio to the general population has increased because of increased visibility, it seems that more people are NOT into dating. That's a fallacy because it does not control for the marginals: they'd not be 'relationship minded' without tinder anyway.
  • sebkomianos 11y ago
• deleted 11y ago
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• patio11 11y ago
  There's a useful word from behavioral economics called "revealed preferences." Briefly, it means that if you're given the opportunity to choose between X and Y, and you say "Wow I really want X" but choose Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, and Y... then your preference is actually for Y.
• mirimir 11y ago
  This reminds me of RFJason's Craigslist experiment.[0] Back in the day, rude invitations with dick pics were odd enough to mock. Now, according to this article, they've become almost accepted. Funny. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Fortuny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Fortuny
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• slr555 11y ago
  The "dating apocalypse" began not with the internet but the pharmacist. Effective long term contraception and anti-infectives that worked against a wide variety of venereal diseases removed the tangible consequences of promiscuous sex. Those milestones are the real articulation in the history of dating. In the 60's there were the "happenings" where people metaphorically swiped right and left. In the 70's it was discos, the 80's had pick-up bars. I'm pretty sure Vanity Fair had long features on each of those phenomena as well. Each generation starts to mature and are pretty sure that they are the first to discover sex, which of course their parents never had, and the older generation sees "little precious" out doing their thing and the end of the world is nigh. 20 years on the youngsters are bouncing the kids on their knees and the old ones are pushing up grass and so it goes. As the Thorton Wilder said, "Once in a thousand times it's interesting".
• linkregister 11y ago
  For those lamenting the "quantity over quality" aspect of Tinder, I would suggest using Coffee Meets Bagel [1] as a supplement or alternative. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/dating-app-coffee-meets-bagel-lands-7-8-million-in-series-a/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/dating-app-coffee-meets-bag... (I have no interest in this company nor have I used it; I have been told it works well for higher quality dates by male friends)
• pandatigox 11y ago
  Interesting to see that America (but as the other commenters have pointed new york) that a culture of sex is well and truly alive, whereas places such as Japan are suffering from a lack of this culture (men are now called "herbivores" due to their disinterest).
• flycaliguy 11y ago
  Any other non-photogenic dweebs with partners glad they got out of this game before it went mainstream?
• narrator 11y ago
  Anyone remember Logan's run and the dating "circuit" thing they had[1]? We are finally there. 1.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMlHZNMH5KA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMlHZNMH5KA