4 ms·

Okay, I'll bite. Isn't the elephant in the room obesity? Is it possible we are less sexually active because people are turned off by unhealthy weights, and bei

Okay, I'll bite. Isn't the elephant in the room obesity? Is it possible we are less sexually active because people are turned off by unhealthy weights, and being in the "healthy" BMI band now makes you an elite minority? It'd be easy to demonstrate this isn't true, if we had something like "obesity is mostly middle-aged people, young adults are roughly unaffected" or "weight and number of sexual partners are actually uncorrelated" or something. But I wonder.

gmarx 10y ago
Possibly and thank you for using that metaphor properly. The article says "There’s another gorilla in the room:" No!no!No!!!! The 500 lb gorilla sits anywhere it wants. The elephant in the room is what people don't want to talk about. Nowadays not only has the gorilla's weight increased to 800 lbs, he is now in the room. This article goes further, now we have multiple gorillas in the room? Flee that room. My point is, we need editors
caminante 10y ago
Appearance (obesity) as a factor is addressed in the article. Quote from a researcher*: "[Online life] ends up putting a lot of importance on physical appearance, and that, I think, is leaving out a large section of the population."
- superuser2 10y ago
  Yes, but putting more importance on appearance, and appearance actually changing, are interestingly different. You could also say that non-Tinder online dating i.e. OKCupid is actually putting less importance on appearance by matching people on preferences instead of "prettiest girl at the bar."
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    I disagree for two reasons: 1) Tinder (along with similar apps) has completely overtaken "traditional" online dating sites like OKCupid in popularity. 2) Even on OKCupid or other such sites, people have photos. I'm pretty sure I remember OKC's data guys even writing an article about attractive people getting far more messages on there than unattractive ones according to some research they did. Having all that extra personal data on OKC might be useful in some edge cases in swaying someone to correspond with someone they might have skipped over, but it's only going to go so far. Maybe you'll go out on a date with a girl who's a "6" because she loves Firefly and AD&D, when normally you only date "7s", but some girl who's into a bunch of geeky things you like but is only a "2" is not going to be of interest to you, except maybe in the "friendzone".
vivekd 10y ago
The suggestion that millennials are having less sex because they are unattractive seems far fetched. I'm not sure what obesity rates among millennials is - but I'm sure if enough of them were that fat, it would sort of become the new norm and standards for attractiveness would change accordingly. I think the real explanation is the the curve in the graph, we had 3 for greatest generation, 5 for silents then jumping up to 11 during the boomers, then declining slightly during x and declining further during millennials. I bet if we could extend the graph back historically we would see the vast majority of human generations were closer to the greatest generation in number of sex partners. This looks to me like there was an increase in sexual promiscuity during the sexual revolution, the effects of which are tapering off as humans return to their normal sexual habits.
- DonaldFisk 10y ago
  > if enough of them were that fat, it would sort of become the new norm and standards for attractiveness would change accordingly. The most attractive women have always, everywhere, had a waist-hip ratio of around 0.7 (http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2013/11/11/curves-ahead-the-science-of-female-waist-to-hip-ratio-and-at.html http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2013/11/11/curves...). That would rule out obesity as the new norm of attractiveness. I assume there is also a formula/ratio for attractive men that rules out their being obese. Also, people are known to lie about the number of sexual partners they have had (http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/12/statistics_on_sexual_partners_cant_be_right_specialists_say/ http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/12/st...). Could that be a factor here? Finally, the article focuses on age of first sex and number of sexual partners, not frequency of sex. It doesn't rule out millennials having more frequent sex with fewer partners. Stop press: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/03/large-number-of-young-people-experience-sex-problems-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/03/large-number...
zamalek 10y ago
I don't fall into the overweight demographic. I just don't care for the immense waste of time that is the game surrounding getting laid. I might be an outlier, though.
eiliant 10y ago
That's very US-centric
Chris2048 10y ago
Then standards would just decrease? I blame porn.

gmarx 10y ago

Possibly and thank you for using that metaphor properly. The article says "There’s another gorilla in the room:" No!no!No!!!! The 500 lb gorilla sits anywhere it wants. The elephant in the room is what people don't want to talk about. Nowadays not only has the gorilla's weight increased to 800 lbs, he is now in the room. This article goes further, now we have multiple gorillas in the room? Flee that room. My point is, we need editors

caminante 10y ago

Appearance (obesity) as a factor is addressed in the article. Quote from a researcher*: "[Online life] ends up putting a lot of importance on physical appearance, and that, I think, is leaving out a large section of the population."

superuser2 10y ago
Yes, but putting more importance on appearance, and appearance actually changing, are interestingly different. You could also say that non-Tinder online dating i.e. OKCupid is actually putting less importance on appearance by matching people on preferences instead of "prettiest girl at the bar."
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  I disagree for two reasons: 1) Tinder (along with similar apps) has completely overtaken "traditional" online dating sites like OKCupid in popularity. 2) Even on OKCupid or other such sites, people have photos. I'm pretty sure I remember OKC's data guys even writing an article about attractive people getting far more messages on there than unattractive ones according to some research they did. Having all that extra personal data on OKC might be useful in some edge cases in swaying someone to correspond with someone they might have skipped over, but it's only going to go so far. Maybe you'll go out on a date with a girl who's a "6" because she loves Firefly and AD&D, when normally you only date "7s", but some girl who's into a bunch of geeky things you like but is only a "2" is not going to be of interest to you, except maybe in the "friendzone".

vivekd 10y ago

The suggestion that millennials are having less sex because they are unattractive seems far fetched. I'm not sure what obesity rates among millennials is - but I'm sure if enough of them were that fat, it would sort of become the new norm and standards for attractiveness would change accordingly. I think the real explanation is the the curve in the graph, we had 3 for greatest generation, 5 for silents then jumping up to 11 during the boomers, then declining slightly during x and declining further during millennials. I bet if we could extend the graph back historically we would see the vast majority of human generations were closer to the greatest generation in number of sex partners. This looks to me like there was an increase in sexual promiscuity during the sexual revolution, the effects of which are tapering off as humans return to their normal sexual habits.

DonaldFisk 10y ago
> if enough of them were that fat, it would sort of become the new norm and standards for attractiveness would change accordingly. The most attractive women have always, everywhere, had a waist-hip ratio of around 0.7 (http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2013/11/11/curves-ahead-the-science-of-female-waist-to-hip-ratio-and-at.html http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2013/11/11/curves...). That would rule out obesity as the new norm of attractiveness. I assume there is also a formula/ratio for attractive men that rules out their being obese. Also, people are known to lie about the number of sexual partners they have had (http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/12/statistics_on_sexual_partners_cant_be_right_specialists_say/ http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/12/st...). Could that be a factor here? Finally, the article focuses on age of first sex and number of sexual partners, not frequency of sex. It doesn't rule out millennials having more frequent sex with fewer partners. Stop press: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/03/large-number-of-young-people-experience-sex-problems-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/03/large-number...

zamalek 10y ago

I don't fall into the overweight demographic. I just don't care for the immense waste of time that is the game surrounding getting laid. I might be an outlier, though.

eiliant 10y ago

That's very US-centric

Chris2048 10y ago

Then standards would just decrease? I blame porn.