12 ms·

Social conservatism on American campuses

62 points by un_montagnard 7y ago

omosubi 7y ago
Is there a non-paywall version anywhere?
- ed 7y ago
  https://outline.com/xxTDbh https://outline.com/xxTDbh
- Gustomaximus 7y ago
  https://outline.com/xxTDbh https://outline.com/xxTDbh
- golergka 7y ago
  No paywall with disabled javascript.
jparse 7y ago
Non Paywall Version: https://outline.com/xxTDbh https://outline.com/xxTDbh
golergka 7y ago
> Many considered the prospect of chatting someone up in a bar not merely daunting but possibly offensive. “Revealing that your intention in talking to someone is sexual? That’s hairy,” shuddered one man. When I read things like this, I can't understand whether american culture has gotten weirdly puritan or this is a wild exaggeration. There's such a huge distance between politely and respectfully expressing sexual interest in someone, especially in a BAR, and being creepy and offensive. Edit: just to clarify, I've never lived in US or in countries in the similar #metoo zeitgest, so this is an uneducated view from the outside.
- spacesword 7y ago
  Welcome to the post #MeToo era
  - huehehue 7y ago
    This is unsubstantive. It's one thing to express concern over what you might perceive as encroaching Puritan morality. It's another to blast a movement focused on giving a voice to sexual abuse victims.
    - lesdeuxmagots 7y ago
      I think it'd be wrong to not think through this though. When we talk about #metoo, we don't talk about the movement itself. #metoo is a symptom, indicative of a broader social sea change. I'm on the more progressive end in a coastal city, but have been in a uniquely diverse environment when it comes to political views, international views. People that are more socially liberal tend to have changed their stances because of a change in the general understanding of what is proper or acceptable. People who are more socially conservative have also changes their stances, but specifically blame the fear around #metoo. And I totally understand why they feel this way - it's difficult to place that shift on some nebulous generational change of social mores. It's much easier to place that shift on a specific, well-defined, well-publicized movement. That's not to say anyone is blasting that movement by saying this is how people feel. Neither is it blaming the movement for actually doing anything. However, it is likely what this change is mentally attributed to for many people.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - colordrops 7y ago
      There have been some very public cases of men being ostracized in the public eye through the #meetoo movement for behaviors that many would be considered acceptable, or at least bordering on it. Examples are Aziz Ansari and John Lasseter. Then you've got a constant barrage in newspapers, Twitter, and Facebook about consent, and what needs explicit consent encroaching ever closer to normal behaviors such as conversation. There is the concept of "enthusiastic consent". All of this is spearheaded by the #meetoo movement. Obviously consent is a good thing. But to pretend that the boundaries of what are reasonable regarding consent aren't overstepped and people aren't attacked unfairly is to deny the evidence. This fuzzy and changing boundary creates an environment of fear among men, especially when considering the consequences. There are forums were people discuss these issues in depth. Are they all hallucinating?
- chrischen 7y ago
  The distance depends on how attractive you are to the other person, which is usually out of one's control.
- nixarian 7y ago
  More often than not, the 'difference' is whether or not the woman decided it's creepy or not, which is, more often than not, attached to the physical attractiveness of the man, or her mood at the time. Benefit of the doubt doesn't enter into it, especially after #MeToo And you might have noticed that women aren't having much less sex. It's because women are all having sex with a small number of men. Attractive, successful men. This is, sadly, the result of female, and to a lesser extent male, freedom of choice. Most women would choose to only have sex with attractive, successful men. And unlike men, they have that option.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  Couple puritanical norms with men who aren't that great at reading social norms and err on the side of caution and this is what happens. A significant minority is not able to make sense of it.
- feministincel 7y ago
  Throwaway for obvious reasons. I’ve never been in a context where that’s even acceptable. None of my friends pick up women (or are successful) and the only person I know in a long term relationship met his fiancé in middle school. I dont think it’s Puritanism but it is being risk averse. I know how hard it is for women and how many creeps they do have to deal with so I’d rather not even create the possibility of coming off as one. Add to this the tinderification of the hiring market (see Google’s top 1% of intelligence) and dating scene have put the bottom 80-90% in a bit of a bind because in many large metro areas there are more straight men than women and women are not culturally expected to make the first move. Couple that with increased expectations and lower social cohesion and it becomes...well, expected. Source - non-homeschooled straight 23 year old, never once asked a girl out.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    I suggest asking some girls out. I had social anxiety and the kind of social skills that lead to an Asperger’s diagnosis and I had more romantic experience than you by the time I was 18. The chances of a girl being offended by being asked out are relatively low in any case; most people are nice. They’re really, really low if you’re attractive. When an ugly, charmless or poor man asks out a certain kind of girl they’re offended not just at having been asked out, but that the thought even occurred. Most girls aren’t like that. They’ll deflect the question or say that they’re busy and make no effort to reschedule. My email is in my profile for anyone who has similar problems.
    - feministincel 7y ago
      Well I’m not exactly attractive either :) Honestly, putting myself in the type of women I’m most intrigued by i wouldn’t put up with myself. The closest I got was when I chatted up a girl on a train, but just couldn’t tell if she was just being super polite. Although I did end up getting her LinkedIn... I guess I’m not smooth either.
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
        If you’re not attractive become attractive. If you’re not the kind of person you’d put up with change, become better. If you’re not smooth or confident work on them, they’re learnable skills. Don’t be yourself, that’s a crock of shit those born on third base say, work on becoming better, on becoming someone you respect and who you think is worth dating.
- mellow-lake-day 7y ago
  Tinder and other hook up apps are the solution. No more approaching strangers in a bar who are either there to hang out with friends or just want to be left alone.
  - feministincel 7y ago
    They are the solution because the intentions are clearer but then... you don’t get matches, because in straight pairings more women get orders of magnitude more attention than most men. Source - I don’t get matches. And if I do, I’m boring.
  - CuriouslyC 7y ago
    Tinder is garbage. They have intentionally created a horribly imbalanced market to hook women with unrealistic prospects while extracting as much money as possible from the bottom 80% of men. Singles meetups organized around a shared hobby or activity are a million times better.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- autokad 7y ago
  I dont think it has anything to do with puritan, as its not related to religion at all. well for one, sex in college is extremely dangerous. the Obama administration basically threatened Universities to treat male students as guilty (not even guilty until proven innocent). https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-campus-rape-policy/538974/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-un...
  - tdb7893 7y ago
    I've never met any male college student where that was why they aren't having sex. I highly doubt this is a major factor for any but a very small number of people (and those people are unlikely to have sex for other reasons anyway).
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    American culture has deep roots, just like everywhere else. Just because the ideology of human rights or progressivism doesn’t identify itself as a post-Christian movement that doesn’t really make sense except on light of Christianity doesn’t make it untrue. The line from the Quakers with God’s inner light in each person to the inherent dignity of man is not exactly subtle. Likewise sex worker hostile feminism in Sweden or Norway uses similar rhetoric of concern for sex workers while doing everything in their power to make their lives hell. Just because the feminists in question don’t talk about Christ that doesn’t mean they’re not the same kind of judgmental bourgeois Lutherans their grandmothers were.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  This is a wild exaggeration. Men used to be able to basically hit on women in all contexts with zero consequence (e.g. hitting on women at work was ok, let alone butting into a group at a bar). More recently, people have been pushing back on men who are inappropriate. This leads to some men who don't understand the new boundaries having a very large overreaction and essentially saying that it's impossible or scary to 'chat someone up'. See also the men who won't work/game in mixed gender groups because it's "too difficult". The new rules are essentially 'be respectful' and "there's a time a place" and 'politely accept no as an answer' and 'no one owes you shit'. They aren't complicated rules.
  - amvalo 7y ago
    Actually the rules are even simpler than that: 1. don't.
    - Pfhreak 7y ago
      They really aren't? You can flirt, you can come on to people. Some people want that, and it's ok in some contexts.
      - Mirioron 7y ago
        And there is no way to tell which people are okay with this and which aren't without taking risks that can have severe consequences. Some men are just going to say "no thanks" to this, and on the scale of society that some men is a large number.
        golergka 7y ago
        > And there is no way to tell which people are okay with this and which aren't without taking risks that can have severe consequences. Ask?
        Mirioron 7y ago
        Just asking can be considered creepy or harassment.
- duxup 7y ago
  There is a sort of sexual paranoia in the US, but it isn't religious and puritan....it shows up in corporations and academic institutions. Laura Kipnis had a wonderful essay about it, and as if to drive the point home it resulted in a series of absurd investigations by the University she works at. http://5d5.3dd.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Sexual-Paranoia-Strikes-Academe.pdf http://5d5.3dd.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Se...
- mirimir 7y ago
  Sure. But the lead in to that makes it pretty clear: > But that still does not seem to explain the persistence of America’s sex recession, or its most extreme feature: how concentrated it is among men. Since 2008 there has been almost a threefold rise in the share of men under the age of 30 who claim to be having no sex. At the same time, the portion of sexless women increased by only 8%. A range of possible explanations for the disparity has been suggested, and the students seemed to corroborate several of them. Many felt men’s social skills had been especially eroded by over-reliance on technology. Overindulgence in porn meanwhile offered them an escape route from reality. Yet the most compelling answer, because it contains elements of all that and more, may be signalled by young people’s increasing reluctance to date. > This is often blamed on the “hook-up culture” of college campuses. Yet casual sex and dating coexisted in the 1990s. It is also easy to exaggerate—now as then—how many people are hooking up. Half the Northwestern students said they rarely or never did. Yet they also rattled off reasons not to date which, among the men, who would traditionally take the lead in such encounters, included uncertainty about how they were even managed. Many considered the prospect of chatting someone up in a bar not merely daunting but possibly offensive. “Revealing that your intention in talking to someone is sexual? That’s hairy,” shuddered one man. I didn't get comfortable "chatting someone up in a bar" until my mid 30s. After a few ~long-term relationships, and a failed marriage. And this was during the 60s-80s. I can't imagine what it's like now.
  - cybersnowflake 7y ago
    Its not rocket science. All but the ugliest women can get sex/relationships more easily than all but perhaps the most attractive men. You have the top 90% of women competing for the top 10% (guessimate but its around there) of men while the other men are left completely in the dust.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      That doesn't seem plausible. How can the "top 10%" of men be having sex with anywhere near the " top 90% of women"? That'd be a lot of sex for those men. And wouldn't they be kept busy enough by the top 20%-40% of women? I do suspect that social media is a huge part of it. With such a focus on superficial attractiveness. And the potential for mobbing. There was lots more slack, back in the day.
- jetrink 7y ago
  When 50% of the population smoked, smoking in bars was accepted. Non-smokers who didn't want to spend an evening wreathed in smoke didn't go to bars. Those who did knew what they were in for. I think approaching people to try to get them into bed is a lot like smoking. At one time, 50% of people in a bar were engaged in that activity. If you went to a bar in the evening, you knew that would be a part of the environment. That doesn't mean it wasn't annoying or awkward for the people being hit on who just wanted to enjoy an evening with friends. It's understandable too that as it becomes rarer, it also is more likely to be seen as creepy, just as smoking has become more offensive as it becomes more rare.
  - kthejoker2 7y ago
    Counterpoint: showing up at a bar that encourages smoking is a much stronger signal when there are less people that do it. A human voluntarily showing up at a bar in the age of Tinder is a strong signal, too. So in theory the "creepiness" of assuming their intention to meet others as potential dating material should reduce as well. And just like it would be gauche to go as a nonsmoker to a smoking bar and complain about the smoke in your face, it would be the same to go to a singles bar and complain about the unwanted attention of other patrons.
deleted 7y ago
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sara7262 7y ago
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awakeasleep 7y ago
I wish they'd include the idea of "competition in the marketplace for orgasms" alongside these social and economic ideas. People have limited time & energy, so some percent are conceivably putting less effort into the difficult ways of relieving sexual tension (relationships) while favoring the easier ways to do so (pornography). Porn has been one of the first industries to take advantage of technology, and the change in accessibility of porn is unparalleled. It went from something one was forced to sneakily travel to shady locations and physically purchase to something that we are accidentally exposed to or even advertised to on omnipresent screens everywhere in our lives. And that isn't even going into the way the market has selected for 'more potent' forms of pornography- like the way that just about every fetish can be explored to depths that would shock/offend someone who doesn't share it. (something that probably has an isolating effect on relationships) And it also isn't accounting for the new-ish industry of 'relationship replacement' style streamers- another economic activity that I believe must be competing with traditional 1 on 1 relationships.
- 01100011 7y ago
  There has always been porn. IME, it served several roles, but generally did not replace the desire to be in a relationship or at least physically intimate with another person. Sure, porn is more available and more potent in a sense now, and it may be a factor, but I think at most it is a minor one. Something else is making kids introverted and isolated.
  - borumpilot 7y ago
    40 years ago, when I started my interest in porn, it was... different. Both in availability and in "potentness". Skip forward 40 years, I have a bunch of millennial kids. Their (for me discoverable) sexual encounters are extremely limited in comparison to mine and that of my wife, at that age. Personally I do not think that the one (porn) has much to do with the other (limited). What I suspect is far more the lack of privacy and anonymity. Everyone in their age group seems afraid of the potential flack they will receive “when people find out I did X with Y”. And with the current over connectivity that seems a real possibility. Whereas we, between 15 and 25, could disappear for a couple of hours / days, and the lamest excuse would enable you to get away with anything. I truly do not envy this generation. It seems growing up, as in establishing your own personality and experiences, is so much harder.
ArtDev 7y ago
I wonder if dating apps contribute to a "paradox of choice". The book by Aziz Anzari "Modern Dating" suggests this may be a factor.
- yingw787 7y ago
  I really liked this book! I don't think I want to post spoilers (like really buy and read the book), but I think he established an inverse relationship between how free a society is towards sex and how much actual sex people have.
newnewpdro 7y ago
You don't really need real physical sex with all the associated risks and overheads when quality porn has become so abundant and readily accessible. A half hour spent on pornhub vs. dealing with other people while making a diceroll on your health and safety? One is clearly more convenient and costs less by a very wide margin. Unless, of course, you want to make children.
fzeroracer 7y ago
There are a lot of people (such as myself) that grew up poor, so we invest most of our energy into our careers to avoid falling back into poverty. Unfortunately, families are expensive and a great way to ensure you raise another generation in poverty. It's no surprise that people are putting off marriage and starting a family if you don't want to raise children in the same situation you were raised in. It's a similar problem across the pond in Japan where people grew up in practically single-parent households due to the rigors of work potentially leading to Karoshi. So you have people either completely checking out of society, or focusing entirely inwards to avoid a repeat of history.
- Avshalom 7y ago
  points that they bring up but wedge into one paragraph in the dead center surrounded by various hand-waving and alarmism... I think some one had a quota to fill.
- povertyworld 7y ago
  In the past the ruling class could always count on the proletariat (literally "offspring producing") to reproduce itself no matter how abysmal its conditions. Yet today we find ourselves in a situation Malthus could not have expected: the proletariat is on reproductive strike! The ruling class response is to push an ideology of mass migration that no one dares question. Who will stand up and say they don't welcome immigrants? Not I. This solution seems to be working in the short term, but if birth rates decline in the developing world, there won't be anyone to mass migrate. Then what? Share the wealth?
  - titanomachy 7y ago
    Plenty of people speak up against mass immigration, especially amongst the proles. Not everyone is concerned with being seen as racist.
plainOldText 7y ago
Less sex, and more porn most likely. I think plenty of people fulfill their sexual needs through online means these days, which is a shame because real life experiences are much more emotionally enriching, with the added benefit that if you repeatedly engage sexually with a person you really like, it could form the basis of a relationship. Whereas in the digital space, one gets no long term return on the time invested/wasted.
- bsder 7y ago
  > real life experiences are much more emotionally enriching I would challenge this and probably flag it as the core problem. Most interactions with the opposite sex are emotionally draining and insipid and our digital interactions are almost always more rewarding. The problem is that you have to wade through a ton of mud to get to the gold nugget that is someone you genuinely like to interact with.
  - plainOldText 7y ago
    > Most interactions with the opposite sex are emotionally draining ... Indeed, but this can be successfully counteracted to some degree by proper socialization, and by participating in social activities alongside a group of friends, which by virtue of creating social contexts, will lower the barriers to social interactions. People spend too much time indoors in the company of their screens, and without adequate social training, anxiety will surely present itself when one is placed in the company of real people, especially of the opposite sex. > The problem is that you have to wade through a ton of mud to get to the gold nugget that is someone you genuinely like to interact with. Anything meaningful in life requires some level of effort. There's no way around it.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  Sure, no one masturbated before there was online porn. Oh wait, there was playboy. And no one just used their imagination.
test6554 7y ago
Previously a person's mate selection was very geographically constrained. Everyone wanted to date the most attractive person in (school, town, neighborhood). The internet has broadened the pool of potential mates beyond mere geography. Which makes finding a match easier, but makes all the matches nearby seem less desirable, and makes all the long-distance matches difficult. Particularly on a constrained budget.
- feministincel 7y ago
  Hard disagree, most people aren’t looking outside of a pretty narrow radius on the apps.
  - masonic 7y ago
    Parent said "mates" rather than hookups.
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      I always cringe when I see people describe human relationships in biological terms, it hints at a feeling of reductiveness, or the applicability of all biological models to human behavior without taking into consideration massive societal differences and the change in attitudes and the emergence of new sexuality (see Japan's hikkikomori) even of the past few hundred years. It's the same sort of "analysis" that uses "breeding" to refer to when people have children. To top it off, the people using these terms to describe human phenomena are likely not even qualified in biological sciences, never mind anthropology, sociology or psychology.
  - madez 7y ago
    How do you know that?
diogenescynic 7y ago
I think it’s a number of things. For one, we have less free time to be social, we’re under more stress, social media is warping expectations and self-esteem, dating costs more than for prior generations, STDs and awareness of them, partisanship and people actually not wanting to date people with differing political opinions, and on and on.
01100011 7y ago
It seems like millennials are avoiding partying in general. Alcohol is a factor in a lot of casual sex. Hell, my family got started because two otherwise unattractive people who previously hated each other realized they liked to get drunk on cheap wine and play with each others' naughty bits. A baby was conceived and a family was started out of guilt. Alcohol plays a big role in breaking down people's inhibitions and insecurities. Now that the combination of alcohol and sex are considered verboten, you lose one of the most effective aphrodisiacs and social lubricants. I'm curious if whatever is behind our lowering sperm counts is also playing a role in this. Given the experience of my fiancee, a millennial who gave up on guys her own age, it seems like the guys who are sexually active(i.e. the ones not stuck on video games and smoking weed), are creeps and philanderers. Hook-up apps and technologically fueled cheating have definitely reduced the mystique behind committed, monogamous relationships among kids these days. Also, title is misspelled. Two n's in millennials.
- cybersnowflake 7y ago
  Obviously there are many factors, those included but I wouldn't be as quick to discount ideological factors as many people are doing. The Metoo stuff...actually this has been bubbling long before as a general feature of puritanical 3rd wave feminism really has put a damper on things, not just through direct fear instilled into men but generally moving the overton window of sex in society's subconscious.
thatfrenchguy 7y ago
" The portion of Americans aged 18 to 29 who claim to have had no sex for 12 months has more than doubled in a decade—to 23% last year" Can also be read as "The portion of Americans aged 18 to 29 who have sex has slightly decreased, from 89% to 77%".
- kthejoker2 7y ago
  A 15% decline is slight?
mellow-lake-day 7y ago
> The economy is strong. I'm not sure why the author ends on such an optimistic note. Economy isn't great especially for millennials. 80% of Americans as a whole live paycheck to paycheck. Furthermore there are some signs that there will be another recession coming up. If anything these statistics are going to get worse. https://www.npr.org/2018/11/30/672103209/why-arent-millennials-spending-more-they-re-poorer-than-their-parents-fed-says https://www.npr.org/2018/11/30/672103209/why-arent-millennia... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-are-much-poorer-than-their-parents-data-show/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-are-much-poorer-tha... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-that-4-in-5-us-workers-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-that-4-i... https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/05/global-economic-crash-2020-understand-why https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/05/global-econ...
- skookumchuck 7y ago
  Living paycheck to paycheck doesn't mean one is poor. I've known many such who were quite well off. They simply couldn't resist spending everything they had.
  - pgodzin 7y ago
    It means they're one injury away from being poor
    - skookumchuck 7y ago
      The point is they aren't lacking in income. More income won't fix it for them.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- winter_blue 7y ago
  Well, we had a huge recession 10 years ago, and we’ve only recently recovered fully from it. We’re at full employment now. There are more open jobs today than unemployed people in the US. It’s true that the value of unskilled and low-skilled labor has dropped, but the value of skilled labor has substantially increased. Case in point: software developers are on average making $150k in salary alone in the Bay Area. Add bonuses, equity, and other cash and non-cash benefits: a good programmer can easily make over $200k. (I’m a millennial, and I find my own compensation incredible and unbelievable.) Americans living paycheck to paycheck has more to do with spending habits than income. People in the United States continue to have the world’s highest purchasing power. On a large scale, living paycheck to paycheck has more to do with culture and discipline than level of income. (Exceptions exist: living in a high cost-of-living area with low/minimum-wage income, only having part-time temporary like PhD graduates who have to be adjuncts and TAs forever, etc.)
cybersnowflake 7y ago
Congrats SJWs, You've finally made the Religious Right's centuries long dream of a sexless puritanical world a reality.
Arbalest 7y ago
There seems to be a lot of different explanations given below, but I can't help but think of: It's all of them, more or less. They've pretty much all come up as a consequence to the internet, whether it be better organisation leading more effective communication of how (some) men make unwanted advances, dissemination of pornography or the paradox of choice in dating. You could probably throw on top of that pile greater entertainment choices that are not pornography, making the payoff for sex just too low when you can get instant gratification now.
iamnothere 7y ago
First off, I'm not making any judgments here -- every generation has its problems. If I had to guess, I would say that a significant part of this phenomenon is tied to status concerns. Compared to Gen X, more people from the millennial generation appear to be openly obsessed with status. (Gen X cared about status, too, but from what I have seen it was considered "uncool" to care about status as an Xer, so you had to have some subtlety about how you obtained it.) Obsession with status is tolerated and even encouraged by peers, and is further reinforced by social networks and group dynamics. * Flirt with someone who rejects you? You lose status. * Seen by peers with someone of potentially lower status? You lose status. * Hook up with someone when there are negative rumors about them? You lose status. * Make out with someone who rejected a friend? You damage that relationship and either gain or lose status based on mysterious dynamics. Status is felt as an invisible currency that affects your prospects for friendships, relationships, and your career. As such, losing it is seen as worse than an equivalent monetary loss. It's almost equivalent to "losing face" in East Asian countries, although the consequences are not quite as severe. I would argue that there is actually an ongoing "status bubble" and that people are overestimating the value of status -- surely it can't be worth all that. For single people, though, it can be hard to drop out of the status game. Who wants to be seen as a "loser"? Edit: I didn't really account for the gender disparity here, I've got some vague ideas but this was already treading too deep into speculation. Anyway, I don't think this can be fully explained by #MeToo concerns.
- borumpilot 7y ago
  Very interesting take on the situation. Thanks, I will keep that in mind and field test your hypothesis.
deleted 7y ago
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SamuelAdams 7y ago
It could also be due to the millennial generation being pickier about who we have sex with. Consider this graph [1] from Datacalysm. It displays the number of messages received by attractiveness. The more attractive an individual, the more messages they receive. There's also another graph [2] that splits this data by gender. There is a pretty significant drop around the 85% mark for women. Which means that the bottom 80% of men are competing for the top 10% of women when meeting through online dating apps. In a world where a more attractive individual is only a swipe away, it's much more likely that the less attractive individuals are getting far less sex. This is just attractiveness. Consider other elements, like family pressures, possibilities of lawsuits / accusations (#MeToo), and other modern issues around sex. No wonder folks are spending less time hooking up. [1]: https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/dataclysm3.jpg https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2... [2]: https://i.redd.it/09d1ndzeki221.jpg https://i.redd.it/09d1ndzeki221.jpg
- WalterGR 7y ago
  Which means that the bottom 80% of men are competing for the top 10% of women when meeting through online dating apps. How does this conclusion follow from the charts you’ve linked to?
bsder 7y ago
How about too many people think that they deserve somebody too much more attractive than they are? Things like Facebook/Instagram/Tinder give the illusion that there are lots of attractive people out there when, in reality, those attractive people are unavailable to YOU because YOU aren't attractive enough. If you hold out for someone too far above your level, you're going to be waiting a while. This has been documented in college professors. Divorce rates are quite a bit higher among college professors because the abundance of attractive members of the opposite sex makes them less satisfied with their partners even though those youngsters really aren't available to them.
koala_man 7y ago
>The portion of Americans aged 18 to 29 who claim to have had no sex for 12 months has more than doubled in a decade >almost a threefold rise in the share of men under the age of 30 who claim to be having no sex So are people actually having less sex, or are they just more willing to admit it?
ummonk 7y ago
What is with the editorialized title?
deleted 7y ago
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skookumchuck 7y ago
40% of romances used to be office romances. These days, asking a woman out at work will get you reprimanded by HR.
bayareanative 7y ago
A WaPo, NYPost & Village Voice alum who was also crab fisherman mentioned... over time, values morph and almost invert entirely: - Upper-case Liberal Democrat become fascist, close-minded and exclusionary - The left becomes a circular firing squad - Republicans become more lower-case liberal - People become atomized from one-another and no longer "disagree without being disagreeable," i.e., it's insults, snark, rhetorical spin doctoring, dismissiveness, censorship and blocking. Oh and power to the most easily offended. - Victim hierarchy inverts power dynamics, rather than delivering equity for all, due to prevalence of mandatory equality of outcome. In general, I think people have fashionablized and cargo-culted philosophical and political positions rather than maintained, mentored, practiced and restored them to their past meanings and values. Maybe it's partially due to the breakdown in social accountability because of mobile populations and partial anonymity/mostly unregulated nature of social media.
blululu 7y ago
Interesting read, but I wish that the writer would conjecture beyond the experience of a non-representative minority (kids who attend top 25 colleges). If you're trying to explain changes in the average of a binary valued distribution, you should focus on the middle 80% of the population.
ginvok 7y ago
Everything we do is wrong, so I really don't know what we are supposed to do.
faissaloo 7y ago
I find it fascinating to see see the cognitive dissonance between the writer's findings and conclusion.

62 points by un_montagnard 7y ago

omosubi 7y ago

Is there a non-paywall version anywhere?

ed 7y ago
https://outline.com/xxTDbh https://outline.com/xxTDbh
Gustomaximus 7y ago
https://outline.com/xxTDbh https://outline.com/xxTDbh
golergka 7y ago
No paywall with disabled javascript.

jparse 7y ago

Non Paywall Version: https://outline.com/xxTDbh https://outline.com/xxTDbh

golergka 7y ago

> Many considered the prospect of chatting someone up in a bar not merely daunting but possibly offensive. “Revealing that your intention in talking to someone is sexual? That’s hairy,” shuddered one man. When I read things like this, I can't understand whether american culture has gotten weirdly puritan or this is a wild exaggeration. There's such a huge distance between politely and respectfully expressing sexual interest in someone, especially in a BAR, and being creepy and offensive. Edit: just to clarify, I've never lived in US or in countries in the similar #metoo zeitgest, so this is an uneducated view from the outside.

spacesword 7y ago
Welcome to the post #MeToo era
- huehehue 7y ago
  This is unsubstantive. It's one thing to express concern over what you might perceive as encroaching Puritan morality. It's another to blast a movement focused on giving a voice to sexual abuse victims.
  - lesdeuxmagots 7y ago
    I think it'd be wrong to not think through this though. When we talk about #metoo, we don't talk about the movement itself. #metoo is a symptom, indicative of a broader social sea change. I'm on the more progressive end in a coastal city, but have been in a uniquely diverse environment when it comes to political views, international views. People that are more socially liberal tend to have changed their stances because of a change in the general understanding of what is proper or acceptable. People who are more socially conservative have also changes their stances, but specifically blame the fear around #metoo. And I totally understand why they feel this way - it's difficult to place that shift on some nebulous generational change of social mores. It's much easier to place that shift on a specific, well-defined, well-publicized movement. That's not to say anyone is blasting that movement by saying this is how people feel. Neither is it blaming the movement for actually doing anything. However, it is likely what this change is mentally attributed to for many people.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - colordrops 7y ago
    There have been some very public cases of men being ostracized in the public eye through the #meetoo movement for behaviors that many would be considered acceptable, or at least bordering on it. Examples are Aziz Ansari and John Lasseter. Then you've got a constant barrage in newspapers, Twitter, and Facebook about consent, and what needs explicit consent encroaching ever closer to normal behaviors such as conversation. There is the concept of "enthusiastic consent". All of this is spearheaded by the #meetoo movement. Obviously consent is a good thing. But to pretend that the boundaries of what are reasonable regarding consent aren't overstepped and people aren't attacked unfairly is to deny the evidence. This fuzzy and changing boundary creates an environment of fear among men, especially when considering the consequences. There are forums were people discuss these issues in depth. Are they all hallucinating?
chrischen 7y ago
The distance depends on how attractive you are to the other person, which is usually out of one's control.
nixarian 7y ago
More often than not, the 'difference' is whether or not the woman decided it's creepy or not, which is, more often than not, attached to the physical attractiveness of the man, or her mood at the time. Benefit of the doubt doesn't enter into it, especially after #MeToo And you might have noticed that women aren't having much less sex. It's because women are all having sex with a small number of men. Attractive, successful men. This is, sadly, the result of female, and to a lesser extent male, freedom of choice. Most women would choose to only have sex with attractive, successful men. And unlike men, they have that option.
im3w1l 7y ago
Couple puritanical norms with men who aren't that great at reading social norms and err on the side of caution and this is what happens. A significant minority is not able to make sense of it.
feministincel 7y ago
Throwaway for obvious reasons. I’ve never been in a context where that’s even acceptable. None of my friends pick up women (or are successful) and the only person I know in a long term relationship met his fiancé in middle school. I dont think it’s Puritanism but it is being risk averse. I know how hard it is for women and how many creeps they do have to deal with so I’d rather not even create the possibility of coming off as one. Add to this the tinderification of the hiring market (see Google’s top 1% of intelligence) and dating scene have put the bottom 80-90% in a bit of a bind because in many large metro areas there are more straight men than women and women are not culturally expected to make the first move. Couple that with increased expectations and lower social cohesion and it becomes...well, expected. Source - non-homeschooled straight 23 year old, never once asked a girl out.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  I suggest asking some girls out. I had social anxiety and the kind of social skills that lead to an Asperger’s diagnosis and I had more romantic experience than you by the time I was 18. The chances of a girl being offended by being asked out are relatively low in any case; most people are nice. They’re really, really low if you’re attractive. When an ugly, charmless or poor man asks out a certain kind of girl they’re offended not just at having been asked out, but that the thought even occurred. Most girls aren’t like that. They’ll deflect the question or say that they’re busy and make no effort to reschedule. My email is in my profile for anyone who has similar problems.
  - feministincel 7y ago
    Well I’m not exactly attractive either :) Honestly, putting myself in the type of women I’m most intrigued by i wouldn’t put up with myself. The closest I got was when I chatted up a girl on a train, but just couldn’t tell if she was just being super polite. Although I did end up getting her LinkedIn... I guess I’m not smooth either.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      If you’re not attractive become attractive. If you’re not the kind of person you’d put up with change, become better. If you’re not smooth or confident work on them, they’re learnable skills. Don’t be yourself, that’s a crock of shit those born on third base say, work on becoming better, on becoming someone you respect and who you think is worth dating.
mellow-lake-day 7y ago
Tinder and other hook up apps are the solution. No more approaching strangers in a bar who are either there to hang out with friends or just want to be left alone.
- feministincel 7y ago
  They are the solution because the intentions are clearer but then... you don’t get matches, because in straight pairings more women get orders of magnitude more attention than most men. Source - I don’t get matches. And if I do, I’m boring.
- CuriouslyC 7y ago
  Tinder is garbage. They have intentionally created a horribly imbalanced market to hook women with unrealistic prospects while extracting as much money as possible from the bottom 80% of men. Singles meetups organized around a shared hobby or activity are a million times better.
deleted 7y ago
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autokad 7y ago
I dont think it has anything to do with puritan, as its not related to religion at all. well for one, sex in college is extremely dangerous. the Obama administration basically threatened Universities to treat male students as guilty (not even guilty until proven innocent). https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-campus-rape-policy/538974/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-un...
- tdb7893 7y ago
  I've never met any male college student where that was why they aren't having sex. I highly doubt this is a major factor for any but a very small number of people (and those people are unlikely to have sex for other reasons anyway).
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  American culture has deep roots, just like everywhere else. Just because the ideology of human rights or progressivism doesn’t identify itself as a post-Christian movement that doesn’t really make sense except on light of Christianity doesn’t make it untrue. The line from the Quakers with God’s inner light in each person to the inherent dignity of man is not exactly subtle. Likewise sex worker hostile feminism in Sweden or Norway uses similar rhetoric of concern for sex workers while doing everything in their power to make their lives hell. Just because the feminists in question don’t talk about Christ that doesn’t mean they’re not the same kind of judgmental bourgeois Lutherans their grandmothers were.
Pfhreak 7y ago
This is a wild exaggeration. Men used to be able to basically hit on women in all contexts with zero consequence (e.g. hitting on women at work was ok, let alone butting into a group at a bar). More recently, people have been pushing back on men who are inappropriate. This leads to some men who don't understand the new boundaries having a very large overreaction and essentially saying that it's impossible or scary to 'chat someone up'. See also the men who won't work/game in mixed gender groups because it's "too difficult". The new rules are essentially 'be respectful' and "there's a time a place" and 'politely accept no as an answer' and 'no one owes you shit'. They aren't complicated rules.
- amvalo 7y ago
  Actually the rules are even simpler than that: 1. don't.
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    They really aren't? You can flirt, you can come on to people. Some people want that, and it's ok in some contexts.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      And there is no way to tell which people are okay with this and which aren't without taking risks that can have severe consequences. Some men are just going to say "no thanks" to this, and on the scale of society that some men is a large number.
      - golergka 7y ago
        > And there is no way to tell which people are okay with this and which aren't without taking risks that can have severe consequences. Ask?
        Mirioron 7y ago
        Just asking can be considered creepy or harassment.
duxup 7y ago
There is a sort of sexual paranoia in the US, but it isn't religious and puritan....it shows up in corporations and academic institutions. Laura Kipnis had a wonderful essay about it, and as if to drive the point home it resulted in a series of absurd investigations by the University she works at. http://5d5.3dd.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Sexual-Paranoia-Strikes-Academe.pdf http://5d5.3dd.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Se...
mirimir 7y ago
Sure. But the lead in to that makes it pretty clear: > But that still does not seem to explain the persistence of America’s sex recession, or its most extreme feature: how concentrated it is among men. Since 2008 there has been almost a threefold rise in the share of men under the age of 30 who claim to be having no sex. At the same time, the portion of sexless women increased by only 8%. A range of possible explanations for the disparity has been suggested, and the students seemed to corroborate several of them. Many felt men’s social skills had been especially eroded by over-reliance on technology. Overindulgence in porn meanwhile offered them an escape route from reality. Yet the most compelling answer, because it contains elements of all that and more, may be signalled by young people’s increasing reluctance to date. > This is often blamed on the “hook-up culture” of college campuses. Yet casual sex and dating coexisted in the 1990s. It is also easy to exaggerate—now as then—how many people are hooking up. Half the Northwestern students said they rarely or never did. Yet they also rattled off reasons not to date which, among the men, who would traditionally take the lead in such encounters, included uncertainty about how they were even managed. Many considered the prospect of chatting someone up in a bar not merely daunting but possibly offensive. “Revealing that your intention in talking to someone is sexual? That’s hairy,” shuddered one man. I didn't get comfortable "chatting someone up in a bar" until my mid 30s. After a few ~long-term relationships, and a failed marriage. And this was during the 60s-80s. I can't imagine what it's like now.
- cybersnowflake 7y ago
  Its not rocket science. All but the ugliest women can get sex/relationships more easily than all but perhaps the most attractive men. You have the top 90% of women competing for the top 10% (guessimate but its around there) of men while the other men are left completely in the dust.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    That doesn't seem plausible. How can the "top 10%" of men be having sex with anywhere near the " top 90% of women"? That'd be a lot of sex for those men. And wouldn't they be kept busy enough by the top 20%-40% of women? I do suspect that social media is a huge part of it. With such a focus on superficial attractiveness. And the potential for mobbing. There was lots more slack, back in the day.
jetrink 7y ago
When 50% of the population smoked, smoking in bars was accepted. Non-smokers who didn't want to spend an evening wreathed in smoke didn't go to bars. Those who did knew what they were in for. I think approaching people to try to get them into bed is a lot like smoking. At one time, 50% of people in a bar were engaged in that activity. If you went to a bar in the evening, you knew that would be a part of the environment. That doesn't mean it wasn't annoying or awkward for the people being hit on who just wanted to enjoy an evening with friends. It's understandable too that as it becomes rarer, it also is more likely to be seen as creepy, just as smoking has become more offensive as it becomes more rare.
- kthejoker2 7y ago
  Counterpoint: showing up at a bar that encourages smoking is a much stronger signal when there are less people that do it. A human voluntarily showing up at a bar in the age of Tinder is a strong signal, too. So in theory the "creepiness" of assuming their intention to meet others as potential dating material should reduce as well. And just like it would be gauche to go as a nonsmoker to a smoking bar and complain about the smoke in your face, it would be the same to go to a singles bar and complain about the unwanted attention of other patrons.

deleted 7y ago

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sara7262 7y ago

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awakeasleep 7y ago

I wish they'd include the idea of "competition in the marketplace for orgasms" alongside these social and economic ideas. People have limited time & energy, so some percent are conceivably putting less effort into the difficult ways of relieving sexual tension (relationships) while favoring the easier ways to do so (pornography). Porn has been one of the first industries to take advantage of technology, and the change in accessibility of porn is unparalleled. It went from something one was forced to sneakily travel to shady locations and physically purchase to something that we are accidentally exposed to or even advertised to on omnipresent screens everywhere in our lives. And that isn't even going into the way the market has selected for 'more potent' forms of pornography- like the way that just about every fetish can be explored to depths that would shock/offend someone who doesn't share it. (something that probably has an isolating effect on relationships) And it also isn't accounting for the new-ish industry of 'relationship replacement' style streamers- another economic activity that I believe must be competing with traditional 1 on 1 relationships.

01100011 7y ago
There has always been porn. IME, it served several roles, but generally did not replace the desire to be in a relationship or at least physically intimate with another person. Sure, porn is more available and more potent in a sense now, and it may be a factor, but I think at most it is a minor one. Something else is making kids introverted and isolated.
- borumpilot 7y ago
  40 years ago, when I started my interest in porn, it was... different. Both in availability and in "potentness". Skip forward 40 years, I have a bunch of millennial kids. Their (for me discoverable) sexual encounters are extremely limited in comparison to mine and that of my wife, at that age. Personally I do not think that the one (porn) has much to do with the other (limited). What I suspect is far more the lack of privacy and anonymity. Everyone in their age group seems afraid of the potential flack they will receive “when people find out I did X with Y”. And with the current over connectivity that seems a real possibility. Whereas we, between 15 and 25, could disappear for a couple of hours / days, and the lamest excuse would enable you to get away with anything. I truly do not envy this generation. It seems growing up, as in establishing your own personality and experiences, is so much harder.

ArtDev 7y ago

I wonder if dating apps contribute to a "paradox of choice". The book by Aziz Anzari "Modern Dating" suggests this may be a factor.

yingw787 7y ago
I really liked this book! I don't think I want to post spoilers (like really buy and read the book), but I think he established an inverse relationship between how free a society is towards sex and how much actual sex people have.

newnewpdro 7y ago

You don't really need real physical sex with all the associated risks and overheads when quality porn has become so abundant and readily accessible. A half hour spent on pornhub vs. dealing with other people while making a diceroll on your health and safety? One is clearly more convenient and costs less by a very wide margin. Unless, of course, you want to make children.

fzeroracer 7y ago

There are a lot of people (such as myself) that grew up poor, so we invest most of our energy into our careers to avoid falling back into poverty. Unfortunately, families are expensive and a great way to ensure you raise another generation in poverty. It's no surprise that people are putting off marriage and starting a family if you don't want to raise children in the same situation you were raised in. It's a similar problem across the pond in Japan where people grew up in practically single-parent households due to the rigors of work potentially leading to Karoshi. So you have people either completely checking out of society, or focusing entirely inwards to avoid a repeat of history.

Avshalom 7y ago
points that they bring up but wedge into one paragraph in the dead center surrounded by various hand-waving and alarmism... I think some one had a quota to fill.
povertyworld 7y ago
In the past the ruling class could always count on the proletariat (literally "offspring producing") to reproduce itself no matter how abysmal its conditions. Yet today we find ourselves in a situation Malthus could not have expected: the proletariat is on reproductive strike! The ruling class response is to push an ideology of mass migration that no one dares question. Who will stand up and say they don't welcome immigrants? Not I. This solution seems to be working in the short term, but if birth rates decline in the developing world, there won't be anyone to mass migrate. Then what? Share the wealth?
- titanomachy 7y ago
  Plenty of people speak up against mass immigration, especially amongst the proles. Not everyone is concerned with being seen as racist.

plainOldText 7y ago

Less sex, and more porn most likely. I think plenty of people fulfill their sexual needs through online means these days, which is a shame because real life experiences are much more emotionally enriching, with the added benefit that if you repeatedly engage sexually with a person you really like, it could form the basis of a relationship. Whereas in the digital space, one gets no long term return on the time invested/wasted.

bsder 7y ago
> real life experiences are much more emotionally enriching I would challenge this and probably flag it as the core problem. Most interactions with the opposite sex are emotionally draining and insipid and our digital interactions are almost always more rewarding. The problem is that you have to wade through a ton of mud to get to the gold nugget that is someone you genuinely like to interact with.
- plainOldText 7y ago
  > Most interactions with the opposite sex are emotionally draining ... Indeed, but this can be successfully counteracted to some degree by proper socialization, and by participating in social activities alongside a group of friends, which by virtue of creating social contexts, will lower the barriers to social interactions. People spend too much time indoors in the company of their screens, and without adequate social training, anxiety will surely present itself when one is placed in the company of real people, especially of the opposite sex. > The problem is that you have to wade through a ton of mud to get to the gold nugget that is someone you genuinely like to interact with. Anything meaningful in life requires some level of effort. There's no way around it.
NotSammyHagar 7y ago
Sure, no one masturbated before there was online porn. Oh wait, there was playboy. And no one just used their imagination.

test6554 7y ago

Previously a person's mate selection was very geographically constrained. Everyone wanted to date the most attractive person in (school, town, neighborhood). The internet has broadened the pool of potential mates beyond mere geography. Which makes finding a match easier, but makes all the matches nearby seem less desirable, and makes all the long-distance matches difficult. Particularly on a constrained budget.

feministincel 7y ago
Hard disagree, most people aren’t looking outside of a pretty narrow radius on the apps.
- masonic 7y ago
  Parent said "mates" rather than hookups.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    I always cringe when I see people describe human relationships in biological terms, it hints at a feeling of reductiveness, or the applicability of all biological models to human behavior without taking into consideration massive societal differences and the change in attitudes and the emergence of new sexuality (see Japan's hikkikomori) even of the past few hundred years. It's the same sort of "analysis" that uses "breeding" to refer to when people have children. To top it off, the people using these terms to describe human phenomena are likely not even qualified in biological sciences, never mind anthropology, sociology or psychology.
- madez 7y ago
  How do you know that?

diogenescynic 7y ago

I think it’s a number of things. For one, we have less free time to be social, we’re under more stress, social media is warping expectations and self-esteem, dating costs more than for prior generations, STDs and awareness of them, partisanship and people actually not wanting to date people with differing political opinions, and on and on.

01100011 7y ago

It seems like millennials are avoiding partying in general. Alcohol is a factor in a lot of casual sex. Hell, my family got started because two otherwise unattractive people who previously hated each other realized they liked to get drunk on cheap wine and play with each others' naughty bits. A baby was conceived and a family was started out of guilt. Alcohol plays a big role in breaking down people's inhibitions and insecurities. Now that the combination of alcohol and sex are considered verboten, you lose one of the most effective aphrodisiacs and social lubricants. I'm curious if whatever is behind our lowering sperm counts is also playing a role in this. Given the experience of my fiancee, a millennial who gave up on guys her own age, it seems like the guys who are sexually active(i.e. the ones not stuck on video games and smoking weed), are creeps and philanderers. Hook-up apps and technologically fueled cheating have definitely reduced the mystique behind committed, monogamous relationships among kids these days. Also, title is misspelled. Two n's in millennials.

cybersnowflake 7y ago
Obviously there are many factors, those included but I wouldn't be as quick to discount ideological factors as many people are doing. The Metoo stuff...actually this has been bubbling long before as a general feature of puritanical 3rd wave feminism really has put a damper on things, not just through direct fear instilled into men but generally moving the overton window of sex in society's subconscious.

thatfrenchguy 7y ago

" The portion of Americans aged 18 to 29 who claim to have had no sex for 12 months has more than doubled in a decade—to 23% last year" Can also be read as "The portion of Americans aged 18 to 29 who have sex has slightly decreased, from 89% to 77%".

kthejoker2 7y ago
A 15% decline is slight?

mellow-lake-day 7y ago

> The economy is strong. I'm not sure why the author ends on such an optimistic note. Economy isn't great especially for millennials. 80% of Americans as a whole live paycheck to paycheck. Furthermore there are some signs that there will be another recession coming up. If anything these statistics are going to get worse. https://www.npr.org/2018/11/30/672103209/why-arent-millennials-spending-more-they-re-poorer-than-their-parents-fed-says https://www.npr.org/2018/11/30/672103209/why-arent-millennia... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-are-much-poorer-than-their-parents-data-show/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-are-much-poorer-tha... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-that-4-in-5-us-workers-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-that-4-i... https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/05/global-economic-crash-2020-understand-why https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/05/global-econ...

skookumchuck 7y ago
Living paycheck to paycheck doesn't mean one is poor. I've known many such who were quite well off. They simply couldn't resist spending everything they had.
- pgodzin 7y ago
  It means they're one injury away from being poor
  - skookumchuck 7y ago
    The point is they aren't lacking in income. More income won't fix it for them.
    - deleted 7y ago
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winter_blue 7y ago
Well, we had a huge recession 10 years ago, and we’ve only recently recovered fully from it. We’re at full employment now. There are more open jobs today than unemployed people in the US. It’s true that the value of unskilled and low-skilled labor has dropped, but the value of skilled labor has substantially increased. Case in point: software developers are on average making $150k in salary alone in the Bay Area. Add bonuses, equity, and other cash and non-cash benefits: a good programmer can easily make over $200k. (I’m a millennial, and I find my own compensation incredible and unbelievable.) Americans living paycheck to paycheck has more to do with spending habits than income. People in the United States continue to have the world’s highest purchasing power. On a large scale, living paycheck to paycheck has more to do with culture and discipline than level of income. (Exceptions exist: living in a high cost-of-living area with low/minimum-wage income, only having part-time temporary like PhD graduates who have to be adjuncts and TAs forever, etc.)

cybersnowflake 7y ago

Congrats SJWs, You've finally made the Religious Right's centuries long dream of a sexless puritanical world a reality.

Arbalest 7y ago

There seems to be a lot of different explanations given below, but I can't help but think of: It's all of them, more or less. They've pretty much all come up as a consequence to the internet, whether it be better organisation leading more effective communication of how (some) men make unwanted advances, dissemination of pornography or the paradox of choice in dating. You could probably throw on top of that pile greater entertainment choices that are not pornography, making the payoff for sex just too low when you can get instant gratification now.

iamnothere 7y ago

First off, I'm not making any judgments here -- every generation has its problems. If I had to guess, I would say that a significant part of this phenomenon is tied to status concerns. Compared to Gen X, more people from the millennial generation appear to be openly obsessed with status. (Gen X cared about status, too, but from what I have seen it was considered "uncool" to care about status as an Xer, so you had to have some subtlety about how you obtained it.) Obsession with status is tolerated and even encouraged by peers, and is further reinforced by social networks and group dynamics. * Flirt with someone who rejects you? You lose status. * Seen by peers with someone of potentially lower status? You lose status. * Hook up with someone when there are negative rumors about them? You lose status. * Make out with someone who rejected a friend? You damage that relationship and either gain or lose status based on mysterious dynamics. Status is felt as an invisible currency that affects your prospects for friendships, relationships, and your career. As such, losing it is seen as worse than an equivalent monetary loss. It's almost equivalent to "losing face" in East Asian countries, although the consequences are not quite as severe. I would argue that there is actually an ongoing "status bubble" and that people are overestimating the value of status -- surely it can't be worth all that. For single people, though, it can be hard to drop out of the status game. Who wants to be seen as a "loser"? Edit: I didn't really account for the gender disparity here, I've got some vague ideas but this was already treading too deep into speculation. Anyway, I don't think this can be fully explained by #MeToo concerns.

borumpilot 7y ago
Very interesting take on the situation. Thanks, I will keep that in mind and field test your hypothesis.

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SamuelAdams 7y ago

It could also be due to the millennial generation being pickier about who we have sex with. Consider this graph [1] from Datacalysm. It displays the number of messages received by attractiveness. The more attractive an individual, the more messages they receive. There's also another graph [2] that splits this data by gender. There is a pretty significant drop around the 85% mark for women. Which means that the bottom 80% of men are competing for the top 10% of women when meeting through online dating apps. In a world where a more attractive individual is only a swipe away, it's much more likely that the less attractive individuals are getting far less sex. This is just attractiveness. Consider other elements, like family pressures, possibilities of lawsuits / accusations (#MeToo), and other modern issues around sex. No wonder folks are spending less time hooking up. [1]: https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/dataclysm3.jpg https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2... [2]: https://i.redd.it/09d1ndzeki221.jpg https://i.redd.it/09d1ndzeki221.jpg

WalterGR 7y ago
Which means that the bottom 80% of men are competing for the top 10% of women when meeting through online dating apps. How does this conclusion follow from the charts you’ve linked to?

bsder 7y ago

How about too many people think that they deserve somebody too much more attractive than they are? Things like Facebook/Instagram/Tinder give the illusion that there are lots of attractive people out there when, in reality, those attractive people are unavailable to YOU because YOU aren't attractive enough. If you hold out for someone too far above your level, you're going to be waiting a while. This has been documented in college professors. Divorce rates are quite a bit higher among college professors because the abundance of attractive members of the opposite sex makes them less satisfied with their partners even though those youngsters really aren't available to them.

koala_man 7y ago

>The portion of Americans aged 18 to 29 who claim to have had no sex for 12 months has more than doubled in a decade >almost a threefold rise in the share of men under the age of 30 who claim to be having no sex So are people actually having less sex, or are they just more willing to admit it?

ummonk 7y ago

What is with the editorialized title?

deleted 7y ago

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skookumchuck 7y ago

40% of romances used to be office romances. These days, asking a woman out at work will get you reprimanded by HR.

bayareanative 7y ago

A WaPo, NYPost & Village Voice alum who was also crab fisherman mentioned... over time, values morph and almost invert entirely: - Upper-case Liberal Democrat become fascist, close-minded and exclusionary - The left becomes a circular firing squad - Republicans become more lower-case liberal - People become atomized from one-another and no longer "disagree without being disagreeable," i.e., it's insults, snark, rhetorical spin doctoring, dismissiveness, censorship and blocking. Oh and power to the most easily offended. - Victim hierarchy inverts power dynamics, rather than delivering equity for all, due to prevalence of mandatory equality of outcome. In general, I think people have fashionablized and cargo-culted philosophical and political positions rather than maintained, mentored, practiced and restored them to their past meanings and values. Maybe it's partially due to the breakdown in social accountability because of mobile populations and partial anonymity/mostly unregulated nature of social media.

blululu 7y ago

Interesting read, but I wish that the writer would conjecture beyond the experience of a non-representative minority (kids who attend top 25 colleges). If you're trying to explain changes in the average of a binary valued distribution, you should focus on the middle 80% of the population.

ginvok 7y ago

Everything we do is wrong, so I really don't know what we are supposed to do.

faissaloo 7y ago

I find it fascinating to see see the cognitive dissonance between the writer's findings and conclusion.