5 ms·

Well... before the internet, if you wanted to meet somebody you probably went to a nightclub, paid $20 to get in, and then $15-$20 per drink so you wouldn't be

Well... before the internet, if you wanted to meet somebody you probably went to a nightclub, paid $20 to get in, and then $15-$20 per drink so you wouldn't be wandering around without a drink in your hand. A lot of these places had cover charges for men but not for women, so they were making money off mostly men's desperation, too.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> if you wanted to meet somebody you probably went to a nightclub I'm sure that I have seen somewhere here before some hard statistics on where partners meet in Western countries – maybe someone still has a link. In spite of the existence of known meat markets, those meat markets are not the source of most of the population’s relationships. Instead, people come together through mundane things like friends of friends, people at work, people in the neighbourhood, classmates, etc.
- purplecats 6y ago
  It doesn't seem _mundane_, it seems safe. They meet via social proof rather than via randomness.
- pcbro141 6y ago
  This Stanford study (2017) says 39% of hetero couples meet online today. Wow, that's really high if true: https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-partner-heterosexual-us-couples/ https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-partner-...
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Waste enough time flinging pigeons at the wall and eventually they all end up in holes. If everyone spends a stupid amount of time with online dating then that's where a lot of the matches are gonna be even if it's not an efficient way to get that end result.
    - EForEndeavour 6y ago
      How do you measure efficiency? Isn't "eventually leads to significant other" a relevant metric? If couples are finding each other online more than they are elsewhere, then online matchmaking is outperforming offline channels.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
    "Online" is not equivalent to using a dating app.
- atmosx 6y ago
  The club thing is popularized by ads, movies, video clips, etc. It is not as common as TV makes it to be.
- interestica 6y ago
  College as a Marriage Market https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26923692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26923692
mdorazio 6y ago
Only if by “meet somebody” you mean for casual sex only. If you wanted an actual girlfriend you were (and probably still are) better off meeting through friends or in-person activities that demonstrate actual shared interests beyond getting drunk.
- deanCommie 6y ago
  This is a bit old-fashioned... "Getting drunk with friends" is an in-person activity. The point isn't getting drunk, the point is to socialize with barriers of anxiety and inhibitions lowered. There are plenty of people who want to ensure physical compatibility for a long term relationship as much as emotional one. Society deems one "shallow", but for many people sex is a crucial aspect of any relationship, and just because they are willing to sleep with someone liberally does not mean they are also not interested in something deeper.
  - CoastalCoder 6y ago
    Sorry for the tangent, but can someone elaborate on what it means to be "physically compatible"? I'm assuming it doesn't mean being capable of basic sexual activity, because that seems like a given for 90% of potential couples. I.e., not something you'd really need to "test". And if it means "capable of giving each other a really enjoyable sexual experience", I wouldn't think that's something you can falsify in just 1-2 dates. Because there's a learning curve, and that takes (among other things) time and practice.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      > I'm assuming it doesn't mean being capable of basic sexual activity, because that seems like a given for 90% of potential couples I would suspect that more than 10% of women complain about a male partner being unwilling to perform oral sex on them, or bad at it, even though this might be very important for them and the main way they can orgasm. Men, too, complain about women’s ability or receptiveness to things they need for satisfying sex.
    - deanCommie 6y ago
pmoriarty 6y ago
"and then $15-$20 per drink so you wouldn't be wandering around without a drink in your hand" Wow. This is the first time I've heard anyone express this concern. It boggles my mind that anyone would care about being seen without a drink in their hand. What consequences do you imagine will come from that?
- grecy 6y ago
  Personally I don't think there are consequences, but I just feel way less confident and conspicuous when I don't have a drink in my hand. Like I don't belong somehow. I'm sure it's all in my head, but there it is. I trick I learned long ago at house parties or BBQs is to drink one beer, then constantly re-fill it with water for the rest of the time. That way I have something to hold onto and a way to entertain myself where there is a lull in conversation or whatever.
  - anticristi 6y ago
    Noted!
- deanCommie 6y ago
  If you're wandering with a drink in your hand you have plausible deniability that you are just drinking and wandering. If you are just walking around without a drink, then you're stalking/leering. Of course it's much more nuanced than that - you can look like a lecherous creep stalking woman with a drink in your hand just as easily. But that would be the premise: With a drink you don't need anything else to have a good time, you're already "doing something". Without, you're literally trying to fill a void.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    "If you're wandering with a drink in your hand you have plausible deniability that you are just drinking and wandering. If you are just walking around without a drink, then you're stalking/leering." Is this how you think of others, or do you imagine that's how they think of you? For me, whether or not someone has a drink in their hand, if they're in a party or a club or a bar they're all doing basically the same thing: wandering, listening, looking to meet and talk to people. I really don't get why holding a drink would change any of that.
est31 6y ago
The charges of the venue itself might be higher for the men but women usually spend a lot more time and money on makeup, care products, hair dressers, nails, clothing, etc. Also note that when you go with a traditional "man is the provider" model, then being in an environment where men have demonstrated their provider ability is beneficial for both parties. For the women as the options are pre-filtered and for the men as there is less competition noise. As for dating apps/online dating... if you look at user statistics you see a strong gender imbalance, so apparently men want to use them far more than women do. I've heard this situation expressed in terms of those apps being less appealing to women than they are to men. However, due to the imbalance, the premise of these apps is essentially broken for most male users.
- P_I_Staker 6y ago
  > women usually spend a lot more time and money on makeup, care products, hair dressers, nails, clothing, etc. I don't think they really do that "to get a man", though
- vmception 6y ago
  > For the women as the options are pre-filtered and for the men as there is less competition noise I mostly go into and create circumstances where the same is true of the women, pre-filtered. One thing I liked about being on my promoter acquaintances' VIP tables is that the women also at the table have been pre-filtered like 4 or 5 times before I ever see them. 1. State department -> 2. Host family (with heavy input choice by the husband) -> 3. Promoter -> 4. Doorman (who would definitely reject guys and gals alike, no matter what name they dropped) -> 5. me. So yes in that environment, there is also even less competition noise amongst men, because we wouldn't ever fight over a woman given the quantity and only chuckle at our predictably similar preferences if a pattern emerged. But, the selective evolution at play is much more extreme than the general population or the rest of the club. and yeah, that also allows us to inherit the social validation and assumptions about our ability to provide that many women would also look for, which would be convenient enough to never think about. In quantity, some people are just more forward and assertive than others, so with a lot of women now competing for attention instead of men, this has been a much more optimal use of energy for men. Occasionally relationships are nice too, this wasn't about that.
missedthecue 6y ago
Male desperation and female vanity seem to be evergreen industries
eddof13 6y ago
I think people get this pretty wrong. As for the drinks, you can get a mineral water with lime if you need a drink in your hand. The point of the cover charge for men is to: Increase the barrier to entry, keep the riff-raff out and maintain a certain level of male clientele. This improves male to female ratio, improves the likelihood of females attending because they have better environment (you should love ladies night- you are paying for the club/bar to set out the bait) and better options to pick from. The higher the cover the less likely you will get into a fight over talking to the wrong girl. I used to hate cover charges but then I realized like most people I got it all backwards. It's only desperation if you pay the cover, buy the drinks, only to not take proper advantage of it.
RobRivera 6y ago
I can assure you the nightclub is not the only venue where you can meet a new life partner. nor is it a place you want to.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

> if you wanted to meet somebody you probably went to a nightclub I'm sure that I have seen somewhere here before some hard statistics on where partners meet in Western countries – maybe someone still has a link. In spite of the existence of known meat markets, those meat markets are not the source of most of the population’s relationships. Instead, people come together through mundane things like friends of friends, people at work, people in the neighbourhood, classmates, etc.

purplecats 6y ago
It doesn't seem _mundane_, it seems safe. They meet via social proof rather than via randomness.
pcbro141 6y ago
This Stanford study (2017) says 39% of hetero couples meet online today. Wow, that's really high if true: https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-partner-heterosexual-us-couples/ https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-partner-...
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Waste enough time flinging pigeons at the wall and eventually they all end up in holes. If everyone spends a stupid amount of time with online dating then that's where a lot of the matches are gonna be even if it's not an efficient way to get that end result.
  - EForEndeavour 6y ago
    How do you measure efficiency? Isn't "eventually leads to significant other" a relevant metric? If couples are finding each other online more than they are elsewhere, then online matchmaking is outperforming offline channels.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  "Online" is not equivalent to using a dating app.
atmosx 6y ago
The club thing is popularized by ads, movies, video clips, etc. It is not as common as TV makes it to be.
interestica 6y ago
College as a Marriage Market https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26923692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26923692

mdorazio 6y ago

Only if by “meet somebody” you mean for casual sex only. If you wanted an actual girlfriend you were (and probably still are) better off meeting through friends or in-person activities that demonstrate actual shared interests beyond getting drunk.

deanCommie 6y ago
This is a bit old-fashioned... "Getting drunk with friends" is an in-person activity. The point isn't getting drunk, the point is to socialize with barriers of anxiety and inhibitions lowered. There are plenty of people who want to ensure physical compatibility for a long term relationship as much as emotional one. Society deems one "shallow", but for many people sex is a crucial aspect of any relationship, and just because they are willing to sleep with someone liberally does not mean they are also not interested in something deeper.
- CoastalCoder 6y ago
  Sorry for the tangent, but can someone elaborate on what it means to be "physically compatible"? I'm assuming it doesn't mean being capable of basic sexual activity, because that seems like a given for 90% of potential couples. I.e., not something you'd really need to "test". And if it means "capable of giving each other a really enjoyable sexual experience", I wouldn't think that's something you can falsify in just 1-2 dates. Because there's a learning curve, and that takes (among other things) time and practice.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > I'm assuming it doesn't mean being capable of basic sexual activity, because that seems like a given for 90% of potential couples I would suspect that more than 10% of women complain about a male partner being unwilling to perform oral sex on them, or bad at it, even though this might be very important for them and the main way they can orgasm. Men, too, complain about women’s ability or receptiveness to things they need for satisfying sex.
  - deanCommie 6y ago

pmoriarty 6y ago

"and then $15-$20 per drink so you wouldn't be wandering around without a drink in your hand" Wow. This is the first time I've heard anyone express this concern. It boggles my mind that anyone would care about being seen without a drink in their hand. What consequences do you imagine will come from that?

grecy 6y ago
Personally I don't think there are consequences, but I just feel way less confident and conspicuous when I don't have a drink in my hand. Like I don't belong somehow. I'm sure it's all in my head, but there it is. I trick I learned long ago at house parties or BBQs is to drink one beer, then constantly re-fill it with water for the rest of the time. That way I have something to hold onto and a way to entertain myself where there is a lull in conversation or whatever.
- anticristi 6y ago
  Noted!
deanCommie 6y ago
If you're wandering with a drink in your hand you have plausible deniability that you are just drinking and wandering. If you are just walking around without a drink, then you're stalking/leering. Of course it's much more nuanced than that - you can look like a lecherous creep stalking woman with a drink in your hand just as easily. But that would be the premise: With a drink you don't need anything else to have a good time, you're already "doing something". Without, you're literally trying to fill a void.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "If you're wandering with a drink in your hand you have plausible deniability that you are just drinking and wandering. If you are just walking around without a drink, then you're stalking/leering." Is this how you think of others, or do you imagine that's how they think of you? For me, whether or not someone has a drink in their hand, if they're in a party or a club or a bar they're all doing basically the same thing: wandering, listening, looking to meet and talk to people. I really don't get why holding a drink would change any of that.

est31 6y ago

The charges of the venue itself might be higher for the men but women usually spend a lot more time and money on makeup, care products, hair dressers, nails, clothing, etc. Also note that when you go with a traditional "man is the provider" model, then being in an environment where men have demonstrated their provider ability is beneficial for both parties. For the women as the options are pre-filtered and for the men as there is less competition noise. As for dating apps/online dating... if you look at user statistics you see a strong gender imbalance, so apparently men want to use them far more than women do. I've heard this situation expressed in terms of those apps being less appealing to women than they are to men. However, due to the imbalance, the premise of these apps is essentially broken for most male users.

P_I_Staker 6y ago
> women usually spend a lot more time and money on makeup, care products, hair dressers, nails, clothing, etc. I don't think they really do that "to get a man", though
vmception 6y ago
> For the women as the options are pre-filtered and for the men as there is less competition noise I mostly go into and create circumstances where the same is true of the women, pre-filtered. One thing I liked about being on my promoter acquaintances' VIP tables is that the women also at the table have been pre-filtered like 4 or 5 times before I ever see them. 1. State department -> 2. Host family (with heavy input choice by the husband) -> 3. Promoter -> 4. Doorman (who would definitely reject guys and gals alike, no matter what name they dropped) -> 5. me. So yes in that environment, there is also even less competition noise amongst men, because we wouldn't ever fight over a woman given the quantity and only chuckle at our predictably similar preferences if a pattern emerged. But, the selective evolution at play is much more extreme than the general population or the rest of the club. and yeah, that also allows us to inherit the social validation and assumptions about our ability to provide that many women would also look for, which would be convenient enough to never think about. In quantity, some people are just more forward and assertive than others, so with a lot of women now competing for attention instead of men, this has been a much more optimal use of energy for men. Occasionally relationships are nice too, this wasn't about that.

missedthecue 6y ago

Male desperation and female vanity seem to be evergreen industries

eddof13 6y ago

I think people get this pretty wrong. As for the drinks, you can get a mineral water with lime if you need a drink in your hand. The point of the cover charge for men is to: Increase the barrier to entry, keep the riff-raff out and maintain a certain level of male clientele. This improves male to female ratio, improves the likelihood of females attending because they have better environment (you should love ladies night- you are paying for the club/bar to set out the bait) and better options to pick from. The higher the cover the less likely you will get into a fight over talking to the wrong girl. I used to hate cover charges but then I realized like most people I got it all backwards. It's only desperation if you pay the cover, buy the drinks, only to not take proper advantage of it.

RobRivera 6y ago

I can assure you the nightclub is not the only venue where you can meet a new life partner. nor is it a place you want to.