31 ms·

Sex is going out of fashion?

• rkangel 4y ago
  This article assumes a premise and then goes on to discuss it. It doesn't in any way attempt to provide evidence for its premise. I personally don't believe it to be true, and me saying that is exactly as authoritative as what that author has written.
• incomingpain 4y ago
• ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  I don't think tech or porn is the main culprit. It's that people now have way more entertainment options other than sex. Of course, a lot for those entertainment options are being driven by tech. Back in my dad's days, they were poor so the only entertainment options in their free time was drinking cheap home made alcohol, dancing and sex, while now we have gaming, Netflix, tic-tok, porn, traveling to the infinite Instagramable places around the world, plus the grind of keeping up with spiraling living and real estate costs, which IMHO, is the real bummer here. Also, adult dating and meeting people for the post-college working professionals, has largely moved from clubs/bars/the office to online dating apps, or lonely depression in your apartment, eating or drinking your feelings away, for those without success in the WFH, remote-everything, online dating world. Especially with the lockdowns.
  • usrn 4y ago
    It's because people in their 20s are living with their parents and don't want to have sex in the park. When I was younger I wanted it badly enough that I did stupid things like that but I can understand why people like me are in a tiny minority.
    • BlargMcLarg 4y ago
      That, and most are still holding people in their 20s to the same standards as generations able to start a family with the credentials of Homer Simpson.
      • usrn 4y ago
        "People" meaning banks really. The games with credit are effectively driving the housing shortage by making buying the small number of already built homes effectively more affordable than building new ones in the massive amount of permissibly zoned empty space we have. We're only exacerbating it by bringing in tons of legal and illegal immigrants and having the government pay for their housing. It's not surprising there's a conspiracy theory about intentional replacement of the native population with that going on. Combine that with the value extraction from rent/debt (everyone has to own a car and since they probably can't afford to just buy one most are in debt over it) and no one can afford sex. The awful part of all this is that young people blame women. Women are just the messengers.
        • danuker 4y ago
          > already built homes effectively more affordable than building new ones The reason people buy instead of build is that the house is already there, whereas building anew takes a lot of time. As interest rates grow, it becomes more expensive to do so, and waiting starts paying off. But inflation is still high in spite of the high interest rates. And then, maybe the central banks will overshoot the interest rate, which will lead to another crash... Other than that, living in a walkable area has its advantages, and codes are much stricter in high densities, so you can't build.
        • BlargMcLarg 4y ago
          I actually meant the people, not banks. Banks exacerbate the problem, but you don't need to hold everyone to the same standards as 30 years ago. People in family homes in Southern Europe date, too. Many Japanese people get married before they leave the parental home. This was pretty standard in most of Europe and America a little less than a century ago. >The awful part of all this is that young people blame women. I don't want to blame women in particular, but from personal anecdotes, women in particular place huge importance on a guy having his own car and place, despite both being massive wastes of money here and actively hurting one's ability to get housing later. The opposite, not so much. This in a country where even rent is now mostly a dual-income market.
    • vidanay 4y ago
      Because now you get a lifetime label as a registered sex offender if you get caught. Additionally, those of us who grew up in the 80's had the absolute fear of AIDS drilled into us. IMO, the AIDS epidemic blunted the libido of at least one generation.
      • Beltiras 4y ago
        Almost nobody got laid in the 80's. Fact.
        • oldsecondhand 4y ago
          In the 80s AIDS was the gay disease. Also people live longer than a decade.
        • samatman 4y ago
          People who grew up in the 80s were by definition not getting laid until the 90s for the most part. As one of those people, well, it didn't stop me. But the terror was real.
      • usrn 4y ago
        • vidanay 4y ago
          It's not a big deal, we know that now. In the 80's when I was a teenager, the fear-tactics and abstinence only education were strong - I'd even say at their peak. Those patterns get embedded in your brain.
          • krrrh 4y ago
            I’ll never forget seeing Oprah on tv in 1987, "Hello, everybody. AIDS has both sexes running scared. Research studies now project that one in five--listen to me, hard to believe--one if five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years. That's by 1990. One in five. It is no longer just a gay disease. Believe me." By the time I was a teenager that fear had subsided, but that’s was a pretty dramatic thing to hear at a young age.
  • lumost 4y ago
    I do wonder if the act of dating has gotten substantially less fun than it was in the past. At least if you go to a bar/concert/activity you may have fun and make plutonic friends, messaging random people on a dating site seems much more depressing.
    • CoastalCoder 4y ago
      > plutonic friends Did you mean "Platonic friends"? Although it sounds kinda nice to have Plutonic friends as well, since they'd have yachts and what not.
      • benj111 4y ago
        Surely plutonic friends would have superpowers and not be the rich tech heavy kind of superhero???
      • oldsecondhand 4y ago
        If you marry a plutonic friend, you can start a nuclear family unit.
        • layer8 4y ago
          I was thinking that you’d reach new horizons.
      • irrational 4y ago
        Oh, I thought it meant friends from the planet Pluto.
      • spyder 4y ago
        It's a very long distance friend who lives as far as Pluto :-)
    • dpz 4y ago
      It is very un fun, one of the big things I've noticed is online dating is very different experience for men and women. Both have their negatives and positives, but it create a weird dynamic of how people date.
  • bko 4y ago
    Entertainment has entered a tyranny of choice. I see it personally. I can watch nearly every show and movie that was ever created but I still flip through Netflix and RT endlessly, often times choosing not to watch anything. When I was younger I would just watch Seinfeld re-runs, with commercials and all. Am I more "entertained" today than I was when I was growing up? I'm not convinced. The weirdest thing is I don't remember what I used to talk to my friends about when I was in high school. We didn't have much shared media to talk about (e.g. periodic TV shows people obsess about today). None of us so much picked up a newspaper at the time so current events were out. None of us had that many specific interests and the interests we had weren't shared. But somehow we spent hours talking about something. I wish I could be a fly on the wall of my prom table to just take in what was discussed.
    • justinpowers 4y ago
      If you became that fly, you’d soon wish to be squashed rather than listen to adolescent chitchat.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • bko 4y ago
        Fair point...
    • vinnymac 4y ago
      I am genuinely unsure, and had to google it. Is RT supposed to be the abbreviation for Rotten Tomatoes?
      • pavlov 4y ago
        I don’t know, but I’m guessing it’s not Russia Today where I associate the abbreviation…
      • Game_Ender 4y ago
        Yes. A popular way to see what shows reviewers and audiences like most. If you Google “rt <name of movie>” you will get the rating too.
  • nnoitra 4y ago
    It's unfortunately a lot sadder than that. You'd be suprised at the amount of males that want to have sex but just can't get any. There is a serious case of looks inflation nowadays with Tinder etc.
    • Noos 4y ago
      there is inflation with everything since we are connected to everyone in the world. All programmers work at FAANG, all artists are superhumanly taleneted, all business owners make million dollar unicorns and look like actors, etc. Average is slowly being filtered out
      • bamboozled 4y ago
        Yes average is there still actually running things...
    • prmoustache 4y ago
      Well you can't really get laid if you spend day and night playing video games and binge watching series. Every time I broke up I was mildly welcoming some time for myself but never managed to be single more than a handful of weeks. And I don't consider myself particularly more attractive/interesting than everybody out there.
      • throwaway2037 4y ago
        I don't play video games, and I don't binge watch series, but why would this exlude women/gender-non-binary? They can and do enjoy both. And they could enjoy both with someone else. After all, what is the meaning of "Netflix and Chill"? I know many women who wish to do the same with another person, and that person need not look like Brad Pitt, et al. Perhaps I am reading too deep, but you make it sound like someone needs to make some great effort to meet someone else. No, just a slight hiccup in their daily routine can introduce them to another person whom has very similar, low energy interests. Think: Buzzfeed dating videos from 5 years ago. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDFKJHczQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDFKJHczQ8
  • CodeSgt 4y ago
    I think that all the things you listed are definitely culprits, but I wouldn't be so quick to discount porn. Anecdotally, I myself and many otherwise healthy, sociable young men I know have pretty serious porn addictions. I really wish there would be more research done on the negative impacts of pornography, especially on young men and teens/pre-teens. I know typically any anti-porn sentiment is met with "Oh you're just being a puritan", but the reality couldn't be further from the truth. On social issues, I'm very liberal. Yet so much porn during my developmental years has done so much damage that as an adult I'm just now really understanding the full extent of it, and breaking that addiction is incredibly difficult
    • ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      Yeah, but porn addiction is a consequence I think. If all men could get laid whenever they'd feel like it with a willing partner, then porn use would plummet. I haven't met many women into porn, probably because a one night stand is just a zero effort tinder swipe away, from the comfort of your pijamas in your living room. As a man, you end up turning to porn or paying for sex, or drinking or doing drugs, to compensate the lack of intimacy in your personal life, as that just leads to depression and lack of any self worth.
      • CodeSgt 4y ago
        I'm not so sure. The average age someone is the first time they watch porn is 11, well before some of the issues you mentioned would manifest. When a porn addiction is developed before you hit your teens it's hard to blame a dysfunctional sex life on externalities.
        • lotsofpulp 4y ago
          I do not think an “addiction” is the problem. Obviously, everyone prefers the real thing to porn. What has changed is the availability of porn introducing an extremely low cost alternative to sex, reducing the impetus for making the effort to find a partner (relative to previous times). Maybe even reducing the impetus to putting in the effort to seduce an existing partner! Of course, it is not uniform across all men of course. I suspect those who are able to attract/interact with partners more easily will opt to do that, and those that are not will opt for the easier, lower cost option (even though there may be other long term costs).
  • ravenstine 4y ago
    > Also, adult dating and meeting people for the post-college working professionals, has largely moved from clubs/bars/the office to online dating apps, or lonely depression in your apartment, eating or drinking your feelings away, for those without success in the WFH, remote-everything, online dating world. Especially with the lockdowns. And those "dating" apps can hardly be called dating apps in most cases. They're designed to mess with the underlying sexual dynamic of men and women. If they were meant for romance, they'd have more mechanisms in place to help strangers actually date and get to know each other. Instead, they're a meat market, and the sad thing is more and more people are growing up in a world where they know no different. If you think about it, dating apps have no incentive to try and get people to actually meet in real life. Not only does that raise the potential for liability, but that means fewer eyeballs on their product at any given time. Tinder knows very well that their product is selling attention to women and the promise of sex to countless men they know have next to zero chance based on their looks alone. As OK Cupid was losing its position as a dating app, I remember them putting out an advertising campaign featuring the initialism "DTF", which tells you all you need to know. They might even still be doing it, for all I know. I remember it from billboards and posters in Santa Monica. > I don't think tech or porn is the main culprit. It's that people now have way more entertainment options other than sex. Of course, a lot for those entertainment options are being driven by tech. I don't buy this one bit. The number of entertainment options is correlative, but who has demonstrated that it's causative? Yes, there is a chance that the proliferation of entertainment options is the primary cause, but unless a double-blind study has or will be done to test whether the sex drive is actually in competition with entertainment, I have very sincere doubts. Furthermore, the porn industry is in no way declining. If people were losing an instinctive interest in sex, why would they be watching porn? What if people actually want sex, but they are too ill equipped to obtain it IRL? And we haven't even brought up declining androgen levels in males. Sex isn't going out of fashion. If anything, we are hypersexualized. The goal of sex isn't merely to propagate genes, but to propagate selected genes. Our current environment allows us to select our mates to such an extent that even more people are seleced out of the gene pool for a variety of reasons. Either we're perpetually thinking we can do better, or that we're never good enough or are too ugly, or are totally clueless because Boomer and Gen X parenting have been a disaster.
    • 4y ago
  • guerrilla 4y ago
    > has largely moved from clubs/bars/the office to online dating apps Online dating apps which have a huge incentive to keep people on their site as long as possible too...
    • skohan 4y ago
      That's a good point: it's actually a perverse incentive. If they successfully create a relationship they have lost a customer.
      • scarmig 4y ago
        This is a bit too conspiratorial: I've spoken to people who work at these companies, and there's not a team of analysts trying to figure out how to minimize the number of successful relationships that come from using the app. An app that has a reputation for "I met my last partner on X, and we're getting married next week!" will get far more users and recurring revenue through word of mouth. The bigger issue is that figuring out good matchings is a crapshoot and users' self-described desires and priorities aren't actually in-line with what will make them happy. Everyone wants someone hot (almost by definition), and so the hot people get a lot of interest: the ones actually interested in relationships quickly end up off the market, and those remaining are more than capable of soaking up all the available interest.
        • moomoo11 4y ago
          Really? I worked on the biggest dating app in the world and there are so many dark patterns at play to keep people paying while in reality the way those features work is correct only from a vague reading of the perks. They not only have analysts but legal involved. End of the day they want money like any other business, their goal is to maximize users and revenue, and keep more and more people engaged. The goal of finding love is something crafted by marketing. It may have been the founders vision, but then they got millions in funding lol. Be real.
        • rurp 4y ago
          > This is a bit too conspiratorial: I've spoken to people who work at these companies, and there's not a team of analysts trying to figure out how to minimize the number of successful relationships that come from using the app. I think the effect can be true without anyone having ill intent. The dating app companies are generally trying to make as much money as they can, which will indrectly lead to decisions that optimize for serial dating. As a parallel I don't think Facebook is full of evil people who want to increase the amount of hate and anger in the world, but it does have a lot of people who just want to make money and encouraging negative reactions happens to be an effective way of doing that, so that's what we get.
  • caeril 4y ago
    > Back in my dad's days, Obesity was much lower and bodies were much healthier and more vigorous. Erectile dysfunction was much less common, and average serum testosterone levels were higher. I guess it's uncouth to suggest that physical acts are more enjoyable with more physically attractive and capable populations, but I don't think it's something that should be discounted.
    • otikik 4y ago
      > Erectile dysfunction was much less common I have no doubt that self-reports of erectile dysfunction were probably less common at that time. I will say that information about it was certainly less common, and the stigma associated to it was stronger and more prevalent. > I guess it's uncouth to suggest that physical acts are more enjoyable with more physically attractive and capable populations On "capable": Erectile dysfunction can be caused by low levels of testosterone, as well as sexual desire. However, sexual prowess doesn't orbit around the male penis as much as our fathers thought. That is but one dimension. On the subject of attractiveness: I question that men with high levels of testosterone are actually more attractive to women. High testosterone has some obvious advantages (higher strength, bigger muscles, stronger sexual desire) but it also bring some things that are not so universally appraised (more body hair, less head hair, stronger body smell, mode violent behavior, less empathy). That group of traits, and the fact that we live in a more informed society, might be making high-testosterone males less attractive to women, overall. Perhaps that is what is making the testosterone levels go down - the same thing that is making us taller: artificial selection. My (totally unverified) impression is that this is what happens in Japan. Most famous male Japanese actors tend to look "effeminate" to me, as an European. There seems to be very little "strong jaw, big muscles" amongst that group, compared to Europeans or Americans.
      • saalweachter 4y ago
        > That group of traits, and the fact that we live in a more informed society, might be making high-testosterone males less attractive to women, overall. I believe Cicero, in one of his speeches, complained about women being into young clean-shaven men, and not the robust full-bearded patrician look.
  • unethical_ban 4y ago
    Tech, porn, and social media/lack of community are what I think the issues are. And your comment which I mostly agree with seems to contradict your first sentence. Everything you said (Gaming, endless video-on-demand, porn, social media, online dating, remote work) is enabled by technology. Ergo, tech /is/ the main culprit. Now, onto the post I originally typed: I wonder if younger people know what it's like to go a week or two without orgasm. I don't know many teens/young adults, much less well enough to ask about sex culture. I came of age in the 2000s, when online porn was a thing, but not ubiquitous, not HD, and still taboo. I do know that deprivation of orgasm makes it that much better when it does happen, and it changes your mind in both increase of sexual drive, and for me, increase in the desire for true intimacy, rather than just an anxious need to get off. When I kick the habit, my interest in talking to women goes higher than normal, and not "simply" because I'd like sex - it's because my entire mind is changed to wanting intimacy and to meet people. So ubiquity of porn and its normalization is a big factor in people not seeking true human contact. I think that people are also becoming more and more shy/anxious in general, at least by my flawed observations. Between rapidly changing social cues/acceptable behavior, being constantly connected, etc., it is difficult for people to connect and disconnect appropriately. I think about the pre-Internet era when people could maybe date or hook up, and if it didn't work, it was out of sight, out of mind. Now with social media, I see people staying connected despite falling out. Maybe out of curiosity, maybe thinking they can still be friends, but I think that the inability to have a clear head/fresh start makes things difficult. At least in my area/life, there isn't a huge sense of community. It takes a lot of effort to find non-bar oriented things to do that has a decently high number of people attending, who are all interested in the same things, and where it's likely to find a person to date. Say what you want about religion, but church really does serve a valuable purpose when not used to direct people toward bigotry. Gotta run to a meeting, this was a bit of a braindump, but the topic of human interaction and macro loneliness is an interesting topic, and a serious one that truly scares the shit out of me for my society and myself.
    • circlefavshape 4y ago
      > I wonder if younger people know what it's like to go a week or two without orgasm I certainly didn't when I was a teenager in the 80s, and I had zero access to porn or sexual partners.
  • mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    We've also forgotten what sex is for in a relationship, doubtless because it is inconvenient when stacked against all of our favorite soma. Watching most people continue to be addicted to systems that take more than they give (social media) is difficult. And it affects the people around them deeply, too. It doesn't happen in a vacuum; the emotional un-presence is palpable. It is so common it feels very difficult to bring up.
  • atoav 4y ago
    Another thing to consider: It might just be, that sex being more of an taboo (without the internet being there to inform yourself!) made it more interesting. Sex is beautiful, but I would always prefer a meaningful human relationship with common interests and good communications without sex over an sex-filled relationship without the rest. Or to put it simply: Love without sex is greater than sex without love. Prefarably both, but it is a thing two people need to want : )
  • slothtrop 4y ago
    This understates the proliferation and impact of porn, but as with most things, there's usually more than one factor. What you mentioned as novel activities today share one thing in common: they're sedentary. A sedentary lifestyle leads to lower sex drive.
  • heresie-dabord 4y ago
    > people now have way more entertainment options other than sex Another way to consider this is that people find it easier to divert themselves than to exert themselves only to be disappointed. (Think of the universal pain of the characters in "Marty". [1]) Even though the cost to "view" people has been cheapened by technology, what we find is that disappointment remains the likeliest outcome. The article is written for humour, but it is worth noting that although "sex" cannot go out of fashion, the illusions of Bernaysian manipulation [2] certainly can. And, as a society with a changing set of prevailing group behaviours, the delights of companionship can certainly be lost. An enjoyable sexual relationship isn't just a matter of presenting (or hunting for) some pastiche of beauty: people must want to charm and please one another. This cultural trait definitely has gone "out of fashion" in Western society. Add to these discouraging considerations the fact that the financial calculation of a relationship (even if children are not planned) has much more risk today than even just 10 years ago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_(film) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
    • thecoppinger 4y ago
      > Another way to consider this is that people find it easier to divert themselves than to exert themselves only to be dissappointed. This is an exceptionally succinct description of the problem, thank you. A societal shift from exertion to diversion. Creation to consumption. Scary stuff. > the illusions of Bernaysian manipulation [2] certainly can What do you mean here, in reference to Bernays? For context, I’m familiar with his work and legacy — the documentary ‘The Century of the Self’[1] is still perhaps the most important piece of media I’ve ever consumed. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
      • heresie-dabord 4y ago
        Hello friend ^_^ By "Bernaysian" I mean much of what is discussed in that documentary by Adam Curtis. The out-sized notion of self in pursuit of the baubles, bangles, and beads of a glorified pageant of passion and love. When two such highly-conditioned specimens meet, they probably will reject each other. Or if not, they will test each other's endurance in the illusion.
• bigbacaloa 4y ago
  Puritanism has returned.
  • sph 4y ago
    Both that and online porn has ruined us. It is an major epidemic that is still under the radar for how massive it is, in my opinion. And it's sad, because sex is very fun and porn is a very poor approximation of the real thing.
    • krageon 4y ago
      The irony here is that you are responding to someone lamenting puritanical thought with a puritanical post.
      • krrrh 4y ago
        The subtlety is that the hyper stimuli of modern porn streaming, while lascivious on the inside, is leading to something that looks like puritanism on the outside, hence the drop in actual sex.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
      • sph 4y ago
        No. What is ironic is thinking being against porn is puritanical. It's not all black and white. Like many people outside of the US, I am as far from puritanism as possible, yet I maintain that porn is a cancer. We should have more sex instead. The hippies were onto something.
        • krageon 4y ago
          It is in fact possible to be further from puritanism, because you could not be against porn. There's nothing wrong with sex and there's nothing wrong with filming it or otherwise making money off of it.
• maerF0x0 4y ago
  a related long read: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/23121356-your-brain-on-porn https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/23121356-your-brain-o... I thought it was a decent book, seemed to cite a good number of sources, but I'm no scientician. But Gary makes a pretty rational argument -- If you're finding yourself in a certain situation[1], without a known underlying medical cause (as ruled out by a doctor), then cutting out porn never killed anyone, and anecdotally has cured many. So why not just give it a try? [1]: I'll keep it PG here, but the book is clear what this situation is
  • Saint_Genet 4y ago
    Gary Wilson was a scientific fraud: https://medium.com/@nicole.prause/gary-wilson-was-a-known-science-fraud-f07cfab15b4a https://medium.com/@nicole.prause/gary-wilson-was-a-known-sc...
    • maerF0x0 4y ago
      Thank you for this, I was unaware. I will definitely be digging some more :)
  • kergonath 4y ago
    I am yet to read a convincing study about these supposed detrimental effects of porn. All these texts start from the assumption that it is bad without anything like a root cause analysis. For example, yes, single people tend to watch more porn. But are they single because they watch porn (demonstrating that porn is a social inhibitor)? Or do they watch more porn because they are single (in which case porn is just a way to get some of the pleasure they would otherwise have with a partner)? Same for depression, which does not help going out and meet people. Should we then deduct that porn causes depression? Of course not, and yet this is the starting point of a lot of anti-porn rants. These arguments also fit too well with puritanical and repressive world views, which makes me very suspicious as motivated reasoning is pervasive in these discussions. > anecdotally has cured many That’s the thing, anecdotes are not data. I also have anecdotes of people who have a healthy life and watch porn regularly. Without an epidemiological study it does not mean much. From my experience, “watching porn never killed anyway, and anecdotally has cured many” is just as true as your assertion.
• criddell 4y ago
  Articles like this are often mostly focused on the male side of cisgendered male-female relationships. Have things not changed for women? Or how about among other types of people? Is gay sex going out of fashion too?
  • Saint_Genet 4y ago
    It is not
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • figglestar 4y ago
    Young people in general are having less sex but young men are having a noteworthy amount less than young women. And the delta between the two groups is a new thing within the last 10 years or so.
    • saimiam 4y ago
      So who are these (presumably primarily straight) young women having sex with?
      • x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
        The same subset of men.
      • scoutt 4y ago
        I learn from the comments here that if you line up 100 women and 100 men, all 100 women will have sex with only 5 of the guys. For which I don't think this is true at all...
        • havblue 4y ago
          I thought this is pretty well documented on tinder at least that the top twenty percent or so of men are making out like bandits.
• mercy_dude 4y ago
  The real culprit isn’t porn, it is mainly the change in societal expectations and the ease of changing your baseline expectations. Our relationships have become extremely disposable. You are one Instagram DM away from moving onto the next one. Dating websites and apps largely have the same problems.
  • yobbo 4y ago
    > You are one Instagram DM away from moving onto the next one. Is this reality for the HN audience?
    • pknopf 4y ago
      Hyperbolic, but yeah.
    • matt321 4y ago
      The HN audience is probably all mega-genius super chads
      • xxs 4y ago
        likely richer than average, though...
        • eropple 4y ago
          I'd bet that how much money you have (beyond a low bar of "enough") matters a lot less for the American dating pool than being able to make somebody laugh.
          • lucaspm98 4y ago
            One hypothesis of a contributor to falling marriage rates is that as women's income potential has risen there's still a standard (whether cultural or innate) for them to marry "up" economically. Therefore, there's a growing demographic shortage of economically attractive male partners in the U.S. marriage market. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jomf.12603 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jomf.12603
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• janmarsal 4y ago
  I'd have sex everyday if women wanted me :D
  • vbezhenar 4y ago
    Men say that until they met a woman who wants sex everyday.
    • gowld 4y ago
      They just say that until they realize that when you don't have sex for a week, you want it every day, but after you have sex, the need fades for a while. And of course sex drive decreases with age, from an extremely horny peak around ~20.
    • AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
      I mean, I have sex with my wife on average 3-5 times a week. It's not daily but it comes close. It only changes when she's recovering from giving birth or one of us is sick.
      • bamboozled 4y ago
        You have received the gold star for excellence.
    • _notathrowaway 4y ago
      I will keep saying it until I hit the jackpot then. Wish me luck.
    • krageon 4y ago
      If everyone treats it as a fun activity (like climbing or morning yoga) it is very fun.
    • KptMarchewa 4y ago
      I can see that if said woman treats sex as something that happens "to her" and just starfishes. Unfortunately, I don't enjoy that kind of thing.
• mellosouls 4y ago
  The underlying article theme (linked in the OP) has been discussed here before. eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23502427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23502427
• mschuster91 4y ago
  There are three things that are lacking from the article completely as a reason for lower sexual activity: a lack of time, a place and money: - With people working ridiculous overtimes, "double shifts" or working two jobs just to make ends meet, there is simply no time to maintain a relationship. That one is offset a bit by Tinder and other "casual sex" opportunities, but nevertheless it's going to impact people. - With rents being ridiculously high, a majority of young adults are forced to live at their parents', a record number not seen in many decades. And without one's own place, it's hard to even enter a relationship, much less have sex. - to expand on that point, maintaining a relationship or having casual sex requires money, which a lot of people simply don't have available. Cinema tickets, going eating out to a restaurant, other joint activities... you get the drift, no money means no dates means no sex. - Especially for the US: as sex can result in children, even when using condoms, the pill or IUDs, many women elect to abstain from sexual activity entirely since the access to abortion is under ever more and more attacks. - Additionally, the cost of giving birth [2] and raising a child [3] is prohibitively expensive for many people, further reducing the amount of people willing to search for a partner in the first place. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-live-with-their-parents-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-have-a-baby-2018-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-hav... [3] https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/01/13/cost-raising-child https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/01/13/cost-raising-chil...
  • TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
    It's a similar story to all the other cases of Millenials are killing X, then.
• ricardoplouis 4y ago
  Kinda funny that sex is equivalent to reproduction in this piece.
  • mcv 4y ago
    There is some biological connection between the two, though.
    • ricardoplouis 4y ago
      Yeah, I guess the bigger point being missed (by the article and most of the comments) is that there is a whole generation of people having sex but not having kids due to concerns for the future. (Myself included)
      • rcoveson 4y ago
        The future is still looking pretty bright relative to the rest of human history, unless the subset of people who are very concerned about the future choose not to have kids, in which case not so much.
  • INTPenis 4y ago
    Yeah it's even weirder when you realize that a teenage boy really just wants a baby. Deep down his sex drive is leading him to having a baby and reproducing.
• jbrun 4y ago
  Population implosion is going to be the biggest problem of our lives. It is one of those issues that creeps up progressively (like Global Warming), but will have cataclysmic impacts. Sex is a precursor to relationships and kids, if people don't have sex... Imagine 80% of the population is elderly and retired (or want to be retired) - that is where the world is heading by the end of the century. From 2018: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex... From 2022: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex... Empty Planet: https://www.amazon.ca/Empty-Planet-Global-Population-Decline/dp/0771050887/ref=asc_df_0771050887/ https://www.amazon.ca/Empty-Planet-Global-Population-Decline...
  • pknopf 4y ago
    7% of all humans that ever existed, are alive today. We can afford a contraction.
    • lm28469 4y ago
      Depends on the scale you look at it. It's going to be a shit show for a few generations. Especially in all the countries relying on the working force to pay for the elderly through tax &co Humanity can afford it, you might not
      • shadowgovt 4y ago
        That's true of every potential future scenario, be it population contraction, climate collapse, downturn in the market, even a temporary drought. Humanity can afford it, you might not. But policy should probably be set to benefit humanity.
      • ajmurmann 4y ago
        > Especially in all the countries relying on the working force to pay for the elderly through tax &co I don't think it makes much of a difference in practice for this scenario if retirement is funded by savings/investments of the elderly or through taxes and other transfers from the working population. As much of the population is retired the value of the investments will go down as now now people are selling than buying new investment. It would become a indirect transfer.
• aquadoggy 4y ago
  “It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.” ― Michel Houellebecq, Whatever
  • pavlov 4y ago
    I thought you were too lazy to look up the English title of his book “Extension du domaine de la lutte”, but it really was translated as “Whatever”!
• blodkorv 4y ago
  Sex is becoming a thing only the upper class will have access to. The rest are either too unattractive or poor to be wanted.
  • ls15 4y ago
    Then why is birth rate inversely correlated with income?
    • kome 4y ago
      well, it's not in most of europe. rich people have more kids.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • KptMarchewa 4y ago
      Have you heard about contraception and abortion? Amount of sex had does not correlate with birth rates, with the exception of literally 0 sex. You can have sex daily all your life and not have any kids, and have sex just one time and get pregnant.
      • ls15 4y ago
        > Amount of sex had does not correlate with birth rates I'd prefer a source for this claim over the patronizing tone
• analogdreams 4y ago
• Markoff 4y ago
  first sentence: "With every fetish having a dedicated subreddit and every vagina a Gwyneth Paltrow candle scent, it's hard to believe sex isn't the most popular of all the cardinal sins..." TIL sex is cardinal sin.
  • maximus-decimus 4y ago
    It's the Lust one.
    • Markoff 4y ago
      That's not really sex, is it? Or every good Christian having children is commiting sin when procreating? How do Christians procreate without sex, through the prayer and then some holy mother come to their house and bring child? You can have lust without sex, though it's quite unplesant to have sex without lust.
      • maximus-decimus 4y ago
        You're supposed to have sex to have kids but don't you dare enjoy it!
• natly 4y ago
  The comments in this thread and this article is making me want to read HN less. (What a crazy incorrect take for most of the population.)
  • incomingpain 4y ago
    >The comments in this thread and this article is making me want to read HN less. (What a crazy incorrect take for most of the population.) Yes the comments in this thread is surprisingly bad and I got flagged on my comment. HN seems to have had their eternal september event.
  • hyperboreanChad 4y ago
  • Weryj 4y ago
    Agreed, some of these assertions I’m reading are just absurd.
    • ianai 4y ago
      Reads like a topic HN can’t discuss like adults.
  • rtpg 4y ago
    The reversion to the mean here just reminds me of stuff I would read on 4chan back in the day as a high school student. Many of my friends in those environments grew up, figured out how to navigate society a bit better, and stopped saying this kind of stuff. But these threads are a reminder that loads of people didn’t.
    • dfxm12 4y ago
      I dunno, don't discount that maybe there's a number of high schoolers on here. I forget sometimes that anyone can be on the other side of these posts. That very few people are mentioning things like the AIDS epidemic (and the abstinence only education that came from it), plus the conservative effort to censor sex positive media from organizations in the 80s-90s like moral majority, PTC (probably in response to the free love of the 70s), etc., is telling that they didn't live through it. Or maybe they're just intentionally ignoring it, I dunno, but young adults today are a product of this.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• andrewclunn 4y ago
  Obesity epidemic. I mean, when so many people are that unattractive, it's not exactly rocket science why we're having less sex. EDIT - The number of replies by people in denial that being horribly out of shape and having excessive body fat isn't related to attractiveness and sexual enjoyment is... well not surprising. Though it is indicative of how in denial our infantilizing culture is and how effectively it enables people to live out slothful, narcissistic, and self-destructive lifestyles, while blaming others for not accepting them.
  • kergonath 4y ago
    Attractiveness is relative, we adjust our standards all the time. Also, history has shown that we, collectively as a species, will have sex with everything we can. Now, obesity might possible lower sex drive, but that would be a completely different mechanism.
  • pirate787 4y ago
    Not unattractive, per se, just fat and out of shape leading to anxiety and low energy and little sex drive.
  • vidanay 4y ago
    Obesity and its social acceptance and attractiveness is very cyclical and not really related to sex.
  • _trampeltier 4y ago
    Let me tell you: a person with a perfect body != good sex. Sex, even soft and slowly sex, is a bit like sport. It is body work, you have to train it a bit, you have get the other persons feeling. Finally you need time, even for a quicky somewhere.
    • klik99 4y ago
      This is absolutely true, but I don't think negates the original point - the gulf between expectation and actual experience is huge
• causi 4y ago
  The obesity epidemic is also a significant contributing factor. Fat reduces testosterone levels, endurance levels, makes it harder to maintain an erection, and directly steals length off the base of the penis. Combine fat men with fat women and a lot of positions are effectively untenable due to length, flexibility, and obstruction issues. Fat sex is just worth way less effort than fit sex. I know this first-hand.
  • sokoloff 4y ago
    I am also less physically attractive if I’m 25# heavier than I should be. This goes to an even greater extent once that surplus tips towards 50#.
    • Balgair 4y ago
      Aside: Woah, using the # (pound) symbol for lbs., why did I never think of that before? Thanks for blowing my mind a bit there sokoloff
      • brazed_blotch 4y ago
        As a non-american this would have been really confusing without your explanation.
        • ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
          I was wondering what an octothorpe weighed, but I guess weighing hash is more apropos
      • Comevius 4y ago
        Specifically the avoirdupois pound is used in the United States, which is 0.45359237 kg, except if you weighting precious metals, then sometimes the troy pound is used, which is 0.3732417216 kg.
      • flomo 4y ago
        Sorta interesting I guess, this was a very common abbreviation which seemed to disappear with computerization.
• youessayyyaway 4y ago
  These threads are always fun, because they often say more about us commenters than the subject matter. Personally, I find the article's supernatural stimulus theory compelling. Sex takes a lot of time if you aren't being selfish about it. It's also boring, compared with other forms of entertainment and creative pursuits, pornographic or not. I'm not sure this is all that new, either. Jokes about the declining frequency of sex after marriage have been around for longer than I have. Maybe we're just hitting that wall sooner as the entertainment that we fall asleep to becomes more compelling.
  • buggythebug 4y ago
    "It's also boring" "These threads are always fun, because they often say more about us commenters than the subject matter." I will not quote anything else from you and leave it at that.
    • youessayyyaway 4y ago
      I stand by it. If you do find sex to be the most fulfilling part of your life, it might be worth asking where that sense of fulfillment comes from. It's probably a "who", not a "what".
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • rcoveson 4y ago
        How much descriptor-space would you say lies between "boring" and "the most fulfilling part of your life"?
        • AlwaysRock 4y ago
          Right. If its the only entertainment one ever has it could get boring. But its far more entertaining that... Most other forms of entertainment. That being said it shouldnt be the most fulfilling part of ones life.
• pshc 4y ago
  > it worries me that none of those porcelain-looking “K-pop” Ken dolls carries enough testosterone in their bloodstream Yikes. Go worry about your own T levels.
  • shlant 4y ago
    IMO the whole article reads like a guy who is overly concerned about his and everyone else's T levels..
    • bena 4y ago
      Yeah, from what I read, I get the feeling the guy has really strong opinions on telomeres.
• orangepurple 4y ago
  95% of Tinder swipes by women are passes compared to 47% for men. Women tend to date up. Online dating apps are rigged for men. These apps are search engines optimized to match women with the top 5% of men. These apps are designed for women. Being average or even above average will almost never result in a date. Tinder was designed like a slot machine which will ruin your self-esteem from constant rejection but your hope of a large reward will keep you going for ages. You will have a much higher success rate as an average guy simply with a completely cold approach. That is how bad online dating is for men. As an example, a slightly above average man who generates 16561 swipes on Tinder will generate 7666 likes and 8675 dislikes. Out of these there will be 290 matches and 7596 no-match. A rate of 2.5 matches per day and an overall 3.7% match rate. Out of 290 matches he will send 87 messages and receive 12. 191 matches will never result in a message. Of the 99 messages 31 will be left on read or never even opened the initial message, resulting in 68 conversations. 40 of these women ghosted him, and our subject gave up on 17 of them. Ultimately this resulted in getting 11 phone numbers. These 11 phone numbers in 4 months led to 3 dates and 8 gave up on texting, declined the dating offer, or our subject simply gave up on them. All 3 dates did not materialize into anything long term. It was a complete waste of time. Considering that online dating is the most common method used to find a date these days, the options are grim for men who are less than very appealing if they use these online platforms.
  • Gravityloss 4y ago
    How does an average woman find the process?
    • orangepurple 4y ago
      I don't know. I will speculate that they will go on dates with attractive men but because the top tier of men by appearance attract so many women there is little incentive to stay in a long term relationship for the man. If this is true then there is a very narrow middle ground between the extremes which could explain why fewer meaningful relationships are formed via online dating relative to a cold approach.
      • deleted 4y ago
• TrackerFF 4y ago
  People also have more options. I'm not saying that in the sense of "10% of some gender has sex with 90% the other gender due to [tinder/bumble/hinge]", but rather that in my countries - dating apps have become the de-facto way to hook up with others. And these apps have sort of redefined that scene - mainly because women have pretty much endless choices, but also because the opposite is absolutely not true for most guys on these apps. With that said, the old ways are still working. People do go out and meet people, but I think most of my peers (late 20-somethings to early 30-somethings) mostly use a bunch of different dating apps for that initial screening. You are exposed to people that you'd NEVER meet in the more traditional sense. Also, as other people have mentioned - there are more options for entertainment today - even for poor people / those in the lower classes. Sex toys are also becoming way better and more advanced for all sexes. If your _only_ goal is to chase an orgasm, lots of modern toys will give you a better shot at that than some random hookup.
  • krrrh 4y ago
    > You are exposed to people that you'd NEVER meet in the more traditional sense. I’ve never used a dating app, but I’m curious about this. My assumption has been that people filter pretty heavily on politics and religion, which are less advertised in person. Meeting people at a party or through social activities seemed to moderate people’s views long term because an initial attraction could lead to encounters with really different sorts of personalities and backgrounds and counter reinforcement of naive views of the world. For instance, more couples used to realize their votes cancelled out, so they would make a deal to just stay home and have sex instead of heading the the polls.
    • verall 4y ago
      I'm not sure what your age/location is, but as a young American, young people filter for politics and religion in person just as fast as they do on a dating app. It is considered that compatible political and religious views are table stakes for a serious (non-hookup) relationship. For example, in my extended friend-aquaintance group, there's not a single young woman who would consider dating a conservative. Obviously conservative women exist, I have seen many on dating apps, the point is that the natural social circles have already formed strong bubbles such that hanging out let alone dating outside the tribe is unheard of. I'm not really complaining about this either, I'm not going to get along with a conservative in a normal sort of idle chatter situation. We could work or play a sport or videogame together but beers aren't going to be enjoyable once they start talking about wokeness poisoning the country.
• nonameiguess 4y ago
  Can this be quantified somehow? Show some evidence people in some place that has been studied are having sex less often now or in the recent past compared to some more distant past? I spent about 20 minutes trying to find some series of historical surveys somewhere, and meanwhile 65 comments popped up with their own personal beliefs on why people are having less sex, but none of those comments and the article itself don't present any actual evidence that people are having less sex. What they do show is people, at least in the US and most OECD nations, are having fewer lifetime children. But that is clearly explainable by widespread availability and use of contraceptives and protected sex or even by the increasing popularity of anal sex. It doesn't require that people not have sex at all. I'm not saying this claim is wrong necessarily, but if this is going to be discussed, shouldn't we have some evidence allowing us to quantify to what extent there has actually been a decrease, where this has happened, and over what span of time it has happened?
• ianai 4y ago
  Some extent, a society that grows probably looks like a society of growth along many aspects. That means down to the mindsets of populace. But just age characteristics will tell you the population characteristics skew towards the elderly for the next couple to few decades. And at least in the US those same people seem to have a stranglehold on all forms of political process. That’s not what a vibrant, growing society looks like. Edit-consider the decades that led to the baby booming period of the 50s-60s. The world had ended WWII on the anti-fascist/pro-democracy side. And a Cold War started over the path the world would take. There were housing programs and I build affordable housing for the war vets. Energy was cheap and nuclear would eventually make metering it unneeded-more indicative of mindset than reality of course.
• anovikov 4y ago
  I think it's simply that the generation for whom the sex was a "forbidden fruit", has become old, the one after them, had enormous amount of sex just because they now could, and for the subsequent ones, sex is nothing special. It is too easy to get - guys who are now 70 year old, had to "win" girls when they were 20, now 20-year old girls are just sitting on Tinder waiting to hook up. It is as uncool as buying canned tuna vs going fishing. If anyone can do it and it's nothing to be proud about, what's the point?
  • nootropicat 4y ago
    >If anyone can do it I think you missed most comments under this article...
• michaelbrooks 4y ago
  I'd say the explosion of mental health and anxiety is playing a huge part in it as well. My wife and I would have a child if we knew we were stable and able to look after them properly. Also, with the wars, global warming and everything else that's happening right now, why would you want to bring a child into this?
  • jimmyjazz14 4y ago
    Well compared to the past we live in one of the most peaceful and prosperous times in human history one only need look at rising life expectancy to see that.
  • onepointsixC 4y ago
    The world has never been more prosperous, safer, and more able to address the issues of its day, ever. Wars have been a near constant factor of human history for nearly all written history, and yet today we enjoy more peace as a species than any other era. In the past few decades we've seen extreme poverty decline dramatically. And we've never had so many viable options for decarbonization. When your parents had you, the world was decisively a worse place. Especially if you were born prior to 1989. Why wouldn't you want to bring a child into the objectively best times of human existence to date?
    • jimmyjazz14 4y ago
      Its interesting that one of the most guaranteed ways to get down-voted online is to say the world isn't as bad as it seems, I would really like to understand the psychology behind that.
      • guerrilla 4y ago
        I think it depends on how you say it. Some people here are just gaslighting, while others are being insightful.
      • ryandrake 4y ago
        I think it's because comments like that are over-simplified and don't accurately describe the world as it is across the distributions of people. For a hypothetical "Worldwide Average Person," things are quite better today than at any point in history. There are a lot of people who were dirt poor yesterday and are now less dirt poor today. For a small number of very well-off people, things are exponentially better today than ever. But for a significant number of people who had it really good in, let's say the 1950s and 1960s, things are noticeably and measurably worse in all ways today. If you're one of these people, the "Well that average person over there in Indonesia is better off" argument isn't convincing.
• jacknews 4y ago
  Market homogenization (because of the apps) leads to a larger scale of 'winner takes all' dynamics, ie increasing inequality. The top players in the market are probably getting way more offers than they can, um, service, and for anyone in the lower ranks, the effort/reward is uneconomic.
  • CuriouslyC 4y ago
    This does happen, but mostly for men. The most successful men are seeing a different girl 5 nights a week. Typically women will tend to try a few men out, then stick with a favorite or two. Men at the bottom get absolutely nothing, while women at the bottom mostly end up going on bad dates or getting used for sex.
    • kvgr 4y ago
      Why do you think they are getting used for sex? If they have sex on the first date it is free will or bad judgement... players will not go on 5 dates withgirl just to have sex if they can have it easier. Woman either want sex and then they are both using each other, which is fine. Or they need to update their filter. And yes, sometimes bad shit happens, when guy dumps you after couple dates and sex. But the same happens to guys.
      • CuriouslyC 4y ago
        Women at the bottom are generally desperate and horny, and so even if they want to try and filter out players their ability to say no to someone slightly out of their league who is being affectionate is pretty limited, so they will lie to themselves with thoughts like "this time will be different" and "we really like each other." Dating sites also disincentivize most people from being honest about what they want in their profile, since women who state that marriage and children are a must and men who just want sex both get way way fewer views and contacts than people with more open interests. As a result, people tend to keep their interest "open" with the idea that they'll "convert" the person to their desires after they start dating.
  • jimbob45 4y ago
• amir734jj 4y ago
  Or maybe people are not interested in fruitless relationships and are learning that it's okay to be asexual or non-binary.
• KptMarchewa 4y ago
  Despite all others blaming it on entertainment, porn, alcohol, working etc, I blame online dating. The bar and amount of work needed to get into relationship (I'm not into casual sex) is just too high for great amount of people.
  • slothtrop 4y ago
    If anything it's been more facilitated than ever.
    • csee 4y ago
      For the top few percent of men.
      • eropple 4y ago
        Touching the poop in these threads is always a bad idea. And this is more to the passer-by who might be reading and thinking that the person to whom I am replying is onto something (edited; I don't think 'csee is being disingenuous). In these sorts of claims, "the top few percent" is never actually defined, and it means that folks who do quite well for themselves but aren't unironically studly chads have to be cut out of their narrative. It is easier to assume that it's everyone's fault rather than your own, but I found that I did a lot better (not just romantically but--well--everywhere) when I worked on having reasons to like myself before I wanted other people to. The people who go on about "the top few percent of men" are most frequently so bitter that it can be detected from space, and that's a them problem. It was, for a while, a me problem. It requires concerted effort and desire to unscrew your head and to make yourself somebody you like, but it is doable. Therapy helps. So do honest friends who aren't in the same shitty boat you're in. I am not fit, I am affluent but not rich, but I try to be decent and patient and kind (which is different from being needy), and I do pretty well for myself. Saying "just do X" would be lying because of the "just" part, but--you can do okay for yourself too. You probably have to work at it some.
        • csee 4y ago
• kortex 4y ago
  This is pretty sparse on citations/evidence compared to the usual HN trending fare. Some commenters are suggesting TFA is equating declining birth rate to declining sex. I don't particularly see it, they seem to be suggesting both are declining (it doesn't typically take much unprotected sex to procreate, modulo fertility issues), but either way, that's still a veridical statement that deserves data.
• LaGrange 4y ago
  > Pushed away by virtual imitations and decaff substitutes that, though nowhere near as gratifying as taking a real trip to pound town Sex ain't going out of fashion, you're just garbage at it.
• m0llusk 4y ago
  There might be some confusion between fashion and reality. You can never be to rich or too thin, but obese and broke is an extremely common combination. Sex may be waning under the stress of modern living, but that doesn't necessarily make it unfashionable.
• ru552 4y ago
  Why all this talk about sex for "entertainment"? Am I in the minority since I have sex because I have an urge to do it? It's never been about entertainment in my brain.
  • Narretz 4y ago
    So you are not entertained when you have sex? Or do you just do it so the urge is fulfilled?
    • gowld 4y ago
      Do you eat, drink, and breath for "entertainment", or to fulfil basic health functions?
      • mmh0000 4y ago
        Generally yes, I eat for "entertainment". If I was eating to just continue living, I'd live off Huel[0]. But since flavor and diversity add a great amount of joy and -entertainment-, a vast majority of my meals are designed and prepared for entertainment. [0] https://huel.com/ https://huel.com/
• gwbas1c 4y ago
  Uhm, the lower birthrates in developed countries is because of better access to birth control, and because it's hard to raise a gaggle of kids when both parents work full-time.
  • hbn 4y ago
    The peak of development for a country is people being so busy with work that they can't have kids?
• kkfx 4y ago
  Some big&powerful might hope so, I do not think nor hope so. Some dream a sex-less society to control and command populations better, leaving of course sex to them, but we are human.
• scythe 4y ago
  Neuropsychology offers a nigh-insultingly simple, drab explanation. Sex isn't simply a matter of stimulation. Sexual arousal is controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system, which becomes more active when the organism is relaxed. Everything is stimulating, nobody is comfortable. I could spend all day listing possible culprits. It's not hard to turn this into an opportunity to take shots at the left, or the right, for any of a thousand petty reasons. But that would miss the point: stop being mean. Stop gossiping, stop leering, stop groping, stop cajoling your partner to try that thing you read about, stop comparing people to each other, stop being a show-off, stop being "provocative", stop imputing sexual insecurity in every third argument, stop putting naked models in advertising, stop writing songs glorifying exploitation, stop cheating, stop lying, stop cat-calling, and stop making jokes about rape, literally, for fuck's sake. https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/02/hes_just_not_that_into_anyone.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/02/hes_just_not_that_in... >He's not retreating into porn because real women don't measure up, he's retreating into it because he doesn't measure up. [italics in original]
• lesstyzing 4y ago
  There are so many incel type comments in this thread and anytime this subject comes up. Online dating definitely isn’t fun but it’s not the shit show people here seem to make out. All of my friends met their long terms partners on dating apps. None of these men are particularly attractive. All are average looking at best. Personally I went from never dating to going on dates with a handful of people over a 6 month period (all found on dating apps) to finding my long term partner. Everyone I met in person was nice and looking for a long term relationship. They were all attractive (to me at least) but objectively of average appearance or slightly below. I’m overweight and average looking at best. If you are really struggling on these apps I’d suggest losing the negative attitude and lowering your standards in terms of partners appearance. There are lots of wonderful people out there but you aren’t going to meet them when you swipe right on everyone, complain that women have it too easy, and expect a supermodel to swipe right on you.
  • BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    I'm going to be real with you, this sounds similar to the "the job market isn't that bad, yes it's bad but I got a job right out of college" spiel bypassing evidence that many people send hundreds of job applications before they ever get a job. Studies show most people meet online. Studies show most people struggle in dating markets. These are not mutually exclusive. But unlike jobs, one doesn't need to date to live, even if having a partner is a major point of fulfillment to most.
    • lesstyzing 4y ago
      I can see your comparison but I disagree. In a normal job market most people can come out of a college a get a job. It just might not be the flashy job they think they deserve. Maybe they have to wash dishes or stick shelves when they’re trained for something else. Dating is similar. You can get a date if you’re willing to compromise on looks. Some people just won’t even entertain that idea or won’t entertain the idea that they might have to aim even lower than they expected.
      • BlargMcLarg 4y ago
• h2odragon 4y ago
  Another factor: Casual sex has a high chance of resulting in legal entanglements, sooner or later. "Consent" can be withdrawn whenever convenient; making a quick fling into sexual assault.
  • gowld 4y ago
    You are saying that rape was a large portion of sex, and is going out of fashion? That would be both distressing (for the past), and encouraging for the future.
    • h2odragon 4y ago
      > rape was a large portion of sex, No, that sex can now become "rape" at some future point, after the act.
• marttt 4y ago
  I think more of thoughtful physical intimacy (not porn) in relationships would be a massive treatment for the depression epidemic modern world seems to suffer from. A contemporary poet and philosopher from my country considered eroticism the key to what he calls "ecological asceticism": physical intimacy and tenderness requires "no more energy than digging in your planting bed", but it forces us to attune to another person, another human being. This is probably the main reason I fear that people who give up having children or (rather) long-term relationships to "save the planet" are digging a hole for themselves. I mean... isn't this a bit too tough, brutal even? Only a handful of us probably really succeed in not being a social animal. Or, not requiring any meaningful physical closeness.
  • sleepdreamy 4y ago
    I'm not sure I am understanding. I am not having kids with my fiancée because the world currently feels like a shithole that I myself would not want to be born into. We're still at the feudalism stage sprinkled with iPhones/Technology. I am just not understanding how that choice means I am dooming myself with less.. intimacy? I don't follow. Explain please - (Genuinely curious not trying to argue)
  • steve_adams_86 4y ago
    I can’t speak for others, but I do know that I thought I could survive without others. I was completely mistaken and totally unaware of myself. I’m introverted and well-suited to long stints of being alone, but ultimately that is nothing compared to a lifetime of being alone. When I meet people who can’t articulate why they don’t want kids or a community or whatever, I worry they’re just as clueless as I was. As with anything, I try to remind myself that I’m not an exception. The standard American diet tends to cause illness and disease faster than a whole food, plant based diet for example. I am not an exception to that rule; if I eat that way, I will suffer too. I’m not special. When humans are alone, they tend to die earlier and lead a lower quality of life (particularly later in life though, with evidence of higher quality earlier in life). I’m not an exception, in any case. We all want to believe we’re exceptions. Note: Just skimming through the research and living a socially isolated life has mortality outcomes comparable to being obese. That’s incredible.
  • 4y ago
• rsynnott 4y ago
  I don't think the data they have is really as compelling as they think. It's self-reported from the National Opinion Research Center mostly. The trouble with self-reporting on things like sex is that (a) people lie about sex a lot and (b) social attitudes determine in what way people lie about sex. If you watch a sitcom from the 90s or early noughties, the idea that someone mightn't have had sex for _a few months_ is a funny, funny joke, as opposed to, well, just normal variation. I think the idea that not having sex all the time is a problem is a significantly smaller part of the culture these days, and thus people will feel the need to exaggerate less.
  • ouid 4y ago
    This "article" is an example of highly motivated reasoning. The first potential cause that he proposes of this "decades long 'phenomenon'" (yes, I'm doubing up on air quotes, sue me) is social distancing. Since the actual text is nonsense, I think it is reasonable to substitute it with the subtext, "Men aren't men and haven't been since 1950, and it's because of the democrats". He's free to write an article about this, I suppose, but its definitely not "signal", as the mission statement of HN demands.
    • ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      yeah, the whole "affirmative consent is too difficult for men these days" angle seems like projection from someone upset that consent is necessary for sex
    • Balgair 4y ago
      Just want to point out two things when it comes towards viewing the 'recent' past in terms of 'manly men'. 1) Smoking increase testosterone levels in men [0]. As smoking levels have dropped, it is resonable to conclude that testosterone levels have too. It will be interesting to see the results of vaping on testosterone levels. 2) Obesity lowers testosterone. As the obesity epidemic clocks onward, testosterone levels will continue to fall. I'm not going to claim that lower testosterone levels are population wide, or that smoking should come back, or that obesity doesn't have other effects. But I am claiming that there is something there and that it's not all smoke and mirrors (pardon the pun). Our perceptions that 'manly men' have gone away in living memory are ... maybe true. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24457405/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24457405/ [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955331/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955331/
• 40acres 4y ago
  *In the west. I think gender equality may be a big culprit. Take the US for example: women will dominate the college educated class soon if they haven't already, and with that economic freedom comes more optionality in choosing a partner, there are more choices to be had and there will be a self selection of the most desirable men (typically college educated as it correlates to income). This is not to blame women in any sense, it's a great thing that we're achieving a more equal society, but with a industrial well educated society more optionality with partners will lead to less sex imo.
  • jfabre 4y ago
    Most men don't care about how much a woman makes. It might be a nice thing to have, but it's surely not a requirement. All other things equal, a rich woman has less options than a poor woman, because women typically don't want to settle for a guy who makes less money than them. Women date up or equal to them in regards to status and wealth and, of course, there are exceptions like everything in life.
  • UkrainianJew 4y ago
    You are forgetting the strong anti-male sentiment throughout the education system. Toxic masculinity this, male privilege that. Women get graduated thinking that investing your time in your own family and kids is slavery, but living paycheck-to-paycheck in a rented condo, ready to be laid off on a whim is true freedom.
    • imtringued 4y ago
      Yes, it is quite paradoxical. They argue for equality but then you become the very thing that oppresses you. I would have wished for an overall increase in freedom.
    • metalliqaz 4y ago
      how about investing in your family and kids while your husband lives paycheck-to-paycheck in a rented condo, ready to be laid off on a whim?
  • 4y ago
• leke 4y ago
  The article doesn't really mention if the numbers are related to sexual partners or number of times the deed is performed. Many years ago, I remember my friend having "encounters" with many different women usually lasting one night. While I had only a few partners, but had much higher deeds. I've noticed "the youth" in general are kind of like my friend. Not into settling down, but rather going for the variety. However, it takes a lot to hook up, even with apps like Tinder. Hence I think people are having less sex.
  • gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
    I’m the same. I’ve had a large volume of sex but only with 3 women. Obviously I have a libido, but it gets overridden often by “this person is awful and I don’t want to bang them” as well as good old social anxiety/the tism. I think for the majority of guys, the rigmarole around getting hookups was always a delicate calculus involving tradeoffs in money and time, for an uncertain payoff: a good lay if you’re lucky and bragging rights. Now the economy is tighter and society has made bragging about conquests a bit less acceptable, so I think our pattern of just having deep (and free) sex with a loving partner is much more appealing.
• jeffreyrogers 4y ago
  "Ctrl-F Marriage" gives no results. Surely decrease in marriages is the biggest driver. It's a lot easier to have sex with someone if you live with them. A straight person isn't going to find multiple new partners to sleep with per week and even if you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, unless you are cohabitating you probably only see them a few days per week.
  • mft_ 4y ago
    This would conflict with the stereotype that marriage == little sex, after the first few years?
    • jeffreyrogers 4y ago
      The median American has ~5 sexual partners. So unless they're having a lot of sex with those partners when they're dating, marriage is still the biggest driver. I would bet the median person has had sex more often with their spouse than with all other partners combined.
    • falcolas 4y ago
      Perhaps because the stereotype is wrong? Or rather, it depends on the relationship you have with your partner. Intimacy will mirror the rest of your relationship.
  • aiisjustanif 4y ago
    > It's a lot easier to have sex with someone if you live with them. I promise you it’s just as easy if you live near each other and much of Europe isn’t get married in their early 20s but are still having sex.
    • jeffreyrogers 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure Europe has the same pattern as America. It's not a European vs. America thing.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• timwaagh 4y ago
  Isn't this an expected outcome of the real estate squeeze? I read once women don't typically have children unless circumstances are right and they aren't for most of us regular folk. Of course there is a difference between making children and sex but it's not a huge jump.
• dangus 4y ago
• planarhobbit 4y ago
  Housing and material wealth keeps coming up but we’ve survived and thrived after a good chunk of Europe was razed, critical infrastructure missing and entire countries needing to be rebuilt. Peoples wants and needs weren’t that different from ours, we just have more of them, but we desire them as much as any period of time before us. We don’t, unfortunately, have many first hand accounts of how people survived during these times. I do remember a poignant scene in Saving Private Ryan as Tom Hanks and the squad are moving through a shelled European city. I think it’s in France, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen the film. In that scene they come across a mother and daughter living in an apartment, with no real hope of a better life as most of the city has been bombed. They invite themselves in for tea. A young Private catches the eye of the daughter, and vice versa. Tom Hanks, the mother, and rest of the squad pretend that they’re having tea and talking and laughing while the two young people go to a different room (subtext being to have a discussion of their own). Tom Hanks looks at the mother and gives her a warm smile. Everyone has a stupid-grin look on their face, acting ignorant. The scene, out of place though it may be, acknowledges the needs of young people, and that older generations sometimes literally have to play a part, and move out of the way and let the young people do what they desire to do and to not strip them of or take away their opportunities.
  • fundad 4y ago
    in a Tom Hanks movie!?
• throwaway892238 4y ago
  Cool? If you're not making a baby, sex is mostly a meaningless waste of time. Would rather be focused on a productive pursuit, as opposed to how I can get someone to squish their body against my body for endorphins. I mean, when you get down to it, if the point of sex is 'cuz it feels good', why not just take drugs, or skydive, or eat an entire pepperoni pizza? Less chance of disease, you don't have to make yourself attractive, you can have it any time you want. If we could eliminate the sex drive, imagine how much less strife there'd be in the world, how much less consumerism. How much more of our time could be spent bettering ourselves and the world without the object of mating. Imagine how much psychological and physical damage has been caused around the world due to shame or abuse surrounding sex. Sex might be one of the worst motivating principles of humanity. Maybe it's time for us to evolve past it.
  • speedgoose 4y ago
    I am not sure how you can compare eating a pepperoni pizza and sex, but anyway, sex is not always about pleasuring yourself. It can be an intimate moment you share with someone you love. You can give pleasure too. It’s definitely not a waste of time.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • standardUser 4y ago
    May be of interest to anyone reading this comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexuality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexuality
  • metalliqaz 4y ago
    You don't seem to understand what it's fore. It isn't just for procreation, or for 'endorphins', as you say. Interpersonal connection is important. Closeness with another person. Pull the foil off your windows, go outside, and make a connection with another human. It's good for you.
    • 4y ago
• freiherr 4y ago
  Ignoring the content, the writing style was extremely annoying. Anyone else with similar feelings?
  • omnicognate 4y ago
    Yep, to the extent the content was hard to discern. I am unclear what point the article is even trying to make. The second paragraph was eye-watering: > Say what you want about old people but they've merited the historical "Baby Boom" through sheer sexual prowess The "Baby Boomers" were the product of the baby boom, not the instigators of it. The ones having the baby boom sex were their parents, the "Greatest Generation", who are now almost all dead. > Now generations have to be named after backside alphabet letters cause everyone is focusing on their careers. I assume this is a reference to "Generation Alpha". In what sense is Greek a "backside alphabet"? More confusingly, are they claiming a lack of sex has something to do with running out of Roman alphabet characters? I'm pretty sure no amount of procreation will make more letters.
  • vgel 4y ago
    Yeah this was insufferable. I can only hope it was upvoted to talk about the subject and not for what the author actually said (the one time I'm glad for this bad habit of HN's).
    • phendrenad2 4y ago
      To many people, sex is a cheeky, rebellious topic, and can only be discussed in terms like this.
• TameAntelope 4y ago
  Sex is going out of fashion... in The West. There's exploding population growth in Africa and Asia that puts the boomers to shame.
• denis2022 4y ago
• denis2022 4y ago
• fundad 4y ago
  Have these people seen fashion these days?
• standardUser 4y ago
  A lot of sex is not that great and therefore any overall reduction of sex may be a good thing, depending on which kind of sex we're having less of. Maybe a lot more married women are not having sex with their husbands, which traditionally was not always an option. Maybe young people are rushing less into big relationships, and so without a steady partner regular opportunities for sex are reduced while at the same time more bad relationships (and marriages) are avoided. Maybe people are engaging more in non-intercourse sexual activity now that access to information about kinks and fetishes is universal. I say, let's stop stressing over the quantity of sex and instead focus on the quality of sex. We should want people to find partners where they can have open communication, and where they have similar desires and where they can share in enthusiastic consent. But this idea that "more penis in vagina = good" doesn't hold up to any scrutiny.
  • havblue 4y ago
    For people with enough free time and no kids this might be the case, but I think once sex happens less than once a week it does become a quantity/intimacy problem in couples.
  • tcmart14 4y ago
    I agree, the idea that we should focus on numbers isn't necessarily good. What I care about more is people are having sex and are enjoying it with their partners. Having lots of sex is great, but blindly jabbing holes with a penis doesn't mean anything spectacular or have any existential meaning. Are people have consensual sex in ways that they want and enjoy with the people they enjoy it with? Is it with the same person over and over or with a different partner every week? Does it matter?
  • yucky 4y ago
    It's not just sex that is decreasing though, it's all forms of physical contact. Social interactions are decreasing in real life, so it's deeper than what your reply suggests.
  • aiisjustanif 4y ago
    > We should want people to find partners > where they have similar desires and where they can share in enthusiastic consent Why? This just all reads from a somewhat monogamous point of view when that’s not the point of the research. Quality is important but their is a significant amount of people in most western countries that wouldn’t define quality sex how you just did.
• cpurdy 4y ago
  Yeah ... no. (Anecdotally, not scientifically .)
• throwaway561 4y ago
• wonderwonder 4y ago
  Wonder if this is related to the lack of personal relationships in general, especially friendships. There is an epidemic of loneliness in the world. So many ways to communicate and all we can do is post memes and upvote influencers. I am happily married but have zero friends. I met my wife through my friend group in college. If I heaven forbid got a divorce tomorrow, not sure where I would meet someone new. Guess I would have to try online dating. Would things get strange if I hit it off with someone and she asked to meet my friends and I said I have none? Humanity is going through a very real loss of social interaction and replacing it with doom scrolling, porn and endless streaming options. I think social media is one aspect of this but specifically pay per click advertising is the root and is also the driver of our political division. It has become so adept at capturing our attention we have abandoned living. Edit: Remote work absolutely compounds this and while it makes it easier to manage personal chores and family it absolutely removes all social interaction and the daily experience of just having a normal in person conversation. Working remotely my coworkers are just names on a zoom call in a 30 minute standup. Have created mental blocks now where I wonder how I could handle the kids and chores while working in an office but millions of people do it every day.
  • CalRobert 4y ago
    Three years ago a HN user named Dexwiz wrote something that hit me hard. I'd felt this, but I never saw it put in to words so well. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20470085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20470085 """ The Screen and the Job have displaced almost everything else is our lives. Loneliness is just a primary symptom. The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all social interactions. This manifests itself in things like SitComs on TV (just a bunch of friends or family hanging out) or Social Media on phones. It’s very easy to fill the social needs of right now with a Screen. But under even a minuscule amount of self reflection these are revealed as hollow substitutes for real human interaction. The Job has completely taken over as a driving force in evaluating choices. The average person has to consider all options in the light of both the current employer and the specter of tomorrow’s. Moving across the country for a high paying job? Great! Moving to be closer to friends? That’s a career killer. No wonder we are lonely. We make choices in the short term that optimize happiness, often at the expense of our relationships. Ghosting is not just for dates now. Then turn around and make choices in the long term that optimize employability at the expense of all else. """
• 3qz 4y ago
  The harsh reality is that around 30% of men are completely unfuckable. They only got action because women needed to be married because they couldn’t support themselves. Ugly men have 0 value in the dating market beyond money.
  • CryptoBanker 4y ago
    Not to mention tons of people don’t even make realistic efforts (see: incels)
    • 3qz 4y ago
      Women get bombarded with offers for sex when they put in 0 effort. Why blame men for not trying? If you have to try then it’s already over..
      • CryptoBanker 4y ago
        Spoken like a true man. Clearly you have no idea the additional things women have to do on a day to day basis to merely appear as if they are putting in "no effort"
        • 3qz 4y ago
          Make a tinder account with an ugly woman and you will see that I’m right
  • hemloc_io 4y ago
    I really just don’t believe that Even in like 2000s when this trend started? I was a kid so maybe it was harder for women then but really? There are lots of ugly women too, who are they going to date?
    • symlinkk 4y ago
      Ugly women can get laid as much as they want on dating apps
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• oblak 4y ago
  What a premise. I am not buying it. To those struggling with online dating: stop and get out in the real world. It's easier, trust me. Don't believe the people who are trying to tell you otherwise. Not only you don't need these apps, they are likely the reason you're not getting much sex. Recently, I tried watching How I met your father. Felt like an ad for a certain online dating service. It was absolutely horrible in every conceivable way. Don't surrender to those people.
  • morbia 4y ago
    Gay guy here, who is polyamorous. I appreciate my experiences are wildly different from a straight person's, but I would be very careful in advertising 'real world dating' as just easier. Often I've seen guys (straight and gay) who struggle with dating do so because their mental health is not in the right state (desperation is not sexy gents). People should focus on sorting that first (exercise, sleep, eating properly etc) before going out on the dating scene. What I would say people should be careful about with apps is to always consider that the motivations of the business do not necessarily align with yours. Tinder wants you to engage with the app as much as possible to drive revenue, they don't want you find the love of your life because then the revenue stream stops. I see it like alcohol though, a little bit of alcohol is a great social lubricant, too much ends in misery.
  • type-r 4y ago
    Couldn't agree more on the "go into the real world" point. It's insane to me, I can be on a dating app swiping through tens or even hundreds of profiles and never get a match. Yet I'm almost guaranteed that if I try to strike up a conversation a couple of times out & about, it only takes me a handful to get to a compelling interaction.
• ouid 4y ago
• boomer_joe 4y ago
• moomoo11 4y ago
  Maybe it’s because all these dating apps emphasize short term or hookup relationships. Aka little to zero substance outcomes that will keep you coming back (and hopefully paying!). A lot of people want to have actual relationships, but those types of people are rare on dating sites. IMO you meet those people by going out and doing activities. If you happen to meet someone there chances are it will go better than being number x match on the list of 30 matches this week. I’m just speaking as a man and as a engineer who worked on a dating app. It is a numbers game and one that most men will not place anywhere close to the top. And from my anecdotal experience talking to women who worked on the app as well as just friends, they seem to view these apps as entertainment more than anything serious. Just find a irl hobby and join groups that do those things. It will be slower but if your goal is a meaningful relationship then that’s your best shot imo.
• GrAfFiX2 4y ago
  I think the wide spread use of opioids has some to do with it too.(Mouse Utopia) Definitely kills your sex drive.. Low testosterone kills it. Getting old.. Partner not keeping up their physique.. Chronic pain.. Lots to do with it.. I still find the same attributes attractive as I did when I was 18, now being over 40/married/chronic pain/long term opioid use... it has degraded the pool of possibilities and who I would want to with also.. I've got kids.. Grandkids.. I've done my part for my genetic lineage. It's will continue on for generations to come. That's all it was meant to do anyways.. Now I'm just waiting to die. Trying not to suffer too much in the interim.
  • GrAfFiX2 4y ago
• blablabla123 4y ago
  It's funny that the article starts with drawing the line to the "old days". It makes me think the true reason is basically people moving far away eventually - and it's by all means desirable. At the same time many aren't interested in starting a family, divorce rates are high anyway.
• chrischen 4y ago
  The article explores the negatives but maybe not enough on the potential positives. Potential benefits: 1) Fewer forced relationships based on the need for physical gratification 2) better adjusted next generation of kids as a result of fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer divorces 3) lower birth rate (solve over-population) related issues Recent study of identical twins where one was raised in the US in a broken family resulted in a lower IQ: https://news.yahoo.com/identical-twins-raised-apart-korea-185552767.html https://news.yahoo.com/identical-twins-raised-apart-korea-18...
• ianbutler 4y ago
  Honestly lack of in person time with anyone to meet kills it for me. Online dating sucks and I’m a reasonably attractive 28yo guy it just feels entirely artificial and chemistry over text is non existent for me. I had a bad relationship that I was finally over in 2019 and then the pandemic hit so online was really the only option which meant I wasn’t picking anyone up for sex. I recently went to California for a vacation and within the first day of being around people I had a date lined up. I think it’s the same for a lot of guys at least, no in person time means no sex because online dating is ridiculously uncomfortable/unnatural.
• MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  Courtship has been out of fashion for years, so it's not much of a surprise that sex has followed suit. Once upon a time before the age of the internet, people had a limited amount of interests to pursue, popular culture was limited to 4 TV channels and about 10 radio stations, and they kept in mind the fact that being in a relationship requires both parties to find mutual interests to enjoy together. You shouldn't expect sex from another person if you can't even figure out how to be friends with them, and you shouldn't HAVE sex with them if you don't enjoy each other's company on a regular basis. Nowadays we have funkopop wielding weebs trying to find their perfect waifu while girls are obsessing over Korean boy bands who barely speak their own language. There's no interest overlap. People don't even try. People are simultaneously too picky and not picky enough. I know a woman who will date a man across the country but won't date one who is under 5'11" or over 6'3". The reasoning? She's 5'8" and wants to be able to wear heels. And while I will never set foot in a church again unless it's for a wedding or funeral, denominational association did a decent job of figuring out what the foundations of people's morality and culture is. It's hard for a Southern Baptist to understand the whats and whys of Roman Catholicism, for example. By the same token, part of the reason that we've culturally evolved rites of inclusion is so that people feel included... and we are now abandoning them because it's easy to sit in a cave staring at a tiny screen while ordering from doordash and amazon than it is to deal with our fellow humans.
• nazgulnarsil 4y ago
  The uh...elephant in the room is increasing lack of physical health. Bmi keeps climbing.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• phendrenad2 4y ago
  This is a good thing. This is largely driven by people having more options and more things to do with their time. People have an endless array of video games and netflix shows, online political debates, they can learn to play the violin from youtube videos. This is also partly driven by the destigmatization of being single, and the acceptance of asexuality (temporary or permanent). People aren't pressured into sex if they don't want it, but it's still available if they someday do.
• handsaway 4y ago
  Glad to see the HN crowd is as normal as ever when it comes to sex and relationships.
• pengaru 4y ago
  When I started messing around (the 90s), all my partners were on the pill since high school and HPV wasn't even in their vocabulary. We had access to porn on VHS and for us nerds via BBSes/dialup, if anything that just increased the drive to find the real thing. You don't lose interest in eating your dinner just because you saw pictures of it on the menu when ordering. Especially when it's still all totally new experiences and hormones are raging. But what was also true in the 90s was men still largely controlled access to resources. That alone puts significant pressure on women to subject themselves to men, just to have people to drive them around and take them out to dinner or on vacations, or pay the rent in a first apartment. Combine that with a seemingly total ignorance of facts like practically all cervical cancers are caused by HPV, and casual sex can easily be common. Today it's very different. Just the other day I read an article about GEICO being sued for their insured negligently giving a woman HPV during car sex [0]. I have the impression that women are simply better educated and have better options today, and that's A Good Thing. Having said that though, the last time I tried online dating, which was before it all pivoted to mobile, the few dates I went on were very obviously women seeking free dinners. So at least within my age group, things seemed to still be more of the same in that regard. [0] https://www.npr.org/2022/06/10/1104134521/geico-lawsuit-std-hpv-insurance-car https://www.npr.org/2022/06/10/1104134521/geico-lawsuit-std-...
• GoodJokes 4y ago