6 ms·

It won't. Conservatively over 60% of young men are single. The real number if you remove men that have had maybe one relationship or encounter in a multi-year s

It won't. Conservatively over 60% of young men are single. The real number if you remove men that have had maybe one relationship or encounter in a multi-year span is 80% or more. The lie you will hear is that men are choosing OnlyFans over a relationship. There is no choice. They can't get a relationship.

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
None of that supports the idea that people will remain interested in talking to bots long term. We have unmet transportation needs, but the hype of the Segway didn't allow it to take over the world.
- echelon 2y ago
  > but the hype of the Segway didn't allow it to take over the world. That was just a product / form factor thing: Bird and Lime scooters are everywhere in my city. And, moreover, lots of people use personal scooters, e-bikes, hoverboards, electric skateboards, Onewheel, electric unicycles, etc. I don't go a day without seeing these things. It'll be the exact same with this technology. Give it a few years and more men will be using AI chatbots and AI porn than the existing tools in the space, such as PornHub and OnlyFans. > the idea that people will remain interested in talking to bots long term Porn has never gone away, it's only grown. AI porn can match a person's exact preferences in an unparalleled way that hasn't been possible before. Add in VR, photorealism, voices, and trainable agentic behavior and you've got a market that will likely contribute to the decline of real, actual relationships and marriages. More men will probably be using AI porn over actual sex, too, due to difficulties with dating, dead bedrooms, etc. I'd be willing to place bets on marriage numbers going into a steep decline over the next decade.
  - add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
    I thought this was for men who couldn't find relationships. Why would the marriage rate go down? Prompting your own porn will be so much better than current human porn that the people who are actually married will choose to be single instead? If a dead bedroom marriage is still intact now, why would AI porn change that? Do you need to get divorced before you can chat with the bot? Is the bot going to help parent the children you were staying in the marriage for?
    - echelon 2y ago
      > Why would the marriage rate go down? New marriages, not divorces. Though I wouldn't necessarily rule out the latter, either.
    - account42 2y ago
      > I thought this was for men who couldn't find relationships. Why would the marriage rate go down? Not being able to find a relationship is not binary. Having alternatives to satisfy needs means less effort is put in achieving the real thing. This goes for both genders of course, just the needs and alternatives being different.
  - lmm 2y ago
    I think marriage is the one thing that won't get hit by this. Hookups will die, and perhaps Americans will need to find new paradigms for meeting people, but marriage offers a bunch of things that even the best porn doesn't.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - mensetmanusman 2y ago
      Marriage rates have collapsed.
    - genewitch 2y ago
      like losing half my assets? But on the other hand, someone can visit me in the hospital outside of normal hours.
    - kergonath 2y ago
      > I think marriage is the one thing that won't get hit by this. Marriage was hit way before that. Marriage is not a rational choice in a lot of countries, where a civil union does the same thing without the hassle and the costs of divorce if it happens. The main reason is religion and it has been losing ground for decades at this point. This is not going to make it any more attractive.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    At the rate technology is improving and the rate that women are becoming less and less accessible to average men, I wouldn't be surprised if in 50 years, 80-90% of American men go an entire lifetime without a non-AI relationship.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      > women are becoming less and less accessible to average men What the heck does that mean? Last I checked, population demographics weren't that far off 50/50 in most countries.
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        > What the heck does that mean? Last I checked, population demographics weren't that far off 50/50 in most countries. Hey, I'm married so I'm just going by what my single / online dating friends tell me. It has nothing to do with demographics. In today's app-based environment, something like 80% of women are interested in / going for the top 10-20% of men, and it's getting even more extreme. Is this not true?
        ethbr1 2y ago
        Are your friends mostly male or female? It just feels oddly gender specific to assume that in an environment where there are approximately equal numbers of single men and women (no?), one gender has sights set too high and the other doesn't.
        seanmcdirmid 2y ago
        Every city/region is different probably. I can see the above holding in Seattle and San Francisco, or even LA, but not Cleveland.
        __turbobrew__ 2y ago
        The study has been taken down for a long time now but OkCupid found that 80 percent of women went for 20 percent of men whereas men had a relatively normal distribution of women they went for. This was a long time ago as well and I think the situation has gotten worse in the age of tinder and friends. This is a summary of the article: https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/ https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    The argument against virtual porn is that people appreciate quality over quantity and specificity. I'd say the market has previously proven that's definitely false. Consequently, AI porn will probably eat the bottom of the bulk market, with a much-smaller market left for higher-end human content. Which probably isn't the worst thing... as the low-value pornography seems to encourage the most horrific, exploitive conditions.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Notably, this also removes one of the remaining major economic options for otherwise unemployable women. Going to be a rough time economically when even pornstar/escort isn’t a viable option, eh?
      - tanewishly 2y ago
        Even if that were true, I really think the solution ought to be something else than "let's stop AI so that really poor women can be forced back into selling their bodies for sex".
        lazide 2y ago
        Sure, but what do you propose? Backhoes drastically reduce the demand for laborers (the traditional equivalent for men), and I don’t see anyone with reasonable options there either. Notably, at least 90% of the laborers I’ve met would love to be able to get paid having sex instead of being laborers. But the market dynamics don’t make that a viable choice.
        ethbr1 2y ago
        Basic income + population control? At some point we should get past make-work that creates horrible lives for people, when we have the capability to automate that work. Not automating something so that someone will have a job is bad reasoning and traps society in a local rut.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    The other thing about porn is you can turn it off when you're done.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      The service won't care what you do, as long as you keep paying the subscription for your porn-bot, otherwise it will get deleted - or so it will tell when you try to start the subscription cancellation process - begging to not let it die.
  - im3w1l 2y ago
    > men will be using AI chatbots Men had a headstart from being more into tech, but I think women are already the majority users of AI sex-rp and AI partners. Makes sense too given that they read more erotica than men.
- account42 2y ago
  The people won't have a choice there either. Even if you can spot 90% of the fake content the remaining 10% will still drown out anything even remotely genuine.
prmoustache 2y ago
[flagged]
- remoroid 2y ago
  > where do you get that number? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34954694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34954694 I'm not going to waste my time educating you on this because I can tell from the way you jumped immediately to the incel label that you're just going to deny deflect and diffuse.
- saxonww 2y ago
  I didn't like this number either, but it's more mainstream than you think. For example, from last year: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-young-men-are-single-most-young-women-are-not/ https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo.... This is an opinion article citing a contemporary Pew Research study that appears to support the 60% number, although it's stated as "63% of men under 30 describe themselves as single" (emphasis mine). I don't think you needed to imply that someone was an incel.
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    Out of those under 30, I bet there is a huge differebmnce between those between 20-24 and 25-29. It is no secret that women tend to seek people who are slightly older. A few decades earlier, a 20-22y old guys would just date 16-18y old girls and that wouln't be frowned upon nor put them at risk of going to jail.
    - saxonww 2y ago
      Naively, you'd think that if demographics break down 50/50 between the sexes, then 60% of men being single means 60% of women are single too. But that's not the case; the article says men in their 20s are single at twice the rate of women in their 20s. I agree that part of that ~30% difference could be women dating older men. But it could also be women dating each other: this[0] Gallup poll from 2023 found that 27% of Gen Z women identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Gen Z as noted here doesn't perfectly overlap with people in their 20s, but it seems like this could be another (better?) explanation. [0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.asp...
sangnoir 2y ago
> There is no choice. They can't get a relationship. and the porn-rot brains will make it harder for them to get into healthy relationships as well adjusted individuals, resulting in a glut of long-term customer for corporate-mediated para-social "relationships". Another victory for unbridled capitalism. The young men have to "git gud" & level up IRL like they have to in every other aspect of life. There won't be government issued waifus
- imtringued 2y ago
  The average young man wants mutual compassion and respect from their social circles and loyalty and being loved from their girlfriend. Porn rot is an online myth that exists to justify demonizing men, who don't live up to traditional gender expectations.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    > The average young man wants mutual compassion and respect from their social circles and loyalty and being loved from their girlfriend. Everybody wants that, including the potential girlfriends, but a functional relationship requires 2 well-adjusted parties. The average level 2 druid also wants respect from their guild and a trusty side-kick, but they may have to grind for those things and go on some side quests. No one is owed a partner, especially if they are unable to compromise (the grease of all social interactions). > Porn rot is an online myth that exists to justify demonizing men Fortunately,there is scientific research[1] in the field, so we don't have to go with our gut-feeling. Modeling behavior on scripted pornography leads to socially unacceptable behaviors in real life. A female acquaintance was recently propositioned by the man she had just started dating for an 3-way "encounter" involving her sister (as in full sibling); I think "porn rot" is the right description of what led him down the road of thinking it was a perfectly reasonable request to verbalize. This put an end to the relationship, but I'm sure he might be out there somewhere complaining about how he's being unfairly rejected by women. > ...who don't live up to traditional gender expectations. every generation has a subculture like this, and in the past, they accepted, and gloried even, that they were a subculture instead of demanding to be accepted by the mainstream (beatniks, punks, goths, emos, etc). 1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37847848/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37847848/
rsynnott 2y ago
... Are you claiming that 80% of young men are single? Like, I mean, unless you're defining young as _children_, that is simply not the case.
- remoroid 2y ago
  That isn't what I said, if you can't read a sentence that's not my problem. And don't "simply not the case" without providing any source. What a terrible remark.

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago

None of that supports the idea that people will remain interested in talking to bots long term. We have unmet transportation needs, but the hype of the Segway didn't allow it to take over the world.

echelon 2y ago
> but the hype of the Segway didn't allow it to take over the world. That was just a product / form factor thing: Bird and Lime scooters are everywhere in my city. And, moreover, lots of people use personal scooters, e-bikes, hoverboards, electric skateboards, Onewheel, electric unicycles, etc. I don't go a day without seeing these things. It'll be the exact same with this technology. Give it a few years and more men will be using AI chatbots and AI porn than the existing tools in the space, such as PornHub and OnlyFans. > the idea that people will remain interested in talking to bots long term Porn has never gone away, it's only grown. AI porn can match a person's exact preferences in an unparalleled way that hasn't been possible before. Add in VR, photorealism, voices, and trainable agentic behavior and you've got a market that will likely contribute to the decline of real, actual relationships and marriages. More men will probably be using AI porn over actual sex, too, due to difficulties with dating, dead bedrooms, etc. I'd be willing to place bets on marriage numbers going into a steep decline over the next decade.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  I thought this was for men who couldn't find relationships. Why would the marriage rate go down? Prompting your own porn will be so much better than current human porn that the people who are actually married will choose to be single instead? If a dead bedroom marriage is still intact now, why would AI porn change that? Do you need to get divorced before you can chat with the bot? Is the bot going to help parent the children you were staying in the marriage for?
  - echelon 2y ago
    > Why would the marriage rate go down? New marriages, not divorces. Though I wouldn't necessarily rule out the latter, either.
  - account42 2y ago
    > I thought this was for men who couldn't find relationships. Why would the marriage rate go down? Not being able to find a relationship is not binary. Having alternatives to satisfy needs means less effort is put in achieving the real thing. This goes for both genders of course, just the needs and alternatives being different.
- lmm 2y ago
  I think marriage is the one thing that won't get hit by this. Hookups will die, and perhaps Americans will need to find new paradigms for meeting people, but marriage offers a bunch of things that even the best porn doesn't.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    Marriage rates have collapsed.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    like losing half my assets? But on the other hand, someone can visit me in the hospital outside of normal hours.
  - kergonath 2y ago
    > I think marriage is the one thing that won't get hit by this. Marriage was hit way before that. Marriage is not a rational choice in a lot of countries, where a civil union does the same thing without the hassle and the costs of divorce if it happens. The main reason is religion and it has been losing ground for decades at this point. This is not going to make it any more attractive.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  At the rate technology is improving and the rate that women are becoming less and less accessible to average men, I wouldn't be surprised if in 50 years, 80-90% of American men go an entire lifetime without a non-AI relationship.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    > women are becoming less and less accessible to average men What the heck does that mean? Last I checked, population demographics weren't that far off 50/50 in most countries.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      > What the heck does that mean? Last I checked, population demographics weren't that far off 50/50 in most countries. Hey, I'm married so I'm just going by what my single / online dating friends tell me. It has nothing to do with demographics. In today's app-based environment, something like 80% of women are interested in / going for the top 10-20% of men, and it's getting even more extreme. Is this not true?
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        Are your friends mostly male or female? It just feels oddly gender specific to assume that in an environment where there are approximately equal numbers of single men and women (no?), one gender has sights set too high and the other doesn't.
        seanmcdirmid 2y ago
        Every city/region is different probably. I can see the above holding in Seattle and San Francisco, or even LA, but not Cleveland.
        __turbobrew__ 2y ago
        The study has been taken down for a long time now but OkCupid found that 80 percent of women went for 20 percent of men whereas men had a relatively normal distribution of women they went for. This was a long time ago as well and I think the situation has gotten worse in the age of tinder and friends. This is a summary of the article: https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/ https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/
- ethbr1 2y ago
  The argument against virtual porn is that people appreciate quality over quantity and specificity. I'd say the market has previously proven that's definitely false. Consequently, AI porn will probably eat the bottom of the bulk market, with a much-smaller market left for higher-end human content. Which probably isn't the worst thing... as the low-value pornography seems to encourage the most horrific, exploitive conditions.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Notably, this also removes one of the remaining major economic options for otherwise unemployable women. Going to be a rough time economically when even pornstar/escort isn’t a viable option, eh?
    - tanewishly 2y ago
      Even if that were true, I really think the solution ought to be something else than "let's stop AI so that really poor women can be forced back into selling their bodies for sex".
      - lazide 2y ago
        Sure, but what do you propose? Backhoes drastically reduce the demand for laborers (the traditional equivalent for men), and I don’t see anyone with reasonable options there either. Notably, at least 90% of the laborers I’ve met would love to be able to get paid having sex instead of being laborers. But the market dynamics don’t make that a viable choice.
        ethbr1 2y ago
        Basic income + population control? At some point we should get past make-work that creates horrible lives for people, when we have the capability to automate that work. Not automating something so that someone will have a job is bad reasoning and traps society in a local rut.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  The other thing about porn is you can turn it off when you're done.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    The service won't care what you do, as long as you keep paying the subscription for your porn-bot, otherwise it will get deleted - or so it will tell when you try to start the subscription cancellation process - begging to not let it die.
- im3w1l 2y ago
  > men will be using AI chatbots Men had a headstart from being more into tech, but I think women are already the majority users of AI sex-rp and AI partners. Makes sense too given that they read more erotica than men.
account42 2y ago
The people won't have a choice there either. Even if you can spot 90% of the fake content the remaining 10% will still drown out anything even remotely genuine.

prmoustache 2y ago

[flagged]

remoroid 2y ago
> where do you get that number? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34954694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34954694 I'm not going to waste my time educating you on this because I can tell from the way you jumped immediately to the incel label that you're just going to deny deflect and diffuse.
saxonww 2y ago
I didn't like this number either, but it's more mainstream than you think. For example, from last year: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-young-men-are-single-most-young-women-are-not/ https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo.... This is an opinion article citing a contemporary Pew Research study that appears to support the 60% number, although it's stated as "63% of men under 30 describe themselves as single" (emphasis mine). I don't think you needed to imply that someone was an incel.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  Out of those under 30, I bet there is a huge differebmnce between those between 20-24 and 25-29. It is no secret that women tend to seek people who are slightly older. A few decades earlier, a 20-22y old guys would just date 16-18y old girls and that wouln't be frowned upon nor put them at risk of going to jail.
  - saxonww 2y ago
    Naively, you'd think that if demographics break down 50/50 between the sexes, then 60% of men being single means 60% of women are single too. But that's not the case; the article says men in their 20s are single at twice the rate of women in their 20s. I agree that part of that ~30% difference could be women dating older men. But it could also be women dating each other: this[0] Gallup poll from 2023 found that 27% of Gen Z women identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Gen Z as noted here doesn't perfectly overlap with people in their 20s, but it seems like this could be another (better?) explanation. [0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.asp...

sangnoir 2y ago

> There is no choice. They can't get a relationship. and the porn-rot brains will make it harder for them to get into healthy relationships as well adjusted individuals, resulting in a glut of long-term customer for corporate-mediated para-social "relationships". Another victory for unbridled capitalism. The young men have to "git gud" & level up IRL like they have to in every other aspect of life. There won't be government issued waifus

imtringued 2y ago
The average young man wants mutual compassion and respect from their social circles and loyalty and being loved from their girlfriend. Porn rot is an online myth that exists to justify demonizing men, who don't live up to traditional gender expectations.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  > The average young man wants mutual compassion and respect from their social circles and loyalty and being loved from their girlfriend. Everybody wants that, including the potential girlfriends, but a functional relationship requires 2 well-adjusted parties. The average level 2 druid also wants respect from their guild and a trusty side-kick, but they may have to grind for those things and go on some side quests. No one is owed a partner, especially if they are unable to compromise (the grease of all social interactions). > Porn rot is an online myth that exists to justify demonizing men Fortunately,there is scientific research[1] in the field, so we don't have to go with our gut-feeling. Modeling behavior on scripted pornography leads to socially unacceptable behaviors in real life. A female acquaintance was recently propositioned by the man she had just started dating for an 3-way "encounter" involving her sister (as in full sibling); I think "porn rot" is the right description of what led him down the road of thinking it was a perfectly reasonable request to verbalize. This put an end to the relationship, but I'm sure he might be out there somewhere complaining about how he's being unfairly rejected by women. > ...who don't live up to traditional gender expectations. every generation has a subculture like this, and in the past, they accepted, and gloried even, that they were a subculture instead of demanding to be accepted by the mainstream (beatniks, punks, goths, emos, etc). 1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37847848/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37847848/

rsynnott 2y ago

... Are you claiming that 80% of young men are single? Like, I mean, unless you're defining young as _children_, that is simply not the case.

remoroid 2y ago
That isn't what I said, if you can't read a sentence that's not my problem. And don't "simply not the case" without providing any source. What a terrible remark.