12 ms·

The relationship recession is going global

34 points by hunglee2 2y ago

compootr 2y ago
[flagged]
- 627467 2y ago
  Aren't there services/bookmarklets that automatically search/redirect to archives?
  - compootr 2y ago
    not sure, but there's the link for everyone without requiring it
retskrad 2y ago
If people took a minute to put their phones away and looked around once in a while, they’d notice that males and females tend to self-segregate, with the vast majority of each gender spending time only with others of their own gender. This behaviour is constant in schools, parties, coffee shops, you name it. I’ve traveled extensively around the world, and I’ve observed the same patterns everywhere. Males and females lead drastically different lives. People act as if voicing these observations out loud automatically places you in the ‘incel’ category.
- pavlov 2y ago
  > “People act as if voicing these observations out loud automatically places you in the ‘incel’ category.” Quite the strawman. Does anybody claim that? Women would certainly agree that social circles everywhere tend to be genderized. And part of the reason is a vicious cycle: men are not used to spending time with women, so they easily misunderstand the situation and get sexual or romantic ideas that are not reciprocated. And having to sort out this unwanted attention and the resulting emotions makes women even less likely to want to spend time with men. There’s a reason why “the gay best friend” is a trope in American fiction featuring women. It’s not because gays are feminine — it’s because they don’t bombard women with their unprocessed feelings. If you want to fix the situation, stop rambling about incels and start thinking of ways to get boys and girls to spend more time together at all ages. American parents still seem to tend to treat boys and girls as separate species.
  - runsWphotons 2y ago
    What?
- portaouflop 2y ago
  What is your point in relation to the article? How would gender self-segregation be related to __rising__ rates of singledom?
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    I think the point he was getting at but failed to come around to was that men and women are different enough they don't actually want to spend time together all that much and historically just put up with it because of social pressure to get on the life path to raising a family and lack of access to casual sex. Sure, there's some mutual interests there that'll get them hanging out together but it's pretty minor overall. There's no big reason for a man who's gotten good at online dating or a women who doesn't actively want kids to date seriously or settle down unless they just happen to run across someone who's perfect for them and wants to lock it in.
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      >historically just put up with it because of social pressure to get on the life path to raising a family and lack of access to casual sex. For women it was also a fundamental question of literally living. Back when women were expected to be full-time housewives, women had to marry to quite literally not starve to death on the streets. The advancement of gender equality to bring men and women, all mankind, to the same level of freedom and authority has undoubtedly played a significant role in the decline of romance and marriage.
      - mike_hearn 2y ago
        That's a pretty odd take on history. You know women have always worked, right? Female life pre-20th century wasn't permanent housewifeing. They often worked from home in cottage industries, ran shops, took part in family owned businesses (often running the financial side) and many other jobs. The reason there was pressure to raise a family - for both women and men - had nothing to do with gender equality. It was because there was no welfare state so people relied on their families and extended families to take care of them in old age and sickness.
- strobeflier 2y ago
  I don’t know about “vast majority”. Mixed-gender friend groups are also very common, especially in larger metros. The two cultural shifts currently happening are 1. Loss of interest in “third spaces” (clubs, church) for mingling and 2. widening political divide between the genders.
- runsWphotons 2y ago
  Why is this flagged?
matt3210 2y ago
Relationships are work. People are lazy. They work hard enough just to keep rent paid and the power on.
- hgomersall 2y ago
  Or perhaps after working hard enough to keep the rent paid and the power on they have little energy left to pursue the important stuff.
- nozzlegear 2y ago
  Relationships have always been work, and people have always worked hard. So what's changed?
  - Muromec 2y ago
    Same thing as with teen girls mental health. Everything is not enough, everything is a red flag, every partner is toxic, every parent is a narcissist. All men are rapists, all immigrants are stealing jobs AND leeching on welfare. Echo chambers everywhere to divide and conquer. And the worst part -- we chatting here and being smart are the ones who built it all to pay our own bills.
    - salawat 2y ago
      Some. Not everyone here did. Some of us watched from the sidelines and tried to tell people they shouldn't do that. But ya can only do so much.
- Muromec 2y ago
  People were always lazy. What changed is being okay with being single compared to dealing with the least effort the other part puts into it (you yourself always put enough effort of course). Call it unrealistic expectations and blame social media or empowerment and celebrate it or whatever. In the end somebody finds a way to feed on the resulting discontent and everybody is worse off as a result.
glimshe 2y ago
We were sold a model where having a career is the most important thing in life, at the expense of family and relationships. Because of that, the world gets richer but unhappier. Additionally, local human contact has been replaced by a world of upvotes by strangers with quirky online names. We need to work on figuring out how we can get the undeniable benefits of modern technologies without forgetting our biological needs. Thousands of years of civilization teaches some lessons on what's important (and what's unfair and dangerous). We should look back for some ideas.
- miohtama 2y ago
  Career and grinding is not a goal, but is needed to afford an house and money to help your parents. Apartment prices relative to income have gone greatly up. Thus, more grinding needed and some low wage occupations are priced out from the market altogether. The question is why apartment prices keep going up and can we stop it.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Apartment rental prices have dropped for the last three months in a row in Canada.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Schiendelman 2y ago
      Why?
      - willhslade 2y ago
        Not OP but in a nutshell, everybody who could bought an condo downtown (Toronto + Vancouver especially but this is broadly true of the country) with a home equity loan from their main property as an investment, and the loan math only works if all properties are increasing in value and the interest rate stays very close to zero. Neither are true and unless something happens Canada could have our very own 2008 financial crisis. No biggie.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
api 2y ago
We are letting the most pathological idiots — incels, femcels, masculinity grifters, misogynists and misandrists, trolls — shape a whole generation’s views on gender dynamics and relationships. Of course I guess it’s like other fields. Antivaxxers and people who think you can cure cancer with a juice cleanse lead health discourse. Conspiritainment grifters and unhinged fanatics shape politics. Why? This needs to be etched somewhere on a giant stone monument: trash maximizes engagement. If you optimize any media for maximum engagement by the maximum number of people, you get trash. Two people walk past you on the street. One says “hi,” and the other smears themselves with peanut butter and clucks like a chicken. Which one maximizes engagement? Edit: I forgot porn. That’s a factor too and another way to maximize engagement that gives people ridiculous unrealistic views on sex. This has always been true. It’s why “yellow journalism” was a term and why tabloids have always existed and why so much TV was always trash. But we’ve gotten so good at it with personalized feeds and algorithms that it’s become far too addictive and powerful. It’s becoming reality for too many people. This is an existential risk to our civilization at this point. Banning TikTok is a start. Now do all the other ones.
- Schiendelman 2y ago
  Define "letting". This seems to me to be the same pattern as every other new communication medium. Sure, it's more addictive now. Do you think playing whack a mole with the definition of addictive will solve that problem? I don't. I think the only way to get the outcome of "people less addicted to media and dumb ideas" is to make addiction uncool - and government can't do that. People are doing the social changes naturally already. Lots of people are off social media. People are quitting alcohol too, and porn. Those people will be more successful in life, and more likely to reproduce. This seems like a nothingburger for an onlooker.
  - api 2y ago
    I'm not as optimistic about people learning, and addiction has never gone away. I used to be more of a libertarian about things like financial regulation, but what changed my mind was watching markets and especially things like the cryptocurrency phenomenon where you really did have deregulation. All you get is scams because people keep falling for the same nonsense over and over again. None of it is new. Ponzi schemes, bubbles, gambling, rug pulls, wildcat banking, all of it is hundreds of years old or more, but it keeps working because every generation falls for it anew because dopamine. I think you'd have to re-architect the human dopamine system in very deep ways if you wanted to change this. We are very easy to hack.
binarymax 2y ago
It’s truly bizarre. I’m married and have a strong social life, but then I see things like this in my local subreddit where men just don’t want to go out and meet women. https://old.reddit.com/r/Rochester/comments/1hyh1r2/where_are_the_single_men_in_roc/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Rochester/comments/1hyh1r2/where_ar... I can’t believe that the thread exists. I can’t believe that a young single straight man wouldn’t be all over that event. Some good speculation on cause behind it in OP and this discussion, but I’m just sitting here confused at the state of things.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  As a "young single straight man" all I can really tell you is that I have utterly no desire nor interest when I have so many other things I could or should be doing instead.
  - binarymax 2y ago
    And that’s the confusing thing to me. When I was in my 20s I spent most of my time outside of work being social. I worked 10-12 hour days. What are the things you’re doing that are a priority? I’m not judging - I’m honestly curious and want to understand.
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      Reading books, playing games, watching anime, conversations on IRC or Discord with long time friends, making stuff in the figurative garage that will never see the light of day... The list goes on. And that's besides life's necessities like work, chores around the house, cooking+eating... The list goes on. There's just so many god damn things I could or should be doing instead of marriage. I literally do not have the time and thus interest in marriage and all the things related to it. And no, the termination of my bloodline or what happens to my crap after my passing doesn't concern me.
      - binarymax 2y ago
        Cool. Power to you. My take on things: I love being married, because I’m always with my best friend, and we’re partners to make all the “life’s necessities” much easier. Cooking+cleaning is a shared experience and not one persons job. Financial burdens lessen as a couple. Sometimes groceries just show up magically. And I always have someone to talk to. We also have different sleep schedules. I’m up early and either hack on a side project or go to the gym. Late at night she watches what she likes without needing to negotiate with my tastes.
haunter 2y ago
https://archive.ph/Vwi1a https://archive.ph/Vwi1a
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bradlys 2y ago
I think this is the new norm and it will only get worse. Social media isn’t going anywhere and the amount of interconnectedness we have is also not going anywhere. Everyone will be in an environment where any social trend will spread like wildfire and you’ll have to deal with it. I don’t think there’s much we can do. More likely to see full blown communism than some improvement to the way we’re dating now. I’ve been single for nearly four years. On paper, I’ve got almost all the things someone is looking for. My main issue is that I can’t find women who find me physically attractive. Social media and dating apps has made physical attraction more paramount than ever but I can’t do shit about it. I’m getting surgery next month in Beverly Hills to push it along but how many more surgeries will I need before someone will love me for who I am? Who knows but I’ll keep going until I get matched.
- deanmoriarty 2y ago
  > My main issue is that I can’t find women who find me physically attractive My main issue is that I can't find someone willing to sell me $VTI at $100/share. Is it possible that your standards of what you consider a woman "attractive enough to date" are too high, and so you are filtering out potential candidates that would be happy to be with you? Four years seems like a really long time for someone actively looking to be in a relationship to stay single, and surgery with the objective of finding a partner seems wildly extreme (just my own opinion, I clearly do not know your circumstances). I am the most average looking (if that) man on the planet, and really never had too much trouble dating, and I live in Silicon Valley where the statistics are not even in my favor. Certainly I never went after the prototypical "Instagram model" as that would have dramatically affected my chances, but by no means I am less happy.
  - missedthecue 2y ago
    There really isn't a good solution here. Lowering your standards to date someone you don't find attractive just so you get into a relationship isn't healthy for you and it's not fair to your partner. I would consider it a deal breaker if I found out my partner didn't think I was attractive.
disambiguation 2y ago
The answer to most of these modern problems are all the same. Put the computer down and go outside, it's that easy.
- gigatree 2y ago
  That’s assuming there’s something to do or people to talk to outside. For most people (in the US at least) everything outside needs to be accessed by car and then where do you go? Hard to talk to strangers at a coffee shop. Might have luck at a club or church.
missedthecue 2y ago
The graph in every country falls off the cliff at the same time. And curiously coincides with smartphones.
gremlinsinc 2y ago
recently divorced I'm finding dating is so much harder these days... I needed to grow up a lot, learn about situationships, attachment styles, co-regulation better emotional IQ, etc... things maybe I should've already known but not something taught.... I think schools should teach psychology classes that prepare people for being successful in relationships romantic, business, or platonic...

34 points by hunglee2 2y ago

compootr 2y ago

[flagged]

627467 2y ago
Aren't there services/bookmarklets that automatically search/redirect to archives?
- compootr 2y ago
  not sure, but there's the link for everyone without requiring it

retskrad 2y ago

If people took a minute to put their phones away and looked around once in a while, they’d notice that males and females tend to self-segregate, with the vast majority of each gender spending time only with others of their own gender. This behaviour is constant in schools, parties, coffee shops, you name it. I’ve traveled extensively around the world, and I’ve observed the same patterns everywhere. Males and females lead drastically different lives. People act as if voicing these observations out loud automatically places you in the ‘incel’ category.

pavlov 2y ago
> “People act as if voicing these observations out loud automatically places you in the ‘incel’ category.” Quite the strawman. Does anybody claim that? Women would certainly agree that social circles everywhere tend to be genderized. And part of the reason is a vicious cycle: men are not used to spending time with women, so they easily misunderstand the situation and get sexual or romantic ideas that are not reciprocated. And having to sort out this unwanted attention and the resulting emotions makes women even less likely to want to spend time with men. There’s a reason why “the gay best friend” is a trope in American fiction featuring women. It’s not because gays are feminine — it’s because they don’t bombard women with their unprocessed feelings. If you want to fix the situation, stop rambling about incels and start thinking of ways to get boys and girls to spend more time together at all ages. American parents still seem to tend to treat boys and girls as separate species.
- runsWphotons 2y ago
  What?
portaouflop 2y ago
What is your point in relation to the article? How would gender self-segregation be related to __rising__ rates of singledom?
- potato3732842 2y ago
  I think the point he was getting at but failed to come around to was that men and women are different enough they don't actually want to spend time together all that much and historically just put up with it because of social pressure to get on the life path to raising a family and lack of access to casual sex. Sure, there's some mutual interests there that'll get them hanging out together but it's pretty minor overall. There's no big reason for a man who's gotten good at online dating or a women who doesn't actively want kids to date seriously or settle down unless they just happen to run across someone who's perfect for them and wants to lock it in.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >historically just put up with it because of social pressure to get on the life path to raising a family and lack of access to casual sex. For women it was also a fundamental question of literally living. Back when women were expected to be full-time housewives, women had to marry to quite literally not starve to death on the streets. The advancement of gender equality to bring men and women, all mankind, to the same level of freedom and authority has undoubtedly played a significant role in the decline of romance and marriage.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      That's a pretty odd take on history. You know women have always worked, right? Female life pre-20th century wasn't permanent housewifeing. They often worked from home in cottage industries, ran shops, took part in family owned businesses (often running the financial side) and many other jobs. The reason there was pressure to raise a family - for both women and men - had nothing to do with gender equality. It was because there was no welfare state so people relied on their families and extended families to take care of them in old age and sickness.
strobeflier 2y ago
I don’t know about “vast majority”. Mixed-gender friend groups are also very common, especially in larger metros. The two cultural shifts currently happening are 1. Loss of interest in “third spaces” (clubs, church) for mingling and 2. widening political divide between the genders.
runsWphotons 2y ago
Why is this flagged?

matt3210 2y ago

Relationships are work. People are lazy. They work hard enough just to keep rent paid and the power on.

hgomersall 2y ago
Or perhaps after working hard enough to keep the rent paid and the power on they have little energy left to pursue the important stuff.
nozzlegear 2y ago
Relationships have always been work, and people have always worked hard. So what's changed?
- Muromec 2y ago
  Same thing as with teen girls mental health. Everything is not enough, everything is a red flag, every partner is toxic, every parent is a narcissist. All men are rapists, all immigrants are stealing jobs AND leeching on welfare. Echo chambers everywhere to divide and conquer. And the worst part -- we chatting here and being smart are the ones who built it all to pay our own bills.
  - salawat 2y ago
    Some. Not everyone here did. Some of us watched from the sidelines and tried to tell people they shouldn't do that. But ya can only do so much.
Muromec 2y ago
People were always lazy. What changed is being okay with being single compared to dealing with the least effort the other part puts into it (you yourself always put enough effort of course). Call it unrealistic expectations and blame social media or empowerment and celebrate it or whatever. In the end somebody finds a way to feed on the resulting discontent and everybody is worse off as a result.

glimshe 2y ago

We were sold a model where having a career is the most important thing in life, at the expense of family and relationships. Because of that, the world gets richer but unhappier. Additionally, local human contact has been replaced by a world of upvotes by strangers with quirky online names. We need to work on figuring out how we can get the undeniable benefits of modern technologies without forgetting our biological needs. Thousands of years of civilization teaches some lessons on what's important (and what's unfair and dangerous). We should look back for some ideas.

miohtama 2y ago
Career and grinding is not a goal, but is needed to afford an house and money to help your parents. Apartment prices relative to income have gone greatly up. Thus, more grinding needed and some low wage occupations are priced out from the market altogether. The question is why apartment prices keep going up and can we stop it.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Apartment rental prices have dropped for the last three months in a row in Canada.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Schiendelman 2y ago
    Why?
    - willhslade 2y ago
      Not OP but in a nutshell, everybody who could bought an condo downtown (Toronto + Vancouver especially but this is broadly true of the country) with a home equity loan from their main property as an investment, and the loan math only works if all properties are increasing in value and the interest rate stays very close to zero. Neither are true and unless something happens Canada could have our very own 2008 financial crisis. No biggie.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

api 2y ago

We are letting the most pathological idiots — incels, femcels, masculinity grifters, misogynists and misandrists, trolls — shape a whole generation’s views on gender dynamics and relationships. Of course I guess it’s like other fields. Antivaxxers and people who think you can cure cancer with a juice cleanse lead health discourse. Conspiritainment grifters and unhinged fanatics shape politics. Why? This needs to be etched somewhere on a giant stone monument: trash maximizes engagement. If you optimize any media for maximum engagement by the maximum number of people, you get trash. Two people walk past you on the street. One says “hi,” and the other smears themselves with peanut butter and clucks like a chicken. Which one maximizes engagement? Edit: I forgot porn. That’s a factor too and another way to maximize engagement that gives people ridiculous unrealistic views on sex. This has always been true. It’s why “yellow journalism” was a term and why tabloids have always existed and why so much TV was always trash. But we’ve gotten so good at it with personalized feeds and algorithms that it’s become far too addictive and powerful. It’s becoming reality for too many people. This is an existential risk to our civilization at this point. Banning TikTok is a start. Now do all the other ones.

Schiendelman 2y ago
Define "letting". This seems to me to be the same pattern as every other new communication medium. Sure, it's more addictive now. Do you think playing whack a mole with the definition of addictive will solve that problem? I don't. I think the only way to get the outcome of "people less addicted to media and dumb ideas" is to make addiction uncool - and government can't do that. People are doing the social changes naturally already. Lots of people are off social media. People are quitting alcohol too, and porn. Those people will be more successful in life, and more likely to reproduce. This seems like a nothingburger for an onlooker.
- api 2y ago
  I'm not as optimistic about people learning, and addiction has never gone away. I used to be more of a libertarian about things like financial regulation, but what changed my mind was watching markets and especially things like the cryptocurrency phenomenon where you really did have deregulation. All you get is scams because people keep falling for the same nonsense over and over again. None of it is new. Ponzi schemes, bubbles, gambling, rug pulls, wildcat banking, all of it is hundreds of years old or more, but it keeps working because every generation falls for it anew because dopamine. I think you'd have to re-architect the human dopamine system in very deep ways if you wanted to change this. We are very easy to hack.

binarymax 2y ago

It’s truly bizarre. I’m married and have a strong social life, but then I see things like this in my local subreddit where men just don’t want to go out and meet women. https://old.reddit.com/r/Rochester/comments/1hyh1r2/where_are_the_single_men_in_roc/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Rochester/comments/1hyh1r2/where_ar... I can’t believe that the thread exists. I can’t believe that a young single straight man wouldn’t be all over that event. Some good speculation on cause behind it in OP and this discussion, but I’m just sitting here confused at the state of things.

Dalewyn 2y ago
As a "young single straight man" all I can really tell you is that I have utterly no desire nor interest when I have so many other things I could or should be doing instead.
- binarymax 2y ago
  And that’s the confusing thing to me. When I was in my 20s I spent most of my time outside of work being social. I worked 10-12 hour days. What are the things you’re doing that are a priority? I’m not judging - I’m honestly curious and want to understand.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    Reading books, playing games, watching anime, conversations on IRC or Discord with long time friends, making stuff in the figurative garage that will never see the light of day... The list goes on. And that's besides life's necessities like work, chores around the house, cooking+eating... The list goes on. There's just so many god damn things I could or should be doing instead of marriage. I literally do not have the time and thus interest in marriage and all the things related to it. And no, the termination of my bloodline or what happens to my crap after my passing doesn't concern me.
    - binarymax 2y ago
      Cool. Power to you. My take on things: I love being married, because I’m always with my best friend, and we’re partners to make all the “life’s necessities” much easier. Cooking+cleaning is a shared experience and not one persons job. Financial burdens lessen as a couple. Sometimes groceries just show up magically. And I always have someone to talk to. We also have different sleep schedules. I’m up early and either hack on a side project or go to the gym. Late at night she watches what she likes without needing to negotiate with my tastes.

haunter 2y ago

https://archive.ph/Vwi1a https://archive.ph/Vwi1a

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bradlys 2y ago

I think this is the new norm and it will only get worse. Social media isn’t going anywhere and the amount of interconnectedness we have is also not going anywhere. Everyone will be in an environment where any social trend will spread like wildfire and you’ll have to deal with it. I don’t think there’s much we can do. More likely to see full blown communism than some improvement to the way we’re dating now. I’ve been single for nearly four years. On paper, I’ve got almost all the things someone is looking for. My main issue is that I can’t find women who find me physically attractive. Social media and dating apps has made physical attraction more paramount than ever but I can’t do shit about it. I’m getting surgery next month in Beverly Hills to push it along but how many more surgeries will I need before someone will love me for who I am? Who knows but I’ll keep going until I get matched.

deanmoriarty 2y ago
> My main issue is that I can’t find women who find me physically attractive My main issue is that I can't find someone willing to sell me $VTI at $100/share. Is it possible that your standards of what you consider a woman "attractive enough to date" are too high, and so you are filtering out potential candidates that would be happy to be with you? Four years seems like a really long time for someone actively looking to be in a relationship to stay single, and surgery with the objective of finding a partner seems wildly extreme (just my own opinion, I clearly do not know your circumstances). I am the most average looking (if that) man on the planet, and really never had too much trouble dating, and I live in Silicon Valley where the statistics are not even in my favor. Certainly I never went after the prototypical "Instagram model" as that would have dramatically affected my chances, but by no means I am less happy.
- missedthecue 2y ago
  There really isn't a good solution here. Lowering your standards to date someone you don't find attractive just so you get into a relationship isn't healthy for you and it's not fair to your partner. I would consider it a deal breaker if I found out my partner didn't think I was attractive.

disambiguation 2y ago

The answer to most of these modern problems are all the same. Put the computer down and go outside, it's that easy.

gigatree 2y ago
That’s assuming there’s something to do or people to talk to outside. For most people (in the US at least) everything outside needs to be accessed by car and then where do you go? Hard to talk to strangers at a coffee shop. Might have luck at a club or church.

missedthecue 2y ago

The graph in every country falls off the cliff at the same time. And curiously coincides with smartphones.

gremlinsinc 2y ago

recently divorced I'm finding dating is so much harder these days... I needed to grow up a lot, learn about situationships, attachment styles, co-regulation better emotional IQ, etc... things maybe I should've already known but not something taught.... I think schools should teach psychology classes that prepare people for being successful in relationships romantic, business, or platonic...