On Tinder, Off Sex | Hacker News Reader

On Tinder, Off Sex

nytimes.com

30 pointskareemm58 comments

> I found the profile of a man whose name is probably Matt and told him I’m new to this Tinder thing and asked him how it works.

> "You match with a bunch of people, no one ever messages each other, and no one ever has sex," he responded.

Sounds like the average male experience on any dating site or app.

When I was single that was exactly my experience; I'm probably just a very average-looking guy with no exceptional talents. But few weeks ago an article from Vanity Fair (http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-cul...) was describing Tinder as an endless supply of sex for whoever cared to tap into it.

I tend to think that VF piece is completely fictional nonsense.

Men and women, on average, have dramatically different experiences in an open sexual marketplace: a few men are having quite a lot of sex, many women are having a fair amount of sex, and quite a few men are having very little sex. This is consistent with an underlying ugly darwinian dynamic: a single dominant male can produce thousands of children, while a single female can produce perhaps ten.

So for a few men and most women, the VF article is reasonably accurate.

And nothing like the 95% percentile's experience. Game ain't based on sympathy.

It used to be the case that hooking up with strangers was assumed to be the whole point of using Tinder. Nobody was really trying to find a life partner on there.

Nowadays, I feel like women are using it for easy validation, or to find a variety relationships (friends only, sugar daddys, traditional dating, finding someone to marry, etc). Which explains the "not looking for hookups / one night stands" that appear in a non-trivial percent of profiles now.

On the other hand, I think most male users are still there mostly looking for quick hookups.

Women are using Tinder for different reasons than they did a few years ago, and its increasing the signal to noise ratio for the hookup crowd.

Maybe she just needs fewer friends who are so judgy.

Before I got married, I generally went 2 or 3 years between sexual partners. There wasn't any particular reason. I wanted to have sex during that time, but I didn't want to put the necessary effort in to make such a thing happen. I just didn't care enough.

Much in the same way that I like watching baseball, would like to watch more baseball, but don't have baseball on television at home and don't care enough to get my ass down to the bar to watch any games, even during the playoffs.

It's okay to have sex. It's okay to not have sex.

That said, I've always found that any sort of dissatisfaction in my life has been due to me going to the same, old, wrong wells for where I thought I should find the things I wanted. If you keep doing the same thing while expecting different results... well, we know what that's about. My wife and I eventually got together after I stopped hanging out in bars so much and started making friends with other people who had more going on in their lives than hanging out in bars all the time.

I think it's fairly common to go two years without having sex. It's just the public hype that makes us think everybody else is having sex all the time.

Just like how every grocery store checkout lane goes faster than yours! Its simple statistics. You are one; there are N more lanes. What is the chance that yours is the faster one? Small.

Recent discussion revolved around how your friends have more friends than you, on average. Similar argument (super-frienders have lots of friends; you are likely connected to one, and unlikely to be one).

So, actually, everybody else is likely having more sex than you. Its just statistics.

Yeah, how many times do we see tv and movies portray characters who report to not have had sex for "weeks" or "months" to be in a "dry spell" or as a "loser", or in need of some kind of sexual intervention.

The only time I've ever heard the media use "years" as the unit of time between sexual encounters is when the characters are enumerating the motivations for suing for divorces.

>I bought a bottle of Larceny bourbon the night before in preparation and had consumed half before he arrived.

Ali Rachel Pearl, you have a drinking problem.

No, seriously: I double-dog dare you, 'Hacker, reading this, to drink half a bottle of bourbon before you reply.

> I quit drinking because I have a problem with alcohol.

Perhaps they do, but is it really relevant?

Alcoholism is rampant in our culture, and a lot of people drink to have sex.

I enjoyed this. But, then, I am a woman who has been celibate for a long time, and not because that's how I "want" it to be. It just is.

I don't think the article has much to do with Tinder. I happen to like it, I am just not sure why it is on HN. I really don't think it has any particular relevance to Tinder. It is a nice piece about someone who is where they are and ridiculous suggestions by other people to try x, y or z and just FIX IT are simply not working. Sometimes that happens. And a dating app (or hook up app?) doesn't fix whatever is causing it, because "meeting people" is not the issue.

There are deeper issues here. She admits that.

After reading this article I still haven't the faintest idea what I read. Tinder? Make your intentions clear, wrap it up in a few messages. Go get laid. End of story.

Sex is infinitely easier for women than it is men.

Finding a willing partner to insert a penis into a vagina is infinitely easier.

Finding a good partner that you like and click with and who you'll actually have enjoyable, rewarding sex with is much, much harder.

Well I don't do casual sex, so I could be wrong, but I thought the whole point of casual sex was that it was with people you don't like enough to date. If you like them enough to date, why not just date them?

You still have to like them enough to fuck them.

I (guy here) have had a few hookups where I didn't particularly like the person, and wasn't even that attracted to them, but the opportunity was there and I took it. I don't really regret it, but on the effort-to-reward scale, it was just barely worth it. I probably would have gotten a better value for my time going to see a movie and eating a burger.

Why would the second part be harder for women?

You have misread the message of the article.

  Maybe my secondary abstinence isn’t in allegiance to God but
  to my own broken heart and the fear that seems to produce a
  kind of magnetic repellant whenever I come close to someone
  I desire.

The point is not in the unavailability -- in fact the point is that it is so available but yet she does not want it; and yet that lack of sex is causing her shame (or rather causing her friends to pity her, and that pity to act as a shame, "making everyone else feel a bit more awkward for having a good time" or "[her] secondary abstinence trailing me like a sad ghost or an unwanted dog").

This argument is actually a result of men's assumption that their preference in sexual partners is reasonable whereas women are irrational/evil for what they like. Both men and women (assuming a reasonable level of attractiveness/social skills) can get laid pretty easily if they're willing to sleep with partners erstwhile considered undesirable, but when certain men consider this question, they assume that "lowering your standards" is reasonable for women but not reasonable for men.

Fat girls can get laid no problem. Fat guys can't. Look how skewed dating sites are.

I don't use dating sites, but I know plenty of fat guys with girlfriends, wives, and children, and many others who get around.

Look, a couple of replies up, this genius suggests that she "become a prostitute":

https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=10402613&goto=item%3Fi...

... because, to him, it's reasonable for a sexually frustrated woman to sleep with the kind of men who visit prostitutes; that shouldn't constitute a minus on her utility function, right?

> Sex is infinitely easier for women than it is men.

I think that's very wrong if for no other reason taht if all you want is unqualified sex then you can get a prostitute of which there are many more females than males, so it should by that measure alone be easier for men.

That's illegal in most of the US. (Someone asked a cop if he knew the best places to pick up hookers. He said no, he only knew the best places to get busted for it.)

Fair enough, it's very different here.

Not sure if a prostitute is typically somebody who wants to have sex with you. But in an extremely nitpicking way we could say you are right (for a definition of sex as "putting your penis into somebodies body orifice"). I don't think that is what the OP meant, though (besides, there are male prostitutes, too, so at most you get to "even").

Am... prostitution is a great example, but it's proving exactly the opposite. If men want to get sex, they can pay a prostitute. On the other hand, if a woman wants sex, she can just go to a bar and find 10+ willing suitors. Or become a prostitute and get paid.

I'm not sure how you got from "there is greater demand for female prostitutes" to "women have a harder time getting laid".

Here (Austria) if you are female and you want to pay for sex you will have a hard time finding it. From what I understand, most male prostitues are actually offering gay sex.

No, in the market of instant sexual gratification, the supply of heterosexual males so far outstrips the demand for heterosexual males that the price is effectively $0. This could be a surfeit of supply or a dearth of demand, but it implies near total lack of demand, because usually supply reaches an equilibrium with non-zero demand that it never really forces prices to $0.

Why would you want to pay for sex if you can get free sex?

You are joking yourself if you think it's easier for men to get laid than women.

Women want sex just as much as men. And they want it on the same scale as men(some people like to have sex all the time.. some less so). They make up about 50% of the population. If you are having problem finding sex with someone it's not the other genders fault; but your own.

Your sentiment isn't consistent with the fact that it's the men who pay for sex and women who get paid for sex. This wouldn't happen if the supply and demand in the market were matched.

Edit: I interpret "want" not as "desire" but as "decide to have sex taking everything into account (desire, danger, risk, ...)"

You seem to be considering only one of the commodities involved in the exchange; if men controlled substantially more money than women, you'd expect exactly the imbalance you refer to, all other things being equal.

If all men controlled more money than all women, you're right. But if anything, men control more money than women only in average; there are poor men and rich women, but the transactions between them don't happen to the same extent as between poor women and rich men.

Even an on-average wealth imbalance would produce a paying-for, paid-for imbalance, all other things being equal between men and women.

Exactly. There is an 80/20 bro-science rule that applies to this: where 20% of the guys are having sex with considerably more women than the other 80% of guys.

So... if you want more sex, work your way to the 20%; feel for the gradient and walk uphill.

If you feel that way, you don't understand what attraction is about.

Women want sex. They want it as much as men want it. They just don't want to have it with people whom they find unattractive. No shit. Are you any different?

Now, you might say, "but I'm not so unattractive". You might even be Brad Pitt himself, or whomever passes as the male archetype for attractiveness these days, IDK, it's not a scorecard I keep up on. But that's moot. You don't get to define what attractiveness means to anyone. Just because they didn't have sex with you doesn't mean they don't want to have sex.

"No shit. Are you any different?"

In fact, that is exactly the difference. Men want sex so much that they will even sleep with someone to whom they have zero attraction. And afterwards, not only will they feel no shame or disgust, but they might even brag about it to their friends.

Sure, some women want sex that much. But, most do not - as you say they value the attraction. So, it's only logical that it's easier for women to have sex. The problem is that sex alone is not enough. So it's not any easier for them to get what they desire.

No, what is different is our various definitions of attractiveness and our cultural understanding of our personal value as a function of sexual partner count.

"Zero attraction" is clearly false. I have met very few men who would sleep with a 300lbs woman, even disregarding their own weight. About as many women I've met who would sleep with such a man.

I think you give us guys way too much credit!

That's the exact stereotype that doesn't fit this woman's story.

Sex is infinitely easier for women than it is men.

Yes, if you are a woman choosing to operate like a man. Most women don't, because they are women not men.

The thing I wonder about her: She did not had sex for two years, and still wants to continue taking the pill, to be available anytime to men who are to stupid to ask (or to smell), if she has the 3 days when French games are topic.

Birth control pills can be taken for many reasons other than actual contraception.

There are other reasons to take the pill than just contraception. It works by giving you a shot of hormones that prevent you from having a normal fertility cycle. Not having the hassle of periods every month is a big motivator for some people.

Doesn't it also curb your desire for sex?

It depends on the pill. Different pills have different side effects on different women; I think most end up working with their doctor and trying several different kinds before they find one they like.

I don't know. It hasn't been a problem for anyone I've known.

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