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Comment by saturdaysaint | Hacker News Reader

Dating has always been annoying. For guys, pre-internet dating heavily, heavily favored the outgoing and macho. Does this sound like you? Finding single women was at least as much of a chore then as now, and unless you were something of a pickup artist, it was just as awkward actually initiating a relationship out of the context of a few circumstances where introductions are easy (parties, a bar scene, etc.).

Also, consider how scripted and industrialized the quest for "serendipity" actually was - for most people, it amounted to an otherwise boring trawl through bars often devoid of anyone attractive to you.

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I can't really comment. I hate traditional parties and bars and just don't go to them. Small parties with friends who are verifiably not loud and obnoxious are good, and so are dinner parties. Basically most generic group interaction modes are just loud and dumb. No thanks.

I go to quiet cafés when I want to think or relax, and mentally I'm not in the headspace of evaluating mates. I guess I'd be open to a woman who made the first move in that situation, but I don't expect it. Even when I go to concerts, it's generally (shock) to listen to music, and I try my best to tune out the existence of the crowd.

The point of serendipity is that it happens when you're not trying to make it happen. By definition, if something is industrialized and scripted, it's not serendipitous. Trawling bars or going to a party with explicit goals to evaluate potential mates is totally the opposite of what I'm talking about, and things like Tinder, while reducing some up front costs (you don't have to physically go anywhere, you don't risk in-person rejection, etc.), are like hyper mega on-steroids version of trawling with explicit mate evaluation goals.

I'm not sure I agree about the macho comment either. In my experience, trying to win the affection of intellectual women, humor is by far the most critical thing.

Here's a DFW quote that has meant a lot to me regarding my modern understanding of the personal importance of serendipity:

"Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer."

>Even when I go to concerts, it's generally (shock) to listen to music, and I try my best to tune out the existence of the crowd.

Haha, this reminds me of a concert I went to in Manhattan a couple of years ago, for a German metal band from the 80s. It was a pretty small venue, the total crowd was less than 500 (I think the fire marshall's sign said max capacity of 450), and as you might expect for a German metal band, the crowd was overwhelmingly male. So I stood near the back (since I like to do that, I'm not into mosh pits) and saw two women come in together. Unlike the men who were obviously all there to actually see the band, and who were using their phones to take pictures of... the band, these two women took selfies of themselves with the band in the background, then promptly went over to the bar to troll for men. None of the men seemed too interested in them...

> Small parties with friends who are verifiably not loud and obnoxious are good, and so are dinner parties.

Seems reasonable. I'm all about being as committed to my personal life as my work and I make those dating apps WORK for me. I am talking 1-2 dates a week when I'm in search mode.

But I met my current SO after I went climbing with my friend and he invited his housemate along. Within a day I knew I was at least somewhat interested, but there was another man partially in my friend group I was interested in. Within three weeks the other man had done something that killed my interest and the climbing man had consistently impressed me.

So I made a move. Tada, two years later we're living together and happy as clams.

There's something to be said for the pre-filter of friends that I find can't be matched yet with online algorithms.

I agree that friend networks can be a good pre-filter. Unfortunately for me, I live pretty far away from my closest friends, and I may be moving even farther away, so it has been hard. Once I am settled, I will have to invest in finding more friends in order to have the network. It's easy to let the salience of online dating seduce you in this kind of situation though ... but really it's like going for a candy bar when you need a meal.

I find your wording very cute: "the climbing man had consistently impressed me" -- I'm imagining some kind of Tarzan character who happened to be out with you when all sorts of freak occurrences happened that were perfectly suited for climbing: getting a cat out of a tree, getting a ball back for some children, getting back into an apartment when you've locked yourself out.

It's funny, when I read "the climbing man had consistently impressed me" I had a completely different image in my head. Rather than a show-off, I imagined a polite and friendly man, that showed genuine interest in the poster, struck up conversations about interesting topics, etc.

It's quite weird to me that the unusual adjective 'climbing' had no impact on the way you pictured it. Of course your description is more likely the real outcome, but it's a very unlikely immediate picture to have when the person describing it is making use of a bespoke aspect of the person (that he climbs) as the primary means of identifying him.

I just realised that a bunch of people I like are into rock climbing, which might be the reason for the different association I had. Climbers are nice people, in my experience.

I agree, and a number of my grad school friends were into climbing. I would never have identified them as "the climbing man" or "the climbing woman" though, since it was just one aspect of their personality. If someone had introduced one of them to me as "the climbing man" then the climbing stereotype would have obviously had some effect on my perception.

>Within three weeks the other man had done something that killed my interest and the climbing man had consistently impressed me.

If you don't mind me asking, what exactly did the other guy to do kill your interest?

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