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Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I agree on all of his points (particularly the stuff about my generation and sexting and so forth), but this struck me:

> "They "go places in a group of friends." Jeez, haven't these kids ever heard of ditching your friends in order to...whatever?"

This is the only way I know things. This is the only way my peers and I in my generation have ever done things. Maybe I'm not in the right subculture or whatever, but for us dating almost entirely arises from the above... I wonder how "dating" worked back then?

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His confusion at the younger generation seems mostly due to his trying to piece together the reality from lingo, pop culture and conversations overheard.

E.g. sexting is no more a substitute for physical interaction than the phone was/is. it's still all about contextualizing and coordinating actual physical interaction.

"go places in a group of friends" is more a precursor to a traditional date. It's the meet-and-greet stage, without being explicitly paired off to lower the pressure and expectation. It's also (in large part) a side effect of suburbanization. When you need a ride from a parent to get anywhere, it's a lot simpler and more discrete to say "group of friends" than "this girl I want to get to know". The goal of most kids in any such group is still to ditch the friends.

At least, in my day it was. Which wasn't all that long ago, but technology makes social behavior a fast-moving target.

I'm not really sure this is Hacker News, but I'm gonna respond anyway. He also confuses a lot of terms. This is definitely someone from the outside looking in.

Sexting, for example, is something only done by high school students. It is a "hey, I'm sitting around with no top on, why don't you run the 2 miles to my house and I'll sneak you in the back door so we can fuck."

"Hooking up" is nothing like he believes. People in relationships don't hook up. Hooking up is when you go to a party with a bunch of people, find someone who you dance with for a little while, make out, then head back to $place and sexile $roommate.

I don't even want to get into Greek life.

Eh, it depends on who you hang around and how you've grown up - what you stated is just one specific example. The somewhat ambiguous way he described it "The term is widely in use, and refers to the exchange of physical pleasure, not necessarily intercourse, between two people who may not be going together or in fact may not have been introduced and indeed may not be strictly sober." describes it pretty well. (well I'd favor dropping the 'may' in 'who may not be going together')

I agree in general, but:

> Sexting, for example, is something only done by high school students.

I think you're incredibly off the mark on that specific. Sexting is just multimedia phone-sex. In my experience, pretty much everyone who's sexually active, reasonably sexually liberated (even if only in private) and has access to the technology does it.

I wonder how "dating" worked back then?

Even before dating-via-Facebook, etc., I think things were different.

From watching Happy Days, etc., I conclude that back in the day, people used to "date" multiple people in parallel, and were only monogamous if they were "going steady".

But by the late 70s to early 80s (when I was of the age), this wouldn't have been tolerated. You can only be "dating" one person at a time.

So maybe the doing-things-as-a-group thing is a work-around that's allowing a person to interact with more potential partners than the one-at-a-time rules would allow.

But by the late 70s to early 80s (when I was of the age), this wouldn't have been tolerated. You can only be "dating" one person at a time.

My time was a bit later, late 80s to early 90s - but at that time the general rule as I experienced it was that above-average women and exceptionally attractive men could get away with multiple dating partners, but it was off limits to the majority,

But also people are now more: A) more sexual with who they date B) are friends more with the opposite sex.

I still recall that when I was in high school, my mother was confused how I had both a girlfriend and several close female friends. Society is definitely different.

I find it odd to try and spend time with someone I like while other people are around. The 1 on 1, "Let's do something like ping pong or a movie together" model seems more natural to me.

(I'm 21, for a generation reference)

Going in places in a group of friends is the only way I know things also. In fact, asking a girl on a date almost certainly implies interest in her and even the chance of "hooking up" afterward. All this is on top of the apprehension of the formal interaction a date requires, which isn't appealing to either party in the least.

This is in the Western U.S., and I'm 23. I hoped that as I moved past college and into the "adult" world this would change but the fact that others have experienced it indicates that that may not be true... and I thought it was just me.

I was having this conversation recently - half the time it appears people aren't sure if this drink, this lunch, this film, this whatever constitutes a "date". Very few of my friends will approach strangers, it's always through mutual friends, parties, etc, and when it's just down to two people it could legitimately be a date or just an instance of everyone hanging out where |everyone| = 2. Things still work out, but traditional dates do appear fairly rare.

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