Tinder and the Dating Apocalypse (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Tinder and the Dating Apocalypse (2015)

vanityfair.com

32 pointshacknrk50 comments

One factor largely absent here (and actually obscured by their choice to interview investment bankers) is the huge amount of financial anxiety facing young people in America.[0]

Crippling student debt, a lack of savings and inability to find high-paying jobs can make the prospects of starting a family or even serious relationship hugely unattractive.

The assertion in this article that Tinder is great because you can hook up “without spending any money,” sounds callous coming from investment bankers, but for a ton of people, that's just the reality of the current dating landscape. If you're focused on paying back loans and working pretty much anywhere other than tech/finance/consulting, it really can feel hard to afford to date the conventional way.

[0]http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/28/pf/financial-anxiety/index.h...

There's also the high risk of marriage ending in divorce and losing half (or more) of your financial assets when the relationship falls apart. That has been keeping a lot of men from marrying, which is another factor that drives some portion of them to avoid marriage by design.

Wouldn't that only be the case if there is a huge disparity in wealth and income between spouses? If professionals marry other professionals, similar to how doctors mostly marry other doctors, that shouldn't be a problem.

Shouldn't...unless there are kids in the picture.

> Wouldn't that only be the case if there is a huge disparity in wealth and income between spouses?

IDK about "huge", but that is often that case, one way or the other.

Given the gender pay gap, we should almost always expect there to be such a disparity in straight couples.

Women's representation in a field (like software engineering, at 16%) is an upper bound on the share of men in that field who could possibly marry female professional peers.

I didn't mean that software engineers should marry software engineers, geologists marry geologists, etc. What I meant was professionals should consider marrying other professionals, e.g. a software engineer marrying a geologist.

Yeah, love should have nothing to do with marriage. It should totally be about bank balances.

Love is important, but it is not the only factor. I think we both agree that future plans, e.g. whether or not one wants to have children, are important factors that should not be overlooked. I believe that economic status, religious and political beliefs and affiliations, risk tolerance, etc. are also important considerations. None of them is a deal-breaker, but these are all things one should carefully consider before getting married.

With the current divorce rates, the odds are greater than 50% that bank balances will come into play eventually. Love doesn't pay the mortgage at that point.

I'm divorced. The divorce was amicable. Two people sincerely trying to not screw each other over as they leave does make a difference in real terms.

Furthermore, the high general divorce rate does not actually mean that any given individual has a greater than 50% chance of ending up divorced. That is not how that works.

What the gender pay gap tells us is that the category of "professionals" at any given income level is far from gender-balanced. It's not mathematically possible for everyone to marry within their income bracket.

Income is one factor, but it's still a crap shoot even if both make similar salaries. That's why divorce lawyers make such a good living.

It's not a binary choice between only marriage and only random looks-based hookups.

I hope.

Dating on the cheap isn't hard at all. The problem is dealing with a potential partner that expects to be treated is the problem.

That being said I've had women friends of mine loose their mind when they hear that I don't pay for the girl on dates I go on.

The unintended picture painted by the article is that this state of affairs only benefits attractive men. I'm not familiar with the platform but I somehow doubt that the majority of male Tinder users can get away with rude comments or a cavalier attitude and still womanize. On the contrary I keep hearing about men failing to garner a single match or sexual encounter independently of whether their behavior was crass or not.

There was an excellent response to this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/26/...

> This surplus of women is not just “perceived” but very, very real.

Man, I must be a heaping turd then.

The author arrives at that conclusion based purely on the # of college grads.

But while comparing current numbers to past ones, he forgets that the relationship between the sexes has changed significantly. E.g., women are far less reliant on men. I think this would significantly affect the conclusion.

Missing (2015) tag.

It's easy to read this as another shitty "millennial are ruining X" article that piles anecdotes on top of popular stereotypes, though it is maybe worth noting that marriage rates really are declining pretty quickly and consistently [0].

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/23/144-y...

If the whole "apocalypse" thing seems alarmist, consider that Japan's birth/death ratio has been <1 for a while, and is now a matter of national concern.[0]

Of course, that's only a real problem if our immigration policies continue deteriorating.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Japan]

Japan's birth/death rate is fairly bad, but at least their fertility rate is increasing again since 2005 after steady decline. Given the current path they look on their way to restoring a healthy birth/death ratio within a few decades.

Meanwhile the US birth rate doesn't seem to be tanking from online dating[1]. There has been some decline since 2005, but it seems to be bottoming out and is still well above 1975-1980 levels. In the grand scheme of things that's just normal fluctuation [2]. Of course 1.85 is still way too low to be self-sustaining, but Tinder doesn't seem to be the problem.

The EU fertility rate seems similarly unimpressed by the advent of online dating (being above the levels of 2000, but still uncomfortably close to those of Japan) [3].

If there's an apocalypse, it's the one caused by wide availability of the birth control pill. That really upset out demographic pyramids. Online dating meanwhile doesn't seem to have any measurable impact so far.

1:https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

2: http://www.prb.org/images12/us-fertility-figure1.gif

3: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

I am 34 year old male, Baltimore, MD. Read the article. I feel sorry for the both parties. By the time they reach 30, they will be cynical fuckers who don't understand what is family is for. It is impossible to have sex with different women(man) every week and not become cynical to the point, you don't give a damn.

To add to the point. I have couple friends, who are in their 40's. They find women on dating sites (anywhere in the US), arrange the "hook-up", buy the ticket, fly-in, have sex and fly-out. None of them have a stable families. They are highly cynical people. Just fuck and get out. Don't be like that. You will grow older, lonely, without families. Stable family is what you will keep you sane, once you reach 45. (Unless your Erdős)

I'm sorry, but if you "need" a family to stay sane, that is a sign of an underlying problem, and instead of running from it you should tackle it.

36 in NoVa and I agree.

At the same time, after 10 years of no interest in women and vice versa (I'm 30), and watching all my friends and workmates of both sexes go through so much turmoil in their romantic lives, I've become a bitterly cynical fucker. Of course, I haven't ever used any of these apps or websites - maybe I've been left by the wayside because of it. I'm just not interested in finding someone that way - I've no interest in a random hookup or a programmatic finding of a long-term relationship.

You can't become Cynical fucker. Go through the turmoil. I am 34/M. And had few women in my live. I meet a love of my love from Switzerland, 34F. Nothing worked out, I was left devastated. But it is best experience in my life(35y/o.M). Do it. You will become a better man. Majority of my friend divorced by the time they reach 35-40. They have kids. They have someone to look after AND they have kids that will look after them !!!

Did you have a birthday between the second and sixth sentence of this comment?

It's totally possible. It may not be the common outcome but it absolutely happens. I do know one guy who appears to be permanently ruined for exclusive relationships but equally one of my best friends easily had sex with over a 100 women before he met his wife, possibly 200. I'm sure Tindr is full of messed up people but that's as much humanity as Tindr.

I wish good luck to your friend. Truly. Women I met Switzerland, who slept with at least football team of men, desperately wanted to have family and another child. She could not comprehend, why I would not propose to her on the 2nd month of of dating. After few months, she ran away, found another men, sent me a pics of her wedding rind, another man. Soon her engagement fell apart. People become cynical to the point, they don't understand what is going on, what is relationship is for.

I decided at age 16 to opt out of "dating." To my mind, "dating" is about men spending money on women in hopes of getting laid. It isn't a great courtship model (courtship is the correct term for the lengthy process of establishing a serious, committed, long term relationship).

Our dating practices are rooted in a culture where men make money, women are primarily wives and moms. This is no longer true, so it should be no surprise that dating is having a crisis.

Though it is sad to read about how victimized the women in the article feel.

"To my mind, "dating" is about men spending money on women in hopes of getting laid"

Real romance does happen, I have experienced it. Not everything revolves around money, especially when you are younger. In terms of getting laid, women actually dont really care about money, unless they are using sex to get a relationship. They want to sleep with a hot guy that they emotionally connect with for short term sex. The emotional and personal connection is actually sometimes the most important, confidence matters.

"Our dating practices are rooted in a culture where men make money, women are primarily wives and moms. This is no longer true, so it should be no surprise that dating is having a crisis.

Though it is sad to read about how victimized the women in the article feel."

Generally its actually the opposite, women are not the victims. A large proportion of average men are not able to sleep with or date women of their same ranking until those women hit their late twenties. 80% of women are chasing the top 20% of men, with the rest of men occasionally "getting lucky".

That's kind of what I was figuring. 20% of the people getting 80% of the sex. (I'm not in the 20%)

But you can be

Discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10019149

The appearance of a limitless supply gives the false confidence that a perfect match will be found. Technology, IMHO, has removed all courtship and romance out of dating. It woukd be interesting to see more of a Tinder of blind dates, no photos, and a requirement that you spend time talking on the phone or texting the perfect before you see their photo.

That more or less described eHarmony, at least as of about a decade ago.

Yeah, its a trap generally. In theory your dating matches are limitless, in reality they are much more constrained. This is how the dating atmosphere in NYC generally works, a ton of people with too many mediocre options.

Aren't you really saying that they are narcissists?

The job market is a bit like this - a lot of job opennings and a lot of applicants.

If all of the jobs you are qualified for are beneath you, then you need to fix your head. And if you want stability, but the only jobs that pay what you deserve are short terms contracts, then you need to consider your priorities.

We tell people not to settle, because getting deeply emotionally involved with someone unsuitable ends painfully. As does trying a committed relationship and realizing that you could do better.

But 'settling' for someone as attractive, clever, funny and sane as you are is not settling.

Saw an article recently stating

* bottom 80% of the men all compete for 20% of the women who actually respond to them

* the other 80% of the women only respond to the top 20% of the men

Yeah its crazy, all these average single girls thinking they are better than the average single guys, until they hit mid to late twenties. Then they "settle" for someone they deemed undesirable for the previous few years.

Two rules of online dating: 1. be attractive and 2. don't be unattractive.

That may be true, but recognize that just as in income, the quintiles are fluid. My wife (presumably) places me in the top 20% by her fitness function, while someone seeking GQ models for December's shoot wouldn't put me in the top 50%.

I can't find the link. But they did histogram of how men and women were ranked by who they were interested in.

Women by in large had an average at 6/10. Men had an average around 2.5/10.

>no photos

We have other kinds of relationships for when sexuality need not be involved. It seems like a huge waste for people to make all that time investment in a romantic context when there is not even mutual sexual interest.

People looking for purely companionate or utilitarian relationships can still find friends, roommates, and coworkers the old fashioned way.

There is real advantage to increasing the number of prospective partners, IMO, whether you subscribe to the rigorous application of the "secretary problem" or not. Even if you don't, I think broader exposure to and sense of the size of your realistic dating pool is helpful.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/16/when-...

Tinder Gold now number one app on AppStore https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/01/tinder-hits-top-grossing-a...

This is so toxic to developing a healthy han relationship. Aren't these people afraid of being desensitized to emotional connection?

Great article. It's from 2015..Would love to see two authors/perspectives, one male, one female, and to see what has evolved by 2018...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com