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Comment by throwaway_234 | Hacker News Reader

All dating should be like gay apps/dating... theres always someone wanting to talk to you, trade pics and try to hook up with you. At least if you have a nice body, decent face and are 20 to 40... unfortunately being white might help too.

Str8 dating app scams barely exist on gay/bi apps. There's no need for it due to how men are. Horny and looking 24/7.

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What I don’t understand is why so many people (at least women anyway) come to dating apps and declare they are just “looking for friends”.

Is this really a thing or is it code for something else? Who is really so oblivious to think that looking for friends of the opposite sex on a dating app where people are there for more than just friendship is a good idea?

I would never go on a dating app to find platonic friends. That is exactly the last place I would go.

Some people are using "just looking for friends" as a filter. They want the person who talks to them to be ok with being friends first before they switch to being romantic.

There is often an element of self-deception too. "I'm not the sort of person who would use a dating app, I don't need it" You see a lot of "I'm just trying out this app to kill time" people too.

Other people use it as a built-in refusal. They can say "Sorry, I'm just looking for friends" when they are asked on a date by someone they aren't interested in. When someone more appealing asks them out no one will complain that they aren't following their "just friends" rule.

Dating is full of interesting meta-behaviour like this.

Just friends == polite way of ‘not interested’

They're looking for attention, while protecting their ego in case anyone asks why they were on there - 'oh I was just bored, haha'.

I think purity is more fitting than ego.

"Just looking for friends" is BS 100% of the time and "No one night stands" is BS 90% of the time. This comes from my personal experience. It's plausible deniability for the girl so if her friends see her on Tinder she doesn't get slut-shamed (Tinder has a bad rep).

People say that on dating apps to create plausible deniability. If a friend, family member, or co-worker spots the profile and says hey what were you doing on that app they have an excuse. That's doubly true for those that are "kind of" dating someone who might wander across the profile.

Code for "hookup that sleeps over, repeatedly"

Is this really true? I find in my own experience that men want sex more than women is a stereotype of sorts. That women are more selective than men is a distinct observation but I'm not so sure how true that is either and how much of it is merely due to traditional gender roles.

The evidence of a stronger male sex drive is overwhelming.

”The sex drive refers to the strength of sexual motivation. Across many different studies and measures, men have been shown to have more frequent and more intense sexual desires than women, as reflected in spontaneous thoughts about sex, frequency and variety of sexual fantasies, desired frequency of intercourse, desired number of partners, masturbation, liking for various sexual practices, willingness to forego sex, initiating versus refusing sex, making sacrifices for sex, and other measures. No contrary findings (indicating stronger sexual motivation among women) were found. Hence we conclude that the male sex drive is stronger than the female sex drive. The gender difference in sex drive should not be generalized to other constructs such as sexual or orgasmic capacity, enjoyment of sex, or extrinsically motivated sex."

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15327957PSPR050...

We need new studies on the subject, but in the context of internet pornography. Given pornography consumption, are there changes in the relative sex drives of men and women?

This kind of research depends on some degree of frankness that may not always be available due to social stereotypes, religious stereotypes and other traditional 'purity' and shaming constraints operating on women.

It would be healthier to assume both sexes have fully functioning sex drives, perhaps stronger in some individuals and discard the outdated notion that women are not as 'interested' in sex or need to be 'persuaded'.

These outdated notions introduce some problematic concepts, reinforce traditional gender roles and taint a mutually beneficial activity into an unhealthy construct of 'giving' and 'taking'.

There are differences. Testosterone makes makes men more aggressive and this may well show in all range of behaviors including sexual but must be tempered with the fact that human beings do have control. Men are also unlikely to be turned on by social status but many women respond to both physicality and things like status which complicates attractiveness and drive.

It’s pretty naive to think that any disparity between sex drives is a social construct

I'd say it's the opposite of naive. That boys are different than girls is taken as an obvious truth by young children. Believing otherwise requires advanced mental gymnastics. (Or advanced insight, depending on your opinion on the issue.)

Take a look at the number of gay-male postings vs the number of lesbian-woman postings on casual hookup sites. Neither of these groups fall into "traditional gender roles", yet males still post significantly more.

Gender is distinct from sexual orientation. Moreover, women in general feel societal pressures to conform to gender norms regardless of their sexual preference, and it's hard to disentangle whether that's innate or not, and if gender norms (and norms about sex) were to change if we'd see different behavior.

These aren’t just arbitrary “social norms” though. Cost of accidentally getting pregnant and child bearing is very high and it simply does not exist for men.

A couple where neither member can produce sperm is not at risk of accidental pregnancy.

A couple where both can produce sperm is unlikely to produce offspring either. Still don’t see what that has to do with anything.

I think the point is that the pregnancy risk issues you pointed out do not apply to lesbians, therefore do not help explain the lower promiscuity of lesbians compared to gay men.

But it does, if you consider the evolutionary perspective. Biologically, women are far more careful about sex, for the reasons I described. Sexual orientation is not hereditary by definition, so the evolutionary imperative and cost benefit analysis both stand. This is also why women prefer older and wealthier men.

Pump enough testosterone into women and you will change the dating dynamic.

traditional fraudsters, however, know no sexual orientation boundaries: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/grindr-frauds...

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