The Percentage of American Adults Not Having Sex Has Reached a Record High | Hacker News Reader

The Percentage of American Adults Not Having Sex Has Reached a Record High

sciencealert.com

57 pointsbuboard54 comments

The articles misses one important factor: Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OKCupid et al. have changed the market in such a way that in a large city, even the homeliest of girls can log on and within hours arrange sex with a guy who she would otherwise have no prospects of a long-term relationship with, but is well above the attractiveness level she would have previously had access to.

I haven’t just read this online; I have seen this with my own eyes, with multiple female acquaintances, none of them exactly venuses, showing me the guys they’ve been meeting up with.

The fact stands that guys are a lot less choosy than girls, and this necessarily includes the guys who are also more physically attractive than most.

As online dating has become the norm, this causes a drought for a larger portion of men than before.

>As online dating has become the norm, this causes a drought for a larger portion of men than before.

From my own experience, it's impossible for me to find a date on Tinder. No matter how much time I spend on profile pictures or crafting bios.

On the other hand in face to face interaction it's not a problem.

From my experience women are more choosy online when they only have data (height, salary, picture). For in person interaction talking, physical interaction (e.g. dancing), energy, smile etc. have more weight.

Tinder became impossible for me too. Take a look into Hinge. The demographic is a lot more focussed and fewer people use it. If you at least ostensibly fit the demographic, then you'll have a big chance.

Sadly I had a different problem on Hinge. Lots of dates with physically very attractive girls, but nothing to talk about. That is not necessarily a problem, but it does make things difficult, at least given how I work. Obviously well educated, well connected, stable, attractive and interesting girls (and actually guys) have no need for online dating anyway.

I was left quite confused as to why they were meeting up with me, and I was quite open about my educational background and interests on my profile. It's also not the case that I have a terribly out of this world salary that I could imply or was implying in my profile.

A few years ago I was getting consistent success through Tinder. It was pretty much my main source. Growing up, your age puts you into a different set of priorities which you are measured by.

I did notice a lot of questions recently about my living situation. Personally I prefer to pay less, live with others and save up. I've always preferred independence. However I might now be entering the demographic where it's expected that I pay for a place on my own. I have been pressed multiple times in the past to move into somewhere on my own by girls who would not be able to afford the same for themselves.

The fact stands that Tinder and Hinge give girls easy short-term access to the guy who doesn't even need to save up. Forget earnings, Adonis is a swipe away too. It's either a blessing or a curse depending on where you stand.

However much song and dance either side likes to make over dating, both sides know the deal, and you're not meeting up just to chew the fat. I've decided to cut my losses and focus on other things for now.

> I did notice a lot of questions recently about my living situation.

Don't sweat it. We are not all Zuckerbergs. You don't have to get your own place in anticipation of finding someone. As you mentioned, its the woman without a place that is very concern. Even though, I live on my own & have my own car. While dating, I initially say that I live with my parents & don't have a ride. More than 10 matches, unmatched me. I am not a chauffeur or bed & b'fast place.

I do the same. I also usually tell girls I'm fat and generally try and make the conversation bad as well. /s

I'm not sure why you would think a car and place are unreasonable ways to judge how attractive someone is.

I agree! As a man, you're in for a really hard dating life (and life in general as a result) if you're relying on these apps. Meeting women in person, an increasingly rare opportunity, is far more likely to result in a positive outcome.

At some level I hold the apps them selves responsible. I think they create some kind of negative loop in the dating world. I don't believe the results of these apps are a net positive for society but my perception is colored.

It's not a negative loop at all. This is now how the market works. The task is to be aware of how it works and to use it to your advantage as far as you can.

I mean yeah, you can exploit it to your benefit by going full pickup artist with your profile(s) but that's a) a lot of work if you're just trying to get normal dates and b) generally frowned upon in polite society.

This isn't about whether you go full peacock fedora pickup artist. The thing I would like to emphasise is that each side knows the deal. Women are provably better at festooning the deal in the presence of other men, but the deal remains. This includes "normal" dates.

I can't know what sort of girls you are generally around, but I was with a group of girls the other night, who were comparing their recent Tinder matches and fucks with each other. They were not talking any differently about the guys they'd met to how men are generally portrayed to talk about women, including size appraisals of varied body parts.

On the polite society comment, each gender is just as calculating as the other. From my experience, this fact does not change particularly based on education level, though the festooning around it might well.

A girl who really has no prospects of a quick fuck might indeed be more inclined to settle for what you would be implying with a normal date. The same goes for for guys in a similar bracket as well.

Going full pickup artist does not generally work if you are physically unattractive (mainly based on face and height if you go by what various studies have shown). Dating apps have utterly decimated dating for a big percentage of the young population - that did not win the genetic lottery - and exposed various strong biases and conditioning in the female sex [1].

The following was deleted since many expressed fears that it would further fuel "incel culture" not to mention it's bad for business, but I managed to find it on archive.org.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170330131859/https://theblog.o...

That's quite an interesting analysis. On OKCupid women shift their attractiveness expectations only slightly ahead of the curve when compared with men. OKCupid is generally accepted to be more of a long-term thing than the alternatives. I predict that this does not apply to Tinder and Hinge.

Bear in mind that that post was 2009, and Tinder launched in 2012.

It's also bad if you're actually interested in finding someone to actually date seriously. Do you want someone who falls for your act?

Kundera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughable_Loves

Nietzsche: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24702467-aphorisms-on-lo...

Houellebecq: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomised

Bukowski: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38500.Women

Kundera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Be...

I appreciate the reading list, but wouldn't mind more clarity. Why do you suggest these readings in particular?

Anyhow, I've only read Women from the list. The book seemed to be a male perspective about women. Bukowski doesn't know why they prefer what they do, or why he would be attractive to them. He doesn't know how to get involved with them without some degree of harm or drama either. A great book, but how do you feel it relates to the conversation at hand?

These books have reinforced my belief that all relationships are transactional. Why should romantic relationships be the exception? They have reinforced my belief that romance is something made up by guys for guys, that women gladly play into the romantic ideal to their own ends, and that by focussing on finding an interesting woman to date seriously as an end in itself, you lose that woman. It’s a lost cause. I don’t mean this negatively or positively.

I think that's cynical and incorrect. Charles Bukowski's Women is not an example of a normal relationship.

By a vague enough definition, all relationships are "transactional." Both parties can intellectualize their feelings and point to what they get out of it, and both parties can point to a theoretical breaking point, where the transaction no longer has any benefit.

But, when most people say "transactional" they mean something a bit different: that the relationship is devoid of genuine emotion, and instead based on some selfish benefit, such as money or shelter. I think you're equivocating the two here. Real, genuine affection does exist. The fact that both people are "getting something out of it" doesn't mean that it's transactional.

This is why I said that I do not mean it positively or negatively. The foundation of a relationship is the transaction. It is not necessarily a bad thing.

The emotion exists on top of the transaction. Real, genuine affection and love do not exist, as they cannot be defined objectively. Romance is the terms, such as love and affection, and framework we use to describe our subjective emotions in the context of the transaction.

One party can use the other's emotion and his or her conception of romance around that emotion to sway the transaction to her or his benefit.

Charle's Bukowski's relationships were normal for him. The relationships described in the other books were normal for their authors. The settings change, but the unproductive idealisations of romance and desire for motherly affection remain.

> Meeting women in person, an increasingly rare opportunity, is far more likely to result in a positive outcome.

Yeah, it will take another 100 years until women are hired 50:50 into engineering jobs. Or probably so many jobs.

I thought the new school of thought was never, ever attempt to date a colleague. Too much risk, even in considering.

Yeah, you could also hang out with your actually funny and interesting female colleague and meet her female engineering college friends. In pre online dating times you'd meet people by physically hanging out in groups, having fun and eventually meeting other friends. Good times. Y'all should try it eventually.

And have your after hours discussions and activities now possibly jeopardize your job if something is misinterpreted? Not even once.

I think the risk of this is widely exaggerated.

I have had many, many long and interesting conversations with women colleagues, and there's never been any risk of anything being misinterpreted, because I:

* don't joke about how I would like to date them (because I don't want to and it isn't a good joke),

* don't suggest that we should meet in places that would be appropriate for dating (romantic restaurant, one of our places, quiet bar, etc),

* don't joke about having sex with people (because those aren't good jokes and I wouldn't discuss having sex with people who aren't close friends),

* don't talk about or joke about pornography.

Carving out that handful of broad exceptions of things I don't discuss with colleagues (men or women) leaves a huge amount of things to discuss -- and places to discuss them -- that aren't really open to misinterpretation.

I also don't think most women want to call out their coworkers, because of the intense social scrutiny turned back on them when they do so, even when their initial calling-out was warranted.

So telling that these simple behavioural rules actually have to be spelled out instead of being normal common sense behaviour.

You can follow the rules laid out and still be accused of saying something offensive. The risk reward isn’t worth socially engaging with colleagues.

Certainly, it's possible one can be accused of anything, with or without any basis in reality.

I don't believe the risk of being accused of inappropriate behavior is anywhere near what you seem to, and accordingly have spent many, many hours and evenings socializing with colleagues, many of whom (men and women) remain friends long after the job is over.

Govern yourself according to what you deem appropriate, but suggesting that it is a fact of society that women are untrustworthy is neither true nor useful to society at large.

Whoever's left after several generations of this consumer technology will look at apps like this and the associated lifestyle the way humans look at snakes, open sores, and other dangerous, reproductive-fitness harming things today. This may be counterintuitive, but since birth control there is an inverse relationship between the number of sexual partners and the number of children.

Technology could be creating a 'winner-take-phenomenon' in dating by massively expanding the options people have. The top X percentage of guys get all the women. There's also the social argument, since marriage is less common, sought after males are no longer locked down the way they once were.

What I don't understand with this argument, is sex is usually a 1:1 activity that takes up a bit of time (like interviewing). Even if you have a population H (for Hottie) of men every woman would wave her panties for (doubtful but let's assume) the men in H can't possibly have sex with every woman every day. Meaning some of the women, even if they can have sex with the men in H, and it probably does affect how they view men in not-H (less well due to inferior H factor), must be spending enough time sexually frustrated to be available for not-H.

Indeed, if you look at sex not as a matching problem between males and females, but as an event distribution, then let's say "desirable men" want sex at a rate of K events per week and all women want sex at a rate of J events per week. Let's say the population has 10 desirable men, 90 undesirable men, and 100 women. In the past where the desirable men were married off, they had sex avg(K,J) times per week, for a total of 10xavg(K,J) events involving a desirable man, leaving 90xavg(K,J) events involving an undesirable man.

Let's say now all those people move in the new, "casual" world. The desirable men can have sex to their heart's content: K times per week. The undesirables must use the remaining times that a woman in the population would like to have sex but the desirables are satiated: 100xJ-10xK. Now, if 100xJ - 10xK > 90xK, so if men and women want sex roughly as many times, or if women want more, undesirable men are not really negatively affected. Indeed they have more variety under the new system.

However if J = 0.5xK, then roughly half the undesirables are unsatisfied, or they're all unsatisfied half the time, which does feel like a step down. Anecdotally I don't think it's the case that 50% of less desirable dudes are just not having sex, but let's say it's 10, or 20%, that's believable. It would mean women want sex slightly less than men -- 10 or 20% less. Note that the 10 or 20% not having sex aren't necessarily less desirable than the other undesirables, just less lucky.

Clearly a solution for the leftover guys is obvious: They must increase all women's libido past the points where the hotties can satiate it.

(Obvious caveats: silly analysis, doesn't model gay people, assume libido is constant or normally distributed across populations, assume partners for every event are independent, etc)

> assume libido is constant or normally distributed across populations

Ouch.

> if men and women want sex roughly as many times, or if women want more,

In my experience, this is counterfactual.

Also, I have a hottie buddie who has a lot of sex with a lot of women. Suspect he can easily keep ten women satisfied, on average.

Yeah I haven't mention this, but my theory also suggest undesirable men may be even less well served if, for some reason, more desirable men also want more sex. If so then they could easily satisfy most of the women -- even if the undesirable men don't want sex as much, sex would unlock more social benefits of "interacting with a woman semi-regularly", and now that they aren't getting any, they also lose that.

If that is the case it would be interesting to know why desirable men have such outsized libidos. Is it that they are choosing sex over other activities because it is more rewarding for them?

A hunch is that the genetic traits that make a man physically desirable are the same that govern testosterone levels (increasing libido over mean).

Is there any reason to think desirable men have a differing distribution of libidos (vs the not desirable men)? A simpler explanation would be that they have more sex because they have more opportunity, no?

This has actually been studied quite a bit, and it would appear that the increased optimization of dating apps has caused a huge inequality in the dating "market". It can even be quantified with the Gini Coefficient, a measure of economic inequality. [1]

> It was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men.

And anecdotally, it is consistent with what I have observed. I am troubled by the effect this might have on our society. I am sure that it is sowing resentment among those who have been left behind. Our society is more sexualized than ever; people are bombarded with messages about how great sex is, and yet it is less available than ever.

[1]: https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...

I'm arguing that if sex is more casualized, which it is, then partners are not "competing"; they can have sex with Man A on Monday and let Jody from Accounting have Man A on Tuesday.

The failure modes for this system are twofold: if women want sex much less than men, by a huge factor (which for casual sex may well be true) or if the most desirable men are insatiable nymphomaniacs and quite capable of finding a spot for every groupie. I'm not sure if the second part is amenable to change, but I'm sure it's possible to increase women's libido because surveys tend to indicate women have much less satisfying sexual experiences than men do, so changing that would show room from improvement.

It really isn't a distribution problem, although it is tempting to look at it that way. But I think you are neglecting human behavior.

It would seem that what is happening is that the majority of women are competing for the attention of a small minority of men. The goal of the players is not to make sure that the most people have sex.

Lot of equations here. A non mathematical way to understand it is to look at societies where men can marry multiple wives. The rich and high status men have several leaving many men with none. These men with zero chance of reproduction become big social liabilities as they are easier to draw towards high risk activities like terrorism.

Would love to know if Cambridge Analytica saw related patterns here with the edge case types it was able to sway.

Maybe Facebook is the recruiting agency and dating apps are (at least a factor in) the cause!

The data presentation in that article is probably a little misleading. It's not entirely clear that young men are having less sex than young women.

Somebody has created another graph showing the confidence intervals, and there is a large overlap:

https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1111695055541161992...

Yawn. Everybody is beating it to internet porn. It's probably the main reason that being seated for long periods isn't killing more people.

I think the article could go into more depth and analyze this much further. One aspect that is entirely missing is how dating changed over the last decade. The rise of dating apps for instance would be interesting to put into the mix when discussing this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com