If you don't like dogs, you will probably have zero interest in this. It has nothing to do with programming or society at large.
> Dusty taught me everything I needed to know about life, but over the years there had been something missing. My friends Ben and Rachel insisted I join a dating app to expand my horizons. That’s how they met, but I loathed the idea.
> Why would I want to expand my life? I had a dog, a place to live, a pickup truck smothered in bumper stickers. But out of curiosity (or God knows what), I humored them. I created a Tinder account with a picture of Dusty as my profile picture. No one matched with me until Rachel explained that I was swiping in the wrong direction. The first time I swiped right, I matched.
> The first time I swiped right, I matched.
- author's fear of being left without companionship overcoming his fear of commitment/failure (seemingly): ... I didn’t want to lose Ilse, especially knowing I was about to lose Dusty ...
- author's POV about living for more than himself: ... I thought none of this was worth anything unless I had something more to live for.
- how his "youth"/carefree phase sort of died with his dog - travels ending in his truck, etc. - and a new chapter begins with his spouse
- near death experience + how that (seemingly?) kicked off his choice to marry his spouse
lots of good stuff to reflect on here, especially for lone ranger/loss-averse/single people types
Anyway, I don't even like dogs and I certainly don't have one but I was still touched by it.
Seems more Reddit or pulp magazine territory to me.
But when you're just softballing in "human interest" stories about pets then it's just reddit with less features.
There is a link between cruelty to animals and violence against women, murder, etc.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/domestic-viole...
Owning a cat however isn't the same, and could have a negative effect.
Huh?
All of my ~longtime girlfriends and wives have been cat people. Two out of three wives, at one point in their lives, had more than five cats. The first, when I met her, had over 20 cats. Counting kittens and loosely attached males.
So why not cats?
As the initial poster was stating, men who have dogs seem to fare better at attracting women, while men who have cats seem to fare worse. There was nothing about women's success at attracting men, and the effect different animals have on it.
What's your evidence for that? There's nothing in the Independent article about it.
If this is a thing, I guess that "likes Lassie" is as good an explanation as any.
Different rules for girls, though single and more than a handful of cats and people start whispering Crazy Cat Lady.
Most people I know would identify as dog people and the stats for Australian households with one but not the other are 2:1 in favour of dogs.
Disclaimer: I currently have two dogs, one cat
But why would women not like guys who like cats?
I have a theory. I like cats more than dogs because cats are independent and self-possessed. Whereas dogs are pack animals, seem to always be testing dominance order, and demand lots of maintenance.
So I can see how women who are looking for fathers would prefer dog people. Whereas women looking for friends would prefer cat people.
Unless you mean they have daddy issues and are looking for a partner that's just like their dad, no. In my experience of dating in a big city, every 30+ white American woman who has no kids, and doesn't even want kids, still goes on and on in her dating profile about how "obsessed" with dogs she is. These women only want men with dogs. It's not because they're looking for someone to be a father to her kids, it's just because that's the fad she's jumped on and decided to center her whole life around, and any man who isn't into that same fad isn't going to interest her.
It's just like women who are all into veganism, or social justice, or Trumpism, or some particular religon, or keto/paleo diets, or whatever. Americans these days all have to have some cause to rally around, and they don't want to date someone who isn't into that same cause, or can't be easily converted to adopt their cause.
Caring for cute, furry little sociopaths with razor sharp claws should be the gold standard of signalling patience and niceness.
In America, being an extremely LOUD, boorish, extroverted person is esteemed, and that's who white American women want to date and marry (regardless of whether they want kids or not, as many of them these days don't). Men with dogs fit into this stereotype well, whereas men with cats don't, they're stereotyped as "nerds" and introverts, and white American women have no interest in dating them.
Again, note that this is entirely cultural (subcultural?), and not universal, even within America. Immigrant women are usually not like this at all (which is part of why I only date non-American women these days), and also black American women aren't real keen on pets either.
I am from central Europe, but have travelled in America and have family over there too, I can tell you that women being attracted to loud, boorish, extroverts its not at all specific to white Americans. This is pretty much a universal human trait.
Its also interesting that you say that immigrants in America are not like that at all? Because in my experience, at least in the black and hispanic communities - they have far more of a macho culture than most white Americans do.
I guess you've never met anyone from Asia.
Is this about the American attitude that dogs are always boys and cats are always girls, i.e. having a cat is "less manly"?
The only two things I can think of are that dogs naturally lend themselves to meeting people because they need to be walked, act as a conversation starter and may even approach strangers themselves; and that dogs are (apparently especially in the US) more socially accepted than cats, so the chances of someone being a dog person (or familiar with dogs) being higher than for cats.
These kinds of dog people tend to associate with the traits in their dogs they like or wish about themselves. I think they then associate cat owners with cat traits (particularly negative ones).
Really?
How odd.
Our one cat, on the other hand, though male, was presupposed to be female.
It's definitely a thing.
Personally, I would choose a female dog and male cat every time. Less dominant and more bidable dog and a less skitish cat who's more likely to not take crap from the dog at meal time.
I'm guessing 'certain forums' is code for the PUA community?
You might want to think of 'women' as being a category with a lot of different and divergent people in it. Some of them like animals. Some of them don't. If they're into pets and you're into pets, then that might help open a conversation. But that's more like 'women who have a thing for dogs'.
Nah, not really, this thing has been 'round since a 2008 study in pet owner forums/FB groups and gets recycled in the summer news hole every other year.
I understand that women are a diverse lot but there are articles which do talk about bond between women and dogs[1]. But since we cannot just accept articles as facts, I thought of enquiring if this has been academically studied.
The article also mentions other studies which focus on the "why" part.
If you're a guy with a cat, you will have a very hard time getting a date with a white American woman. Luckily, there's other (better) women out there who don't insist on having animals that are totally impractical in the city.
Having a dog signals that you will take on caring for another being even if it is not in your financial best interest and that you can at least keep the thing alive. Think with your lizard brain and it makes perfect sense why women are attracted to that.
Why childless American women who explicitly don't want children aren't attracted to men who like cats, I have no idea. It's not like this in other countries; this is mostly an American phenomenon.
That's exactly what I'm saying. The dog is conspicuous consumption. It's signaling that you are willing to burn resources (time in particular) in a similar manner you would on a child. The lizard brain eats that shit up and the human brain is none the wiser. As a byproduct of being far more practical in terms of time/money resources the cat does not broadcast that signal. Nobody is saying the cat is not more practical. That's a given.
In reality, most people don't truly know what they're looking for and definitely cannot afford to travel more than 1x a year, if that. Hell, I "travel" that much and it'll never be a bullet point on my profile because it's not something I really value.
People put in the most formulaic BS on their profiles in the hope of appearing "normal" to a potential match. The UX of most dating sites encourages this kind of self-pigeonholing as well.
In rare cases, people will actually write "I really don't know what to write here, it's hard to summarize myself this way". But I find that to be a truer reflection of a person rather than the boilerplate text people tend to post.
Sure, you can say things like "love to travel", "fluent in sarcasm", etc., without those being huge parts of your daily life. But you can't own a dog and not have it be a big part of your life.
I do see some women who don't own dogs, and will say stuff in there about how much she loves them, wants to get one, will totally swipe right for your dog, etc. But usually they actually do own one.
That's the scenario I was referring to. For potential matches that already have pets of some kind, I usually see that they ask that the other person be OK with dogs/cats, which is very reasonable compared to "you must also have pets".
https://web.archive.org/web/20110126111953/http://blog.okcup...
I agree that this is an American thing, but moreover, I think it's a relatively recent thing too. I don't remember this dog craze existing back in the 90s.
The real moral of this story is to not have any attachments. It’s all fleeting in the end. When the time comes, you need to accept it with open arms, instead of holding on in futility. Death comes for us all eventually.
sorry, you should correct that to :
you will miss out on everything worthwhile
Do other people's lives seem more worthwhile to you because they have some relationships with people you'd care nothing for? Not to me -- the worthwhileness is an entirely subjective feeling for them. Whereas suffering is a real thing that subtracts much more from life than worthwhile adds.
It's the thesis behind one of the world's great religions.
If you are talking just from the elimination of suffering angle, sure. But they make the theological case that the absence of suffering itself leads to a state that is far more than just the absence of suffering. I don't think we can or should take that as a given, just as we don't take other theological truths as a given.
Imagine for a moment a person makes the decision to commit suicide but needs to stay alive for a while longer in order to complete certain professional obligations. Would it be appropriate for that someone to form attachments, to be selfish and make friends knowing that he will hurt them terribly when he kills himself? If one of them were to be the one that discovers his dead body, or by the ones coping with his disappearance?
Or is it better that he do the right thing, and sever any attachments that may exist so that they won't get hurt when he does kill himself? To contain the suffering to just one single individual.
I find it hard to believe that you could read a story like this one and what you come away with is the idea that dogs bring suffering.