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Comment by monological | Hacker News Reader

Serendipitous conversation has taken a nosedive because everyone is constantly staring at their phone. All the normal feedback loops are out of whack. This also affected fashion and even interior design. People just wear sweatpants and athletic wear everywhere and almost all coffee shops and stores have the same design aesthetic. Regression to the mean and mass addiction is wrecking the world. “Bicycle for the mind”. Yea right, more like a ball and chain for the masses.

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> athletic wear everywhere

I mean, if we're talking about sex, I'll say that I love athletic wear on athletic-looking women. I guess the scarcity of athletic-looking people might be part of the problem.

All of this seems to be downstream effects from wages not keeping pace with inflation and productivity since the 1970s. People are poorer than previous generations so they have less time to cook healthy meals or exercise regularly. Then they raise fat kids who don't know how to cook and don't exercise and the cycle becomes ingrained.

In times of yore when salaries were uncertain and low people had far more sex than they have now. Things they did not have back then which may be part of the reason why they went at it:

- an abundance of electric lighting

- media to distract them and personal portable screens with access to such. Personal is important since even a television screen watched by 2 people offers more of a social experience than those same 2 people each bent over their personal screens.

- contraceptives

- state pensions

- education, for good and for bad

- a relentless drive to consume, consume and consume for the sake of it

- life success measured by the number of ephemeral gadgets you collect - your great-grandfather's golden pocket watch was a status symbol for life while your Apple watch is outdated in one or two years.

To be sure, there were some things which people had back then which they do not have now for the most:

- religion - many people met their partner while going to church

- marriage was far more common

- contact with their neighbourhood - people knew their street/hamlet/village, they met them on the street, in shops, pubs, church, at work, etc.

- public social gatherings of sufficiently large size to meet that girl from the next town and of sufficiently small size to meet her at the next event.

It's tempting to agree with you, but the truth is we just don't know what the impact of these changes have been on sexual activity. Likely it's a combination and includes and excludes some surprises.

Lower testosterone levels in males [1] are probably related as well.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33582534 -

I saw one of those random askreddit threads the other day asking women what sort of clothes they find unattractive on men, and I was mildly surprised to see gym/basketball shorts come up a lot. Can’t have anything comfortable smh.

I believe it going in that direction (what women find attractive or not on men). I suspect that it's a product of women generally caring more about socioeconomic status (signaled by being well dressed), while men generally care more about the purely physical aspect of sex. After 15 years of being together, my wife knows that I find her most attractive in t-shirts, tank tops, running shorts, and sleepwear but it's still counterintuitive to her and she instinctively dresses up when she wants to impress me.

Is it possible she's doing it for her own sake? It might be that dressing up like that makes her feel better about herself. She might feel more confident and sexy when dressed up. I know I feel good with a shave, haircut, and a sharp outfit.

"Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants." — Karl Lagerfield

Whew i'm safe, all I wear is PJs

I definitely stocked on sweats when the pandemic hit.

Karl Who?

Basketball shorts _these_ days tend to be huge tent-like things that come all the way down to the knee and hide any hint of the actual shape of the hips/thighs/bottom of the man wearing them. Which is not exactly sexy.

TBF it's easier to get off people when you're drunk as well from experience!

People are staring at their smartphones because there are less communal spaces than before and less energy put towards having them.

Read some Robert Putnam. This was happening well before screens could be blamed.

Yet I see people staring at their smartphones even in settings that would be perfect for some real social interaction. These things are just way too addicting for our primitive brains.

And people read newspapers back in the day too...

Maybe, but iPods and Walkmen predate smartphones by a few decades. I recall posts from a decade or so ago from men bemoaning headphones as a blocker from interacting with strangers.

If it wasn’t phones, it’d be newspapers. People will find devices to keep to themselves in public.

Newspapers, iPods, blackberries, the modern smartphone. The effect on the mind gets progressively worse from these things. I'll often go out somewhere without my phone, but I'll bring a book or newspaper and I easily get more distracted by what's happening around me and can't focus on reading. A smartphone? The apocalypse could be happening and my mind unchecked wouldn't pull its attention away the screen.

I've seen couples sitting together on a data at a restaurant, each glued to their own phones, not even saying a word to each other. I know I'm being judgmental here, but that's ridiculous and these people actually need help. The world has a mental health crisis going on, and smartphone addiction is only a tiny tip of the iceberg.

They repainted my gym to all gray. Every car on the road is white black or gray. All homes are adopting the white black gray interior color scheme. Its very depressing

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