'It's quite soul-destroying': how we fell out of love with dating apps

Unless the "undateable" person gives up and accepts staying single forever, they may stay on the platform for a decade or more. Maybe with decreasing activity/time investment, but still an active user eligible for matching. That's longer than I'd expect a dating platform (or any random software startup in general) to thrive.

It’s like deciding to date a famous actress based on a character she played in a movie. She may look like the character but personality and interest-wise she’s unlikely to be anything even remotely resembling the character!

This really takes the artificiality of the dating profile and explodes it to an incredible degree. I’d much rather meet someone through a common interest and start dating organically. That’s basically what the article is saying is coming back.

so you literally have a crowd of people who like reading, and are critical thinkers etc & most likely to be high earners too.

but like every thing - the power of the lowest common denominator rules ie endless swiping on who you think is hot.

this doesn't end with apps -- with forums gone -- you can hardly find places online where civilized discourse happens.

now everything is just for the 'gram. or to go viral on tiktok.

match.com doesn't own the local bar, and that's why it's probably a better way to get laid

To be honest, I'm rather surprised how good we have it those days, when good skills and hard work at least have a quite good chance to lead to a decent life

TeMPOraL nailed what I was trying to convey.

What is your experience like? Do you live in a place where high quality work alone is unanimously recognised as success?

Sounds like a form of phantom pain. I don't know the exact term but it is a well studied phenomenon. one that, AFAIK, isn't fully understood.

But yes, your brain can very much lie to you. Just look up how much post processing your brain will do to help you see the way you see.

>Sometimes I can switch the pain off on purpose, sometimes I can't.

yeah, we have chemicals in our body to do that. It doesn't turn off pain automatically because it is in fact a good thing to realize when you're bleeding out of your leg. It only turns that off for you semi-voluntarily if your brain involuntarily determines (again based on other chemicals) that GTFO is more beneficial to survival than tending to your wound. I'm not going to say it's impossible to train these excretions of chemicals. I will argue that this is probably something you can train for years to do and fail, though.

There's so much about our bodies that still eludes the brightest minds. Even a function as basic as sleeping and why and how it benefits us is still not fully in our understanding.

What I’m referring to is nothing like that whatsoever, and I’m not talking about/advocating CBT, or anything that involves adopting meekness.

if you can afford it, sure. But that civil lawsuit you dismiss will suddenly crush you if you punch the wrong person in the face.

Maybe there is a bit too much soft footed training these days, but there's also a very good reason, financially and legally, to know when to hold your punches. At least be smart enough to get an explicit reason on record before you start swinging fists.

Really? I've never done it but have heard some negative stuff, like what do they teach you?

Thats a skill and like sports, there are certain affinities to having and tailloring that skill. It's why we call it "emotional intelligence". There will be some absolute saints that can manage their emotions to an almost sociopathic level, and 90+% of people can train their lives and never truly obtain such skill. We are shaped by early experiences, memories, and traumas too much to truly say "anyone can do this".

Likewise, being punched in the face is a skill. But not necessarily one that is "mastered", just mitigated. the best boxers in the world will get punched enough to have permanent damage, even with modern safety regulations. That's just a fact. Meanwhile, most people who don't spend time fighting will have different biology that determines how well they can take a face punch. Someone more muscular will take it better than a meek lad. You may not even realize the former got punched the next day wihle the latter has a scar that never heals. You can't fully control that without a major lifestyle change.

I won't even entertain "you choose the consequences of being hurt". Mike Tyson says it best: "everyone's got a plan until they are punched in the face"

In a good year they might eat well. In a drought year, maybe not at all.

Did some people eat well, some of the time in the 1900s? Absolutely. But ending hunger is maybe the greatest conquest of our time and it's barely recognised. That's exactly the sort of expectation gap I was referring to in my original comment.

We take obviously mostly-genetically-determined traits like height, eye/hair/skin colour, facial features etc, then extrapolate to argue/assume that all kinds of other things must also be genetically determined, like cognition, behavioral patterns, emotional patterns, for which there is far less evidence of them being hard-coded in DNA. This will be confounded by the fact that we can often see commonalities in these factors from parents to children and between siblings, and assume these commonalities exist due to genetic coding, not recognizing that there are other forms of inheritance/conditioning that can explain these commonalities, but that even if these inherited patterns are deeply ingrained, they can be altered via the right practices (emotional “letting go” being the most important in my experience).

Star Trek and parodies are really coming in clutch for good examples of married life.

Holden is no peach of a partner either. Don’t play the “Holden does something the hardest way possible because he can’t ask for help” drinking game, you’ll be unconscious in a few hours.

Bruh.

They were both hot in high school. They peaked in high school and married/created a family with their high school sweetheart. That's the entire point of the show.

> They had kids. They took care of them.

They were also neglectful and callous.

> They didn't exactly love each other, but they didn't hated one another also.

Did you watch the show? They most certainly verged on hating each other, and were never as ambivalent as you make out.

> The most realistically portrayed family on TV in decades.

The Middle. Malcom in the Middle. That 70's Show. Any of a dozen "prestige" television shows that aren't sitcoms.

Come on. This entire argument is ridiculous.

> ...answers to subjective well-being questions have been shown to be correlated with physical evidence of affect such as smiling, laughing, heart rate measures, sociability, and electrical activity in the brain (Diener, 1984)

I have not (yet) seen any relatively modern stable society where 80% of men don’t have children. Having that many men with not much to lose would, presumably, be a destabilizing force.

If she wants a doctorate she has to be married before she enters the workforce.

She has time for maybe 1-3 long term relationships before she ages out of childbearing age.

So yes women have more options but they also have less time to pick the right one.

Still did better than most in the dating pool today.

More over, the disconnect here isn’t between what “women” want and what they say they want. The disconnect is between the beliefs and attitudes of a minority of elite liberal men and women, and the average woman, especially the average non-college educated woman.

The Sultan having a harem of 40,000 = not patriarchy.

That really seems to be the attitude. Women haven't changed at all and want the same thing they always have. It was a brief bit of egalitarianism in history that gave us a "tradition" that was in fact an anomaly.

As a side note, I laugh at the 6-6-6 thing. It doesn't help. They want something else.

Sure. Average men have flaws. But so do women. When I was dating around I met a bunch of girls who had a wild drugs & partying phase in college. A couple still had cocaine habits. I smoked some weed in high school then stopped. I’ve had sex with 7 women in my entire life, 5 of which were one or two night stands because we didn’t get on. I’m told I’m judgemental & picky because I’m not attracted to women with twice or more my sexual experience.

It’s true that a person’s sexual history does not define their worth as a person, just as height or weight doesn’t. But, what is ignored these days, every person absolutely has a right to their own preferences of attraction. But we insist that young men are terrible people if they don’t accept a history of promiscuity with anything less than enthusiasm.

Who doesn’t like to believe they are on an upward path so maybe they will be able to do better?

Yeah, right. It’s too late. None of them did, and if they did, it would be at great risk to them and child.

35 + courtship period + marriage + 9 months = no kids.

Geez.

Also 200k is the new 6 figures, 100k doesn’t cut it anymore

That said, the problem with these apps is that their business model depends on long term user value. (If you register for free, quickly find someone, then you paid nothing to them. Maybe they were able to show you a few ads.) And those who are on it for long tend to have problems. And especially big issue are those who don't give up, but are ruining the mood for others. (Which leads to even fewer women on the platforms.)

I guess 80% in 2009 is better than 95% that I remembered.

> Women aren't perfect, but there's definitely got to be some kind of change for men as a collective. I know some great male partners, but I also know that they're out weighed by so many men I know personally.

This is a bit like saying: “White people aren’t perfect, but there's definitely got to be some kind of change for black people as a collective. I know some great black folks, but I also know that they’re outweighed by so many blacks I know personally.”

(I suspect that this is the reason your comment has been downvoted.)

I think guys who are intimidated by successful women have a ton of growing up to do, clearly. Surely it would be amazing to be with someone ambitious and intelligent?

I don't know anybody that complains that their wife/gf makes more than them. It's pretty rare, but those in that position are very grateful for the freedom to work lower paying jobs with higher satisfaction.

Nothing is perfect of course. Lots of pensions destroyed/raided, and retirements screwed up by greed too.

And going crazy in the other direction marriage wise definitely has very real downsides too!

I’d be curious to see how the majority of cases went though, overall.

We’re discovering the downsides of going too far in our current direction now, and I suspect this winter is going to be a doozy.

We currently are getting the worst of both worlds near as I can tell on both fronts (men and women), but it often gets worse before it gets better!

Is it really?

The world may be largely monogamous and heterosexual, but is that the case for Westernized societies? I remember reading stats on how native Western EU cultures rank highest in terms of infidelity and divorce rates, with Luxembourg enjoying a massive 40% divorce rate. The world may be monogamous, but I doubt that's only because repressive Old World societies are propping it up.

Costs became unmanageable and out of reach for the average folks once women entered the workforce, essentially doubling the supply of labor overnight. This could have been balanced out with men not being looked down upon for staying at home with the kids (although that raises more questions, considering men weren't really biologically wired for the task).

There's a reason most rich families have mostly stay-at-home wives/moms even today. The man earns the dough, while the woman stays home or works a very chill job, while her primary focus remains the house and the family (including its finances, social standing, kids - which tends to be a very high amount btw, etc). And in my experience, the ones that aren't structured this way tend to fall apart quickly.

What you’re pointing out, IMO, is that expectations and roles aren’t realistic. People keep stepping on each others toes, fighting to justify themselves, burning out, etc.

But then, there have always been the ‘confirmed bachelors’ and ‘old maids’ no? It would be interesting to see the percentages over time however.

One thing that is easily confirmed by data and just by looking around - older, established men have no shortage of ‘market value’, as do young pretty women.

Also, there has never been a time where raising kids or stable long term relationships was easy, or when there was no abuse somewhere.

A minority of those single men have numerous (sometimes >hundreds) short-term relationships. But far more of those single men have very few or even no relationships at all. I think this disparity is far more extreme for men than for women.

If that upper echelon of single and promiscuous men were socially pressured to stop man-whoring and settle into healthy long-term relationships, then the rest would have better odds. Of course those men will never voluntarily change their ways unless there exists a strong social pressure to change. In the past, this pressure existed in the form of men without partners [wives, but it doesn't have to be wives] being viewed with suspicion if they wanted to attain social standing at work or in their community. This pressure has all-but evaporated into nothingness.

I'm saying perhaps a major part of the reason so many men are single is not necessarily because they are lazy losers who refuse to level up like you suggest, but because they can't meet modern women's unrealistic standards or women just aren't that interested in them even after they've leveled up.

Many men can 'level up' to the maximum realistic extent, and still have few women interested in them. That doesn't make these men lazy losers who refuse to put in the work.

I'm not suggesting they are owed a woman for leveling up to the maximum realistic extent, I'm just saying it's very unfair of you to call them lazy losers for their effort not bearing fruit.

A public event you didn't pay for? Really depends. I can still enjoy a decent meetup here and there. But meetup issues come from the meetup itself or the people being inconsistent. Hard to build relationships when it's a revolving door that claims to meet "every 2 weeks" but ends up averaging 4-8 weeks.

I joined a book club last year, and it was great for a few months, but I noticed that most people, unless truly dedicated, petered off, or would only come and 'taste' for a month then ghost. I'm not saying I'm any better. When you've gone to 5 book clubs that have fallen apart, why would you risk committing and being sad when it falls apart again?

I believe our ability to commit is deteriorating; the how and why is a whole nother topic.

My pets certainly seem to appreciate companionship.

This is not the average for men in certain socioeconomic classes/age groups/ethnicities. For a non malnutritioned young man, 5ft8in or 172cm is probably going to be on the lower end depending on ethnicity.

This is not to make any judgment on which heights woman should or should not be “filtering”.

1. Knowing this, don't guys just lie about their height in their profile?

2. Are most women really able to look at a guy in-person and know that he's 5'10 vs. 6'0? Or is it mostly abstract and only becomes an issue because height is explicitly listed in online profiles?

Do you want to sign up for the "might get forced to be with someone who's abusive" lottery?

People are perfectly happy to say that in all sorts of places including this very forum.

From men:

> The apps are algorithmic doom barrels

> I’m fated to end up alone

> he has tried Bumble, Match, Badoo and Facebook dating, but in nearly three years has only met one person, with whom he had six dates before the relationship ended

> The vast majority of matches have resulted in no dialogue, most of the rest there was a bit of to and fro before being ghosted

From women:

> I meet so many men,” she says enthusiastically

> So I’ve given myself the challenge of flirting with one person every day, which has been a lot of fun

> I was getting a torrent of likes – and I absolutely hated it

> I’m simply looking for an interesting or creative person, and that’s one thing you can’t spot easily on an app, but then I’d get too many matches, which was really overwhelming

> I’d get a lot of comments about being a wheelchair user

Hell even disabled women seem to have absolutely no issue getting matches. Maybe the buffet of men they get to fastidiously sort through isn't well stocked enough for them? Well la di da, welcome to reality.

There's a reason for this, how we raise girls is tailored to making good girlfriend/wife material. You don't see the incredible amount of effort that is spent over a lifetime to this end because we're used to it.

Once you see the dynamic you can't unsee it. It even happens with bisexual women where the joke is, "I'm attracted to like 10 men and every woman."

For better and worse boys don't get this treatment. If you spent 10,000 hours under the weight of intense social and societal pressure to mold yourself into someone that you think of as attractive because your social status depends on it, where the idea of what's attractive that has been planted into your brain since birth lines up with what women find desirable in a partner i'd bet you'd be a catch too.

There's a huge impedance mismatch that is set up to hurt men which is that being the kind of guy that women find attractive hurts your social status among men. Pretty boy is used as an insult but you will find no shortage of women throwing themselves at them.

They also rest on concepts of resource scarcity, which is an artificial construct in the context of post birth control sex.

Artificial scarcity rarely lasts long in markets, it can only be propped up by industry collusion.

The 50's model of "precious chastity" sexual relations just doesn't apply to current interpersonal dynamics.

The risk factors that drove that model are very different today and have freed both women and men in different ways.

Or I'm misunderstanding yours - where did I say anything about men discussing sexual prowess?

If you read the linked research paper, I think you'll understand the point I was making better.

> Men are more likely to say they got no matches on a dating site and complain

Does not really align with the fact that men tend to brag about their experience (hence: every single match is mentioned to friends)

> women are more likely to keep quiet of they get few to no matches and exaggerate the number they do get.

But they don't keep quiet, they complain about the quality of the men on display. And the ones who are successful usually don't mention it openly, to avoid negative connotations about promiscuity and such.

> Maybe men are more likely to blame the site or algorithm

In my experience, men tend to compain about the women (namely their behavior to be too picky). As apparent in this discussion as a whole.

> women are more likely to blame themselves

As mentioned, they're likely to blame the choice ("the grapes are sour"), or, if they get any matches, the quality of their dates.

> men must ask and make the first move in most cultures whereas women don't have to.

It's the same on Bumble.

If you spend some time watching our closest ancestors, you start to see that they have lot of common gestures with humans. It is difficult to thoroughly explain this using just words.

And looking at how much harder it is for men to find a match 10 times as much time to find a partner for men seems reasonable.

Now tell me all the reasons you won't do it.

This isn't going to be bring in anywhere near the amount of money you're thinking it will.

The only way to have a fighting chance is to start in a single metropolis (eg New York), and try to get everyone to coordinate trying at once. Since the demographics of people complaining about dating sites online is a bit small (and selects for the kinds of clients you don't want), you've got to advertise more broadly, eg with ads on Youtube or in the metro. That gets expensive.

    Also I have body image issues and do not enjoy working out around other people.

Those groups all have their own networks, etc. If you vibe with some of them and become part of their groups, you naturally get introduced to new people.

This also works if you move to a new area and even if you’re already in a relationship (I’m married), great for making new connections.

My gay friends using grinder don't expect it to be full-filling, they expect it to be pleasurable.

Pleasure is nice, but it doesn't sustain happiness.

And intense pleasures that are easy to have regularly mess up with your dopamine system.

It's fine if you only have one part of your life like this. The rest balance it out. And we all need fun.

E.G: one of my friends is deeply involved in teaching kids, another one is a very dedicated doctor, and so forth.

In that case it's healthy.

But as the internet became more popular, dating sites became more mainstream, and then the location-based ones matured, it almost became a race to the bottom (so to speak).

If someone is horny right now, why chat with person A (with a text-based profile) when person B has photos? Why chat with person B when person C has shirtless photos? Why chat with person C when person D sends dick pics right away? Why chat with person D when person E sends dick pics and will drive to your house in 10 minutes? So a subset of users start pushing this towards being hyper efficiency, but that comes at the expense of the other subset of users who don't necessarily want that.

My experience has been you can't ever escape that. That mentality has permeated the system, and now we're conditioned to "meet up within 3 messages", "send pics in first message", "no fats, no fems, no flakes", etc. And if you don't like that and want something slower then you get told "it's just grindr, what do you expect?" (which eventually morphs into "it's just tinder what do you expect?", "it's just hinge, what do you expect?"). But even the people saying "it's just grindr" also complain that after they have sex, they just feel lonely again and that they feel trapped or addicted to grindr.

Obviously I'm painting with really broad strokes. Some people do find relationships on grindr. Some people are satisfied with their interactions. But, I think like the original article describes, it feels soul destroying. And by the time you're in your 30s, I think a lot of gay men realize that easy sex doesn't necessarily mean good sex and it often doesn't mean feeling satisfied or content afterwards. But it's difficult when you have a heterogenous population, with a vocal faction of the population that keeps pushing the limits of efficiency, and the rest of the population is just sorta dragged along.

Birth control changes this of course, but society (let alone biology!) hasn’t adapted to that yet. It’s very unclear where we’ll end up long term.

STD risk is dramatically higher for women too, but one could make a ‘giver/receiver’ argument with men that is less clear. Still less risk though I believe.

Men have always been able to ‘hit and run’ in a way that women can’t. No one is getting pregnant because they were ACE, or had homosexual sex (with either gender). So it’s about meeting one’s own needs, with limited consequences, for both parties.

Marriage and other forms of sexual control has always been about trying to get a degree of accountability and stability that is a compromise between the sexes so that society isn’t inundated with the poverty, countless needless deaths and out of control orphans/unwanted children that result otherwise. At least pre birth control.

Shotgun weddings were a thing for a reason! Dad was going to get stuck with the costs of raising some random assholes kid otherwise, and fuck that!

And out of control physical violence and abuse if men don’t get what they need too (which is more than just sex, despite what many men will say).

If things don’t get reined in somewhat, we’re going to be Brazil - if we’re lucky.

But the dynamics between men and women are so damn different it's evident there must be a difference to begin with. Just because it's not proven and not certain 100% doesn't mean we can't look at it and go "yep, this really seems to work a certain way".

There are no double blind tests done for parachutes.

Gay stuff is just more underground. You're never going to just walk into a gay club, for instance. Nor wander into an LGBT meetup by surprise.

to be clear, there are multiple examples here of varying politeness.

You can share your own opinion as usual, but it's going to be a hard sale.

It's not about forcing the idea on you, rather it's reporting what a lot of humanity have found to be true on the long run.

We technically have a choice, but practically, our biology and social context make one path very attractive.

Based on my experiences when I visited the USA, with sidewalks in most of the states I visited suddenly stopping for no apparent reason forcing me to re-trace my steps and take a different route, or with many road crossings feeling so dangerous that I was seriously tempted to take a taxi even for really small distances[0]? There's plenty of places where the city designers make this unnecessarily hard.

One of the reasons I chose Berlin over San Francisco when I was deciding how to show the ultimate lawful middle finger to UK politics, was that I like walking.

[0] it's only the 0.4 miles from the The Cupertino Hotel to 1 Infinite Loop, but ten lanes on the North De Anza Boulevard and 2/3 on the on/off ramps connecting it with the Junipero Serra Freeway is terrifying.

It’s no wonder these dating apps aren’t working when standards are so high!

No, the joke is literally that it tastes better because I’m not worrying about the fine details. You are your own worst critic and all that. When somebody else makes it, you can enjoy the food for what it is and don’t find yourself focusing on the flaws.

And I don’t think I’m missing the forest for the trees here. The whole argument hinges on, “things are innately better if I put more work into it”, which I don’t believe is true. In the specific example of ready made meals vs a meal being cooked personally, the quality of the food has no bearing on how much work it took you to prepare it.

And this is trivially provable. Wealthy people that have personal chefs certainly don’t have a lower quality of life even though they don’t personally prepare every meal. Of course McDonald’s everyday will lower your quality of life, but going to fine restaurants won’t. All of these have vastly different levels of effort involved, but the effort involved doesn’t correlate to quality of life.

Very well put. I'm pretty sure this was the case where I had online contacts that didn't work out IRL. I had a really strong connection but they were not able to continue this in real life due to physical distractions. Or in one case, I wasn't.

But yes, many (most?) in person relationships are also ‘imagination’ driven. Some very pathologically so (NPD, BPD, DID, etc.).

On the other end could just be a really good chat bot. It may feel good at the time, but what future does it hold, and/or what useful feedback are you getting from it that isn't just a mirror of yourself or someone similarly disconnected physically?

Dissociative Identity Disorder is a problem for a reason. At the end of the day, real life/our physical selves do matter.

They generalized across an entire group of people "engineers and tech people" all but insisting that they should value "efficiency" over "effort". I am responding to the generalization and the forced assignment of values for those people (me included) prioritizing certain values over others (I don't). In general such an attitude of "shoulds" goes hand-in-hand with a lack of respect for others expressing complexity, subtlety, nuance, and especially agency in such matters. And also encourages race-to-the-bottom behaviors not just economically but also in social dynamics. It's an antisocial attitude and especially romantic partners lose interest very quickly when people act this way.

Source: I was like this once and see it in many techies I know socially. It's a mental shortcut that is common in social settings where techies dominate.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inside-the-box/20140...