But one thing I notice is that there's a subset of the gay community that seems shallow and very physical in their sexuality. When you speak of 'satisfaction' in this sense it seems to be purely the physical side and nothing else counts. For me that doesn't work at all. Good for them of course (and I do really think they are truly fulfilled by this so power to them!). But it's a phenomenon that seems pretty unique, I have not heard of this in the lesbian scene for example (my friends are very diverse and open about their sexuality)
Of course this subset is highly represented in those clubs and on Grindr because that is where they find their partners easily.
In these clubs I don't feel so comfortable because they take consent for granted while in the kinky community we always confirm consent before doing anything. Even as much as touching someone's arm.
But I also know a lot of gay people that are more sensual and careful like me. You just don't find them much in those places because they are similarly put off by the attitudes.
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.
I (as a cis hetero man) consider many such things toxic masculinity in today's society but I'm very emo (and proud of it nowadays). But if it's consensual it's fine, it's more that consent is often overlooked by the people who are into this kind of sex.
So really to me the problem is that men, on average, struggle with expressing their emotions more. Asking those men to form healthy, loving relationships with other men is then a challenge. Not impossible, but certainly more difficult.
To me, Grindr is a symptom not the cause. If you are taught from a young age that men don't cry, toughen up and be a man etc, then sex is reduced to the physical act. Add in some emotional truama, which is again very common in the gay community, and the problem is exacerbated. Of course Grindr doesn't help and makes it all worse, but really they're just making money off the damage which is already done.
But what is also happening is that men tend to pick more violent ways of killing themselves - shooting themselves and alike. Women tend to go for poisons and such. So, the suicide attempts are much more closer between genders - but men more successful at it.
I see what you mean though. I'm used to being the token guy at self help workshops lol.
I agree Grindr is a symptom not the cause. There were rough gay clubs for decades before apps ever appeared.
I don't think this toughening up thing is really the issue though. Many gay friends like this kind of sex and are plenty emotional. And for young people this toughening up bullshit isn't really a thing anymore anyway. When I grew up in the 80s the traditionalists were still like that and there was this (in my opinion) fascist thing in Holland with pretty much all men still being forced into the military and be primed into obedience, following orders and stuff. But since the 90s it's a different world for young people. These things aren't expected and part of their lives anymore. Unless they actually decide they want to be told what to do and join the army voluntarily.
I don't mean to digress, but this statement of yours could easily apply to technology or any cultural change.
Yeah...the goal of these dating apps is not to have you happily be in a relationship and stop paying them money.
Other thing they need to do is eliminate the requirement that all new treatments reviewed by the FDA meet the requirement of a "disease". Theres a lot of things people want out of lets say gene therapy that is not strictly a disease but benefits your health in the end. And I dont know why cosmetic or enhancing treatments should not be considered as well. They need to loosen up.
FDA approval for (gene therapy for instance) is taking something like 15 years to get approved. And only their narrow definition of whats necessary for the public is even considered. This is an absurd situation. Govt red tape is literally killing us.
You don’t have to look very hard to realize this trope is totally wrong, just google “vaccine”.
Of course, alternative treatments such as the nasal spray that is supposed to totally eliminate the disease have, well, lost funding[0].
But I guess those vaccines, right? They just prove that we don't live in a rent-seeking society.
[0]: The End of Vaccines at ‘Warp Speed’ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/health/covid-nasal-vaccin...
Not saying that FG is a good oracle to go off of, but if it's such a prolific mindset that comedy shows are riffing on the concept the people up top have definitely crunched numbers on such factors.
Family Guy also jokes about virtually every other conspiracy theory, yet birds do in fact exist.
comedy is awareness, and awareness is an important first step. But awareness is not hard proof. It's at best a step to start investigations with.
So I don't know what you want me to say. I do see it both ways. Maybe there is a point, but nothing I can argue in a real capacity.
>Family Guy also jokes about virtually every other conspiracy theory
Indeed. but FG can be strangely prohetic at times. Not always (Trump Guy aired in like, 2019, 3-4 years after everyone made every joke in the book. And FG didn't add much there), but said episode aired in 2012. So we're talking nearly a decade before the internet consensus started taking this hard cynical anti-capitalistic approach.
I take it you weren’t around in the 90s when Chris Rock made this exact joke (it was on Bigger and Blacker), and it killed. People have thought that doctors were after repeat business for as long as there have been doctors.
This is a commonly held belief because treating symptoms always* come first. It always comes first not because the pharmacryptoluminati are ghouls after money, but because it’s easier. But that’s not a good punchline.
I'm sure there's always been cynicism. I'm less sure that this isn't yet another peak of cynicism, with the main difference being that that whole faux politeness is crumbling away. Companies can't even keep up that facade anymore like the various 90's "companies are evil" that has been satarized and parodied constantly.
I think the big difference between back than and now is that patents are extremely rampant in a bad way. I can't envision a Jonas Salk of modern times because so much of doctors (especially R&D) has become privatized and because any potential treatment (let alone cure) will be restricted for quite a while before the public (already dependent on insurance to pay for this) can benefit.
> I can't envision a Jonas Salk of modern times…
Fortunately overcoming your baseless skepticism is not a prerequisite for winning the Nobel.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2023/kariko/facts...
okay, that's perfectly fine. I just wanted to talk about a family Guy episode, I wasn't looking to convince you of... well, whatever we're arguing about at this point. You win.
>Fortunately overcoming your baseless skepticism is not a prerequisite for winning the Nobel.
the COVID vaccine is the exact kind of example of why modern pharmaceuticals is a mess. I understand it was a global emergency, but the mess between 3 companies and the lack of clarification early on regarding insurance and what's covered or not (even though it was also offered insurance free). It shouldn't have been this debate on Pfizer or Moderna or J&J. It shoulda just been "COVID vaccine".
But yes, good on Katalin Karikó. I'm very glad she's getting and gotten the recognition she deserves.
Anyways this discussion has long ran its course and when you resort to insults it's time to disengage. Take care.
That nasal spray has, of course, been conclusively shown to be ineffective. Otherwise we’d use it, because that’s how science works.
I put very little effort in my sleep and have a very good one.
Some things are just good and cheap. It's nice.
Unfortunately, that never characterized heterosexual courting, eating healthy food while working full time or finding meaning in your life. Most people struggle with those.
Also note reporting satisfaction with something can just validate the pleasure it brings to you. I'm personally satisfied with Netflix.
But you can't fill your life with such things and expect happiness.
Obvious just means "given our context, we don't expect to require much complex thinking to get to that conclusion".
It's just another convention.
Given our context of most of us having eyes and color receptors calibrated in a similar fashion, I expect most people will see the sky blue. Of course if you dig deeper, it opens the discussions to nuances.
It's the same here.
Nothing wrong with that.
[0] one suggestion is the "gay uncle hypothesis" which posits that people who themselves do not have children may nonetheless increase the prevalence of their family's genes in future generations by providing resources (e.g., food, supervision, defense, shelter) to the offspring of their closest relatives; this hypothesis seems to be consistent with the evidence without being sufficient on its own.
Being a hero by jumping on a grenade is a pretty terrible survival trait for an individual for instance, but essential for the group to have at least one in any decent sized population. All the non-grenade-coverers will strongly support such folks, as long as it doesn’t hurt their own survival chances somehow.
So if we look at individual tendencies as coming more from die rolls than anything else, with a wide distribution, a lot of outlier behavior makes a lot of sense.
A hardcore survivalist most of the time is going to be selected against, for instance, for many reasons when things are going well. They’re dumping all their stats points in the wrong categories!
But any population that doesn’t have at least a few is going to completely disappear on those rare long tail events (an actual nuclear war?).
And if those survivalists are actually capable, they get the benefit of ‘seeding’ the next generation without any competition! Long odds, but potential huge payoff biologically.
Also many of the traits might also only show up under extreme stress, and we’ve learned to frown on doing destructive a/b tests on entire cultures.
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.
Large segments of the population ending up in Favelas, insane crime rates + massive drug use, general chaos and social disorder, especially in the cities.
Think ‘US in the late 70’s, early 80’s’ but with way more people, denser, and more intense.
Males that refuse to mate with females is something that we only see in humans. It’s inherently less well understood. You can’t apply the vast body of animal behavioural studies because all males of all other species will mate with females.
You can hypothesis generate with evolutionary logic, but that doesn’t mean anything until you do some experiments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals
I am not sure where you got your data but male male mating seems to be rather well researched in animals.
Just grabbing one of the many quotes:
----- One species in which exclusive homosexual orientation occurs is the domesticated sheep (Ovis aries).[8][9] "About 10% of rams (males), refuse to mate with ewes (females) but do readily mate with other rams."[9]
The part you’re missing is that all of those males that mate with males will mate with females as well.
The paper Wikipedia references about rams notes that the only mammals with exclusive homosexual behaviour are sheep and humans. Exclusive homosexual mating is exceptionally rare. There are about 6000 mammal species.
The Wikipedia sentence should read the only other mammal which exhibits exclusively homosexual mating behaviour is sheep.
Also domesticated animals have been under some pretty weird selection pressures so you have to be careful comparing their behaviour to a wild type animal like humans.
I'm not sure how you'd be able to control for that sort of bias in any kind of rigorous study, or how much variation might be left if you did.
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.
Plus maybe you don’t need an escort if you are a match with someone else looking for the same thing as you.
strip clubs I imagine. They can't legally say they have escorts, but it's an entire scene. Like any other tribal knowledge, you need to know the edge cases and know the right people. And/or be rich. You can't just google this kinda stuff, you gotta get out to your town and dig (well... you kind of can. But you don't want to take the risk asking for certain Craigslist ads on this stuff).
Or you can go to Vegas where prostitution isn't illegal.
The Japanese already have a very similar service, called Delivery health.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_prostitution_in_moder...
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.
I do agree with you that when people use apps, they should set correct expectations. I think it’s the unmet expectations that are causing problems.
Heroin feels really good, which is why it’s dangerous. Because it feels too good, for what it actually does to you, and that’s a trap for a decent percentage of the population.
How can this be gatekeeping? It's a conversation. Saying "repeated shallow dopamine hits will make it harder for you to build long term joy" isn't stopping anyone from doing anything. It's just a proposition.
> People have been satisfied with “simple pleasures” that made them happy throughout centuries
I don't think this is really...anything. Wisdom tends towards building for the long term and delayed gratification, not short termism at the expense of the long term. Being happy at seeing a beautiful sunset is at the expense of nothing, which is the difference being proposed.
Netflix in itself is not a problem.
Filling your life with it is.
Which is easy to do because it's intense dopamine effects for little effort.
Then again, divorces are through the roof as well, so maybe that is also failing at large.
Apologies for the rant, I just don’t get it when others say “do X, not Y to be happy”, as if happiness is nothing but a subjective state of mind. Obviously I am not entertaining the obvious physical/psychological addictions and stuff on that level, but if someone chooses a trash reality TV over “life enriching books”, that’s not my place to give them advice.
I don't make this assertion as some form of gatekeeping, and I don't expect everyone to have the same values. I don't have the answers, but I want to ask these question, in a Socratic style. Dig down and figure out what makes one "tick". Not quite as philosophical as "what is the meaning of life", but a similar vein of "what gives you* a meaning to live"?
It's a relatively simple question: "If you had 10 million dollars today, what would you do?". If that answer is still just netflix, beer, sex, and games: well, that's your answer. Not what I would have gone with (and I imagine others have other riches or charities or power they'd do), but if they truly just want to live simply even when granted riches, so be it.
The question isn't about some fantasy land, but more to figure out what values and other factors in life they care about. e.g. If you would by a yatch with 10 million, that probably means you would like to explore some water based activities. Maybe not fancy sailing, but rowing or fishing. Just an exercise to think outside the box many are trapped in.
>I just don’t get it when others say “do X, not Y to be happy”, as if happiness is nothing but a subjective state of mind.
Why do I care? I feel like at some point in the plot of life many forgot that they had passions and aspirations about what they wanted to grow up and do. We get bogged down by college grades (if that), by trying to grab a job, by trying to live and make rent, and then by retirement... what's left? you spent 40+ years working without a purpose just to fulfill check-boxes, without filling in the blanks in between the lines. It may be out of place, but living to be some corporation's peasant isn't a way to live.
I simply want people to remember that spark and remind them that they can still work at it, not work to simply get by and pass your life by. If that spark is as simple as netflix, so be it.
> Back when I was a kid, I’ve only seen a poverty and everyone was “simple”, and people still lived and laughed.
in some ways I miss that simplicity. Honestly, part of my goal with those kinds of riches would be to just gather some old friends and hang out for a while. I wasn't a rich kid either, but I remember the days where it didn't take a month's planning to get 4 people together for a 2 hour sunday brunch.
But there's some things money can't buy, and I know most of my friends are too prideful to take a "vacation" off, even if I was perfectly willing to compensate them for it.
What? All of these apps exist merely to organise the first meeting. Those users will not interact with each other on the platform after that.
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.
Or you can just read the reviews on App Store / Google Play and see for yourself.
Yeah man, love this app, who wouldn't...
There might very well be a problem in the gay community in this regard, but if so it runs way deeper, this would happen with or without grindr.
I actually prefer people list their preferences up front, that way that's no disappointment later.
For example, I can think a straight guy is cute, but I'm not personally attracted to straight guys, I find it unattractive, because I know they're not interested (in addition to hetero culture, chest beating etc that is just gross).
Easier for someone to say "not into short guys" up front cause then I just skip over them rather than interact and have awkwardness later on.
to be clear, there are multiple examples here of varying politeness.
The geek section has been taken over by self described "nerds" aka jocks who live in the gym but have an xbox to play fifa. Ugh.
The numbers are interesting: there are about 32,000 new HIV cases in the USA each year, and the per-month cost of ongoing anti-retroviral therapy is estimated at $1,800 - $4,500. This works out to a gross cost of ~ $0.7 billion to $1.7 billion - and it's cumulative, year after year. as HIV patients need this treatment for the rest of their lives. Given profit margins of 10-15% in pharma at least, this is a huge cash cow for the industry. (Also explains the reluctance to invest in seeking a permanent cure for the disease that would allow patients to terminate their therapy).
Now, would a profit-hungry industry deliberately encourage reckless sex practices in order to grow demand for their product, year after year? It might bear some investigation.
From the perspective of your theory, that would seem counterproductive. As a greedy pharma company you'd want people to take a drug that makes them feel good while they are on it, be no permanent cure, _and_ still allow them to spread the condition.
You can list your STD status, whether you take pre exposition meds and when you last checked yourself for STDs.