This is really a monumental societal change.
3rd spaces are nearly completely destroyed, and online seems to be the main option for ppl now.
Looks like a whale, mouth on the left
If you pay me $5 dollars you may talk to each other for 5 days! But, if you pay me $10, you may receive an additional free talk week!
Don’t you guys want to talk? So give me money! There are women in your area ready to talk!
we need to shut the internet down until we can figure out what the hell is going on
I sometimes wonder if its even possible to have any healthy online social network. We can try to build in things to make social media less addictive, and try to use less of the psychologically damaging things capitalist software companies build in… but at the end of the day an online group of friends can never sub for a real one.
Making things less addictive helps.
I also recall someone once saying that privacy isn’t about maintaining secrecy around one’s inner life, but rather the capacity to regulate or control how one shares it.
Feeling a lack of control over privacy makes lots of people cagey about opening up to others, and that’s a killer for intimacy and trust. Some of the problem is tech that doesn’t respect privacy, but the prevalence of such tech has also changed culture, and so one has to be more cautious with people who have been trained by their tools that privacy isn’t to be respected.
That is true, a combination of both I think is the best. But, under Capitalism, the IRL experience is getting progressively worse and worse so people go into the Internet to escape that hell.
Would be interesting to see how these compare to the number of people who’s given up on meeting an SO and/or doesn’t have the time/energy to.
🤚
I’ve def met a few people like this. They have a few terrible dates on these sites, and it just stresses them out too much to even try again. Its really sad.
10 years of online dating, 6 dates out of it. As a well below average guy I just gave up
“a well below average guy” i think stuff like this is just made up, i dont believe in ratings and i dont think others should either tbh
Idk comparisons are a thing that can be done and I’m objectively worse than most people in most categories (looks, intelligence, earning potential, education, interests, etc…) so I consider myself “well below average” especially since choosing a person to potentially date does involve comparing them to your other “options.”
since choosing a person to potentially date does involve comparing them to your other “options.”
i mean if you choose a partner like you would choose a car, then i guess it is like this
or actually even then it is not like this, like there is nothing objective for most categories.
like you list interests as below average, what is this even supposed to mean lmao or intelligence like how would you even know that and for earning potential, there are like a lot more poor people than rich, beeing poor is the normal one lol
even for education, like people can still know dtuff even if they dont go to university… Or know nothing if they went
what i am saying is this sounds more like you just beeing unhappy with yourself if anything. Or if you are happy, then you are probably just not a good match anyway for someone that is like looking for a car.
(Not OP)
I do get both your standpoints, its all subjective of course, so you can’t really be below average in interests or something like that, but you can definitely be below average in terms of commonalities with other people.I don’t know OP so I don’t know if he’s telling the truth or is indeed just unhappy with himself. But if your hobby is watching VR MyLittlePony porn you’re going to have a tougher time than if your hobby is cooking.
Same for weight, if you’re 200kg it’s going to be harder, especially on dating apps.
Money and intelligence I’m not so sure about, that probably matters less than he might think
I also believe in a classless society.
Are you actually a below average guy, or do you just have below average pictures?
Good “candid”/fun/funny photos are huge for dating apps.
idk about him but there has been roughly one photo taken of me in the last decade and it’s on my ID
Pro gamer move: don’t use your license photo for online dating. Unless it’s really funny then maybe.
Yeah honestly it sucks getting into it, but it’s a lot easier when you can recruit someone for help.
literally don’t know anybody in town, haven’t seen anyone else wear a mask in two years.
I’m below average in most ways not just as far as attraction goes, but yeah my photos are never that great because I’m not attractive at all. I have had candid ones and funny ones, but I never got much traction. I live in an overpopulated area so this buffet table is brimming with options. I’m just that odd pizza at the Chinese buffet where you wonder why it’s being served lol
i’m sort of like this and i don’t see it as sad.
i was “married” (in quotes because it was illegal for me to be married at the time) and both internal and external stressors taught me that i got less significantly fulfillment out of the efforts & sacrifices necessary to maintain that long term relationship than i do now that i’ve been single for the last decade+; so i stopped stressing myself with the belief that i need to be partnered.
it’s definitely sad if you get more out of being partnered than single, but i suspect that it’s not true of a significantly large number of people and that most are just taught to believe that they should be partnered and that, in turn, causes people to lament lacking partnership out of ignorance that they don’t really need it.
I’ve met a disturbing number of young people who haven’t given up on dating per se, but make zero apparent effort in it.
I mean like, never talk about anything but work or family.
I think this is actually good in that the online space lets us have access to more options and let folks find partners that are well suited to their idiosyncracies
What’s bad about it I think is the fact that capitalists are involved extracting value. But essentially we have inserted control and intentionality into a process that previously was more or less random. The wisdom really did used to be, just wait for it, it will happen when you least expect it. Well, not for everyone!
I think this is actually good in that the online space lets us have access to more options and let folks find partners that are well suited to their idiosyncracies
0 > 0?
Did you live pre-internet?
It was way worse in my experience.
I dated only without internet ; online hookups is just so… not me
i had one LTR before online dating and none since. it’s a desolate wasteland out here
I predict that we’ll see a lot of people giving up on human relationship altogether with the advent of horny AI chatbots.
I’m married and almost ready to give up on human relationships outside of my partner and mom lol. Not really, but shit’s bleak even outside of dating…
The US is a giant experiment on just how atomized a human society can get before collapsing.
I think there are many valid criticisms of online dating, I would not suggest it’s an unalloyed good thing. However, I am old enough to have plenty of experience (trying to) date when online wasn’t an option (limited only to work, through friends, and through church since I was religious when I was younger) and I have to say, I prefer having the online option - or at least I did before I married my wife, who I met online.
Relying only on non-online spaces sucked for me. I just didn’t have the confidence to approach women and ask them out. I put myself in the friend zone all the time. When I first found online dating, I found it refreshing. It lowered that barrier for me and I think probably for a lot of other more socially awkward people.
There’s probably broader social problems when online becomes the dominant form, at least under capitalism.
Sometimes I get the feeling Zoomers think dating was “easier” before apps but I really don’t think that was the case, at least for me.
Same here during high school and college.
The issues that I remember were:- Having a great time chatting to women/girls only to find out they were in a relationship.
- Going to lively party and there’s 50 guys and 10 women of which 9 are girlfriends and the last one is surrounded.
- Going to a lively party and noticing a girl/women with an attitude of “Huh, she looks okay, I wonder what she’s like. Maybe she’s great, maybe she’s not, let’s find out.” So I approach her with “Hi my name is Folaht, what’s…?” and immediately get replied “My name is ‘Get the hell away from me RIGHT NOW!’” and then walk off with “Sheesh, I just wanted to go to know someone.” and hear from behind me “No you don’t! You just wanted to GET INTO MY PANTS, WRAGH!!”. As poor as replies can be at dating sites, it’s at least never this bad.
- Going to a lively party and noticing a girl/women with an attitude of “Huh, she looks okay, I wonder what she’s like. Maybe she’s great, maybe she’s not, let’s find out.” So I approach her with “Hi my name is Folaht, what’s…?” and then a group frat guys noticing and going “OOHHHH… WOLF WHISTLE AWOOOO!!! OW OW OW!!!”.
And these issues were not just present, they were the norm.
Every action I did to just start a conversation was “You trying score” by “getting into her pants”
and every opportunity I think I have had, I ran away from because I felt it went way too quick
and I didn’t want to say ‘yes’ to things I might later backtrack and disappoint the person with,
just because I didn’t want to hurt that person’s feelings at that time.Yeah, same here. I barely dated before online dating (granted I had a boyfriend for a couple years.) When I found online dating, it felt kind of magic. All of a sudden there were all these men interested in me who were actually cute/smart/funny AND into the same shit as me? It even made me realize what a bad match my ex had been and that some portion of our relationship was just out of convenience because he had actually asked me out. (The men I found myself most compatible with online weren’t generally high in confidence and didn’t ask many women out.)
Within a month of trying online dating, I found 2 fantastic men I wanted to be in a relationship with (at the same time… Womp womp.) However just within like 5 years of dating one of them, the online dating scene had already felt like it shifted it a lot. It was way more frustrating with a lot more people I wasn’t interested in and the really compatible ones fewer and further between (or maybe just harder to find.) I ended up casually dating online in earnest for several years before meeting my husband. It was still easier than meeting someone in person imo (but I’m also a woman) and I definitely understand why younger people might believe in person was better.
i think the problem isn’t online dating as such - in a healthy, post capitalist society it would probably still exist as one avenue among many - but moreso the specific structure of all these Tinder-likes which combine facets of an online catalogue, a slot machine at a casino, and a pay-to-win phone game. it’s a perfect storm of the transactional atomization of relationships under capitalism and the gross objectification encouraged by patriarchy that makes them such shitboxes of sexual harassment, lowered self esteem, and disposable, precarious relationships with others. more humane online dating would probably revert to something similar to the old school OK Cupid model.
you can still find worthwhile connections on the apps, but you’re swimming against the current trying to do so. this is coming from someone who never really found a ton of success in either traditional “cold approach” type dating spaces, or the apps. most of my relationships and situationships have emerged from organic community connections, generally have grown out of friendships to one degree or another (with an exception or two that were from the apps).
the sad part is, we have us oligarchs mediating it worldwide. not a good look.
well thats the one place I’ll never look lol, rip me
I mean, we met online but not on a dating site.
First long term relationship, brother of my friend who came down here from up north. Had kids, never married, at midlife he got radicalized and hella racist and abusive, we split dramatically after 21 years, (not all his fault, I also did regrettable things in response to what was going on).
Second round met online, had a date, hooked up for awhile, really got on well. He’d had a string of 2 year relationships (from “good on paper” matches from eHarmony) so I said after 2 years we can live together. Our kids all got along, his parents liked me after awhile, he wanted to get married, I said you can ask after we’ve lived together 2 years. We are happy a dozen years in.
I don’t think it matters how you meet but it DOES hurt to think of people as a commodity, all that swiping and trying to maximize compatibility. People are people not clothing or toys.
Yeah that does bother me about the graph. It’s the digital age, you can’t just lump one value to “online” and expect it to be a representation that makes any sense, did they meet on a dating app? As gamers? Facebook friends? I met my fiancee on deviantart after she liked one of my photos and messaged me to tell me so.
Society is online now, third spaces are still a thing but they’re in a different form. This data is presented in a way to make you feel bad about the globalization of the Internet
all that swiping and trying to maximize compatibility. People are people not clothing or toys.
Exactly, all these apps need the user to be self absorbed. “Who’s YOUR right fit? Who is YOUR type? Who fits YOUR personal fantasy narrative?”
Love is about two people giving themselves toward each other, not obsessing over their “ROI” in some transactional economic thinking. But that simply doesn’t compute to a CEO and natural human friendship doesn’t return 4x to investors every quarter, so it’s gotta go, right?
Building a relationship should be out of interest in the other soul, and finding that person isn’t what these algorithms promote. They turn dating into just another job hunt with metrics to meet, a “market” of desirability, bullshit interviews, performative fakery, marketing, and ego.
I also met my partner online, but ~20 years ago on World of Warcraft LOL. Younger people ask me for dating advice and I’m like “Stay off those stupid apps and just go meet people who might like what you like and see what happens!”
Fuck the commodification of human relationships. I wish people wouldn’t support that
Why is it a blue whale?
i really dont know if i should do online dating, like i mean i kind of want to meet someone and this is how to do it appearently, but also i rather would meet someone by chance and get to know them over time… And like furthermore everytime i try these apps, it ends up with me beeing obsessed just about the matches itself, feeling either good or bad, and no intrest to actually chat with people since like it feels a bit forced and like i dont know, it is automatically like multiple chats, since mostly likely some dont respond and this for example already feels weird and then it is more like just chatting with someone than chatting with a specific person if that makes sense… and like it does not feel like fun or anything to talk with multiple people basically about the same stuff and so on… i hope someone understands what i mean
i dont really spend much time on dating apps and last time was years ago to be fair tho
Yes, absolutely. But also: I wonder how much of the online stat is stuff like people who met in online communities/groups compared to, say, dating sites and apps.
Because I could absolutely see a large portion of that line being people who met after joining a local meetup group for a shared interest like tabletop games, hiking, sports, etc.
It used to be that the dating pool was very limited in the way that making friends and dating in school is, where the odds are good that the thing you and your friends have most in common is your age and the distance that you live from each other. It wasn’t until college that I really met a diverse group of people who all shared a common interest in what they were passionate about. Nowadays I can go online, find people nearby who share a hobby of mine (or even meet people through an online hobby first and then physically meet years later), and maybe find lifelong friends or partners through that rather than somebody my friend happens to know or somebody I work with.
