Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

hanging out, in some cases, for twenty hours a day, according to the article.

  I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer
   right by my bed, and I'd never have to leave it.  
  But I use a typewriter, and afterward I mark up the pages
   with a pencil.  Then I call up a woman named Carol out 
  in Woodstock and say, "Are you still doing typing?"
  Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds 
  out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat 
  back and forth, and I say,"Okay, I'll send you the pages." 
  Then I go downstairs and my wife calls, "Where are you 
  going?" "Well," I say, "I'm going out to buy an 
  envelope."And she says, "You're not a poor man.  
  Why don't you buy a thousand envelopes?  They'll deliver 
  them, and you can put them in the closet and get one 
  whenever you want."And I say, "Hush."  So I go to the 
  newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and 
  lottery tickets and stationery.  I have to get in line 
  because there are people buying candy and all that sort of 
  thing, and I talk to them.  The woman behind the counter 
  has a jewel between her eyes, and when it's my turn, I ask 
  her if there have been any big winners lately.  I get my 
  envelope and put the pages in it and seal it up and go to 
  the postal convenience center down the block at the corner 
  of Forty-Seventh Street and Second Avenue, where I'm 
  secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep 
  absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel 
  about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and I 
  got to meet a cop and tell him about it.  Anyway, I 
  address the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of 
  the post office, and I go home.  And I've had a hell of a 
  good time. I tell you, we are here on earth to fart 
  around, and don't let anybody tell you any different.


     — Kurt Vonnegut, (Harper's Magazine Nov. 1995)

Women try and find the best man they can possibly get. Just because 50% of the population is female and 50% is male doesn't mean that they're going to pair off equally. Women want the top 20%! [1] There are evolutionary reasons for this that push our species forward, mating always has and always will be a competition.

Now think of the perspective of these top 20% guys. They get all the sex and need not give out their exclusive commitment. And why would they? From an economic perspective, they can maximize their sexual strategy this way (spread the seed, as it were). Monogamy just slows that down.

Furthering the economics analogy, these dating apps increase the liquidity and efficiency of the market. Want Chad, the good looking investment banker guy? Keep swiping, you'll find him. No need to wait around for Bobby from your programming class to finally ask you out (he probably doesn't even lift weights).

There are two groups clearly disadvantaged by this current setup:

1) Those 80% of "below average" males. Because one of the top males can satisfy many young women (you read the story, some guys sleep with 100+ girls a year), these men get left out. Traditionally, marriage existed as an incentive for the vast majority of men to be productive in exchange for reproduction opportunities. I'm sure the discerning reader wouldn't be surprised to learn that a girl sleeping with a bunch of top 20% dudes and later "settling down" has a harder time staying in a happy marriage [2].

2) Which leads us to #2, unmarried women entering their 30s, or whatever arbitrary later age makes them less attractive to the top 20% men. The reality of male preference for physical attractiveness necessarily means that women who engaged in hook-up culture during their earlier years will have to lower their standards.

We had a period of time where strict monogamy throughout adulthood dominated, and now that's becoming less so (hugely declining marriage rates as one indicator, [3]). The question is whether or not this is a natural evolution for our society, or a sign of decline.

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[1] - "As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. " http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dati...

[2] - "They claim this finding is especially true for women, writing in the report, "We further found that the more sexual partners a woman had had before marriage, the less happy she reported her marriage to be."" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/more-sexual-partner...

[3] - http://national.deseretnews.com/article/4535/US-marriage-rat...

The more I stay away from social media (and to some extent, the internet), the better person I become. Instead of putzing around on the internet, I read books and listen to informative podcasts. Instead of looking at how other people live and lamenting my own life, I just do what makes me happy without worrying about opportunity cost.

I too work in tech. I feel like people can live however they want to live, and perhaps they will even have enough time to change their ways if they change their minds, but that life is just not for me - the easiest way for me to know that for a fact is that I simply can't bear to hang out with such people.

Nowadays, if a single guy doesn't use Tinder and other apps, it's missing a huge pool of single girls available to meet for a drink (or other things).

It's never been so easy to meet new people, so guys don't value so much the girls they met like before, but it's the same for girls. If the pool of single girls it's huge, imagine the pool of single guys on this apps.

I know a lot of girls who uses Tinder only to inflate their ego and play with guys. They have never met one guy through Tinder. Sometimes they even mark a date with a guy and "disappear" before that just for fun.