The Problem with Modern Romance Is Too Much Choice

Not really true. There are many women out there who marry below 26, even with career opportunities. Debt tends to be low, though not zero. And family values are high. However, they do tend to be from a set of ethnicities that are not extreme Western or American.

The women you may be referring to are unbounded, liberal, and non-restrictive. The set of men they tend to attract are less serious, less guided, are more short-termed. Marriage for them before 30 is a situation of rarity.

> Statistically, people marry later than before.

True when you include certain cultural demographics.

There is no mention about kids or who would be making the sacrifice if a kid pops out.

I think the issue of "too much choice" in online dating has seeped out into the real world, making people believe the world is full of infinite choice, so why get married? Why settle? Why TRY? When the world beckons.

When you make a strict distinction between hooking up and dating, everything starts to make sense.

Hooking up stats are rather clear: around 80% of women have sex with around 20% of men. That's why an average looking guy on PoF/CL/Tinder/OkCupid has very little chance compared to real life.

This imbalance is actually caused by the guys. Your average guy will throw himself at almost any woman. You join a site, you go through profiles, you message the ones you like. You can easily message 100 girls and get 1 reply. Why? Because every other average guy is doing the same. So an average girl gets 100 messages a day, and there's no way she's replying to all of them - she will pick the top 5-10, and will talk to them.

If your face isn't good looking, don't worry. You can compensate with other things. Hit the gym, girls LOVE fit bodies, even though most of them you tell you they want someone funny/smart/interesting. Don't believe the words, believe the actions. When I started gaining muscle, women started paying attention. Other things that help are: confidence, ability to speak calmly and confidently, dressing better than average, treating women as humans, not as princesses.

If you want to meet lots of women IRL, pick up an activity with mostly women, like dance, yoga.

For "discussion", you can have people looking for 2 different things:

1) confirm/discredit/explain/etc the specific facts/opinions in the article

2) expand the article's specific topic into a launch pad for general anecdotes (often manifested as group catharsis)

I can't speak for jessriedel but I assume he's looking for the first type of discussion (science). It's not wrong or right but just pointing out how people look for different commentary. Based on curiousdater's upvotes, many HN readers find his online experience interesting and don't care that his comment could be posted to any submitted story about dating and not just this specific one about the science research into choice fatigue.

To your question, it's not impossible to talk about choice overload without reverting to personal anecdotes.

The article's author Elizabeth Svoboda only used one anecdote which was about her friend Shannon Whitaker. Ignoring that, 99% of the article cites data from professor Barry Schwartz, psychologists Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, anthropologist Helen Fisher, economist Hanna Halaburda, marketing professor Alexander Chernev, and researcher Daniel Mochon. It also mentions opposing evidence from professor Benjamin Scheibehenne.

The personal anecdote about her friend was only a tiny amount of text at the beginning and the end. The anecdote was used as a narrative device to frame the article but it wasn't the main message.