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Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

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181–190 of 265 posts

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#181

The idea that casual sex serves as some sort of formative process sounds ridiculous. In my mind, sex serves an important role in pair bonding, and casual sex would then inhibit the ability of people to pair bond.

Totally agreed. Relationships are hard.

Leading how to do them well means having relationships.

Casual sex for a limited time window is good for learning more about sex, but if you don’t shift to investing in relationship building, you may not learn those skills before it is too late.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#182
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably more than that. You don't have to be some 6ft tall hunk to land a woman. It definitely helps but it isn't required. What is required is that you try and don't get discouraged. It's a lot easier to stay home, play video games, and watch porn than it is to date. Plus, successful dating reduces time for video games.

You've obviously never been an unattractive man on Tinder. It's not just "hard", it's mentally excruciating. You can easily swipe through thousands of women and not find one that's willing to even have a conversation with you. I'm honestly surprised that dating app related suicides aren't more common. I'm tired of this, "just keep trying and you'll land a woman" narrative. It's the same logic that capitalists use to…

> You've obviously never been an unattractive man on Tinder. It's not just "hard", it's mentally excruciating.

You don't have to be unattractive to find it excruciating, it's just generally excruciating by its very nature. Being in the top 5% or so of attractiveness is just the only way out. Dating apps are terrible and will one day rank among mankind's most awful crimes.

> I'm tired of this, "just keep trying and you'll land a woman" narrative. It's the same logic that capitalists use to tell poor people, "just keep working hard and you'll succeed".

Eh, I think in this case it is generally true though. If you approach dating from a perspective of finding potential mutual-goal life partners as opposed to some kind of sex-hunting or prize-seeking game, you probably can find someone. Society doesn't encourage us to think of relationships in this way though.

> It expects people to keep facing failure after failure and never let's us admit that for some men dating is just not worth the pain involved.

On this I will agree at least. If you find dating a damaging experience that makes your life worse, then it's ok to just not do it. Or at least find a different way to do it. Definitely not apps.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this explanation often, but it ignores the fact that only a small fraction of population uses Tinder. I don't know the real reason, but if I was to guess, the most obvious one is that there are so many interesting things to do, learn, engage in, that making considerable effort in order to have sex simply doesn't seem worth it, that's all.

There's tons of dating apps besides Tinder.

Sure, but they're at least as awful because the whole concept is awful. I have never seen a counter example anyway.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#184
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an absolute nightmare and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Modern "dating" is frightening, dehumanizing, demoralizing, ahistorical, amoral, and devoid of meaning.

honestly it's all extremely subjective. my experience with modern dating (read: endless tinder dates) was mostly positive. of course i had plenty of heartbreaks, a LOT of wasted time. but mostly, i got to meet some really interesting people and create some wonderful connections, even if they were brief. ultimately i met my now girlfriend of 4 years. there were periods i would have 0 matches, and then out of nowhere w…

How can you look at a system you had to constantly gamify and say that it was a positive experience?

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said OP is in the inactive bucket? ;)

call it a hunch ;)

I'm married. I'm just capable of sympathizing with single young men and, even more importantly, of seeing the negative effects the end of monogamy is going to have on our society.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#186
well we've built a national cybernetic state of drug prohibition, parallel construction dragnets, security cameras, and omnipresent militarized police, so nobody can party.

we've retarded emotional development so nobody knows how to be interesting, and censored/surveilled all media that young people use so nobody can talk to each other.

we've normalized excessive parental control into adulthood and crippled everyone economically, so there's no place to go.

now nobody can fuck except rich people and broke ass queers who never gave a damn anyway.

the straights really done it to themselves

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#187
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You propose to eliminate the concept of status? Impossible. Even monkeys have it.

You're on the right track with that comparison but need to connect the dots. Humanity's next stage of evolution is to Oneness imo.

Isn't that the Human Instrumentality Project that Seele was after?

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#188
post #46

Modern casual sexual encounters are assessed purely on subjective ratings of the opposite party's sexual attractiveness (secondary sexual characteristics, behavior, social status, etc.). Furthermore, constant saturation into the full range of these behaviors and characteristics across humanity through the internet and dating applications creates a endless "could I get a better mate?" feedback loop in the minds of bot…

I have a nephew who looks like Chris Hemsworth and when he travels to a new town, doesn't bother with a hotel. He just shows up at a singles bar and waits for an overnight invitation, and his usual problem is choosing among them. The price he pays for the bed is not burdensome to him.

To him, I'm the strange one for bothering with the hotel. I don't think that the attractiveness 1% are much less oblivious of their privilege than the financial 1%.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#189

Many comments are ignoring the most important aspect. The decline is almost all among men not women: > Using a slightly different age range and time frame, Ueda et al. (2020) found that the percentage of sexually inactive men ages 18 to 24 increased from 18.9 percent in 2000–2002 to 30.9 percent in 2016–2018, and the percentage of sexually inactive young women increased from 15.1 percent to 19.1 percent over the same…

I expected the redpill to be popular on HN but this is just absurd and disgusting.

"The bottom of the male market has just fallen out completely."

It's not a market. People aren't commodities.

"you could be the only one available or could woo women through other qualities."

Isn't this just the "last man on the earth" respun as "last guy at the bar?" Since when has there been a shortage of guys at bars?

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#190

Many comments are ignoring the most important aspect. The decline is almost all among men not women: > Using a slightly different age range and time frame, Ueda et al. (2020) found that the percentage of sexually inactive men ages 18 to 24 increased from 18.9 percent in 2000–2002 to 30.9 percent in 2016–2018, and the percentage of sexually inactive young women increased from 15.1 percent to 19.1 percent over the same…

I expected the redpill to be popular on HN but this is just absurd and disgusting. "The bottom of the male market has just fallen out completely." It's not a market. People aren't commodities. "you could be the only one available or could woo women through other qualities." Isn't this just the "last man on the earth" respun as "last guy at the bar?" Since when has there been a shortage of guys at bars?

Like it or not, the dating pool is a function of supply and demand. That makes it a market.

Social media has expanded the potential dating pool while removing anonymity. This changes behaviors.

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