Why are fewer young adults having casual sex? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#201

Post by durnygbur » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #171

mywittyname wrote: post #123

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 don't have to be some 6ft tall hunk to land a woman. It definitely helps but it isn't required. This is true, but what you do need is access to women so that you can learn what they want. If those women have a low incentive to spend time with less physically (or financially) attractive men, it’s going to be hard for the less attractive ones to develop the necessary capacities.

> it’s going to be hard for the less attractive ones to develop the necessary capacities.

Exactly this. After hundreds of attempts and success rate 0 I simply lost any reference point. Should I invite her to museum or to the garbage dump? Come barefoot or in evening shoes? Say "hi beautiful" or "screw you"? I seriously have no clue.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#202

Post by quacked » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

throwaway8581 wrote: post #185

metalliqaz wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is quite bizarre that any criticism of modern sexual economics is immediately met with "ha, bet you're not getting any!" I have become convinced that these people do not have a great deal of insight into the true private lives of the people they know, and that shallow understanding of their cohort forms a platform of belief with which they're repeating their platitudes and banalities.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#203

Post by imbnwa » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

Dirlewanger wrote: post #197

watwut wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about casual sex specifically. That has nothing to do with women who don't want casual sex in the first place, because they are willing to have sex only in committed relationship.

Well, that starts to get into the hairy territory of what women say they want vs. what they actually want. And due to inflated standards from dating applications (constant swiping due to thinking there's something better around the corner), I think you see what I'm getting at.

> what women say they want vs. what they actually want

Not particularly gender-specific, people say what makes them comfortable, which isn't always the truth.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#204

Post by volkk » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #184

volkk wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

because i understand it's not perfect, and probably never will be. so i adapted. i think all of the positive experiences that i had outweighed all of the negative. that's all there really is to it for me. it also allowed me to meet my now gf.

something i've noticed from people that didn't have much luck on these apps is that they fall into two buckets. unfortunately for some, it's really tough since they might not have the social skills/looks that dating apps really select for which i truthfully have no answer to. hopefully one day someone smart will solve for this. there's a reason that most of /r/tinder (or at least 4 years ago they did) subscribes to the "two steps" aka "1. be attractive 2. don't be unattractive" ... unfortunately that's just how these sites operate. i would argue, however, that's how real life tends to work a large percentage of the time. good news is you can do some really really basic stuff to look better even if you're not "conventionally attractive." I currently work for a major dating app and we are trying to help people from posting pictures that are honestly just really really bad. mirror selfies, blurred pictures, low light ones, in their cars neck up looking at a camera, etc.

the other bucket are people who have looks to get matches but don't get any luck because they have little experience interacting in a flirtatious/interesting way and therefore just give up or become extremely jaded/salty and start creating a negative persona which provides even worse results. for this group, which i think i fell into for a period of time, i can say that the only way out is to just play the game and put on a fake smile until you start seeing results. you can moan and groan and complain all you want, and it's your prerogative but don't expect any results if that's the path you want to go down in the dating app world. broken? sure. no ones forcing you to join these apps, but my hypothesis is this: a very not insignificant distribution of the people complaining and having 0 success on the apps probably also fall into the type of person that wouldn't have much success in real life scenarios as well.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#205

Post by DC1350 » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

throwaway8581 wrote: post #192

ceilingcorner wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was more or less the purpose of monogamy. If you observe many societies that don’t strongly enforce it, you see that wealthy men end up having tons of wives, while poor men have none. Same situation is happening in America, we just don’t call it polygamy because it has been reduced entirely to the physical act.

100%. And single young men with no prospect of a family life are not going to just accept their lot. The director of the FBI in the last few days listed “incels” as a group of “extremists” that they are concerned about. But society can’t subdue 30% of men through law enforcement. It has to give them a place in society. And as you point out, that is the function of monogamous marriage. We are in trouble.

It’s not going to matter. What do you think the gay frog experiments were for? It’s a continuation of MK Ultra which turned Ted Kaczynski transgender, but nobody ever talks about that part.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#206

Post by imbnwa » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

nlbrown wrote: post #6

blakesterz wrote: post #2

The answers, from the abstract seem to be "young people" are living at home more, drinking less and gaming more than they used to. "Among young women, the decline in the frequency of drinking alcohol explains about one quarter of the drop in the propensity to have casual sex. Among young men, declines in drinking frequency, an increase in computer gaming, and the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all…

I'm quite surprised to see that the leading theories in many of these studies revolve around competing forms of entertainment. I'm personally more concerned with how economic difficulty, mental health, and hormonal imbalances could be causing these sort of changes in society.

> I'm quite surprised to see that the leading theories in many of these studies revolve around competing forms of entertainment.

Really? If there's anything Game of Thrones kept reminding us of, its that males find defeating/killing other men in battle (and the "in battle" part is important, human warfare is very ritualistic just like Chimpanzee warfare) and fucking women equivocal if not related activities. Our ape brains don't appear to make much difference between virtual and physical, at least not enough to make one a lot less addictive than the other.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#207

Post by imbnwa » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

backtoyoujim wrote: post #8

marcodiego wrote: post #3

Entertainment and porn these days are more accessible and higher quality than they ever were.

Great. Now all I can think about is the Matrix human pods playing the pornhub theme as they close.

What'd you think the killer app for Neuralink was gonna be? Just joking, of course

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#208

Post by kar5pt » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #182

kar5pt wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

The part about it being easier if you're looking for a life partner is not true in my experience since most young women on dating apps will just assume that any man on there just wants sex and is lying if he says otherwise.

The other part which I forgot to mention is that social capital has been declining since the 60's (see the book Bowling Alone), so it's become harder to meet someone off of dating apps. The institutions which used to facilitate finding partners are no longer there so apps are becoming the only option.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#209

Post by nickthemagicman » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

viklove wrote: post #180

nickthemagicman wrote: post #20

My theory, that no one wants to talk about, is that dating apps have sped up hypergamy. (Note: talking statistically on a population level..this is not every person) Before an average guy used to be able to get a date without a problem, but now the bar is set much higher for a male, due to quick and easy access for women to dates via technology. (This in reverse applies to men less so because men are polygamous not h…

Lots of people have talked about these issues, but society's response has been to drive those people away and label them "misogynists" for observing what has happened in the sexual marketplace. A lot of the ideas you talk about are openly discussed in Red Pill/Incel communities, and you know how much everyone hates those groups. Red Pill is the group of men who understand hypergamy and actively try to elevate themsel…

Copernicus was labelled a heretic for saying the Earth revolved around the sun.

But science proved him right.

Science seems to make people uncomfortable because it lifts the delusion that humans are way further from animals than we actually are. Humans are formed in the image of GOD! And the universe revolves around us!

Not only does science show that the solar system does not revolve around humans, but also shows that men and women have primitive instincts on the dating market to maximize their genetic success...just like animals.

Polygyny, or the harem strategy, is the most successful mating strategy throughout all the mammalian class. One strong male with a group of females. And this pattern is seen repeated throughout many species of mammals.

The harsh truth is that as a male mammal, this is the framework you have to work in. Not being blessed with family resources, or natural good looks, or natural talent, or the ability to make a a baby, makes one disposable by default and having to fight for reproductive success.

There's exceptions to the rule but statistically it seems to be sound.

I don't know why people deny this. They simply have to compare the average guys Tinder to the average girls Tinder to see this mating selection in action. Women and movie stars can literally get casual sex at the push of a button.

People like to delude themselves that theyre better people than they really are I guess. Then they cheat on their spouse with a swimsuit model or a lawyer.

Re: Why are fewer young adults having casual sex?

#210

Post by imbnwa » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #169

whaaswijk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a historian but aren’t those tightly controlled cultural practices a relatively modern invention? Certainly the ancients were known to have orgies (presumably for fun). People have observed how the 20th century was for many people a return to their “true” nature (eg free love, drugs, rave parties). Maybe it’s just always been true that, when their wealth/resources allow for it, people like to have sex for fun…

Afaik, no. Before contraception, sex meant babies. Babies meant someone to feed and work for. Kids were always an expense for years, it takes at least 7-8 years till they sorta kinda can earn for themselves. Traditional cultures would do a lot to control the sex of their unmarried daughters, because that would mean babies to care for and that means a lot of additional troubles.

Urban human cultures are another story however, because of the near-ubiquitous practice of slavery for most of urban human history.