Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem? • Hacker News Board

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#151

Post by goodpoint » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

cuuupid wrote: post #28

itsmemattchung wrote: post #4

> One possible aid for sexual loneliness might come from online dating apps such as Tinder. In theory, online dating could provide an efficient way to find a partner. However, online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers – perhaps even more so than traditional dating. While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them My wife d…

To be fair this is not entirely due to social dynamics but rather due to MatchGroup companies following identical monetization patterns. They’re just capitalizing on male desperation and artificially widening or narrowing the gap depending on how much you pay. If you observe the actual dating climate it’s nowhere near this bad and in larger cities like NYC it can even be closer to 1:1. Rather than a social problem th…

There's nothing dystopian in a non-profit dating service. If anything it is very dystopian that we allow for-profit companies to get involved in something so delicate!

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#152

Post by pcbro141 » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

I think women naturally just aren't into men as much as men are into women (in general, at a group level). They're also more likely to choose to be alone than be with someone who doesn't meet their standards. So any society where they "don't need a man" (no financial/cultural/patriarchy pressure) is going to have the same large incel issue over time.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#153

Post by wonderwonder » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

thw09j9m wrote: post #124

I'll chime in as somebody who's been considered top 10% of attractiveness in one country and bottom 50% in another - the difference in the amount of sexual opportunities on apps is absolutely staggering. Not that this should be a surprise to anyone. Where I am considered attractive, I've gotten 80+ matches in one day and random women messaging me at 11PM telling me they're lonely and to come hang out. I've had more f…

How does that work? Is it an ethnicity issue?

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#154

Post by some_random » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #73

f-securus wrote: post #5

Legalize prostitution and regulate safety and perhaps incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit from paid sexual interactions? I'm kind of ignorant to the subject of what is the cause of 'sexual loneliness' but I believe the world's oldest profession shouldn't be pushed into the shadows as that causes more problems than it prevents.

> incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit While there's a perception that incels are ugly, socially awkward nerds, the one's I've interreacted with online (and off) tend to be angry, misogynistic douchebags. The nerdiest guys I know (IRL) all have significant others. The bitter guys I know (two) IRL are older, have let themselves go and have nothing "going for them". They are both very active onlin…

That's exactly it, and it really muddies discussions. So many dumbass discussions of "why don't the femcels and incels just date each other" by people who have absolutely no idea what either of the groups are beyond the name.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#155

Post by avmich » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

darkwater wrote: post #100

spaniard89277 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been running online communities for years and this, as far as I can see, factual. I've read somewhere, maybe multiple times, that most men are emotionally and sexually deprived. That sounds correct given the data I have. I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. I still struggle sometimes. Many of my friends do much worse than me. I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-look…

> I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. I still struggle sometimes. Many of my friends do much worse than me. I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-looking, that have not been touched by a woman in years. While I think that globally the sentiment about this is true (market is driven by women), I also had many average-looking, intellectually stimulating male friends that sai…

> I also had many average-looking, intellectually stimulating male friends that said "that girl is too ugly".

That however doesn't mean that male friends would rule out going with said girl.

There's the "wisdom" which summarizes the idea that there are no ugly women. It's in other words the same idea as above - for vast majority of women men would still go with them.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#156

Post by dilippkumar » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

I’d love to start a conversation here about attempting to solve this in a very narrowly defined place as an experiment. Since this is HN, I nominate San Francisco.

My hypothesis is that the bandwidth required to present oneself and assess another person is larger than what fits in the self_awareness -> profile_creation -> dating_app_algorithm -> profile_selection -> personality_model_creation -> model_evaluation pipeline.

We already know that a lot of communication happens non verbally. There are other signals we care about: do this person’s friends like them, etc. There are questions about compatible value systems and one’s relationship to risk, money, independence etc.

If there is a technology solution here, I doubt that it looks like a collection of profiles.

Anecdotally, online gaming and niche reddit communities have a somewhat high success rate at creating friendships. One possible way to use this model is a dating app that lets you solve puzzles with another person real time instead of swiping on profile pictures?

I don’t know. I’m throwing ideas here to get a conversation started.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#157

Post by netjiro » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

yibg wrote: post #49

cuuupid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair this is not entirely due to social dynamics but rather due to MatchGroup companies following identical monetization patterns. They’re just capitalizing on male desperation and artificially widening or narrowing the gap depending on how much you pay. If you observe the actual dating climate it’s nowhere near this bad and in larger cities like NYC it can even be closer to 1:1. Rather than a social problem th…

I don't know if that's true. From most data I've seen women's preferences skew towards a small percentage of men. i.e. most women want the same guys, which are the small minority. This leaves (making up numbers) 80% of women wanting 20% of men. Where as men tend to be less discriminating in their choices of women.

I wonder about the actual numbers here, and how they vary between cultures, regions, age groups, etc. From what I see from my single female friends 20% is waaay too high. Not trying to be a jerk here, just observation.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#158

Post by extua » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

cuuupid wrote: post #28

itsmemattchung wrote: post #4

> One possible aid for sexual loneliness might come from online dating apps such as Tinder. In theory, online dating could provide an efficient way to find a partner. However, online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers – perhaps even more so than traditional dating. While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them My wife d…

To be fair this is not entirely due to social dynamics but rather due to MatchGroup companies following identical monetization patterns. They’re just capitalizing on male desperation and artificially widening or narrowing the gap depending on how much you pay. If you observe the actual dating climate it’s nowhere near this bad and in larger cities like NYC it can even be closer to 1:1. Rather than a social problem th…

Yeah, there's rightly a lot of concern over the power of the big social media monopolies and dating apps don't seem to get the same level of scrutiny.

Ultimately you decide who you want to date, but in scenarios where most people meet through apps, those apps have a lot of influence over who meets who. Nobody knows how the matching algorithms work, all we see is the effects and a mountain of anecdotal evidence that some men are having a difficult time finding partners.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#159

Post by wpietri » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

some_random wrote: post #69

wpietri wrote: post #25

I am a regular reader of Reddit's "Am I the Asshole" and the sheer number of terrible boyfriends/husbands is jaw-dropping. And that's probably always been true, but what has changed is the extent to which women now have agency through having decent jobs and not being social pariahs if they're not married and pregnant by 22. The stuff my grandmother put up with just doesn't fly today. So if the content of AITA is any…

I'm sorry I have to be the one to tell you this but AITA is about as credible as newspaper advice columns and 4chan greentexts, that is to say not at all.

Oh, sure, a lot of the posts are made up. But a lot of them aren't. And most of the replies grounded in personal experience appear to be sincere, as they tend to come from established accounts with consistent histories, at least when I look.

But in some sense, that doesn't matter, because even popular fiction serves as an important mirror for popular concerns. I hear enough verifiable real-world stories of entitled, lazy male partners to know that it's not all fiction. I think the extent to which things get upvoted on AITA is a pretty good indicator of popular concern. And a lot of replies clearly come from people who, whatever the truth of the original post, have lived through similar things.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#160

Post by rightbyte » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

spaniard89277 wrote: post #38

itsmemattchung wrote: post #4

> One possible aid for sexual loneliness might come from online dating apps such as Tinder. In theory, online dating could provide an efficient way to find a partner. However, online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers – perhaps even more so than traditional dating. While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them My wife d…

I've been running online communities for years and this, as far as I can see, factual. I've read somewhere, maybe multiple times, that most men are emotionally and sexually deprived. That sounds correct given the data I have. I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. I still struggle sometimes. Many of my friends do much worse than me. I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-look…

> The only advice I've told them is to get out of any online stuff and hit bars.

They need your wife to bring her single friends to the bar.

If they have a hard time reaching out to women hitting bars without friends won't help them much.