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

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#511

Post by dilippkumar » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:03 PM UTC

f-securus wrote: post #243

dilippkumar wrote: post #156

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 pipe…

Maybe have a dating app that hides photos until a certain level of communication/time occurs beforehand.... Does such a thing already exists?

I haven’t checked, but my intuition is that removing photos reduces the available bandwidth, not increases it.

Perhaps a dating app that only allows photos taken with the app, that ensures no filters or edits were done to the image probably increases the bandwidth. But then, that’s an antifeature - I doubt people would want to use such an app.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#512

Post by antisthenes » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:03 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #416

yodsanklai wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would predict that being able to afford a nice apartment in a good area close to date locations will easily 10x your sex chances. This matches my experience. But overall, location is extremely important. I used to date quite a lot, and depending on the place, I could find dates extremely easily, or it could be virtually impossible. But one thing I understood after I turned 40. The number one criteria is age! It g…

What is your gender? I'm 46 and male, and more and more women (my preferred gender!) seem to be attracted to me over time, though surely at some point that trend will go into reverse. I've heard a lot of women around my age suffering from the opposite trend.

How old are the women that are attracted to you? Are they actually desirable partners?

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#513

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:03 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #381

weatherlite wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its also quite cultural. Its normal for men to hold hands when walking in India, Nepal for example. At first it looked ridiculous to me...having grown up since then I think its Western civilization that's a bit ridiculous in that aspect.

Perhaps. But it's also "weird" that it only exists with same-sex. Why is it a cultural taboo for single men and single women to say, hold hands, if they aren't in a monogamous relationship with anyone else, and are doing so consensually? I feel like traditional culture is the only thing that says "you shouldn't do that", which seems equally ridiculous to me.

Because there is a potential underlying motive, and it presents danger for one of the parties due to them being physically weaker. The risk of sending (or the other party assuming) the wrong signal is probably not worth it.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#514

Post by frognumber » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:04 PM UTC

orange_fritter wrote: post #473

frenchy wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but roles eliminate a lot of room for conflict. I think that's only true if those roles line up with practical realities. The bulk of the problem with the 'old' roles is that become obsolete due to technological and cultural changes. The two biggest changes were household electricity, which enabled the mechanization of most houeshold chores; and refrigeration/modern fertilizer production, which made household garde…

I was fairly deep in religious culture through college and can definitely argue that the "values" I learned were somewhat crippling in a liberal society. Especially ideas around interpreting intimacy as a sign of commitment. I was trying to capture some powerful sanctified physical connection, and the women I dated expected to hook up on the third date and still be non-commital. I don't think either approach was supe…

Ho boy. When I first ran across a date like this, I crashed-and-burned there. I thought sex implied a connection. My partner didn't. The outcome, emotionally, for me was bad.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#515

Post by godelski » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:04 PM UTC

seydor wrote: post #485

godelski wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the parent is really talking about is that people in close proximity for extended periods are going through shared experiences. If you spend time with people and experience similar things then you will start to form emotional bonds with them. The parent could have also replaced partners with friends and the statement would hold true for the same reasons. On the other hand, let's do the same analogy and replace p…

I was thinking of social networks mostly. Tinder is an antisocial, hookup app

I honestly don't believe that social networks bring us closer together. They can, but in practice they don't. Instead I believe they give us the illusion of feeling closer and more involved, but that is likely cognitive dissonance (akin to thinking ChatGPT is smart because it speaks). The only way to build relationships is through shared experiences. This can be done online btw, but these experiences are not doing things like liking peoples posts or occasionally commenting in threads. They involved personal and/or group conversations/activities. That's why you're more likely to find friends playing videogames online than through a social network (assuming pure online).

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#516

Post by evilduck » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:04 PM UTC

jbuhbjlnjbn wrote: post #273

jrumbut wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but you don't have deal with her problem which is an inbox flooded with random noise. It might be flattering for a minute but after that I'm sure it's a burden not much lighter than the empty inbox. Besides, as long as you get those few responses, that will be enough for all but the most active and adventurous daters. There are only so many hours in the day.

>It might be flattering for a minute but after that I'm sure it's a burden not much lighter than the empty inbox. I guess some things have to be experienced for real understanding. No, this is surely not a burden by any measure, it is a huge privilege.

Feels like there's a strong analog between tech careers and recruiters and men and women in the online dating scene.

In tech, fending recruiters off with a stick is far less of a burden and stress than being unemployed or permanently underemployed or underpaid in a different field. It's annoying, sure, but it's not going to cause you depression to have so many people showing interest in you, it validates some amount of self-worth. Recruiters also take an approach to recruitment very similarly to men in online dating, treating it as a numbers game and where they don't care about candidate quality before first contact. Blast out interest and feelers indiscriminately to anyone and then evaluate the quality of those who respond and be happy to settle for any commission in the end. Both are broken processes of course, but the power dynamics seem similar.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#517

Post by lechacker » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

As a 30+ year old kissless virgin I have recently began noticing that the loneliness part has began affecting me more deeply than usual. I suppose noticing the first signs of aging in my face led to the realization of all things not-done. I've had a couple of episodes of despair in the past few months because of this.

Unfortunately people like me become helpless. You'll be alone because you _are_ alone: you don't have any social proof, any social skill, people your age don't "get together" to find a partner at the same rate as younger people, they have higher expectations regarding your experience and more.

The way I see it, once each man crosses a certain age without any or much sexual experience they will become stuck in that category the rest of their lives. Whether we have the tendency to lash out violently against others or ourselves more than the average, I don't know. I wonder if the solution by Western society will come in the way of some "Minority Report-like" way to identify us and pre-emptively lock us out.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#518

Post by benj111 » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:05 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…

Whos considering you in the top 10% v bottom 50%?

How you you know there isn't a cultural difference where one group replies that you're attractive to be polite where as the other says the opposite because they feel you're being rude?

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#519

Post by ryeights » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

Mezzie wrote: post #347

ryeights wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this response is divorced from reality. I have observed many 20-something women swiping through Tinder and the #1 cause for a man’s profile to be rejected is his attractiveness simply being average or below average. Have you ever tried online dating on platforms such as Tinder?

I'm betting the #1 cause of men rejecting women is also looks based...

Yes, except most men do not enjoy the liberty of being picky about it. For most guys I know, the attractiveness cutoff is merely “not obese”

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#520

Post by LorenPechtel » Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

GrigoriyMikh wrote: post #403

idontpost wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At minimum I think most people (the bottom ~90% dating-success-wise, both men and women) in our society would be better off with arranged marriages compared to our current cultural hellscape. The problem is no one thinks they're in the bottom 90% of anything.

Agree. Arranged marriages worked for generations. And to me it looks like a perfect mechanism to tame hormone-induced young people, who, en masse, hurt not only themselves but whole society.

There's a big statistical problem here--these days the things shown to relate to a relationship "working" are basically reasons not to dissolve failed relationships. Lots of couples stay together but are basically financially-linked roommates.