Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

vanityfair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 222 posts

Re: Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

#181

Post by cJ0th »

GuiA wrote: post #16

For the most part, I find that most online social media just degrades human interaction. Twitter encourages short shallow quips, Facebook shows me my friends arguing angrily and pointlessly over random articles, dating apps encourage some of the behaviors described in the article. Heck, even HN encourages a certain kind of attitude that I don't find that great, all in all. I know that it's not black or white, and tha…

> One of the things I did was not connecting my iMac (which I still use for composing music in Ableton, programming, reading PDFs, etc.) to the internet.

I too haven't connected my studio pc to the internet. However, the fact that it is still running XP admittedly facilitated that decision. ;)

All in all, I could have written your post. I am still baffled that I became (to some degree) so anti-technology so early.

While I don't fancy becoming an Amish I sort of subscribe to their conservative philosophy regarding technology in that now I run Debian on my laptop.

Re: Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

#182

Post by CmonDev »

rhino369 wrote: post #78

People have been writing about the casual sex explosion for ever since the internet hit mainstream but reports also say millenials have less partners than their baby boomer parents did. Hard to say what is accurate.

It's like app store 20% get the 80%. The subj article was focusing exclusively on 20%. Let's hear the "dad bod"'s story.

Re: Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

#183

Post by xyzzyz »

malandrew wrote: post #165
sheepmullet wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We break up easier, divorce easier, and refuse to live unhappy lives because the idea of being alone is no longer terrifying. And funnily enough we seem to be a hell of a lot less happy.

That's a broad sweeping generalization. Does it have any basis in fact? Are people more depressed today than 10-20 years ago, or do we diagnose more people as depressed because we like labels? And if we actually are more unhappy today, is that cause attributable to dating issues, or is it attributable to some other shifts in society like the changing nature of jobs and financial stability?

> That's a broad sweeping generalization. Does it have any basis in fact?

Actually yes, it does -- though only for women. Men are happier than in the past.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969

Re: Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

#184

Post by rndn »

jpatokal wrote: post #172
bambax wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Monogamy advantages non-alpha males, to the disadvantage of most women. Women want to mate with the leader of the pack; if all females mate and carry the children of the one leader, all other males don't mate _at all, ever_. Many (not all, but many) animal mammal societies work like this, and there are strong indications humans were wired to work like this too. Some human cultures still use that form of r…

> Some human cultures still use that form of reproductive organization. Citation needed. In what culture "all females mate and carry the children of the one leader, all other males don't mate _at all, ever", or anything even close to this? By contrast, there are a lot of cultures (eg. India, the Arab/Muslim world) where marriage is societally more or less obligatory.

> Citation needed.

This is still very new research, but not implausible. See for example section 3.6 in this paper [1].

> By contrast, there are a lot of cultures (eg. India, the Arab/Muslim world) where marriage is societally more or less obligatory.

An interpretation of that could be that it’s a result of memetics [2], i.e. several successful cultures have invented marriage because it makes them successful. Marriage might significantly increase social stability at all scales. For an interesting discussion about these kind of arguments from cultural evolution, see this blog article [3].

[1] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.6231.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

[3] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/07/the-argument-from-cultu...

Re: Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

#185

Post by rndn »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #164
deciplex wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's extemely ironic that women would complain about the disappearance of something that was designed to their direct detriment. So-called 'alpha males' tend to define and shape the culture they're a part of, a lot more than the 'non-alpha' males you just spent ten sentences shitting on. It's interesting you think low-status males just 'invented' monogamy, and in doing so turned the reproductive tables on 20% of me…

Bingo. The beta males did not invent monogamy; it evolved as a system whereby more productive abled bodies were invested in the success of a society. These societies proliferated. > Whether this remains true now is an interesting question. I believe that when the benefits do not outweigh the cons, a lot of males start checking out of society altogether. See Japan [1] as an example. E.g. I'm going to have to work my a…

These statistics provide some evidence: http://www.japancrush.com/2013/stories/30-of-single-japanese...

There is an antithetic trend in Japan though, since Japanese women are emancipated and the high economic demands prevent them from investing time into dating. So, the numbers could possibly differ even more. (I’m not sure how emancipation affects the statistics for the males, though.)

Re: Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

#186

Post by Navarr »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #17
Navarr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some. And some just want to have sex. That's the way it's always worked online.

The problem is that our access used to be constrained by proximity, and so there was a natural limit to the number of people we could reasonably entertain the notion of a relationship with. With apps like tinder come an unprecedented level of access. What happens to dating mores once it becomes the norm to have "access" to tens of thousands of people within an X mile radius? Considering how we judge worthiness of a p…

Blah at the institution of marriage. The institution of marriage hasn't had any sanctity for the last x years (divorce skyrocketing). Which is perhaps fine, a single partner for one's entire life isn't cut out for everyone. (It's cut out for me, though, and I am happily married).

The "Tinder problem" does exist though, and perhaps it'll lead to a segregation of those who want something meaningful and those who don't. Not sure if that will be a good or a bad thing.

Re: Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

#187

Post by normloman »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #141
pavlov wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Anyone who doesn't want to feel like a commodity product that gets evaluated in two seconds should not be on Tinder. But I find it strange that the women are apparently such willing participants. If they don't want to get dick pics from the "fuckboys" (as the article calls them), why are they hanging out online with these people?

> feel like a commodity product that gets evaluated in two seconds Everybody constantly gets evaluated in two seconds. Mates very nearly are commodities. People claiming otherwise are just uggos, or class-ists. Once we get video of some interaction + voice + smell, that's really 99% of the mating game. Nobody really gives a shit about anybody's resume. They may claim to when asked, but in reality we're dealing with s…

This is true when you're just looking for a quick fuck. But as someone in a long term relationship, believe me, superficial qualities matter a lot less. My wife is beautiful, but so were other girls I dated. I stuck with my wife because we make a good team, and she shares my values.

Re: Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

#188

Post by normloman »

Osmium wrote: post #34
GuiA wrote: post #16

For the most part, I find that most online social media just degrades human interaction. Twitter encourages short shallow quips, Facebook shows me my friends arguing angrily and pointlessly over random articles, dating apps encourage some of the behaviors described in the article. Heck, even HN encourages a certain kind of attitude that I don't find that great, all in all. I know that it's not black or white, and tha…

> For the most part, I find that most online social media just degrades human interaction. Twitter encourages short shallow quips, Facebook shows me my friends arguing angrily and pointlessly over random articles, dating apps encourage some of the behaviors described in the article. Heck, even HN encourages a certain kind of attitude that I don't find that great, all in all. I don't know. I think, perhaps, in the 're…

The medium always shapes the conversation. So yeah it's different from the real world. Maybe you don't see flame wars on Twitter. But do you ever see in depth discussions? Long form story telling? Even 2 way discussions are rare, though they are possible. Twitter is optimized for the quick joke, the announcement, and the reaction comment.

Re: Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

#189

Post by normloman »

angersock wrote: post #36
Yhippa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking about why Tinder seems like a bad deal for my lady friends. It seems that women used to hold the power in online dating but for whatever reason Tinder has turned into a site that reduces the cost (time investment and biological risk) to sleep with strangers. It seems that as that's picked up the new norm is a "race to the bottom" for women who want traditional relationships.

I think technology is somewhat to blame, and agree with you in a way. With broadcast mediums and technology, we first made it easy to compare any potential with the pool of all potential partners, and so many women (the historical gatekeepers of sex and relationships, fair or not) began to hold out on local suitors because they didn't meet some platonic ideal they'd seen once somewhere. Now technology has ticked agai…

"and so many women (the historical gatekeepers of sex and relationships, fair or not) began to hold out on local suitors because they didn't meet some platonic ideal they'd seen once somewhere."

Citation needed. Pretty sure women had standards before television and movies.

"If they'd wanted traditional relationships, they should've been friendlier and less aloof when they were being courted earlier."

Ah, the 'nice guy' argument. Plus a bit of generalizing. It disturbs me that you refer to women as 'they' as if they all collectively decided to ignore you.

Re: Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”

#190

Post by jazzyk »

psycr wrote: post #55

Does anyone else have a feeling of total alienation from the people and behaviours described in this article? I certainly do.

A beautiful aspect of our lives reduced to narcisistic, transactional, dehumanizing consumption.

I realize the article was exaggerated, but I have run into people like that in real life.

Depressing.

Post reply on HN