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Sex is going out of fashion?

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Re: Sex is going out of fashion?

#351
post #333

"Ctrl-F Marriage" gives no results. Surely decrease in marriages is the biggest driver. It's a lot easier to have sex with someone if you live with them. A straight person isn't going to find multiple new partners to sleep with per week and even if you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, unless you are cohabitating you probably only see them a few days per week.

This would conflict with the stereotype that marriage == little sex, after the first few years?

The median American has ~5 sexual partners. So unless they're having a lot of sex with those partners when they're dating, marriage is still the biggest driver. I would bet the median person has had sex more often with their spouse than with all other partners combined.

Re: Sex is going out of fashion?

#352
post #158

People also have more options. I'm not saying that in the sense of "10% of some gender has sex with 90% the other gender due to [tinder/bumble/hinge]" , but rather that in my countries - dating apps have become the de-facto way to hook up with others. And these apps have sort of redefined that scene - mainly because women have pretty much endless choices, but also because the opposite is absolutely not true for most…

> You are exposed to people that you'd NEVER meet in the more traditional sense. I’ve never used a dating app, but I’m curious about this. My assumption has been that people filter pretty heavily on politics and religion, which are less advertised in person. Meeting people at a party or through social activities seemed to moderate people’s views long term because an initial attraction could lead to encounters with re…

I'm not sure what your age/location is, but as a young American, young people filter for politics and religion in person just as fast as they do on a dating app. It is considered that compatible political and religious views are table stakes for a serious (non-hookup) relationship.

For example, in my extended friend-aquaintance group, there's not a single young woman who would consider dating a conservative. Obviously conservative women exist, I have seen many on dating apps, the point is that the natural social circles have already formed strong bubbles such that hanging out let alone dating outside the tribe is unheard of.

I'm not really complaining about this either, I'm not going to get along with a conservative in a normal sort of idle chatter situation. We could work or play a sport or videogame together but beers aren't going to be enjoyable once they start talking about wokeness poisoning the country.

Re: Sex is going out of fashion?

#353

I don't think tech or porn is the main culprit. It's that people now have way more entertainment options other than sex. Of course, a lot for those entertainment options are being driven by tech. Back in my dad's days, they were poor so the only entertainment options in their free time was drinking cheap home made alcohol, dancing and sex, while now we have gaming, Netflix, tic-tok, porn, traveling to the infinite In…

> Also, adult dating and meeting people for the post-college working professionals, has largely moved from clubs/bars/the office to online dating apps, or lonely depression in your apartment, eating or drinking your feelings away, for those without success in the WFH, remote-everything, online dating world. Especially with the lockdowns. And those "dating" apps can hardly be called dating apps in most cases. They're…

Dating apps have no incentive to encourage long term relationships, because if you are in a long term relationship you are far less likely to use a dating app. Given the prevalence of dark pattern research to maximize "engagement" in the social media space, I would not be surprised if the most successful dating apps are actively optimized to encourage a meat market dynamic because it maximizes engagement with the app.

This is analogous to how regular social networks actively encourage unreasonable maximally-controversial discourse because it maximizes engagement, to the detriment of rational discussion of social and political issues. If people can reach a solution to issues like tradition vs. personal freedom, abortion, guns, etc., then they might spend less time on social media debating them and trolling and fighting about them and social media engagement might decline.

As far as porn goes, it's absolutely a substitute for sex for some people. It's less fulfilling but it's enough to get off and have the desire go away and it requires far less effort.

Another thing about porn I haven't seen mentioned much in this thread is how unrealistic it is and how people raised with a lot of porn probably have really unrealistic ideas about what sex is like. If they try to literally act out porn in the bedroom with their partner, it's likely not to go that well. In some cases they might go right for things many partners won't be interested in or would only be interested in after establishing a lot of trust and a real relationship.

Re: Sex is going out of fashion?

#354
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The idea that HIV/AIDS is primarily of concern only to gay men is completely false. At the Whitman-Walker clinic in Washington, DC, which was for years primarily an HIV/AIDS clinic serving mostly gay men, the majority of new HIV/AIDS patients has for some time been straight African-American women. Every sexually active adult needs to be concerned about HIV and take appropriate precautions.

Maybe at one particular clinic? But that's not true in the general case. I remember when I first discovered that AIDS was both rare and overwhelmingly affecting the gay community (where I live). I was pretty upset because having grown up in the 80s and 90s I'd been left with the impression that HIV was everywhere and even just one heterosexual hookup was a gamble (condom or not). But that's not an accurate view given the tiny, tiny number of people who have HIV.

Looking back at the 80s/90s AIDS hysteria now, it was the same as COVID hysteria. Same people even, guys like Fauci. They were telling people you could get AIDS from drinking water fountains and similar crap. No wonder people were crazy about it.

Incidentally the whole concept of a virus that primarily targets gay people doesn't make much biological sense, does it? Nothing the size of a virus can detect your sexuality, nor is there any evolutionary reason to select for such a thing even if it could. That's why the 'experts' predicted it would quickly stop being primarily a gay disease. Nope. That rather makes the theory that a lot of AIDS cases were driven by drug abuse more plausible, doesn't it, especially because this preference for gay men mysteriously vanishes in Africa.

At any rate, the public health community has pretty consistently and for a long time misled heterosexual people about the risks of any disease that's known to primarily affect the gay community. They're doing it again now with monkeypox. It almost exclusively affects gay men which is why the official CDC guidance is to - no kidding - hold socially distanced gay sex parties. But to listen to the early announcements about this you'd not have suspected this reality. There is of course no question of the state enforcing any measures against the at-risk community to "crush the curve", like banning pride week sex parties: the LGBT community is special. For the rest of us, we get lockdowns. For them, nothing. It's this sort of thing that destroys the credibility of public health (not that they had any left after COVID). It's just one long string of ideological driven "science".

Re: Sex is going out of fashion?

#355

Despite all others blaming it on entertainment, porn, alcohol, working etc, I blame online dating. The bar and amount of work needed to get into relationship (I'm not into casual sex) is just too high for great amount of people.

If anything it's been more facilitated than ever.

For the top few percent of men.

Re: Sex is going out of fashion?

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think an “addiction” is the problem. Obviously, everyone prefers the real thing to porn. What has changed is the availability of porn introducing an extremely low cost alternative to sex, reducing the impetus for making the effort to find a partner (relative to previous times). Maybe even reducing the impetus to putting in the effort to seduce an existing partner! Of course, it is not uniform across all men…

> Obviously, everyone prefers the real thing to porn. That makes intuitive sense, but is far from the reality. Many men, even in otherwise healthy relationships, prefer porn. Again I really wish more data was collected on this but anecdotally I've seen hundreds on online discussions from both women who are concerned about their partner and declining sex life and from men who want to quit using porn to better service…

>Many men, even in otherwise healthy relationships, prefer porn.

Do you have data of this phenomenon?

Re: Sex is going out of fashion?

#357
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Podcasts changed the game for me on this. Now there are entire days where I never turn the TV on. A bonus is that I can get basic chores done while listening or workout. It really freed me from the couch potato routine. A bonus is that many of them are educational and released weekly, so "binge" isn't really an option. There are certainly "junk food" podcasts that I listen to but the ratio of informative to junk comp…

I too love podcasts but I don't think the educational ones necessarily teach me much. Listening is too passive, especially if you're doing other things. If I'm not following a book or paying close attention, I'll put the book down. But its easy with well produced podcasts and audio to just continue listening while zoning out. I've listened to hours on a subject but if you were to quiz me on that subject I would be cl…

For the same reason I don't do audio books. I tried listening in the car during low overhead highway driving and quickly realized my attention faded in and out too much.

Along the same lines, I also came to theorize that books that were written to be read don't make good audio candidates. Yes, doable. But I found lectures and speeches to be better suited for listening (as it was their original and intended medium).

Re: Sex is going out of fashion?

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand by it. If you do find sex to be the most fulfilling part of your life, it might be worth asking where that sense of fulfillment comes from. It's probably a "who", not a "what".

How much descriptor-space would you say lies between "boring" and "the most fulfilling part of your life"?

Right. If its the only entertainment one ever has it could get boring. But its far more entertaining that... Most other forms of entertainment. That being said it shouldnt be the most fulfilling part of ones life.

Re: Sex is going out of fashion?

#359

I don't think tech or porn is the main culprit. It's that people now have way more entertainment options other than sex. Of course, a lot for those entertainment options are being driven by tech. Back in my dad's days, they were poor so the only entertainment options in their free time was drinking cheap home made alcohol, dancing and sex, while now we have gaming, Netflix, tic-tok, porn, traveling to the infinite In…

Tech, porn, and social media/lack of community are what I think the issues are. And your comment which I mostly agree with seems to contradict your first sentence. Everything you said (Gaming, endless video-on-demand, porn, social media, online dating, remote work) is enabled by technology. Ergo, tech /is/ the main culprit. Now, onto the post I originally typed: I wonder if younger people know what it's like to go a…

> I wonder if younger people know what it's like to go a week or two without orgasm

I certainly didn't when I was a teenager in the 80s, and I had zero access to porn or sexual partners.

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