Swiping people left and right: the Tinder/hook-up culture discussion

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/education/edlife/teaching-generation-y-the-basics-of-a-strong-relationship.html

[quote]Yet for all of their future designs on marriage, many of them may not get there. Their romance operandi — hooking up and hanging out — flouts the golden rule of what makes marriages and love work: emotional vulnerability.[/quote]

Came across this article, and while I usually dislike stereotypes about millennials I found both Andrew Reiner and Donna Freitas (writer of the alarming End of Sex, quoted in the article) to be quite on the money. Having been myself into hook up culture in the past year or so, more by necessity than choice, i speak from experience when i say it has lead me to a big loss of self esteem and mild forms of depression. When I say necessity rather than choice, it's because I find 20-28 years olds are exposed to very little amount of alternatives. Obviously, Tinder has facilitated the hook up business and rendered even emptier the sexual norms, which is my totally biased and unscientific view on this. However, lots of other groups, male and female, gay and straight found this new form of sexual expression to be quite liberating.

So yeah, Tinder, classic or dud?

There's plenty of 'emotional vulnerability' even in the most random of hookups.....

I never wanted to be married when I was a teenager. Almost every married couple I grew up with either divorced, settled into a rut, or devolved into sparring partners. That does not mean I don't value long term relationships, merely that I don't wish to obtain a government-issued stamp of recognition for my private life.

being married sounds amazing. modern "dating" was so stressful to me that i only really briefly experimented with it, and now i've dropped out for a while unless something emerges on its own

Their romance operandi — hooking up and hanging out

If it makes you feel better, this claim -- the kids just hook up, they don't go out on dates! -- was made about college kids when I was in college, too, in the early 1990s, and it was even kind of true, just as it's probably kind of true now, but it didn't keep us from mostly getting married and having marriages that work. So far I've seen no reason to expect rampant Tindering to have any great effect on the typical life course.

yeah i agree with eephus! things aren't harder now than before. the loosening of expectations might be confusing, but it also puts less pressure on people and leads to more freedom. the reason love and dating are hard is because it is just an emotionally brutal arena of the human experience.

this ['hookup culture'] trend is creating the first generation in history that has no idea how to court a potential partner

indeed, so much of this NYT article is ridiculous. Someone time-travelling from 150 years ago would likely find courtship rituals from the 1970s to be as unrecognizable as today's are to that generation. Or how about:

The result is a generation that’s terrified of and clueless about the A B C’s of romantic intimacy.

No matter what generation you're from, we're all born clueless about romantic intimacy. Discovering it and experiencing it for ourselves as we grow is a large part of what makes it romantic and intimate.

it also makes it so painful. i am sort of amazed that people continue to throw themselves in the line of fire when heartbreak hurts as badly as it does. don't get why this perspective isn't more popular:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKlSVNxLB-A

back to the TS and to flip flop from an earlier point i made, online dating apps are extremely alienating though. people are encouraged, i think, to sort others into categories based on attractiveness and shared interests and individuality is lost.

i can't see how it would be anything but bad for one's self-esteem to be involved in this

i can see how tinder specifically with the 'they only see your profile if they like you back' feature would stunt vulnerability. hookups in general though?

also every study i've read of this finds much higher rates of satisfaction with serial dating among men than among women--not to mention that is kinda burying the lede.

what's so great about vulnerability?

when relationships seem strong, and there is mutual trust and affection and all that stuff, vulnerability is precisely what you don't feel anymore

I don't know Treeship, being in a good relationship doesn't make the loss of a father go away easily. If anything good relationships are places in which one can be safely vulnerable. Trying to negate this is exactly the type of thing a lot of young people my age are suffering from.

Also, I don't believe that hooking up being the social norm leads to less pressure. In college, there is massive pressure for both guys and girls to hook up, despite it being against their values, desires and interests.

Treeship otm throughout, trying to get into Tinder in my efforts to reintegrate into dating life has been overall p detrimental I think. I have had marginally more luck w/ traditional dating sites but not by much. so basically Simon and Garfunkel also otm

Tinder seems so old fashioned and kinda conservative to me, seems to make dating/ meeting people much *harder* somehow than just.. randomly meeting at bars, parties, events. it's like something out of the Victorian ages; an electronic update of some kind of ancient book you had to flip through, approving people based on looks/status etc before you even met them. actually maybe *all* online dating is like that i dunno.

and next up.. 'Mixxxxer' which is like something out of 'Saturn 3'

http://www.dailydot.com/technology/tinder-mixxxxer-hookup-app/

people are encouraged, i think, to sort others into categories based on attractiveness and shared interests and individuality is lost.

This is . . . how people date in meatspace too? I don't know, I've been married for 23 years, but, I mean . . . how the hell else do you choose potential partners? Myers-Briggs assessments? Bank statements?

ime "shared interests" is not such a big deal irl, you can be interested in completely difft things & still have chemistry, online the importance of that shit gets inflated

Don't think tinder works on my phone

All of it fills me with disgust tho tbh - tinder, online dating sites, all that, it just seems wrong somehow

fuck grindr, fuck scruff, fuck tinder, fuck okcupid

I deeply, deeply resent the reduction of complex and multi-faceted personalities to a filled-out profile with all nuance of body language and chemistry and all of the other shit you'd get when you met someone irl just completely stripped away. You're not engaging with someone, you're engaging with someone's cherry-picked representation of themselves and there is so much room for misreading and crossed wires, and it's something that very few people who participate in these sorts of things seem to consider (overreduction, inadequacy of text-based communication as a substitute for face-to-face, etc)

burn it all to the ground

And like 'there's an app for that!' well maybe for booking train tickets or whatev but for relationships?

I met my wife the old-fashioned way, I hired her to work in my lab. Dating is the worst.

stevie d extremely otm about the value of irl interaction and the cherry-picking of crafted profiles
it scares me tbh
romantic interaction is way more complicated than that

i have never used any of these things, but the thought of doing so fills me with mortal fear for myself and concern for others
i don't think they're evil and it can be great if it works of course, but i really wish people didn't let it get them down. love is everywhere. i know that sounds corny but it's true.

to me a lot of y'all's critiques--reducing personality to a paragraph, overvaluing of 'shared interests'--just counsel in favor of tinder versus other sites. also i think most people would agree that you should meet someone in person soon after talking online. anyway it's easy to say "just meet people in person," but some people don't have a broad enough social base for that to be realistic--maybe they moved to a new city, maybe they're just generally introverted.

a critique of the internet writ large as an isolating and regressive feature of modern life makes more sense to me than singling out online dating

This is . . . how people date in meatspace too? I don't know, I've been married for 23 years, but, I mean . . . how the hell else do you choose potential partners? Myers-Briggs assessments? Bank statements?

― Οὖτις Δαυ & τηε Κνιγητσ (Phil D.), Sunday, December 14, 2014 9:58 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

some of my best friends are people who like very different bands and books than me, and some of my best relationships have been with people whose photos probably wouldn't have inspired me to "swipe right" (in tinder, you ONLY see the photo)

also "meatspace" is a disgusting term

lol otm on all counts

what can be gained from personalities within the first few hours of meeting someone is mostly curated just as many personas are largely performative.

the trick is finding someone who is willing to cut through the artifice of it all; that can happen either online or in person.

people are mostly dull anyway tbh.

i dunno - people have varying levels of realness irl too, and there's no way to determine that unless you talk with the person

like some people are more comfortable being their real selves than others. some people only like other performative people.
you can only tell this by interacting with them irl
although it's pretty easy to tell on ilx too tbh!

i have no idea why i am participating in this discussion at all aside from the fact that it seems like people have a hard time getting to know new people in general, regardless of hookup culture. i've heard more people say they wish there were an ok cupid for friendship and that scares the living daylights out of me tbh. it's challenging to make new friends, but it's def possible. dnw computer assistance.

oh yeah for sure, i was responding more to the hand-wringing idea that artificiality is endemic to "hook-up culture" -- one is just as likely to become demoralized by hanging in bars in order to meet people and becoming frustrated that the connections they make don't last.

the problems with these apps arises when sex/company is viewed as a transactional operation instead of a desire for mutual connection, but types with this tendency can be deflected with conversation. not always of course.

xps

although it's pretty easy to tell on ilx too tbh!

I was gonna bring this up if nobody else did, it's sorta the elephant in the room & obvious counter to "you can't know anything about a person thru online interaction" argument

think the aloofness of ppl is not so much due to or an inherent element of the tendency away from long term relationships but more an emergent property of a culture obsessed with garbage ephemera and surface level conviviality, but i'm enough of a utopian to believe that humans can learn emotional intelligence and arrive at some sort of self-knowledge through the medium of art that exposes them to a wide variety of viewpoints and ideas.

it's not even about sharing tastes in music, literature or whatever but the bare fact that they have engaged with something outside of the usual myopic purview of their immediate surroundings and cultural milieu.

(in tinder, you ONLY see the photo)

This is nae true, laddie. You also see their interests and any mutual FB friends you share.

I always forget which way to swipe

Anyway I know at least three couples who met via online dating incl. one getting married next year. I met my wife the old fashioned way, my friend was dating her friend and I asked for her number.

I mean in that case Tinder, at first, proved useful to me. It's a seemingly easier way to get out of the cultural milieu, the idea was that I don't think people in the art community was a good match for me but it's almost the only type of people I could meet because, well milieux tend to be insular in general.

Can somebody edit the quote in the thread opener? it's a bit embarrassing!

i've heard more people say they wish there were an ok cupid for friendship and that scares the living daylights out of me tbh

i don't get this. computer seems like a fine way to make a friend. a caveat being don't rely on the computer to the point you never leave the house.

It's the profile/advertisement/algorithm part that gives me reservations.

Computers are fine, but computer assistance less so.

I met my wife the old-fashioned way, I hired her to work in my lab. Dating is the worst.

the trick is finding someone who is willing to cut through the artifice of it all; that can happen either online or in person.

― (曇り) (clouds), Sunday, December 14, 2014 6:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ding ding ding! This is so otm my hand hurts ringing the ding bell.

I get where Stevie D is coming from. But there are actually people out there who try internet dating or whatnot whilst feeling the very same. That it is artificial. And those people hope to meet other people who recognize the flaws of the very means they employ. Wether it be okc, tinder, or whatever.

The means don't necessarily change or say something about the people using it. I've met some terrific people through online dating, got all I ever desired and more - and one of the ideas we shared was how shallow it is to use internet dating! I'm not the "I'm from internet dating inc and I'm here to help" advocate, but people who dislike the idea or concept of okc or tinder or what have you, still use it nowadays. And you are bound to find those people if you look for them.

In the end it's not about which website or app you use, but about your intentions, desires, needs; and you will find people who match that. Even if it is through a website or internet culture you deem shallow. Because surprise, loads of people using these places think it is shallow, and want to meet people who think so too.

Tinder where I'm at (Bible Belt) isn't much of a hookup culture - tons of people mentioning how much they love Jesus, pictures of their kids, etc.

how do people go about using tinder for casual sex? i've gone on four or five tinder dates -- mostly at coffee shops -- and they kind of felt like job interviews.

I just dated someone I met on Tinder for a couple months. She's great, we're going to stay friends. I don't know anyone who uses Tinder for casual sex. Tinder dates are just dates.

how do people go about using tinder for casual sex?

tinder won't even run on my phone but I assume

1. want to meet someone for casual sex
2. meet someone off tinder and see you if you want to have casual sex with them
3. ask them to have casual sex

is casual sex when u keep ur adidas stan smiths on lol

flaccid casual

I think it has to do with asking for sex casually rather than submitting a formal request with notarization but idk for sure

dating in a feminist culture is increasingly difficult so these sites should hopefully provide a timely anecdote to the problems of female supremacy

:-/

Don't know if you are being sarcastic but still

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date outside the feminist culture u fool

they sure do produce anecdotes tho

Now adding various caveats to my post upthread about stuff like, if you're new to a city these sites might be useful.

Probably dismissed it too readily

Some of us also probably get a bit high-minded when it comes to 'telling the truth about who we are to others'.

Like does it really matter if I put a very carefully angled and lit picture of me on there, and if I cobble together my various damp squib career attempts and say I work in the creative industry?

The idea of doing that knocks me sick, but then I guess the reader might in fact expect me to be doing that kind of 'polishing' on my profile, and so it wouldn't actually be a deception?

Actually not so much that it knocks me sick, more like a wave of what's-the-point weariness coming over me at the thought of yet another ruse

clouds gloriously otm itt

tinder seems ok, w/e. for all its flaws okcupid seems the best way for me (altho hopefully I won't have to use it again). just a matter of finding people who don't use it so reductively. they're still people, not internet ciphers. sometimes people you'd fall madly in love with regardless of how you met them

my only contribution to this thread is that I get that Pitbull/Ke$ha song stuck in my head whenever someone mentions Tinder

now, hopefully, you do too

yet another ruse
all dating

(placeholder for when I feel like contributing to thread)

why? it's not like you can edit posts...

sigh

this is how two people can really hit it off online fwiw

clouds otm

unconvinced that any mode of meeting people is inherently more ~real than any other, real is what u make of it

I've interacted w/women on tinder, including meeting one (happened to be at the same place at the same time) but no hook-up materialized. Most others I've talked to are, in fact, using it as a dating community much like okcupid or other sites.

I saw some college kids online trying to figure out what grindr is and one was like "it's like tinder only gay" which is completely backward and wrong, afaict.

I don't think there's any wrong way to find other people attractive, but the physical attraction/emotional connection/lifestyle compatibility ratio is definitely balanced differently depending on how you meet and interact. If I meet someone in person and there's a mutual physical attraction, I'm more likely to overlook other differences. Maybe that's wrong, but judging from past experience, idk, seems fine

i almost feel like an asshole saying this but isn't the primary concern for initial meet, in fact, physical attractiveness?
obviously, long-term, you want someone who is compatible with your life, personality, soul, what-have-you. but let's be honest, most people won't give others a chance if they don't meet a baseline standard of desirable looks.
honest question - i have no experience with this stuff

there's a pretty large range of physical attractiveness, from "kind of attracted" to "I am so attracted I can't use words properly," with the former worth looking into if you get along well, and the latter possibly being so intense that you overlook entire realms of compatibility problems in the short term

if you find someone flat-out unattractive then, sure, that's a non-starter

also, if it's a hook-up as the latter part of the thread title implies, the meet-up is mostly to ensure the person is true to their photographic representation, and also use instinct to see if they seem like a serial killer

i've been in a monogamous relationship for 11 years, have never really participated in "hook-up culture" or used any app or website for meeting people. seems kind of exciting but almost immediately scares the shit out of me and feels super gross.

stevie deux, treeship, and la lechera relentlessly otm itt

In my extremely anecdotal experience I know a handful of people who seem to be stuck in a kind of okc/tinder loop for the last several years, serial dating, nothing ever going further, and zero people who have met a lasting relationship partner or spouse that way. To be fair, I do actually know one married couple who met online a while back, in the earlier days of internet dating.

I think it's something about the limitless choices, especially in a city with an endless supply of single young people. Maybe in a small city or suburb online dating wouldn't have that quality.

fwiw most of them also seem to be unhappy about it by now.

out rural the broadband rly limits the amount of swiping you're willing to do before u just settle

still trying to figure out how Treeship thinks Tinder is *only* the picture yet has gone on four or five Tinder dates!

imo people like it more than sites like okcupid or match _because_ of the brevity, not despite it. I'd rather people decide whether to talk to me based on seeing a couple shared interests, shared acquaintances, a short sentence and a general idea of what I look like than judge me on how I choose to present my detailed personality inventory via mini-essay and questions?

btw, the article linked in the intro post here is, in my opinion, kind of garbage?

when relationships seem strong, and there is mutual trust and affection and all that stuff, vulnerability is precisely what you don't feel anymore

― Treeship, Saturday, December 13, 2014 10:56 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Mutual trust" means that you are open and responsive and have empathy with your romantic partner, which is impossible without the sort of emotional vulnerability the article skirts around. the binary that is set up between "partying until 30" and being in loving romantic partnerships is kind of garbage, because without experience, all many people have is emotional vulnerability. It's necessary in a committed relationship -- the ability to open up, to love, leaves you vulnerable to being hurt, but it's the same thing that gives you the ability to love.

If anything the article seems like a reaction to the new status quo? It used to be that we'd shame youth for having sex, and then shame them when they didn't use protection/birth control/etc. Now there's a generation that is, by most accounts, not approaching sex as casually so they're being painted as emotionally barren. I know ilx is an outlier, but the average marriage ages of 29/27 still seem low to me!

29/27 is approaching the tail-end of prime offspring-making years, so it's not really that young for marriages intended to include children, especially since I'm guessing most marriages today don't involve starting at kids immediately.

that is pretty true, but that impulse is also behind some of the worst relationship decisions I've heard from people

it depends on what you mean by "immediately," too. most people I know who have a strong impulse to have kids in that age range have gotten pregnant around two years in?

Well assuming two years before pregnancy, first kid is born close to 32/30, assuming you want more than one and not irish twins say next one is 35/33, then pretty soon after that you start getting into "high risk pregnancy" years. Science hasn't 100% caught up to this generation's idea of how long what I guess you could call young-adulthood should last.

yeah, this is a sidetrack

back on track: what is with people who strongly identify as parents or have their kids in their primary dating profile picture? I have no problem with dating women with kids, but to me dating is about discovering how someone relates to you and vice-versa, not an immediate dump of their entire identity. I guess the dating hook here is "I'm a mother?"

Maybe it's sort of a "get this out of the way up front" strategy, like just eliminate all the people who are going to bail once they find out you have kids.

So far, from experience, the status quo has been: college students are extremely busy, having sex is an impersonal affair that checks off like laundry and grocery, virginity is mocked and almost all communication are via text/FB and now Tinder. Other alternatives are very rare. There is a huge malaise right now, and perhaps it's always been the case that sex and relationships in your early twenties was a difficult affair, but don't we want to be smarter about it?

Are you a college student, VHS? I am interested in hearing more about this

I was until not very long ago, planning to go back to it for masters.

I would recommend the End of Sex by Donna Freitas, it's a rather short read and she did superb research in different types of colleges to understand how relationships work and don't work now. I don't agree with absolutely everything, but most of it I could relate with, and she makes sure everything is backed by numbers, which is solid. She doesn't discuss Tinder, it didn't exist the way it does now during the time she researched (around 2009-2012).

virginity is mocked

by whom and in what social situations?

Basically what happens in my case, and in the case of many friends and acquaintances, male and female is:

Most people have spent the past 4-5 years hooking up and very little more.
Outlier cases of married couple by their mid-20s exists, they are rare.
If you go on a date, chances are, you have no idea what you are doing. (I think I've been on my first real date at age 25, it seems to be the case for a lot of people around me to)
So if the other person has a clue about dating, it doesn't work.
So if the other person has no clue about dating, it reverts back to hooking up instinctively and usually don't go beyond.
If you are both comfortable with dating, then it still has little chance to work out because dating is a brutal experience on it's on.

I mean, what I'm bemoaning here is that having first real dating experiences are pushed back in favor of a culture of hooking up that benefits no one.

not to pry, but where are you geographically if you don't mind my asking?

maybe it's a different bunch I've run into, but the younger new hires at my workplace and our interns seemed a little more socially conservative

White upper middle class Montreal. Donna Freitas arguments is that it's worse in universities like Oberlin, where there is little else to do, at least we have a whole city to explore.

ahhhh

yeah, Montreal and the midwest US are very diff worlds for many reasons

I mean that's personal experience, but I've seen the numbers corroborate this experience from different US cities.

in what way is hooking up hardwired to never go any further

I mean dating is a shitty way to do things as a formal and agreed upon process so I'm all for alternatives and I'm wondering why this particular one is being identified as prelimited in this way

most ppl I know in relationships prob started out as a drunk hookup, structured dating not rly a thing where I'm from

actually my marriage grew out of a drunk hookup fwiw. I don't think it would have happened through tinder -- profiles wouldn't have seemed matchy enough or something. But then every encounter that leads to a marriage is so by nature unlikely that it's a pointless inquiry.

I said usually, meaning that there is instances in which serial hooking up leads to dating. At this point, the dichotomy here is dating as 'getting to know someone and yourself' vs hook up as 'not caring the least about the other person or your own feelings'.

Do you mean there aren't, like, couples? That seems hard to believe.

for sure, it seems like a less-examined culture, kind of a swapping of self-consciousness and vulnerability for what's being read as narcissism and self-esteem but don't really code that way to me

the thing you can get with a series of relationships or dating is the idea that you can open up emotionally and be vulnerable, and learn more about yourself and others, and that it doesn't necessarily have to end badly or result in bad feelings on one or both ends.

I don't think there's anything wrong with hook-ups or casual sex, but doing so in lieu of actual relationship-building or opening yourself up emotionally seems kind of stunted.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a friend a few weeks back where he lamented he's past the point where he can think clearly to date or even consider a relationship because he's mentally stuck at the point where his mind immediately goes to sex.

dichotomy here is dating as 'getting to know someone and yourself' vs hook up as 'not caring the least about the other person or your own feelings'.

which regardless of scaremongering btwn generations still strikes me as more likely a false dichotomy as anything else.

for sure, I don't understand hook-ups as something that happens in a bubble as its presented. like, can't you just have a few at the pub and stay over and maybe have breakfast and decide later if it's going to develop into something relationship-ish

that would be considered a date. hooking up is really just having sex for the sake of sex, it's not casual sex per se. there is no communication involved in hooking up.

I meant going out as a group or just meeting someone out?

I understand now. I guess i'm really just discussing a specific form of hooking up then, one that involves completely shutting down emotionally.

i'm kinda skeptical that's possible

still trying to figure out how Treeship thinks Tinder is *only* the picture yet has gone on four or five Tinder dates!

they have like a tagline too, right and you can see mutual friends... the way i would use it was just swiping based on appearance. i'm the problem as much as tinder i guess. but yeah, what others have said, the elaborate profiles are equally problematic. what's missing in this sort of communication isn't more data

i think van horn street is on the mark about how depressing it can be to try to wade through hook up culture looking for a relationship. but the alternatives seem poor too. dating is just fucking scary: it's frightening to think about never meeting the right person and it's scary to think about sharing your life with someone and opening yourself up to pain.

i guess i want to clarify the vulnerability comment that people took issue with. i understand that the ideal is to be able to be totally open and comfortable and whatever but as a single person, each time i've done that i've ended up feeling shattered eventually. not that other people did anything wrong, necessarily, it's just the nature of the game. unlike your family, partners can abandon you. this being the case i can understand why people would want to "shut down"

no, family can also abandon you.

yes, that is true. sorry i was speaking from privilege there

general point still stands re. dating/relationships: there is no easy answer, and no matter what chances are you are going to take some serious emotional blows

i agree it's hard. on the upside i think having a support system and/or partner fail you / break your heart has the potential to make it easier.

you become more resilient. it might be an important part of life/development

zing has crashed twice instead of letting me post but I think Treeship has finally got it

nothing makes the last breakup sting less than the next one, or moving on and finding fulfillment

simon and garfunkel/ "i am a rock" solution still underrated though. i think that's still where i am rn

I thought Paul Simon was a dickhead to women

i have no idea. was referring to the narrator of that song that is meant to be ironic, where the narrator talks about being closed off and defensive and finding fulfillment in his books

so irony is underrated huh

I still don't understand whether Van Horn Street is saying that the large majority of students in his college got all the way through it without being in a romantic relationship, having someone they'd call a "boyfriend" or "girlfriend," etc. or whether he's just saying they don't go out on "dates" (i.e. two people making a scheduled arrangement to see a movie or eat at a restaurant.)

The latter seems unsurprising, the former I would actually think is weird. And the college kids I know often do have boyfriends or girlfriends.

in my world of young people i.e. the under-25s i know there's definitely much more fluidity between friendship and romance and seemingly less of a need to define relationship statuses than there is w/ people even just a few years older

^ for whatever reason, I was like that even 20 years ago before it was common. I wondered why it wasn't like that for nearly everyone else. I'm not sure what that means....

I still don't understand whether Van Horn Street is saying that the large majority of students in his college got all the way through it without being in a romantic relationship, having someone they'd call a "boyfriend" or "girlfriend," etc. or whether he's just saying they don't go out on "dates" (i.e. two people making a scheduled arrangement to see a movie or eat at a restaurant.)

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, December 15, 2014 10:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My experience is mostly the former part, but researching what was the situation for undergrad kids today (18-22 years old say) I discovered it's the latter.

blaming "hook-up culture" seems slightly off the mark to me (and i'm not convinced it's so universal either). you don't have to wade through casual sex if you don't want to, but no given way of meeting new people is going to give you an idealised long-term relationship just because you want one. awkward dead-end first dates during which you realise you have nothing in common with the person opposite you aren't going to make you feel any better than emotionless random hook-ups, give or take a hangover.

(there's really no guaranteed route to finding yourself a life partner - drunken hook-ups can certainly be one, though, i think the most stable and long-term marriage i know started with a drunken hook-up - and you probably have to accept that on some level. i don't feel that hook-up culture "benefits no one" even if it doesn't lead anywhere.)

a lot of women like tinder because you can't be bothered by dudes until you've liked them. something to think about.

Their romance operandi — hooking up and hanging out — flouts the golden rule of what makes marriages and love work: emotional vulnerability.

oh that's the goldren rule?

xp it wouldn't take much for okcupid to implement such a system as well. it can also be implemented unofficially - my gf and i only started messaging after we'd both 'liked' each other

in my world of young people i.e. the under-25s i know there's definitely much more fluidity between friendship and romance and seemingly less of a need to define relationship statuses than there is w/ people even just a few years older

― Merdeyeux, Monday, December 15, 2014 10:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think some of this might be age rather than generation, like people under 25 tend to have more of a "cool with whatever" attitude, or pretend to have one even if they don't. Getting older makes you pickier about your relationship choices and definitions. For some reason I often think of a female friend who described an internet date experience like this: "So when we went back to my apartment, he was like 'so listen, I just got out of a divorce, and I'm just not up for anything too serious right now, is that ok?' And I was like, 'you know what, no, that's not ok. I don't want this kind of thing anymore.'"

i've been thinking about this and i realized that in order to know whether i want to associate with someone, i only feel totally comfortable when i'm able to see how they treat other people. i need to observe their behavior a little bit. this is another reason it's important to meet ppl irl. it works on ilx too, but okc or dating app wouldn't really allow you to see that sort of thing.

that's pretty fair, man alive!

I've had (and friends have had) the opposite experience where you're dating someone who's going through a divorce and it's like, idk, I'm not going to be able to give you a 100% commitment because you are still married to some other person

xp man alive yeah that sounds legit, better to be honest about intention and call it off early

i've been thinking about this and i realized that in order to know whether i want to associate with someone, i only feel totally comfortable when i'm able to see how they treat other people. i need to observe their behavior a little bit. this is another reason it's important to meet ppl irl. it works on ilx too, but okc or dating app wouldn't really allow you to see that sort of thing.

― vigetable (La Lechera), Tuesday, December 16, 2014 6:41 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A woman I know once told me this. It is something so obvious, practical and common sense yet I realised almost no one I had ever met thought like this. Or, more precisely, few people I had met chose a serious mate based on this concept. That in itself was a shock to me, which is why I was initially so shocked by its practicality when she told me it.

? that's what the first date is for

xp man alive yeah that sounds legit, better to be honest about intention and call it off early

― Nhex, Tuesday, December 16, 2014 1:52 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I mean point being that it's an example I think of of people who were "cool with whatever" when they were younger who hit an age where suddenly they realize they're not.

imo the only benefit of apps and websites is to meet people you might otherwise never run into in your life as-is. you only have so many friends-of-friends, work acquaintances, neighborhood whoevers. other than that, the technology doesn't really do anything. you still have to do whatever it is you do when you meet someone.

i mean, it used to be your parents or busybodies from your church doing this stuff; thank god those days are long gone

or they've experienced enough "whatever" to know what they're not cool with xp

? that's what the first date is for

― goole, Tuesday, December 16, 2014 8:02 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not the people i know. but i guess that says more of those around me. i'm sure it is much more common in other circles, so i believe what you say. hope this doesn't sound too 'contradictory'/paradoxical

if you don't notice how your dates/friends treat others, you should probably think about how you treat others

it has nothing to do with noticing, it has more to do with what qualities you prioritise in your mate, your previous experiences in relationships, and many other variables.

i'm sure many people live clear-cut lives, but many others are stuck in the complexities of relationships, trauma, love, etc.

I have no idea what a clear-cut life is, but basic human interactions with others are a clear indicator of how you're going to interact, long-term

i think in theory i agree with you, and try to act that way myself, but unfortunately human interactions aren't always laid out simply and people don't talk about their feelings/intentions. i think favouring healthy relationships is obviously a start, but relationships don't seem so 'logical' and intentions are not so 'clear-cut', is what i'm saying. a large portion of 'casual' relationships are based on an "absence of decision"...which is what i guess you guys are calling "cool w whtvr".

and people are not always themselves in the first few dates. there's always this motivation to impress and overcompensate. and asking a slew of serious/interrogatory questions will put your date off pretty soon, i'd wager. but maybe this is a generational thing.

I think we're talking about more key things you can pick up on right away, like "does this person treat the wait staff of a restaurant like human beings"

is being visibly terrified of everyone a swipe left or swipe right?

nb i don't know which direction is the positive one

kind of nervously swipe back and forth until the card flies off the screen

I think we're talking about more key things you can pick up on right away, like "does this person treat the wait staff of a restaurant like human beings"

― valleys of your mind (mh), Tuesday, December 16, 2014 8:23 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm not sure how that is a key thing, unless you notice your date is treating them poorly. If they treatment them normally/politely, i wouldn't think the person is necessarily a better person. but yeah, this is part of what different people prioritise, i suppose.

in my experience, most people around me have not mistreated waiters, so it's hard to tell who they really were based on these general human interactions, where everyone kind of acts accordingly--i want to say basic human decency?

you have been lucky enough not to run into people who lack decency, then!

also stuff like "does this person frequently make jokes at the expense of others" or "does this person get into heated arguments over petty things" -- does this person have a baseline level of personal integrity? no profile would be able to tell me that. i'd have to see it for myself.

xp

yeah, i'm willing to concede to that, because i spent most of my life in a medium-sized city. huge cities tend to be pretty surreal to me, so yeah

LL otm, also people who talk over you in person or don't seem interested in engaging with what you're saying -- it's harder to fake that online.

I have no idea what size of the city has to do with it! I've seen people be jerks everywhere.

also stuff like "does this person frequently make jokes at the expense of others" or "does this person get into heated arguments over petty things" -- does this person have a baseline level of personal integrity? no profile would be able to tell me that. i'd have to see it for myself.

― vigetable (La Lechera), Tuesday, December 16, 2014 9:31 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

While this is entirely true, one gets a sense of another person fairly quickly though right? Three or four emails back and forth, how the other person reacts, tells you loads no? I've not had a single bad experience with internet dating. And certainly no things like people acting rude in public or anything. Intuition and a general sense of the other person, even if only after a couple of letters, weeds out traits like this. At least it has done for me. (But then I haven't tried tinder and always write with someone for a week or two first)

Three or four emails back and forth, how the other person reacts, tells you loads no?
It tells you loads of stuff that they're willing to show you. Not the full picture by any stretch. I don't trust people easily though -- this is probably already abundantly clear.

is being visibly terrified of everyone a swipe left or swipe right?

― example (crüt), Tuesday, December 16, 2014 3:24 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark

You found the girl from Pomplamoose on Tinder?

Three or four emails back and forth, how the other person reacts, tells you loads no?

It tells you loads of stuff that they're willing to show you. Not the full picture by any stretch. I don't trust people easily though -- this is probably already abundantly clear.

― vigetable (La Lechera), Tuesday, December 16, 2014 10:00 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Didn't want to be disrespectful LL, and am sorry if it came across that way. And I truly understand. The full story cannot be told in a couple of emails, I agree. No one can, we - the 'good ones', the ones not meaning harm - can't. My experience has been solely pleasant so far, even if it didn't work out in the end; the basics of mutual respect and kindness were always there. And I do believe I knew they would be, after having written or communicating for a couple of weeks. But not having gone through bad experiences myself, I realize I am easy to speak on this perhaps.

we - the 'good ones', the ones not meaning harm

making a lot of assumptions here *purses lips*

Yeah I know :)

dating app required for ppl who dont like ppl

http://gawker.com/tinder-is-dead-1683394434

alternately,

http://domesticity.gawker.com/the-only-tinder-opening-line-you-need-1681214764

Everything about dating is depressing

RIP

for a while i was openning with just "nice"

it actually worked pretty well, a typical interaction would be

me: nice
girl: lol
me: ;-)
me: sup

and then it just took off from there. but then a super beautiful girl unmatched me first shot so i stopped

this guy 3v4n dub1n$ky, kind of a douchey but hilarious promoter from montreal has been writing articles for an online website thats kind of the pheonix that rose from the local alt-weekly's ashes, i only read the first one but it was pretty hilarious & on point. there's a whole series now

http://cultmontreal.com/2014/11/tinder-dates/

tinder seems skewed really young tho? i'm 23 and it makes me feel old

There's no good way to tell you this but... you're old

jesus flopson is still only 23, and that's still ancient

yeah i am as much as 2 flopsons w/ a little powdered flopsons on top

age ain't nothin but a #old

just caught up with this thread, lots of good discussion all around.

my personal feeling/experience is that tinder/okc are obviously flawed and cant replicate irl interactions, but they've also helped me counter my flawed approach to meeting women irl.

i dated/hooked up with lots of women i would have never thought twice about talking to irl, either because sizing them up at a bar/party/etc just wouldn't have been likely do anything for me in the way of interest or attraction, or because i was too intimidated or would never be at a bar/party/etc with them in the first place.

its easy to assume that shopping for people based on carefully-groomed profiles is gross and makes you picky beyond reason, but the opposite has proven true for me more than once

gr80, your experiences and perspective are both insightful and inspirational. thanks.

def agree about it making you consider people you otherwise wouldn't have

has anyone tried hinge?

heard it was for swingers

lol

Haaaaaa

loool

Nice

I feel way more comfortable chatting people up on OKC than Tinder. I've taken to using Tinder strictly as a delivery system for lil' ego bossts whenever I get a new match. just a collection of sexy, approving digital heads I never interact with

I'm trying this out and it's not really working because I reflexively swipe left 98% of the time. How do you decide, beyond attractiveness and type, you actually "like someone"? Or is it really just a matter of throwing caution to the wind and liking anyone you're attracted to, then contacting them to find out if they're actually interesting and not some right-wing douchebag or whatever?

lol, i also just realized my age on facebook is 77 (as opposed to 27). Might change that...

right wing douches r cool

https://upload-assets.vice.com/files/2015/05/22/1432319107meattinderizer.gif

'beat your meat to Tinder' joek in 3... 2... 1...

fix yr age and throw caution to the wind

Yah just swipe right unless you're totally repulsed. They can turn you off, for real, in messages later

gr8080 have you/will you dispense yr Tinder opening message tipz itt?

I think that's a fine idea, Steve

no.

So I got this app last week and since then, I have apparently swiped ... Everybody? it says "there's no one new around you" :( Is that normal? I'm in the ~25th largest city in the US..

Closer to 20th biggest actually, just had to dbl check myself. I mean, I know there are a Lott more ppl in ny or Chicago, but.... One week of only moderately obsessive swiping and that's it?

now you just sit back and let the love roll in

try turning off the wifi connection, rebooting the program, and trying again. mine doesn't get along w/ wifi v much

I've been hooking up with dudes through online sites since AOL in '99 and it's done wonders for my charm, charisma, and self-presentation. It works like any other date: you start a conversation, meet at a public place for a drink, if you're feeling it you hook up. At worst it's a hookup and you'll have time to finish that load of laundry

So, when you swipe left is that a permanent swipe left, or do you you cycle through people again as they go back online?

pretty sure it's permanent

I figured as much, but am pretty certain I've seen doubles. Wasn't sure if it's a glitch or not.

if they remove their account and sign up again you may see them again

deleted tinder recently - found myself wasting time swiping but with no real intention of meeting people (nor any good conversation with matches really)

it's compulsive even when you have no expectation of ever meeting anyone on it. it's also just depressing - all these fucking faces - i feel like as it's got more popular there are more aggressively normal people on it also.

yeah, those things happened with okcupid for me in a big way over time.

I was laughing about Tinder over the weekend because a friend and I, both from smallish cities, were visiting Montreal and we were kind of casually flipping through Tinder and we never ran out of possible matches. I mean, we were busy doing things so we weren't looking for any extended period of time, but with the search radius even down to two or three miles it still seemed limitless

It is limitless - it starts to erode your sense of humanity and human individuality after a while... or maybe that's just me. Something about seeing the same pictures 300 times and the same slogans etc - the same places even.

The amount of pics beside the holocaust museum in berlin is truly odd - like just to stop that classic date scenario where it's all going so well until it turns out she supported the holocaust.

apparently all the men in london have pics of themselves beside tigers.

all the women have pics of themselves jumping on a beach.

it's the 2015 version of of men are from mars, women are from venus

I feel like you get a handle on undercurrents in your local culture you might not have been aware of

I saw a picture of a woman holding a shotgun and a dead wild turkey today

college sports apparel is amazingly widespread

for a while i spoke to this woman who was a truck driver - she explained she sometimes slept in her truck with a baseball bat.

i guess it was interesting to think how it could put you in touch with someone so radically different from your hipster friends.

or to imagine the rich material for a play us going on a date would have been

ugh

i've seen a few celebs on it too actually...

surprising number of profile pictures for women feature them in Venice IIRC, that faded relic of past glories.

they clearly don't make celebs like they used to..

So I got this app last week and since then, I have apparently swiped ... Everybody? it says "there's no one new around you" :( Is that normal? I'm in the ~25th largest city in the US..
― Nobody ever knows anything. (sleepingbag), Wednesday, May 27, 2015 7:04 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Closer to 20th biggest actually, just had to dbl check myself. I mean, I know there are a Lott more ppl in ny or Chicago, but.... One week of only moderately obsessive swiping and that's it?
― Nobody ever knows anything. (sleepingbag), Wednesday, May 27, 2015 7:07 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have, uh, gotten a lot better at using this app since last week 😜

did you have the radius set to like two blocks?

Swiping left is mostly permanent - a very smart trick is that the premium version gives you a 'cancel last swipe' button.

But yeah you can create a second one - I had a description-less one for brief ego boost then deleted it and signed up again saying "Hey just out of serious long term relationship, not looking for anything permanent" - obviously got a different set of matches than the first.

I got hit by the compulsiveness too, swiped everyone within 2 miles - there are probably more women with the top range (25 miles?) than in Ireland, but that's London for you.

Also yeah it's incredibly performative, all of a dating profile shrunk into 500 characters so there a lot of heavily laden words about being Fun! and Genuine! and er Tall! pinging past.

Also a lot of travelling, leading up to this encomium on the Travelling Girl (warning: Elite Daily).

Not just all words to be fair - lots of photos of Machu Picchu and Everest Base Camp. They don't let just anyone in there!

~1/10 of the women on tinder here (zurich) have the quote 'travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer'

i went on a few dates from it but i'm also thinking of deleting it now. it's such a great rush when you swipe right and get a match with someone cute. seemed to happen a lot when i first installed it or when i'm back in london for the weekend. it's awful when you start to worry that you've swiped through the whole city.

sorry but 'travel' is not a hobby imo

biggest tinder celeb spot: violinist for the trans-siberian orchestra

"hobbies" are for savages

this encomium on the Travelling Girl (warning: Elite Daily)

this is such a horrible barf-inducing article. "There is something to be said about a woman with stamps in the pages of her passport." somehow, "she is wealthy" entirely escapes the discussion.

lol elite daily

I think I removed several people on facebook who shared mostly stuff from that site, then blocked the site.

Oh yeah obviously what is being performed is "I have quite a bit of money (or at least know how to produce this impression)".

The way in the Avengers film where Ultron bathes in the cliche of consuming All The Internet and learning about humanity - you could connect a decent AI to a Tinder device in Trafalgar Square and it would hum for a bit and declare it now understood the British class system. Less mountains of skulls, too, in general.

the skulls are already buried across the imperial diaspora

*frequently what is performed

i defiantly have started seeing ppl i've swiped left on pop up again

just started noticing it in the last month or two

definitely not "defiantly"

Right, but since deleting your profile is two taps and importing again from Facebook is like four taps, that's not that surprising, right?

Slavoj Žižek to thread: http://bigthink.com/videos/online-dating-and-synthetic-sex

Is the Facebook requirement keeping people away from this?

In other words, does it make public on Facebook the fact that you've installed it and are seeking out matches?

Prolly not

no, and no

it isn't a "Facebook app" or w/e, it just uses the info to log in and grab age/selected photos

Also connections / shared interests, which are among the data it shows you about profiles. So if'd be a bad idea for someone to ask a friend "hey saw your friend on Tinder, are they cool?" then I'd go with manually creating a profile / pictures.

true!

imo that's a strength, not a weakness, but if you find online dating shameful I guess you can go undercover

girl i am currently seeing made a fbook account just to get on tinder and then subsequently deleted it

Right, but that's so cumbersome

Are they funded by Facebook?

a little curious why one of the most popular and profitable apps can't muster an ipad version.

just install the phone version

a few days ago i was in bed about to go to sleep but just before decided to message a girl i matched with a few months ago. i think she was actually the first person i matched with after a pretty horrendous breakup so i was a bit reluctant to msg at the time. anyway....ended up getting up out of bed and going out to meet her. had the most amazing night of wandering around the city and talking. we ended up drinking in a square until about 3am like teenagers. i've seen her every day since and it's turned into a bit of a whirlwind romance. tinder is cool?

that is a v great story

thinking of c&p-ing that into my abt me as what i aspire to

that rules! aww.

Tinder can be very cool! The first response after I recreated my profile got a date arranged after three hours - kissing at the end of the first date, going to the movies and completely ignoring the movies for the second (Could <I>not</I> recommend Will Smith / Margot Robbie vehicle Focus highly enough for this purpose - bright and engaging out of the corner of your eye and you can miss more or less all of it with no ill effects). She's finishing her PhD in September and moving away, I'm out of a serious long term relationship and not looking for another, so Tinder found us each other for fooling around and watching Father Ted.

Vanity Fair weighs in

This article kind of disturbed me.

seen that roundly criticized already on twitter, but i haven't read it yet.

couldn't read past that ridiculous "expert" quote tbh

yes this article is one of those insufferable NYC-center-of-the-universe table talk pieces

Nick, with his lumbersexual beard and hipster clothes, as if plucked from the wardrobe closet of Girls, is, physically speaking, a modern male ideal. That he fulfills none of the requirements identified by evolutionary psychologists as what women supposedly look for in mates—he’s neither rich nor tall; he also lives with his mom—doesn’t seem to have any effect on his ability to get rampantly laid. In his iPhone, he has a list of more than 40 girls he has “had relations with, rated by [one to five] stars…. It empowers them,” he jokes. “It’s a mix of how good they are in bed and how attractive they are.”

Am trying to have a hard time figuring out how women feel safe on Tinder at all.

most men aren't Nick

It's no less safe than blind dates or meeting someone in a bar - your first experience alone with the person should be a public place.

thoughts: a) the whole piece is kind of sad
b) i need to go to the gym so I can attract these loose women with shirtless pics

it empowers them, he jokes

“It’s rare for a woman of our generation to meet a man who treats her like a priority instead of an option,” wrote Erica Gordon on the Gen Y Web site Elite Daily, in 2014.

"gen y web site" a rather bulging rug, here

once, a boy would pick a girl in the street

I am approx 4 paragraphs into this article and these guys they're talking about sound like the biggest assholes. I want to castrate all of them.

this article is completely made-up right? someone watched wolf of wall street the night before and based their techno-fear article on it.

More American Psycho than anything else

pretty sure that's not how most ppl use "fuckboy"

^ yeah, that was kinda lol. made me second guess my going definition, but urban dictionary backed me up.

ive definitely heard this definition of fuckboy taking hold

lol @ Bananaman B

I just thought it was a synonym for "rentboy".

my favorite was the explanation of "get it in". imagining vf readers reaching this cryptic phrase in the midpoint of a very long article about casual sex and being baffled.

Read it more often (agreeing with the article) as fuckboi, but you know how it is with kids these days.

lol did anyone find the "researcher perspectives" quoted to be totally absurd? eg human sexuality professors quoted saying "this is a whole new phase in the evolution of human sexuality"

Twenty years ago I was in college and there were dudes whose life was organized around maximizing number of vaginas entered and there were dudes who were mostly looking for girlfriends and not particularly hustling for sex outside this context. (And I mean obviously some continuum between these.) The article paints a picture of a dating environment really well-adapted for the first class of dudes but the second class doesn't really appear in this article. Is the point that they don't exist anymore, as some of the women in the article claim? Or are they still around, and just kind of doing what they've always done, and not using Tinder, or using Tinder to find girlfriends instead of maximizing sex-count, or...?

people sure to love to read about rich young people who seem to fuck more than average

feel like there could be a whole lot of media put together about this!!

read half of goole's previous comment and immediately thought of Migos

soooo...investment banking douches competing for notches in their belts...is a new thing brought on by technology?

Some guys, they say, in order to hide their multiple sex partners from each other, will assign them fake names in their phones, such as “Crazy Mike.”

REPORTING

lmao every time i type "tinder" i mistakenly type "tindr" at first, why is it not called "tindr" what is up with that extra vowel? totally unnecesssary

yes this article is one of those insufferable NYC-center-of-the-universe table talk pieces

― Robert Earl Hughes (dandydonweiner), Thursday, August 6, 2015 5:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permali

Exactly. "No one seems to just want to make a human connection anymore" say rich 20-somethings mostly interested in their careers and partying.

lmao every time i type "tinder" i mistakenly type "tindr" at first, why is it not called "tindr" what is up with that extra vowel? totally unnecesssary

― marcos, Friday, August 7, 2015 2:11 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

straights need e to do their thing

"I don’t want it to be like that, but sometimes the world is the way it is and I can’t change it, so I just embrace it.” wow has any statement ever captured the awful mentality of str8 white dudes so perfectly?

i was totally gonna post that and be like yea wtffffffffffffffffffffff fuck these assholes jesus christ

https://twitter.com/samknight1/status/631280024679776256

kinda siding with Tinder there tbh

lol, what's with the insane hyper-defensiveness? Like one chin-strokey article about tinder is any kind of threat to the business.

Feel like Tinder have a fair case with a smug, poorly reported piece

This was very good: http://thehairpin.com/2015/08/breaking-dating-men-still-sucks-for-women/

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/users/2015/08/tinder_and_the_moral_panic_over_women_using_technology_to_meet_men_and_have.single.html

Anyone tried Bumble? Met someone from another city thanks to it and the whole process has seemed both more serious and more generous. The idea that women have to commit first is a nice reversal of situations that leads to more trust from the get go. It's more my wheelhouse.

no one is on it here

lmao

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bumble.android

http://time.com/3851583/bumble-whitney-wolfe/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-marketing/rethinking-the-tinder-generation/article26003958/

someone please tell me this isn't really a 'trend'

every time i type "tinder" i mistakenly type "hinder" at first

can we have a moritorium on articles abt how millenials are like totally different than any previous generation

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/millennials-to-snake-peop/jhkibealmjkbkafogihpeidfcgnigmlf?hl=en-US

still really useful

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/94609711/Millennial%20Swipe%20Sim%202015_F/index.html
trenchant video game commentary

I would love to try out Bumble but I'm an Android user so I'm SOL.

haha that's awesome

xp

lol trenchant

http://fortune.com/2015/09/09/tinder-super-like/

and carly rae still can't go gold

http://38.media.tumblr.com/46d06ef5825391b15d30a3186e029ff7/tumblr_n5me0pJ6xH1qlzc82o1_r2_500.gif

wow

yeah, aces

i'd have swiped right on her

http://www.fastcompany.com/3054871/whats-your-tinder-score-inside-the-apps-internal-ranking-system

I'm so boring on tinder. In general too, but mostly on tinder. Have no idea how to get the conversation rolling/am lazy and sort of want my matches to do this for me

In a current conversation a woman mentioned she liked this park. I mentioned it was close to my brother's place and so I will try to check it out one day. She said I should do that. Now I am stumped.

Fsce to face conversation is easier

i don't know a whole lot about tinder but isn't the spirit of thing that you tell her it looks like a nice park and ask if she wants to meet at the park for hooking up?

ha treesh your park conversation sounds so much like every conversation i've ever had on tinder and i used to be pretty good at being charming and flirty in internet venues (non-ilx).

lol late great otm

tell her to meet you at the park then arrive and announce THE TREESHIP HAS LANDED!

http://i.imgur.com/4EzPF0r.jpg

I'd like to add that I hope i'm not making you feel uncomfortable or badly in any way by posting these fliers

http://i.imgur.com/TRSein4.jpg

XD

the girl in that shot is some vermeer-level shit

I think this Polish pilot I'm talking to might be a bot. 50/50. Her backstory is very specific but she communicates in a botlike way.

Love the bots btw.

polish pilot sounds bottish already, but I guess there are actual pilots in poland so who knows

trying so hard not to make the jokes here

I think tinder bots are fascinating especially when they are plausible and uncanny. They also steal people's photos and names so there are bot versions of some of real people floating around.

ime it's really easy to spot the bots

I'm one of them!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/your-romantic-first-dates-restaurants-hate-them/2016/06/07/bf45adfc-1df5-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html?postshare=5121465329289247&tid=ss_fb

first date at a restaurant are a no go

drinks/coffee/tea or gtfo

my most frequent spot is a "gastropub," which crosses lines as surely as some of the dudes I meet

lol

this metered drinking thing sounds like the me of today, as opposed to the "hell yeah let's have some drinks and see where this goes" me of yesteryear

I usually had the presence of mind to make out around the corner from the establishment though, not inside

Still do that. Uber helps.

If I wasn't so damned straight I'd be swooning

Anyone can go crooked.

i met one girl from tinder. but it does seem like if theyre not bots (i had one bot from a charity!), then theyre so busy/distracted you cant really have a decent conversation with anyone. plus, tinder never seems to work that well on adroid, or my phone at least, so i gave up.

as it's vice, this is v poorly sourced, but i wonder if it's a real phenomenon

http://www.vice.com/read/restaurants-are-changing-their-seating-thanks-to-all-your-awkward-tinder-dates-vgtrn

it's a parasite article hanging off an actual article in the wapo (not that that is v much more legit tbh)

when i was using dating apps, tinder was by far the best for me

no idea how it all is now and i would dread using them now

would probably seek more conventional avenues first

got old and boring

ha

http://www.latimes.com/style/laaffairs/la-hm-laaffairs-david-welby-20160614-snap-story.html

i can't tell whether or not that's satire. it has to be, right?

I'm no sexologist, but I'm not sure Tinder is that's guy's problem.

idk but i laughed

barf

https://67.media.tumblr.com/9d05e00f946031164e222c39083cbc18/tumblr_ob0udwTtaM1qgh75xo1_540.png

skull_emoji.jpg x 10000

lol @ image choice

http://www.latimes.com/style/laaffairs/la-hm-laaffairs-david-welby-20160614-snap-story.html

a toy designer!?

In addition there was something I had never seen before, a message in my inbox, the first time a female had broken the ice.

this happens very rarely indeed, and when it does happen, it's not a good sign, like one time, within 5 minutes i get a message 'why I haven't messaged her yet, are your fingers broken!?'. O_o

i cant stop thinking/laughing about that image, it's so perfect

Not sure if I'm missing something, but his nightmare date is that he met up with somebody who wasn't interested in him? Why would any newspaper publish that?

To protect the name of this particular female (although she doesn’t deserve it)

remarkable how these few, seemingly innocuous words reveal so much about this guy

there's a national cheese convention in town and cheesemongers from around the country (world?) are all over Tinder

😁

This has pretty much completely displaced walking up and talking to strangers at bars and coffee shops hasn't it? I spend a ton of time at those establishments and rarely if ever do I see that happen anymore.

who ever did that anyway? douchebags and the dim?

People with a dog-eared copy of The Game.

oh come on

(not an exhaustive list)

drunks

Honestly I feel like there is this totally invented golden era of meeting strangers in public places and then having relationships with them. And phones are supposed to have killed it. But in my experience this never existed, or if it did, it wasn't golden it was mainly creepy and/or excruciating. I don't mind telling you I had a lot of girlfriends in the 90s but not a single one did I 'approach' in a coffee shop, or a subway, or a bar, or a club. Good lord! I knew them from friends, or from work, or some other setting that put each us in each other's ambit. There was a filter already, based on social circumstances, education, job, a pre-swiping that had occurred which facilitated things.

meeting strangers in public places and then having relationships with them

the pokemans are bringing it back, baby

It's really true

xxp - that lack of new friend intros would make dating almost impossible for me now if not for OKC/Tinder/etc.. Most of my friends are married/having kids (or already have teenagers in a few cases), they know other married people, there are far fewer random parties where people bring people.

Nothing good comes from dating. I had tinder for a while bc I thought I was miserable being single but after a few dates that kind of fizzled through neither party's fault I realized that nothing is worth the awkwardness of a "first date."

in my experience the perfect setup goes like this:

- your friend invites you for dinner
- at that dinner is another friend of theirs, who is v cuet
- you like each other a lot and hit it off
- you then invite them over to dinner
- your friend, and in fact everyone else aside from cuet friend mysteriously disappear

I wish I was one of those bizarre people who were married right after college. In this scenario I work as an analyst at a hedge fund.

But tracer hand otm. It's way better if no one pursues anyone and you just organically "hit it off" in a pressure free context

If you're the only two single people there, though, that's an obvious set-up and I would've thought it would be a very pressure intense context? I don't really know, though, having never done this sort of stuff.

in my experience the perfect setup goes like this:

- your friend invites you for dinner
- at that dinner is another friend of theirs, who is v cuet
- you like each other a lot and hit it off
- you then invite them over to dinner
- your friend, and in fact everyone else aside from cuet friend mysteriously disappear

- you and cuet friend realize with horror that ONE OF YOU MUST BE THE KILLER

If you're the only two single people there, though, that's an obvious set-up and I would've thought it would be a very pressure intense context? I don't really know, though, having never done this sort of stuff.

― emil.y, Friday, July 29, 2016 11:08 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

only if the friends put pressure on it, which unfort they sometimes do... but if theyre just like "hey i am gonna invite this person and this person because i ennjoy their company" -> no pressure -> :)

this never happens tho

yeah the best things do legit come from meeting your friend's friends that you somehow haven't met before, and they are cute and you hit it off. this happens for me increasingly rarely for the reasons milo z points out. have never had any knack/interest/comfort doing the bar-conversation thing, it makes me feel like a creepy weirdo barging into someone's night. but my parents met this way! my mother saw my dad was wearing an orange tie and thought he must be from tennessee (he was not) and the rest apparently wrote itself. a napkin from the bar is in the family scrapbook even.

my only key to actual lasting success has so far been

- know somebody for a couple of years but due to circumstance or whatever, never even really consider it a possibility
- eventually be like "hmm"
- also they do this "hmm"

not exactly a repeatable "strategy" but it has worked out a few times

^^^

having someone introduce you is a really underrated icebreaker imo. I met my wife that way, and the friend that introduced us didn't even really know my wife, just her brother, but just having the friend give us a slight nudge to talk to each other went really well.

i kinda miss going on first dates, sure there is awkwardness and occasional disaster, but i like the structured context of having a one-on-one conversation, asking questions, getting to know someone new.

tracer otm about the myth of strangers meeting each other in public! it's all about expanding and intersecting social circles. the exception is not pleasant daytime coffee shop approaches but clubs when both parties are off their heads

it's not like you absolutely never meet strangers in public though. people in london have barriers but i've still made a lot of good friends at random. also through hobbies.

i met one close friend at 4am when i was drinking in my friend's living room, on the ground floor and she was passing with a friend and knocked on the window. another close friend i just met in a pub. maybe it's diff as far as romance goes.

imo the "meet a random stranger" thing is less likely than going to the same places regularly and starting a conversation based on running into each other all the time

through hobbies = through social circles

drinking at 4am = meeting in a club (in terms of the vibe, the state of mind people are in)

i know other ppl are a lot more open to strangers in pubs than i am, i'm very guarded and only have time for the ppl i'm there with

I feel sort of nostalgic for the brief period in my life when I tried to randomly date strangers or near-strangers, even though it never worked out. The summer after my freshman year in college I was in NYC and randomly asked out this absolutely beautiful coffee shop clerk and she said yes, and I was like "holy shit, that worked!" and felt briefly ecstatic. Only once we were on the date she was rather shocked to learn that I was only 18 and, she turned out to be 23 or something, and it seemed that I was just completely out of the question at that point and the rest of the date was awkward. In another case, again someone who I thought was way out of my league, a *friend* of hers muscled in on the date at the last minute (at a jazz show) and ruined it on purpose by being a dick all night.

who goes to the same public places regularly? like at the same time every week? that is strange behaviour to me. apart from the commute i guess.

isn't this the reason people used to join softball leagues, take dance lessons (or even just go to "dances"), other assorted old timey hobbies? main difference now is that, more and more, "dating" has become a distinct social activity and not merely the (often intended) consequence of other social engagements?

it kind of depends on the pub i guess - most places would be weird or require someone to "approach" a person, but some pubs have a more natural mingling of people.

i dunno if it's just tourist's envy, but when i visit nyc i always feel like meeting people must be far easier. people just talk to each other in bars in a way that never happens in london. people go to bars alone etc. as i say tho, dunno if i'm over-romanticising a foreign city.

also Treeship otm on the intrinsic humiliation of first dates.

it's more that tourists behave that way, when i'm on holiday i'm like HI I WILL TALK TO ANYONE IN THIS PLACE HAPPILY whereas if i'm at home i'll just glare at anyone who even thinks about making me take my headphones off

isn't this the reason people used to join softball leagues, take dance lessons (or even just go to "dances"), other assorted old timey hobbies? main difference now is that, more and more, "dating" has become a distinct social activity and not merely the (often intended) consequence of other social engagements?

― ryan, Friday, July 29, 2016 11:28 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's something happening here... not to put too fine a pt on it, but i think it used to be that workplaces (esp), neighborhood and social gatherings, churches etc, unmarried women were p much fair game? a lot of the "acceptable" milieux for making a pass have closed, rightfully. yes i am blaming feminism lol.

xp

that's part of it but not all ime. i came here a bunch as a tourist and met loads of people. i'm definitely less open than i was now i live here. but going to the bar alone is much more normal thing to do here. the bars a literally physically set up for it, and to encourage strangers to talk to each other.

who goes to the same public places regularly? like at the same time every week? that is strange behaviour to me. apart from the commute i guess.

― lex pretend, Friday, July 29, 2016 11:26 AM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not to be needlessly snarky but it's a more common exp if you don't live in one of the world's top 25 megalopoli

isn't it fairly common for most people? not routinely but eg drinking in a pub near your home or work, using similar stations daily, returning to places you like - seems almost impossible for this not to happen

once the server starts to anticipate my order i feel it's time to move on.

caek otm - in ny you sit at the bar and meet people who may well be there just to hang around and chat to others, at least so it seems to me. I spent a Sunday evening in a bar and met a playwright in his 60s and a woman in her 30s who worked in advertising around the corner, personally I love this kind of thing, but I guess some wouldn't.

there are at least two or three places I've been semi-regular at where walking in feels like an episode of cheers

yeah the best things do legit come from meeting your friend's friends that you somehow haven't met before, and they are cute and you hit it off

I have been coupled for 20 years (married for 15) and this is for sure how I met my wife and how I met every girlfriend I ever had, at least once I was past the stage where "we had a class together in college" was how you met people.

I did sometimes Ask Someone Out and Have a First Date but I can't think of a time when that developed into a real relationship (or even a fake relationship)

end of old-timer reminiscence

my parents met at a party, which is funny, because I can't picture either of them at a party

they also had sex just fyi

i've got proof of that one though

who ever did that anyway? douchebags and the dim?

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Friday, 29 July 2016 09:01 (10 hours ago) Permalink

uh i agree with the other stuff that you said but this actually happened to me a few times

the last one was on new years day at a bar. i went up to pay and a lady and her male friend were sitting having drinks. im waiting for the bartender to come back with my bill and i sense someone looking at me. i turn to her and kind of do a polite smile. my bill comes and i grab a pen and as im getting ready to sign it she grabs my hands and gives me this cheesy sexual look and signals to me and her guy friend next to her and asks if i want to have a threesome

the other times were a lot more normal experiences but it also involved a woman proposing some type of date

everyone needs at least one creepy threesome proposal story

I knew them from friends, or from work, or some other setting that put each us in each other's ambit. There was a filter already, based on social circumstances, education, job, a pre-swiping that had occurred which facilitated things.

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Friday, July 29, 2016 3:14 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so to go back to this

i think the people you meet under the circumstances that youve described are of much better quality as trite as it sounds to say

but hooking up was definitely a thing at clubs and house parties. i mean i noticed it happen often wherever i happened to be

I met my current gf as a stranger in a coffee shop. Though I wasn't really trying to hit on her, I was bored at a work meeting and thought it was cool that she was carrying around a Flann O'Brien book.

ya i have to say im not entirely agreeing with people here

it doesnt happen in my current city but in previous ones my pals and i would constantly talk to strangers at bars all the time

we are also regulars at a few places -- its less of a thing in this city but it does happen in other cities

and i also met my gf at a coffee shop

and i just remembered when i was reading portrait of the artist at a coffee shop once and this girl started talking to me and we socialized for a few months after

(didnt work out bc she is a hardcore christian)

not to put too fine a pt on it, but i think it used to be that workplaces (esp), neighborhood and social gatherings, churches etc, unmarried women were p much fair game? a lot of the "acceptable" milieux for making a pass have closed, rightfully. yes i am blaming feminism lol.

― goole, Friday, July 29, 2016 4:55 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've wished I knew someone to date and I've wished that I could meet more date-able people but I've never wished that inappropriate men would hit on me more often in public while I was busy doing something I enjoyed with my friends. When it has happened, it makes me so awkward and uncomfortable and even mad.

apart from a few short relationships i was single until i was 27 and constantly out in public gatherings - bars primarily, but also parties - and i only ever approached a stranger to say hi once. tinder would've been useful for me lol.

once the server starts to anticipate my order i feel it's time to move on.

― ryan, Friday, July 29, 2016 5:12 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*tips hat* yep *morricone theme*

i have to reapproach dating now that i'm living healthier. less "i desperately need you to love me" and more "do we have similar goals." i do need some goals first.

There was a brief period where I would get approached sometime by women, never that often. I was a bit thinner then but I think the main thing I had going for me was more confident body language

were you in college

No i dont count that

less "i desperately need you to love me"

go to a coffeeshop wearing a placard saying this and see what develops

basically meeting someone on tindr is like finding a new song via some spotify discovery feature. maybe it's alright but it lacks the layers of meaning it would have if it were a consequence of another part of your social life.

i mean, unless that person is really hotttt

usually lacks layers... of clothing!!

heck yeah

No awkward threesome proposal but I got a message on Tinder from a polyamorous woman - but she was looking to date-date and not just casually hookup, while maintaining her main relationship.

All the work of actually dating without the possibility of relationship intimacy developing sounded like a drag.

I can understand intimacy developing in even secondary poly relationships, i just can't figure out how anyone has the time.

I get approached every now and then, mostly when I'm dancing. I dance pretty well for a white guy. There's also been quite a few women who've written the first message to me on tinder, mostly because I wrote in my profile text that I like to dance.

My point being: Learn how to dance. Or at least to look happy while you try.

I can't dance but I can (sort of) cook and when I was using Tinder I'd make moments whenever I would bake or make cornbread and that generated an awesome response.
No cooking in the clubs, though.

I know two good dishes. Risotto and Jambalaya. That's good for a couple of dates.

Based God begs to differ

Xp

basically meeting someone on tindr is like finding a new song via some spotify discovery feature. maybe it's alright but it lacks the layers of meaning it would have if it were a consequence of another part of your social life.

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Friday, July 29, 2016 3:53 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This strikes me as a good insight.

The whole thing about the rules of public approach having changed seems tricky. I mean I'm speaking hypothetically here because I've been out of things about 15 years now, but I've definitely heard some women say stuff like "Look, if I'm sitting in a coffee shop reading a book, it means I want to read my book, not be hit on by strangers." Which seems, you know, pretty reasonable. The other day my office had an outing at a placer with a driving range, and one fairly attractive female co-worker came in after driving for a little while and was just like "Ugh, this is why I never go to driving ranges," because apparently two different guys during her time out there came over and tried to give her "pointers." At the same time, since there is a history of people hooking up or coupling up as a result of public encounters, it seems sort of weird to lose that entire avenue to people meeting.

well, presumably/hopefully there are forms of meeting people from scratch in public that do not fall under mansplaining or interrupting people when they are obviously trying to read. i don't think we have to sign off on The Death Of Meeting People just yet.

the other forms are equally awful

Well yeah, but I mean you could make an argument about almost any public space. A person doing any activity may not want to be interrupted. A person standing at bus stop or riding a subway could feel captive/uncomfortable. Same for a person in the middle of doing a job, e.g. a clerk or cashier or restaurant worker.

I mean maybe on balance it is better to have these clearly demarcated channels.

I dance pretty well for a white guy.

please tell me this is not in your profile

xp. i feel like if youre a man and not a psychopath you can divine when not to interrupt someone, and when an interaction you have initiated is unwanted. the problem is not difficult to navigate social cues, but dickhole men.

there is probably a new etiquette still emerging, maybe, in the long wake of a series of feminisms and the more recent, very helpful wave of reminders that e.g. catcalling and mansplaining and all these other behaviors are generally not welcome. the culture as a whole might potentially absorb (slowly, and perhaps through weird channels) the language and practices of consent, so that there would become some recognized forms of doing this. i don't think it necessarily has to be super complicated. like, asking if someone would like to talk, and being genuinely sincerely okay with "no" and not dragging your own response to "no" out to where it becomes itself a big inconvenience and About You.... i dunno.

and yeah frederik b i don't know how it rolls in denmark but the formula "black people = good dancers, white people = bad dancers" is problematic to put it mildly and i would politely suggest you consider removing it from your vocabulary/world-view. but this probably makes me sound like one of the new-millennium thought police idk.

Hey guys, sorry. Didn't think. Danish people don't really dance, so I often dance with people from the middle east, southern europe, latin america, etc. There's way fewer black people in Denmark than people from the middle east, and I didn't think of what I wrote as white/black, and phrased it 100% as that anyway. My mistake.

Technically you phrased it 50% as that.

luv 2 dance w southern euros

I think Tinder gets a bad rap. I had met a lot of nice women through it and had a lot of pleasant first dates. It's very low commitment, so sometimes people flake out, but that's nothing to get mad about. A lot of the appeal is that it's low expectations, which makes it a really easy, pressure-free way to re-enter the dating pool.

caek otm - in ny you sit at the bar and meet people who may well be there just to hang around and chat to others, at least so it seems to me. I spent a Sunday evening in a bar and met a playwright in his 60s and a woman in her 30s who worked in advertising around the corner, personally I love this kind of thing, but I guess some wouldn't.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Friday, July 29, 2016 5:13 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have met people literally of these descriptions off twitter alone, i'm not sure what this Romanticisation Of A Bar ever needs to prove (aside from one's superiority as ever)

most of my relationships have one way or another stemmed from having worked in bookstores when i was in my 20s, which is neither helpful for me now nor current 20yos.

never tried tinder but first dates aren't actually that bad! it's only later that my boringness becomes apparent

OKCupid first dates were worse than Tinder because there had usually been a lot of chatting beforehand plus longer profiles, leaving less to talk about.

i don't like coffee enough t oever go to a coffee shop and i do not use tinder. i do disgracefully dance in public tho, my saving grace

i have met people literally of these descriptions off twitter alone, i'm not sure what this Romanticisation Of A Bar ever needs to prove (aside from one's superiority as ever)

the discussion moved towards the idea that people might be more open in other cities besides london, and some people said that bars in new york are built for strangers to interact a bit more. i was agreeing with that.

twitter is also a way in which people communicate, very good.

basically meeting someone on tindr is like finding a new song via some spotify discovery feature. maybe it's alright but it lacks the layers of meaning it would have if it were a consequence of another part of your social life.

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Friday, 29 July 2016 21:53 Bookmark

i met a nice girl in a bar once but it turned out forksclovetofu was watching and later kidnapped her to keep in his basement for other pervs. still, spread the love though eh

that bastard

Not convinced infinity's story doesn't have another timeline where he wakes up missing a kidney.

basically meeting someone on tindr is like finding a new song via some spotify discovery feature. maybe it's alright but it lacks the layers of meaning it would have if it were a consequence of another part of your social life.

I am not entirely sure about this but I don't want to distract from boggling at r|t|c

Yeah it's too neat and I've never used tinder. Plus people are more volatile, changeable and surprising than songs (at least the good ones are). But I don't know, there's a kind of hermetic bubble aspect to online dating? You don't have to make them fit in with the rest of your life AT ALL if you don't want to? Which is maybe what I was trying to get at.

Tinder: Users experience body dissatisfaction, body shame, low self-esteem

Users of hookup culture dating apps like Tinder - that encourage self-objectification through accepting or rejecting a possible match based on their physical appearance - have a more negative perception of body image than non-users, a new study finds.

Mostly undergraduate students - 1,044 women and 272 men - completed a survey about Tinder usage and answered questions about their body image, sociocultural factors, perceived objectification, and psychological well-being.

Of the total participants, around 10 percent stated that they were Tinder users. Compared with non-users, Tinder users of both sexes reported less satisfaction with their bodies and appearance. However, only male Tinder users reported lower levels of self-esteem.

shocker

I'm so mystified by the whole offline-dating thing. Like, I do technically understand how it works, but the things that seem to be pillars of it (approaching strangers, having friends introduce you) are just totally outside of my social experience.

Online just seems so much more, I don't know, civilised? You meet someone you already find interesting and attractive and know to be sexually compatible, and it's always pleasant and relaxed - the other thing sounds terrifying.

idk, people feel things differently but when on a date do you have a moment when you share a look or conversational moment when you're emotionally charged? shared eye contact that you both take a second to break because you're mutually enjoying it, pausing because you're a little shocked by how something your date said just clicks with your personality? the thing is, those things are what you hope for on a date, but they can be completely serendipitous and shared by people who are not currently sizing each other up. I think experiencing those is what turns some people off of online or arranged dates -- they seem natural and not part of a selection process, even if it's with someone who might not have made the cut if you'd sized each other up online

Oh hey, tinder has made something new called 'tinder social', which seems completely useless. So now every fifth image I see is an ad for some stupid feature I get if I give them money. And also, while upgrading the app to get it to run all these ads to me, it deleted all my matches. Yay.

got a first message from someone i was too nervous to message first. what is a 3 step, foolproof plan to not seeming like a dork on this app/on a first date that comes from this app.

it has to be exactly 3 steps

1) Don't worry about seeming like a dork. Focus on getting to know her instead. That way you show you care about her, rather than trying to get laid by being performatively impressive. 2) Do actually care about her. Be honest. And interested. 3) Listen!! And smile. And remember to have a good time.

Just start talking imho. People use it like txting, not like email. If nothing comes of it or they fade out on you, accept it and don't second-guess what you said, people treat this thing very loosely. Be yourself!

maybe limit messaging and meet in person asap?

I'm poor in love, though. I've probably terrified all of the women on the site right now... I do like dating, I like getting to know strangers.

Reading advice columns I see that now college students use Tinder? This I don't get. I thought the whole point of online dating was that after you leave college you're no longer constantly encountering potentially datable people every hour of every day. College is Tinder.

don't think it's surprising to see college students utilizing everything within their grasp that might increase their chances of getting laid. plus some people are in majors that skew heavily towards one gender or w/ever. i would use it.

tinder is about flicking the faces of a million strangers into the past, not getting laid.

because of your d/n on first glance i thought you said "tinder is about flicking the bean," like damn dude

I didn't use dating sites as such in college, or if so only at the very tail end - got onto OKCupid sometime in 2004 which is the year I graduated. Doesn't seem super weird to me, but I also was pretty seasoned in Internet flirtation by that point, and was used to the (basically pointless) scrolling through Makeoutclub and Lipstickparty profiles of the attractive and hip. In late 2003 I'd even had a couple of dating situations emerge out of Friendster correspondence. Tinder probably would have fucked me up mentally but I would have used it.

lipstickandcigarettes?

Don't know that one! Lipstickparty was definitely a thing, though it seems very obscure on the internet now. I have AIM chat logs that refer to it by name so I'm sure I'm not imagining it.

oh well i am a very young person with a lot going on, i wouldn't know

same

Fellow Europeans: Do you also see a steady stream of profile pictures snapped at the holocaust memorial in Berlin? People laughing, jumping, climbing in between the concrete slabs. And always smiling. It really weirds me out.

guess I shd post here or revive BRAGGIN 2007 to say I met an incredible girl on bumble, somehow :)

just noticed Tinder's new "recommend to a friend" feature

creepy as fuck

still don't know what the hell Tinder Social is either

tinder social seems to be used by younger people in my area, so I only notice it if the group has one person who is older than the others and falls into my age range

the idea seems to be that a group of single friends is going out this evening/weekend and are looking for more people to possibly hang out with? trying to recreate that situation where you're out with friends at a bar or w/e and end up talking to another group and mingling

tinder is about flicking the faces of a million strangers into the past, not getting laid.

relying on a single photographic image displayed on a smartphone to decide whether or not one would be interested in the person pictured seems so devoid of reality it is hard for me to wrap my head around

there can be several photos, a list of common friends/interests (based on your Facebook info), and room to write a short bio about yourself. tinder is as gross/depressing as you want to make it really.

relying on a single photographic image displayed on a smartphone to decide whether or not one would be interested in the person pictured seems so devoid of reality it is hard for me to wrap my head around
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Tuesday, September 20, 2016 12:50 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This brand new world where people are attracted to other people or not because of what they look like... Makes me sick just thinkingabout it

just noticed Tinder's new "recommend to a friend" feature

creepy as fuck

the weirdest thing, is, i think, that it seems to be impossible to recommend a MATCH to a friend. That seems a lot more logical. Like at that point, you have chatted with this other person, maybe even dated this match, it hasn't blossomed into anything, so...

also this whole 'recommend to a friend' thing, takes up a LOT of space on the screen now, like.. i am swiping for friends Tinder!?!?

the whole Tinder Social thing makes Tinder more into a 'let's get drunk and party'-app and less of a date-app.

This brand new world where people are attracted to other people or not because of what they look like

in my world there is an appreciable difference between seeing a person and seeing a smartphone image of a person and if I were to choose which of them better resembles the person, I'd choose the person.

don't worry these millennial bitches are kind of fickle but you'll get there if you keep swiping dude

the whole Tinder Social thing makes Tinder more into a 'let's get drunk and party'-app and less of a date-app.

uh according to all impressions of youth culture ever all kids do is get drunk, party, and fuck. tinder's market is finding ppl for that third part, makes sense they'd be in on the first two

yeah i'm definitely not going to be using it but i can see the point of it

brb going to gbx's location, we're gonna make a tinder social team. going to be playing in the tinder social finals by year end.

uh according to all impressions of youth culture ever all kids do is get drunk, party, and fuck. tinder's market is finding ppl for that third part, makes sense they'd be in on the first two

yeah ok i see the point as well, yet, it still makes me feel like, if you're already out there on the dance floor, with a group of friends, do you really need to hook up with ANOTHER group of friends, i mean.. the social situation ís there already.

anyway, i must be old. :P

yes because your friends are all dudes and you are a hetero man

and you want to fuck

I thought the millenials didn't want to fuck anymore. I think I read that somewhere.

Aimless, yeah, sure, I think many people would choose the person, but in a world where you are not going to ever meet 99.99999% of the people in your city that are in your age range or whatever, there are some kind of filters in play anyway. Why not this?

if I can't come up with a compelling reason to meet me in a couple minutes and a few sentences I'm sure as hell not going to able to make the case in a long-form dating profile (and definitely not in person)

it's not like I have pheromones spewing from my body that make people think "whoa so much better, the real thing, I'm swiping right!!" *makes swipe motion in air*

I'm awful at these new dating apps. Mostly because I don't like texting or typing on my phone. Acrylic nails are a bitch.

I am just waiting to meet someone IRL someday, somehow. Although maybe I should try; my sister, after years of Tinder-ing, just finally met her dream man and is very happy.

if I can't come up with a compelling reason to meet me in a couple minutes and a few sentences

the dilemma is that in order to do so, you must figure out how to praise yourself, while sounding credible as a witness to your own virtues. out of curiosity, what few sentences do you think would be appropriate in your own case?

Kentucky Derby ... last updated by sexyhorsepics

you realize people workshop dating profiles and how they present themselves in that manner with friends, right?

sarahell otm

and you don't praise yourself, you present yourself in an attractive light

let me tell you, if presenting yourself as a decent human being who'd be interesting to talk to is what you view as self-praise, you're probably depressed

(note: familiar with depression over here)

make that the text of your Tinder profile. guaranteed results!

Kentucky Derby ... last updated by sexyhorsepics

(note: familiar with depression

I've heard that

"I don't know what to write about myself but here's a recipe for pancakes:
recipe"

has become a trending profile text

And if there's one thing someone reading ILX wants, it's a trending profile text.

?

I am possibly taking niels too seriously.

I do agree that 'praise' is probably not the most useful lens - as Aimless says you will not be seen as a credible source.

Was not trying to help out, more of an adding to the general discussion type post

i read this and did not get a lot out of it

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/10/the-unbearable-exhaustion-of-dating-apps/505184/

Jesus... people are still writing think pieces on the alienating effects of online dating???

I seem to be locked out of tinder - or it seems unable to send my the sms verification code to register an account, which kind of throws off my plans for the next week -_-

Anyone experiencing this/know how to get around it/want to register an account for me? Tinder's support is, obviously, totally useless.

http://i.imgur.com/UP5cVvj.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/zC49ObZ.jpg

http://www.latimes.com/home/la-hm-la-affairs-giorgio-selvaggio-20161216-story.html

lol

another one for the lulz

http://www.latimes.com/home/la-hm-la-affairs-valentina-valentini-20170125-story.html

has it all rly

irish stereotypes, obvious red flags, clingy desperate oblivious woman

if he's a weed dealer why is he always broke?

I wasn’t so upset that he was in the pot business — I was more upset that he was terrible at it.

if he's a weed dealer why is he always broke?

― Islamic State of Mind (jim in vancouver), Friday, January 27, 2017 2:56 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bc it's california and anyone who needs weed just gets a medical card instead of calling a dealer? idk

ok nevermind i read the article now lol

I am in many ways a Victorian Spinster, but it's hard to express how o_O I was about:

Amid all this and after about a month of dating, I let him come live with me in my minuscule Culver City studio apartment.

come on guys, we can't blame tinder for this one or hook-up culture

unless it's a weed hook-up she was after and this was all a miscommunication

i didnt know where to put it

didnt seem serious enough for the relationships thread

fair enough