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.

pretty much impossible in this economy

Yeah I would say I know plenty of people that age well enough to know whether they're married, but none well enough to know whether they're monogamous.

I suppose if they are saying "I want to seriously date you but you'll always be my lowest priority," that may be difficult to make work

I don't personally get involved in these sorts of arrangements but I can understand the appeal of having someone you only see from time to time and you can fill a particular need for each other. I know a few women secondary partners where it works in this sort of way and it can be sustainable with the right people.

I agree, but I get why that might not be appealing to some

https://www.moretvicar.com/media/product/2019/02/07/3719_19880_w450.jpg

tinder and all the swipey apps are a horrible hell that i have now experienced and can confirm the hellish nature of, and celebrate being free from

embargo on discussing my romantic affairs lifted today by sheer coincidence (as i met tt and we had a nice chat about it lol) - but i've now met someone on a really nerdy old-school dating site and it's all going well and maybe she can be my current love interest let's see. get off the swipey apps ilx

i think on average i hate more things about okcupid than tinder tbh

okcupid has become a swipey app, and a very very bad one yes

They're mostly owned by the same conglomerate anyway.

Dating services in general

The creepiest conglomerate is those people who run the porn sites, mindgeek.

There are some real dystopian corps out there

i was talking with somebody who’s on this thing and asked him how on earth he ever matches with anybody in a city as big as new york where there are literally thousands and thousands of users and he says he literally just likes every single profile to increase his chances of something happening lmao

yup, known strategy, kinda gross

i hate it

The average man matches around 0.6 % of the time, the whole thing is designed this way. Tinder is only making money if you are out there swiping all the time.

my partner and i broke up in july, it was sad but it was like amicable and i understood why it needed to happen, thus there wasn't the usual need to torture myself about it for months, thus i got back on the tinder saddle a little earlier than i normally would and i just started dating someone really nice and it's great :D

yayyyy!

nice :)

I got out of a 10-year relationship back in August and was just starting to feel comfortable with the idea of reengaging socially/romantically when Omicron hit and shut down the more organic avenues of shows/bars/karaoke/etc. So now I've signed up for this app since I feel out of options and seasonal depression is amplifying the loneliness. I wasn't getting any matches the first couple days but the likes were starting to pile up so I bit the bullet and got a month of Gold just to see if any of them seemed like a good match. So far all the women in my age group in Oakland swiping right on me are either too normie for my tastes or worse, burners. I know there's the (probably true) stereotype that men don't read bios but do women? I don't right swipe on women that say they're looking for LTR in their bios (or that don't have bios) and am explicit in mine that I'm not looking for anything serious but a lot of women who've liked me seem to be looking for a soulmate.
That said, reading through this thread it's been really encouraging to hear accounts of how it's worked for some folks in both short-term and long-term ways and that despite the algorithm being lame it still boils down to people trying to connect with people.

I'm also in the Bay Area and I've had better luck with Bumble and Hinge, fwiw.

just to stay up to speed and because i like the idea of human video games, i'd like to download and try out one of these without the intent of following up in any way but i feel like that's an extremely difficult impulse to explain to my partner

using Tinder will make you extremely glad you're not dating, maybe if you explain it that way

lukas otm. Turns out all I had to do to my bio for the algorithm to start working better was add:
"ACAB" -Mark Twain

i met the woman i'll likely marry on tinder when i had no bio and did not give a shit about meeting anyone. anything can happen

as much as I dumped on it I did meet my current (and I’d wager lifelong) partner on there three years ago

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/caleb-from-west-elm-meme

team west elm caleb tbh

okay I have a question - if two people go on a date and neither one texts afterwards, that's not ghosting, right? ghosting is when one person texts and the other person just never replies? asking for me.

in a mutual ghosting the date never happened and is elevated to the status of hermetic mystery

if you had no prior relationship and no specific plan for post-date texting was agreed upon before the date ended, then it feels like good etiquette doesn't require you to text, only to respond. but that is from an old guy who has never used dating apps, so take it fwiw

The Buzzfeed comments are something…

i would say that if no one responds that's more of a wight than a ghost

and if they are made of rotting flesh it's more of a ghoul situation

Glad they nailed this one-of-a-kind monster.

got his ass

hell have a book deal soon I’m sure

The plan? create a Hinge profile that specficially targets women who make viral TikTok's about dating in order to increase West Elm furniture sales pic.twitter.com/L1GjxTIyul

— Jason (@jasonosia) January 22, 2022

Couldn't find the original version of this story, it seems it's been deleted:

oh no pic.twitter.com/9Vl3UrImvQ

— leon (@leyawn) January 21, 2022

I have to admit that inspired me to try Hinge, not for the sordid reasons you might assume, but for much more noble reasons having nothing to do with goblin fetishes etc.

Hinge claims to use some expert "compatibility" algorithm based on myriad complex factors. But based on the experience on setting up a basic profile there it seems like this "compatibility" essentially boils down to: sexual orientation, age, race, education, and political alignment.

Is this really what true compatibility boils down to? I always assumed it had to do with demeanor and similar sex drives but my track record doesn't really speak highly of my understanding of romantic relationships.

There was an app supposedly based around your mutual distastes and I thought that would be cool - eliminate Republicans and Harry Potter stans right off the bat. Then it was asking questions about coffee in the morning and how soft towels should be.

lol at leyawn

Feel like “ghosting” is frequently misused. Like if you go out on a date and aren’t feeling it and there were no plans made to get together in the future, not texting them ever again (if they don’t themselves reach out to you, maybe coyly expecting you to make the first move) is hardly “ghosting”. If they text you and you refuse to answer and at least let them know you aren’t interested in going further, sure, that’s valid. But the former gets lumped in sometimes. I’ve done it and have been on the receiving end, doesn’t strike me as a dick move. Don’t think anyone really wants to give or receive an awkward explanation of how they’re “not feeling it”. Message received, we barely know each other and don’t really owe each other anything.

i didn't hate dating in the pre-tinder era but i feel i would hate it if i had to start again now

It’s not great, but it’s made things a lot easier in certain respects. Like crawling bars looking for someone is a sad endeavor. And it’s rare I get the “oh, I know someone single and I think you guys would get along” matchmaking from friends anymore. I’m mid 30’s, everyone’s already kinda shacked up.

Also women are generally bombarded by dudes on these sites. Looks overwhelming to deal with. Can be hard to cut through that noise on both sides.

i've got this great picture with a tiger though

"Also women are generally bombarded by dudes on these sites. Looks overwhelming to deal with."

For real. I was comparing notes with a friend who has Tinder Gold and has just about given up on the Sisyphean task of weeding through the 3k+ likes she has. Meanwhile I've received like 7. That's why I don't mind using the super likes. At least it lets women know, "Hi, I'm interested in you specifically"

maybe this is the year I actually do this ... idk ... i kinda was ok with the old school bars and parties model (not like, ok, as in wildly successful, just like, comfortable) ... i know there are people older than me on these things, but, the one time I made a profile and then inactivated it a few hours later, I got "matched" with 4 dudes I knew, one I think I had a friend date with years ago and the chemistry was not there, two dudes I would never be interested in, and the creepy coke-addict ex-bf of a former bandmate ...

Sarah, I mean no disrespect when I say this, but based on your account of setting up the app and deleting it a few hours later, you are at high risk of making yourself miserable. I speak from experience here: all of my experiences with dating apps have been miserable up until the past 2 or 3 months.

What changed was that I started to think of myself like one of those dudes you see fishing at the seashore with a dozen poles standing up in the sand. Cast your line, then forget about it and move on to the next one, because there is nothing you can do now to make the fish come sooner. Recognize that there is a good chance the person you're angling for doesn't even have the app installed on their phone anymore. (If you're using one of the apps that tells you "so&so has been active today," pay attention to it! Those people may be worth spending a little more energy on reading their profile and crafting a personalized intro.) Work in short bursts, sending intros to a few people who seem interesting, and when you feel your standards start to lower as you try to force something to happen -- it's time to log off for the day! Turn off the app notifications, go read a book, crack a beer (N/A for me), come back later in the week and see if you've caught anything. And never ever ever worry about how long it takes someone to reply, because every halfway datable person on these apps will occasionally forget to check them for a few days.

The part after you match is a little harder to give advice about. How long to talk before planning to meet, what red flags you want to look for before agreeing to a date, at what point you decide that they're wasting your time or catfishing you -- these are personal judgments you have to make for yourself. Fortunately, they get easier with practice. You *will* have a few bad experiences; don't feel too bad, because everybody does.

I hope this advice is at all useful to you. Happy hunting!

Sincerely,
A man who has used dating apps to meet women

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

― mh, Sunday, August 7, 2016 8:20 PM (six years ago)

Not having a great couple of months, and I keep thinking about this, though the first half tells me "hang on, just keep at it, the moment will arrive" while the second half tells me "delete, then have much more romantic presence of mind throughout the day, so you can recognize and honor those moments outside of formal date scenarios."