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

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.