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

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.