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

Much like david cross i’m a lucky guy

Lots and lots of young people are getting married, they're just also openly fucking other people more than they used to (anecdotally anyway)

That sounds really bad tbh.

I don't mean they fuck using anecdotes, but that's also a thing probably

That sounds really bad tbh.

I agree, this "getting married" thing has gotten really out of hand

And makes me sad. Hope it isn’t true.

@ treeship when I say "openly" I mean as agreed to by both married parties, it's neither good nor bad. some people are great at it and other people are really bad, just like...well, marriage

(obviously in addition to that many ppl use the apps to cheat on their spouses without their knowledge, yes)

Oh. I thought u were talking about cheetahs in particular 🐆. I wasn’t thinking about swingers.

I like to take public stands against behavior everyone agrees in wrong. I like to join in the choir.

poly people would probably distinguish themselves from swingers, but it's a thin line

re: that line, I was flattered by a few poly women swiping right and initiating conversations but they all wanted to date date. I would have no problems hooking up with a married poly person but I had no interest in putting in the work of dating for little future reward.

what is this future reward you mention? I didn't realize prizes were involved

A relationship i assume. Why invest energy into becoming a “third wheel”?

it's implied though that a relationship is what they are looking for and not a third wheel

at least that's how I read "date date"

None of them seemed to be looking for a third equal partner - but you can date and have an extended relationship (of sorts) while still being a third wheel. (Which, yes, not my thing.)

Yeah, 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

im perfectly happy being old and boring when i hear younger people i know who have more than one "primary" partner, or find out that someone who i think is going out with someone has a parallel, longer and more important relationship with someone else.

i don't have that much intimacy to give out to the world.

Admittedly my social circle skews a little younger than me (mid-20s to early 30s) but I really don't know a lot of people younger than me who keep things strictly monogamous, whether they're partnered up or not

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.