"You should decide what you want out of such matters..."
August 30, 2023 7:52 AM Subscribe
Dating Roundup #1 - This is Why You're Still Single is a long commentary that mixes surveys on dating and relationship attitudes, common strategies and their pitfalls along with crossfire commentary from other viewpoints. Some of the language is absolutist so ymmv. (20-30 minute read)
Surveys suggest many single people have given up or aren't trying.
What is the right mindset approach for dating?
Is it really true that dating today is harder than before?
What qualities to look for? (character > financial > looks)?
How are couples actually meeting?
The DateMe Document.
Be prepared to be informed enlightened, outraged, soothed.
Surveys suggest many single people have given up or aren't trying.
What is the right mindset approach for dating?
Is it really true that dating today is harder than before?
What qualities to look for? (character > financial > looks)?
How are couples actually meeting?
The DateMe Document.
Be prepared to be informed enlightened, outraged, soothed.
not to mention a healthy anecdotal dose of "blame lefty feminism run amuck" wedged into the middle
posted by daisystomper at 8:39 AM on August 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by daisystomper at 8:39 AM on August 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
Also very little there about economics, although much has been made in recent years about single men's also increasingly declining labor participation rate.
posted by AndrewInDC at 8:48 AM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by AndrewInDC at 8:48 AM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
Uhh, am I missing the potential for the rather steep 2012 to 2021 decline in single women in their early 20s (62% to 34%) relative to men (59% to 57%) to be at least partially explained by women dating each other (more openly)?
Not just older men with money who haven't fallen into self-defeating wokeism, or NEETitude, or whatever the hell this article is trying to signal?
Here's the only occurrence of the word 'lesbian' in the article:
Visakan Veerasamy: love this: awkward shy rejection-sensitive pimply Asian guy asked 100 girls out on a date. 19 said yes! 10 were lesbian. Concludes that he got over his fear of rejection in a single day.
The world 'gay' doesn't appear at all.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:57 AM on August 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
Not just older men with money who haven't fallen into self-defeating wokeism, or NEETitude, or whatever the hell this article is trying to signal?
Here's the only occurrence of the word 'lesbian' in the article:
Visakan Veerasamy: love this: awkward shy rejection-sensitive pimply Asian guy asked 100 girls out on a date. 19 said yes! 10 were lesbian. Concludes that he got over his fear of rejection in a single day.
The world 'gay' doesn't appear at all.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:57 AM on August 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
TFA:
My heart sinks that we are continuing to do pairwise RLHF rather than trying to collect richer data. I do get that people are lazy, but seriously, come on, you are leaving such a huge percentage of the information on the table when you do that. LLMs can understand language and everything.
Wow! And everything? That's a lot! How big's the table?
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:04 AM on August 30, 2023
My heart sinks that we are continuing to do pairwise RLHF rather than trying to collect richer data. I do get that people are lazy, but seriously, come on, you are leaving such a huge percentage of the information on the table when you do that. LLMs can understand language and everything.
Wow! And everything? That's a lot! How big's the table?
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:04 AM on August 30, 2023
It seems like a lot of pointless anecdotal griping, am I missing something here?
My personal theory is that success on apps has lots to do w age.
20s; more casual, but more angsty, no one knows who they are yet.
30s-40s: scarce because lots of folks are married and raising kids.
50s: more plentiful because more people have left their first marriages/kids are nearly grown.
posted by emjaybee at 9:17 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
My personal theory is that success on apps has lots to do w age.
20s; more casual, but more angsty, no one knows who they are yet.
30s-40s: scarce because lots of folks are married and raising kids.
50s: more plentiful because more people have left their first marriages/kids are nearly grown.
posted by emjaybee at 9:17 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
yeah.... The more I learn about McKinsey, the more likely I am to immediately ignore anything thats based on it's "research." This feels about as insightful as something cobbled together by a econ major during his summer internship after he got a buddy at Match.com to email over a bunch of excels.
posted by EllaEm at 9:20 AM on August 30, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by EllaEm at 9:20 AM on August 30, 2023 [16 favorites]
I'll start dating again when asshole is finally released as a gender so that I can find my people more easily.
Not soothed.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 9:29 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Not soothed.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 9:29 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Some interesting stuff - fewer people use apps than I thought, fewer people want monogamy. I seem to run in circles where everyone uses apps and a large number of people are non-monogamous, but again, this is not broken out by sexuality.
I admit that this is probably age talking, but I cannot see myself dating anyone, ever, who used the phrase "body count" to describe how many people they'd hooked up with. Never mind if they actually thought that this number meant very much. (some of the advice quoted towards the end).
The article has an oddly mechanical approach, on the whole, that I would not find very congenial were I looking to date. I mean, I'm not looking to date a product category, I'm looking to date an individual human.
posted by Frowner at 10:16 AM on August 30, 2023 [11 favorites]
I admit that this is probably age talking, but I cannot see myself dating anyone, ever, who used the phrase "body count" to describe how many people they'd hooked up with. Never mind if they actually thought that this number meant very much. (some of the advice quoted towards the end).
The article has an oddly mechanical approach, on the whole, that I would not find very congenial were I looking to date. I mean, I'm not looking to date a product category, I'm looking to date an individual human.
posted by Frowner at 10:16 AM on August 30, 2023 [11 favorites]
Whoops, more people want monogamy than I thought.
posted by Frowner at 10:19 AM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 10:19 AM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I hated everything about this, from the fake-ass big-data approach to the Bay Area effective altruism Soylent transhumanism bro affect, to the selection of equally odious crypto twitter Musk fanboy dead-enders brought in as vox-pops, to the unexamined assumptions lurking behind every statement. Cripes.
posted by derrinyet at 10:28 AM on August 30, 2023 [27 favorites]
posted by derrinyet at 10:28 AM on August 30, 2023 [27 favorites]
I'm fond of the fellow who 'swiped right' over 40 thousand times, and then discovered his first message got ignored 80%. Or were what he considered a bot. My man, the bot is you.
posted by zenon at 10:30 AM on August 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by zenon at 10:30 AM on August 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
Also, I can't IMAGINE why dating's gone downwards since 2019. Gosh. It's almost like something happened to make dating more fraught! What could it POSSIBLY have been?Especially galling because the author (ex-professional-“Magic: The Gathering”-player Zvi Moshowitz) just spent like two years being an internet COVID expert before pivoting to being an internet AI expert about a year ago.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:42 AM on August 30, 2023 [13 favorites]
For a long-form piece on human relationships I really didn't get the sense that anyone involved, quoted, or studied has ever had a face-to-face conversation with a flesh-and-blood human being.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:47 AM on August 30, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:47 AM on August 30, 2023 [12 favorites]
I was trying to pin down what different worlds the writer and I live in - like why exactly his read on the data was ringing false, then he passed along the suggestion to hang around in Rationalist Twitter for dates and I sort of gave up. Which is maybe an illustration of the whole phenomenon? I don't know.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 11:11 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 11:11 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
He may have reached it through a tortuously circuitous route so that he could tell himself his conclusions are "data-driven" despite the sheer amount of Just So Stories he made up to get there, but one of the chief conclusions he ultimately reached was "the best dating app ever was OkCupid and somebody should bring it back exactly how it used to be" which I find it hard to disagree with.
posted by mstokes650 at 12:02 PM on August 30, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by mstokes650 at 12:02 PM on August 30, 2023 [12 favorites]
So for reasons no one understands one of the subreddits I use gets a ton of advice requests from young men. The "You're Single Because You're Not Even Trying" absolutely applies to a large fraction of them. There are just so many who are convinced they're too ugly or have some intangible flaw, but are just making no active attempt to find a partner at all. The stats in the article seem correct on that front. Not sure how relevant any of this is to the Metafilter demographic though.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:13 PM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:13 PM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
Every single thing I read about OLD sounds so fucking grim; I'm so glad I missed all that trash.
To the author of the piece: As to why you're still single, maybe it's because you're reading about dating data instead of you know, going out on actual dates?
posted by smcdow at 12:14 PM on August 30, 2023
To the author of the piece: As to why you're still single, maybe it's because you're reading about dating data instead of you know, going out on actual dates?
posted by smcdow at 12:14 PM on August 30, 2023
As to why you're still single, maybe it's because you're reading about dating data instead of you know, going out on actual dates?
Idk man, I love dating and I love the meta dating inside baseball stuff about dating maybe even more. Probably why I've become such a heavy user of the green over the years. It's fascinating. People are literally SO BAD at dating: why? how? This article wasn't great but I always like to peek into what other people are doing to thwart their own happiness.
I like this stuff so much I've often considered being a dating coach, or maybe even making my own I'm not like other dating apps I'm different dating app.
posted by phunniemee at 12:36 PM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
Idk man, I love dating and I love the meta dating inside baseball stuff about dating maybe even more. Probably why I've become such a heavy user of the green over the years. It's fascinating. People are literally SO BAD at dating: why? how? This article wasn't great but I always like to peek into what other people are doing to thwart their own happiness.
I like this stuff so much I've often considered being a dating coach, or maybe even making my own I'm not like other dating apps I'm different dating app.
posted by phunniemee at 12:36 PM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
after he got a buddy at Match.com to email over a bunch of excels.
Or a bunch of incels.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:09 PM on August 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
Or a bunch of incels.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:09 PM on August 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
So I found this article fascinating, there are some things I agree with and some things I think are still imbued with poison, and some things that are just...mixed. I think this article is very clearly about heterosexual men and heterosexual-open-women: he didn't caveat that, but it's clear what he means. I will for shorthand refer to this as h-men and h/o-women so I'm both not an asshole and not overtyping.
I do agree that we haven't really transitioned well from kind of the...what I'll term the meat grinder era of dating to the respectful era of dating, and I think this is in part because we kind of skipped to the end and didn't actually do the emotional training along the way. Heterosexual men have learned that they can't assume yes anymore, but many of them have not yet learned the emotional competency to be able to read nonverbal signals that indicate interest, and so they just kind of mutely hang around waiting for h/o women to make the first move and do all the work. This is...not always attractive to h/o women who then foretell a lifetime of doing all the work.
I agree that old OKCupid as it was, was the best and scarily accurate. It once made a world 98% match with one of my top three ex boyfriends. We had not interacted on the internet before.
I agree that h/o women largely look for people who are at least their equal in education, though would disagree that education needs to be formal or that it is a bad thing. I also disagree that h/o women are looking for people who earn above them as some sort of innate thing; where it occurs, I think it's more of a counter-reaction to h-men's frequent reactions of insecurity to h/o women who earn more than they do.
I think in terms of the monogamy/nonmonogamy - I think people are kind of figuring these things out. I think in my experience there was a huge burst of nonmonogamy in the early 2000s as everyone realized it was possible, and people are kind of realizing whether or not it worked for them. I was someone who tried it and found it only worked for me for casual relationships and didn't work for me when I was involved in serious relationships. Leaving anything else aside, it's so much work!
I really strongly disagree with his implication that h/o women with children or a high "body count" should be considered as undateable, and I think that may also be part of what is causing the problem - if we are seeing a time when it is both considered more acceptable to be a single parent and also less acceptable to date a single parent, then that's a wild situation.
I'm horrified by those numbers of how many people are going on less than one first date a year though. Absolutely horrified. If those are real statistics....I don't know what to make of that.
posted by corb at 1:28 PM on August 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
I do agree that we haven't really transitioned well from kind of the...what I'll term the meat grinder era of dating to the respectful era of dating, and I think this is in part because we kind of skipped to the end and didn't actually do the emotional training along the way. Heterosexual men have learned that they can't assume yes anymore, but many of them have not yet learned the emotional competency to be able to read nonverbal signals that indicate interest, and so they just kind of mutely hang around waiting for h/o women to make the first move and do all the work. This is...not always attractive to h/o women who then foretell a lifetime of doing all the work.
I agree that old OKCupid as it was, was the best and scarily accurate. It once made a world 98% match with one of my top three ex boyfriends. We had not interacted on the internet before.
I agree that h/o women largely look for people who are at least their equal in education, though would disagree that education needs to be formal or that it is a bad thing. I also disagree that h/o women are looking for people who earn above them as some sort of innate thing; where it occurs, I think it's more of a counter-reaction to h-men's frequent reactions of insecurity to h/o women who earn more than they do.
I think in terms of the monogamy/nonmonogamy - I think people are kind of figuring these things out. I think in my experience there was a huge burst of nonmonogamy in the early 2000s as everyone realized it was possible, and people are kind of realizing whether or not it worked for them. I was someone who tried it and found it only worked for me for casual relationships and didn't work for me when I was involved in serious relationships. Leaving anything else aside, it's so much work!
I really strongly disagree with his implication that h/o women with children or a high "body count" should be considered as undateable, and I think that may also be part of what is causing the problem - if we are seeing a time when it is both considered more acceptable to be a single parent and also less acceptable to date a single parent, then that's a wild situation.
I'm horrified by those numbers of how many people are going on less than one first date a year though. Absolutely horrified. If those are real statistics....I don't know what to make of that.
posted by corb at 1:28 PM on August 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
To the author of the piece: As to why you're still single, maybe it's because you're reading about dating data instead of you know, going out on actual dates?
He's married and has 3 kids.
posted by Urtylug at 1:33 PM on August 30, 2023
He's married and has 3 kids.
posted by Urtylug at 1:33 PM on August 30, 2023
Gave up on dating. Trying to figure out why it wasn’t working — that way madness lies.
Aside from going through some very-real withdrawal after deleting the app, it’s gone well. No more worry, no more fretting, and a lot less work. And there’s something empowering in thinking that I’m alone because that’s what I’ve chosen for myself as opposed to it being what others have chosen for me.
posted by Capt. Renault at 1:46 PM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
Aside from going through some very-real withdrawal after deleting the app, it’s gone well. No more worry, no more fretting, and a lot less work. And there’s something empowering in thinking that I’m alone because that’s what I’ve chosen for myself as opposed to it being what others have chosen for me.
posted by Capt. Renault at 1:46 PM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
phunniemee, you should absolutely make a new dating app!
posted by eviemath at 1:53 PM on August 30, 2023
posted by eviemath at 1:53 PM on August 30, 2023
I think some of it is useful - first the advice to 'join a group and get real friends - and find someone to date in that group of real friends' is only 20%, so that's bad advice, or at best incomplete. 'Volunteering' is even worse. 2%. Don't volunteer to find a date is good advice. Volunteer to help someone else.
You have to combine at least 2-3 things to get even to 50%, like 'date at work' and 'date online'.
I really strongly disagree with his implication that h/o women with children or a high "body count" should be considered as undateable,
Me too, but that was just one quoted fool. Almost as 'foolish' as the "I'm telling you I'm going to an orgy casually but don't ask if you can go with me" wierdo.
People are literally SO BAD at dating: why? how? This article wasn't great but I always like to peek into what other people are doing to thwart their own happiness.
Look at online dating, 39% of meetups, and then the stat than 69% didn't use a dating site in the past year. Easy to determine that equals 0 dates for most people.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:02 PM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
You have to combine at least 2-3 things to get even to 50%, like 'date at work' and 'date online'.
I really strongly disagree with his implication that h/o women with children or a high "body count" should be considered as undateable,
Me too, but that was just one quoted fool. Almost as 'foolish' as the "I'm telling you I'm going to an orgy casually but don't ask if you can go with me" wierdo.
People are literally SO BAD at dating: why? how? This article wasn't great but I always like to peek into what other people are doing to thwart their own happiness.
Look at online dating, 39% of meetups, and then the stat than 69% didn't use a dating site in the past year. Easy to determine that equals 0 dates for most people.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:02 PM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
even making my own I'm not like other dating apps I'm different dating app
pick.me :P
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:26 PM on August 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
pick.me :P
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:26 PM on August 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
wow is this written by an instantly clockable kind of guy, and mostly about those kinds of guys, with an entirely that-kind-of-guy approach.
posted by danhon at 2:39 PM on August 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by danhon at 2:39 PM on August 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
I (married man, mid-50s) enjoy the many vicarious online dating experiences our single and divorced friends have. but oh lawd, would I not want to be doing that. Were my wife to disappear in a puff of smoke, I cringe at the thought of having to put together a profile and... swipe, or whatever one does. Our straight guy friends are all like "it's nothing but single moms" and straight women friends are like "it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland of Republicans and momma's boys", and I'm like could I live on one income? I could try.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 3:49 PM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 3:49 PM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
I can't read this without laughing at the murderer's row of Substack cranks, right-wing Nu-Twitter blue checks, and "tech" kooks cited in all seriousness as authorities on the statistics of dating and the methods of sexual and romantic success. It's done with such a light touch, as though no one would ever question, for instance, that sexual-harassment laws and norms against sexual harassment have gone too far, or that liberalism makes men too fearful to approach women.
Which is to say that it's interesting to get out of my own echo chamber and have a listen to someone else's, even if I find the sound cacophonous and silly. I don't know the writer's previous work, though I could make some educated guesses about it based on what I see here.
Once you suppress your involuntary smirk at seeing Aella_Girl, Freddie deBoer, Noahpinion, Elon Musk, Slate Star Codex, and various sanitized Manosphere types cited in all seriousness, and once you skip over the conjectures about the potential of AI to revolutionize filtration by attractiveness and IQ, you can find some sound advice in there. Web developers should clone the old OKCupid. Men looking to get a date should take the risk and make an advance once in a while, and if rejected, they should accept it. You do miss 100% of the shots you don't take. But this piece, like pretty much every post about how lonely men ought to find love and companionship, has a lot of cruft in it.
On the other hand, I touch receipts, so I'm already doing something badly wrong, and you probably shouldn't listen to me, either.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:38 PM on August 30, 2023 [16 favorites]
Which is to say that it's interesting to get out of my own echo chamber and have a listen to someone else's, even if I find the sound cacophonous and silly. I don't know the writer's previous work, though I could make some educated guesses about it based on what I see here.
Once you suppress your involuntary smirk at seeing Aella_Girl, Freddie deBoer, Noahpinion, Elon Musk, Slate Star Codex, and various sanitized Manosphere types cited in all seriousness, and once you skip over the conjectures about the potential of AI to revolutionize filtration by attractiveness and IQ, you can find some sound advice in there. Web developers should clone the old OKCupid. Men looking to get a date should take the risk and make an advance once in a while, and if rejected, they should accept it. You do miss 100% of the shots you don't take. But this piece, like pretty much every post about how lonely men ought to find love and companionship, has a lot of cruft in it.
On the other hand, I touch receipts, so I'm already doing something badly wrong, and you probably shouldn't listen to me, either.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:38 PM on August 30, 2023 [16 favorites]
after he got a buddy at Match.com to email over a bunch of excels.
Or a bunch of incels.
Is an excel an incel who finally got laid?
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:15 PM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Or a bunch of incels.
Is an excel an incel who finally got laid?
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:15 PM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
It was honestly kind of hard to follow this article. I felt like I was reading only one side of a two sided conversation. It seemed like the author would advance theses then drop them a few paragraphs later without following up. Also, while some studies were cited, a lot of the arguments seemed to be based on personal opinion, ancedotes, or opinions of weird twitter personalities. Personally, I don't think I've ever talked to someone about an orgy that person was about to attend let alone thought about how to score an invite to said orgy.
Also, though not explicity stated, the article seemed primarily aimed at men. In a wierd way, it seemed like a mirror image of this book, which although not explicitly stated, seemed primarily aimed at woman and gay men. The book was written by a "data scientist" employed by a popular dating site. It's weird not to acknowledge such divergences.
Personally, I'm interested in this topic for highly selfish reasons, but I didn't feel like I got a lot from it. Asking people out more is probably good advice; although, I think context matters. I believe the ancedote he cited about the guy who asked 100 woman out occured on a college campus. I wouldn't try to replicate at the local supermarket. Really, it can seem like online dating is the only venue to meet people anymore outside bars, which sucks. The apps are created to make money, not find your "perfect match", if such a thing is even possible.
That being said, I second the idea that I wish OKCUPID would come back or be recreated (I know from unforttunate experience it exists in zombie form after being devoured by Match group).
posted by eagles123 at 7:16 PM on August 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Also, though not explicity stated, the article seemed primarily aimed at men. In a wierd way, it seemed like a mirror image of this book, which although not explicitly stated, seemed primarily aimed at woman and gay men. The book was written by a "data scientist" employed by a popular dating site. It's weird not to acknowledge such divergences.
Personally, I'm interested in this topic for highly selfish reasons, but I didn't feel like I got a lot from it. Asking people out more is probably good advice; although, I think context matters. I believe the ancedote he cited about the guy who asked 100 woman out occured on a college campus. I wouldn't try to replicate at the local supermarket. Really, it can seem like online dating is the only venue to meet people anymore outside bars, which sucks. The apps are created to make money, not find your "perfect match", if such a thing is even possible.
That being said, I second the idea that I wish OKCUPID would come back or be recreated (I know from unforttunate experience it exists in zombie form after being devoured by Match group).
posted by eagles123 at 7:16 PM on August 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
phunniemee, you should absolutely make a new dating app!
Yes! I'm not even single, and I would totally sign up.
Were my wife to disappear in a puff of smoke, I cringe at the thought of having to put together a profile and... swipe, or whatever one does.
I wonder about this sometimes. All the single actively-dating people I know right now are women I work with, and I love the stories they tell at happy hours, but OMG it doesn't sound easy. On the other hand, the bar is seemingly so low for men in my age group that maybe I'd do just fine. (Do you have a job? Most of your teeth? At least one photo not holding a fish? Good to go!)
posted by Dip Flash at 7:54 PM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yes! I'm not even single, and I would totally sign up.
Were my wife to disappear in a puff of smoke, I cringe at the thought of having to put together a profile and... swipe, or whatever one does.
I wonder about this sometimes. All the single actively-dating people I know right now are women I work with, and I love the stories they tell at happy hours, but OMG it doesn't sound easy. On the other hand, the bar is seemingly so low for men in my age group that maybe I'd do just fine. (Do you have a job? Most of your teeth? At least one photo not holding a fish? Good to go!)
posted by Dip Flash at 7:54 PM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Old OkCupid, before Match destroyed it, was the last useful online dating website, especially in the pre-mobile era. You could browse well-written profiles, send specific targeted messages to people you found compatible, and you didn't have to wait for them to swipe to even send a message.
Now, it's screaming into a void hoping the slot machine pays out (it won't), and once generative AI finishes proliferating, it will be rendered even more useless.
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 8:36 PM on August 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
Now, it's screaming into a void hoping the slot machine pays out (it won't), and once generative AI finishes proliferating, it will be rendered even more useless.
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 8:36 PM on August 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
From the linked "Date Me Doc" directory:
The practice of making and sharing Date Me Docs spread within tech, rationalist, and effective altruism communities
A trio of absolutely cursed groups. Any straight man that wants to throw a document into that pile of third-rate bitcoin scammers, Twitter blue checks, soulless Samuel Bankman-Fried acolytes, and job-killing generative AI thieves is perfectly in their rights to waste their time doing so - there are hardly any eligible women in there anyway.
Effective altruism, a selfish justification for pillaging as much money as you can so that you can play God with the shreds of charity you put out, might be the least attractive belief I have a reasonable chance of encountering. (I try not to run in far-right circles.)
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 9:12 PM on August 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
The practice of making and sharing Date Me Docs spread within tech, rationalist, and effective altruism communities
A trio of absolutely cursed groups. Any straight man that wants to throw a document into that pile of third-rate bitcoin scammers, Twitter blue checks, soulless Samuel Bankman-Fried acolytes, and job-killing generative AI thieves is perfectly in their rights to waste their time doing so - there are hardly any eligible women in there anyway.
Effective altruism, a selfish justification for pillaging as much money as you can so that you can play God with the shreds of charity you put out, might be the least attractive belief I have a reasonable chance of encountering. (I try not to run in far-right circles.)
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 9:12 PM on August 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
I think he's right. People are not dating because... they aren't motivated enough to get out there and date.
Dating is a cultural practice, and like a lot of cultural practices, perhaps this one has just about expired. Dating as a practice only started around the Turn of the Century (1900) when women began to seek work outside of the home. Prior to that if you were a man who wanted to find a partner, you pretty much had to go to the woman's home and meet her family because there weren't a lot of places you could meet up with her outside of the home. You could meet her at a community event, like church, or a town picnic, but she would likely show up with her family and leave with them and you never got to actually be alone. If you took her out somewhere in public before the practice of dating became entrenched, you actually ran the risk of having her arrested for prostitution. There was a time when the only woman you could take to a restaurant or a theater was a family member. The closest thing to dating back then was asking your friends to introduce you to some nice guys (or women). If they were able to oblige you'd end up meeting at your friends' home.
The custom of dating was fueled by the desire to get married. Women's wages were so bad they faced a lonely life of poverty, even if those wages were an enormous aid to giving her some economic power. Factory girls and shop girls would put money by for when they got married. Working men were delighted to marry a factory girl because her savings might mean being able to married a few years earlier. Her savings could likely pay for important things like a stove, or the furniture, or her own doctors bills when she gave birth. Girls and women who lived at home and who dated were copying the courtship rituals that had originated to help working women find partners.
In the early days, a guy who dated and never proposed to any of the girls he went out with was considered a user. A woman who dated and wasn't trying to find a husband was considered immoral. In the 1920's dating just exploded as a common cultural practice, but everyone was deeply concerned that women who went on dates might be either being taken advantage of by men who didn't respect them, or they might be gold diggers, leading men on to get them to spend money on them.
Plenty of the couples who dated did have sex - enough that the pulpit thundered with denouncements of dating as the path to hell - but the practice came in as a way for people to find marriage partners when the didn't have a family or a community that would find partners for them. An enormous number of them did not have sex - and the worse the economic times, the fewer the percentage of dating couples who were sexually active. People abstained to avoid the disaster of a pregnancy. Only after birth control became easily available did dating become synonymous with having sex. In a lot of places that was not before the 1960's or even the 1970's.
Dating requires having a place to go out to. The idea behind dating is that by meeting in a public place it didn't matter if you didn't have chaperones. You could safely get to know someone without risk of harm, if the person you went out with turned out to be out to exploit you. Dating meant you could be yourself and you could get to know them without having your family interfere with your choice. No kid sister sitting in the shrubs and giggling when you had some supposedly solitary time sitting on the porch with your prospective partner, no need to caution a stranger that grandmother was going to open a beer bottle with her teeth, or that they had to be ready for a catchism on the Methodist Creed. No pretending you went to church when you didn't, you could look for someone who really shared your values.
But who goes out to the movies now? The days when a sizeable proportion of the public took in a movie at the cinema once a week are long gone. How many people go down the pub for a pint every evening? A live show costs as much as a day's wages for most people. For some people it can add up to a week's wages. People aren't going out the same way they used to. Taking someone out is a much bigger deal than it used to be, for people with middle to lower incomes. If want entertainment it's SO much easier and cheaper to just bring it up on your phone and watch it on video. But are you going to invite a total stranger to your house to watch alongside you?
One thing to keep in mind that people don't get married either when economic times are bad. The marriage rate in the United States fell a staggering 22 percent between the years of 1929 to 1933. It shot back up through the fifties and started to drop again steadily as real incomes dropped in the seventies. Marriage rates and real income rates are both chugging steadily downward.
Nearly 3/4s of people between 18 and 35 have never been married. The reasons might be economic, even thought we are hearing nothing about them complaining that they can't afford to get married. They don't see their inability to find a permanent partner as a crisis. Oh there are incels whinging about about not being able to land a partner, and complaining that only rich Chads land dates, but the reasons they can't find partners are so abundantly clear to everyone else, that they need to be in their own echo-chamber to get any sympathy. People now aren't dating or getting married because they don't want to enough to even complain about ending up single.
There isn't a counter pool of young woman complaining that they can't find decent men to marry. This is because they can find men to go out with, but they don't see an economic benefit to a permanent partner relationship. Dating just ends up being a bunch of work, and they drop dating the way they drop an old hobby they don't have time for. There's a bunch of young women muttering that they looked into getting a partner and decided to get a cat instead. They used to go to concerts, or they used to stay up late at night drawing manga, or they used to date. But now they just stay home and get to bed early so that they can get enough sleep to get up in time for work. They may not be entirely satisfied to watch videos on their couch with the cat beside them, but True Love or Happily Ever After are the same kind of wish fulfillment fantasies as A Good Union Job, Winning the Lottery or Owning My Own Home.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:18 PM on August 30, 2023 [29 favorites]
Dating is a cultural practice, and like a lot of cultural practices, perhaps this one has just about expired. Dating as a practice only started around the Turn of the Century (1900) when women began to seek work outside of the home. Prior to that if you were a man who wanted to find a partner, you pretty much had to go to the woman's home and meet her family because there weren't a lot of places you could meet up with her outside of the home. You could meet her at a community event, like church, or a town picnic, but she would likely show up with her family and leave with them and you never got to actually be alone. If you took her out somewhere in public before the practice of dating became entrenched, you actually ran the risk of having her arrested for prostitution. There was a time when the only woman you could take to a restaurant or a theater was a family member. The closest thing to dating back then was asking your friends to introduce you to some nice guys (or women). If they were able to oblige you'd end up meeting at your friends' home.
The custom of dating was fueled by the desire to get married. Women's wages were so bad they faced a lonely life of poverty, even if those wages were an enormous aid to giving her some economic power. Factory girls and shop girls would put money by for when they got married. Working men were delighted to marry a factory girl because her savings might mean being able to married a few years earlier. Her savings could likely pay for important things like a stove, or the furniture, or her own doctors bills when she gave birth. Girls and women who lived at home and who dated were copying the courtship rituals that had originated to help working women find partners.
In the early days, a guy who dated and never proposed to any of the girls he went out with was considered a user. A woman who dated and wasn't trying to find a husband was considered immoral. In the 1920's dating just exploded as a common cultural practice, but everyone was deeply concerned that women who went on dates might be either being taken advantage of by men who didn't respect them, or they might be gold diggers, leading men on to get them to spend money on them.
Plenty of the couples who dated did have sex - enough that the pulpit thundered with denouncements of dating as the path to hell - but the practice came in as a way for people to find marriage partners when the didn't have a family or a community that would find partners for them. An enormous number of them did not have sex - and the worse the economic times, the fewer the percentage of dating couples who were sexually active. People abstained to avoid the disaster of a pregnancy. Only after birth control became easily available did dating become synonymous with having sex. In a lot of places that was not before the 1960's or even the 1970's.
Dating requires having a place to go out to. The idea behind dating is that by meeting in a public place it didn't matter if you didn't have chaperones. You could safely get to know someone without risk of harm, if the person you went out with turned out to be out to exploit you. Dating meant you could be yourself and you could get to know them without having your family interfere with your choice. No kid sister sitting in the shrubs and giggling when you had some supposedly solitary time sitting on the porch with your prospective partner, no need to caution a stranger that grandmother was going to open a beer bottle with her teeth, or that they had to be ready for a catchism on the Methodist Creed. No pretending you went to church when you didn't, you could look for someone who really shared your values.
But who goes out to the movies now? The days when a sizeable proportion of the public took in a movie at the cinema once a week are long gone. How many people go down the pub for a pint every evening? A live show costs as much as a day's wages for most people. For some people it can add up to a week's wages. People aren't going out the same way they used to. Taking someone out is a much bigger deal than it used to be, for people with middle to lower incomes. If want entertainment it's SO much easier and cheaper to just bring it up on your phone and watch it on video. But are you going to invite a total stranger to your house to watch alongside you?
One thing to keep in mind that people don't get married either when economic times are bad. The marriage rate in the United States fell a staggering 22 percent between the years of 1929 to 1933. It shot back up through the fifties and started to drop again steadily as real incomes dropped in the seventies. Marriage rates and real income rates are both chugging steadily downward.
Nearly 3/4s of people between 18 and 35 have never been married. The reasons might be economic, even thought we are hearing nothing about them complaining that they can't afford to get married. They don't see their inability to find a permanent partner as a crisis. Oh there are incels whinging about about not being able to land a partner, and complaining that only rich Chads land dates, but the reasons they can't find partners are so abundantly clear to everyone else, that they need to be in their own echo-chamber to get any sympathy. People now aren't dating or getting married because they don't want to enough to even complain about ending up single.
There isn't a counter pool of young woman complaining that they can't find decent men to marry. This is because they can find men to go out with, but they don't see an economic benefit to a permanent partner relationship. Dating just ends up being a bunch of work, and they drop dating the way they drop an old hobby they don't have time for. There's a bunch of young women muttering that they looked into getting a partner and decided to get a cat instead. They used to go to concerts, or they used to stay up late at night drawing manga, or they used to date. But now they just stay home and get to bed early so that they can get enough sleep to get up in time for work. They may not be entirely satisfied to watch videos on their couch with the cat beside them, but True Love or Happily Ever After are the same kind of wish fulfillment fantasies as A Good Union Job, Winning the Lottery or Owning My Own Home.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:18 PM on August 30, 2023 [29 favorites]
The reason dating sucks is because good people don't stay in the dating pool long, while bad ones are always jumping back into the pool. Usually the avoidants who run in and out of relationships willy nilly. You're looking for a needle in a haystack of shitty dudes. Once I read that in some book on attachment, I was all, "welp, that explains everything." You're far more likely to meet terrible people while consciously trying to date because there's so many more of them deliberately trying to date.
I'd love to meet someone while at the theater. I keep trying, y'all, but they're either taken, gay, or find me repulsive. I hang out in bars and see attractive guys, but see above. I get the point of supposedly looking for people who are announcing that they are single and want to date, but see above paragraph commentary as to how that goes.
I think you get lucky or you don't and I'm not going to get lucky.
phunniemee, I'll put in my request for a "weirdos who wanna date other weirdos" app, please. I'm seriously thinking that the whole "date me doc" thing is about the only way I could stand that sort of shit, even though it looks like most of those people are SF tech bros and I live far enough away for them to probably not want to date me (or to be fair, vice versa). But I do like the idea of "welp, this is who I am, take it or leave it, here's the plusses and minusses" that the date me doc does. I have occasionally thought about setting one up (well, I did write one, but it's not public) and then having a friend be the one who reads the emails it gets and then she can vet whether or not to pass it on or just plain filter the shitty people so they don't lodge in my brain. I have one friend and her husband who would probably be up for that. But that probably won't work, like nothing works, so I haven't tried it.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:30 PM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'd love to meet someone while at the theater. I keep trying, y'all, but they're either taken, gay, or find me repulsive. I hang out in bars and see attractive guys, but see above. I get the point of supposedly looking for people who are announcing that they are single and want to date, but see above paragraph commentary as to how that goes.
I think you get lucky or you don't and I'm not going to get lucky.
phunniemee, I'll put in my request for a "weirdos who wanna date other weirdos" app, please. I'm seriously thinking that the whole "date me doc" thing is about the only way I could stand that sort of shit, even though it looks like most of those people are SF tech bros and I live far enough away for them to probably not want to date me (or to be fair, vice versa). But I do like the idea of "welp, this is who I am, take it or leave it, here's the plusses and minusses" that the date me doc does. I have occasionally thought about setting one up (well, I did write one, but it's not public) and then having a friend be the one who reads the emails it gets and then she can vet whether or not to pass it on or just plain filter the shitty people so they don't lodge in my brain. I have one friend and her husband who would probably be up for that. But that probably won't work, like nothing works, so I haven't tried it.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:30 PM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
after he got a buddy at Match.com to email over a bunch of excels.
Or a bunch of incels.
Is an excel an incel who finally got laid?
No, but they both assume that everything's a date
posted by Ned G at 6:26 AM on August 31, 2023 [34 favorites]
Or a bunch of incels.
Is an excel an incel who finally got laid?
No, but they both assume that everything's a date
posted by Ned G at 6:26 AM on August 31, 2023 [34 favorites]
I nominate Ned G for one-liner of the decade.
posted by Dysk at 6:59 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 6:59 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
Dating is a cultural practice, and like a lot of cultural practices, perhaps this one has just about expired. Dating as a practice only started around the Turn of the Century (1900) when women began to seek work outside of the home. Prior to that if you were a man who wanted to find a partner, you pretty much had to go to the woman's home and meet her family because there weren't a lot of places you could meet up with her outside of the home.
I mean come on now. Just because in the past a man met a womans' family fairly quickly doesn't mean that nobody went on 'dates' before marrying until the 1900s. The lack of telephone, or other distance communications, is the reason for that, and that that more people lived with their extended family for longer. The link is a description of 'dating' in France in the 1700s, and is very similar to today, in too many ways.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:31 AM on August 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
I mean come on now. Just because in the past a man met a womans' family fairly quickly doesn't mean that nobody went on 'dates' before marrying until the 1900s. The lack of telephone, or other distance communications, is the reason for that, and that that more people lived with their extended family for longer. The link is a description of 'dating' in France in the 1700s, and is very similar to today, in too many ways.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:31 AM on August 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
On the other hand, the bar is seemingly so low for men in my age group that maybe I'd do just fine...
I mentioned posting this to my wife, who laughed and counted on her fingers. "Woman A, B, C, D... there might be one other, have all separately told me that were I to die or divorce you, they'd show up and try to be your new wife." I'm like first of all that's a real crass thing to say to someone's spouse, and secondly that there are other compelling reasons all those women are single, but yeah, the bar appears to be waaaay lower for men than for women. Straight ones, at least: I don't know enough about middle-aged gay dating culture to formulate an informed opinion.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:32 AM on August 31, 2023
I mentioned posting this to my wife, who laughed and counted on her fingers. "Woman A, B, C, D... there might be one other, have all separately told me that were I to die or divorce you, they'd show up and try to be your new wife." I'm like first of all that's a real crass thing to say to someone's spouse, and secondly that there are other compelling reasons all those women are single, but yeah, the bar appears to be waaaay lower for men than for women. Straight ones, at least: I don't know enough about middle-aged gay dating culture to formulate an informed opinion.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:32 AM on August 31, 2023
I'll put in my request for a "weirdos who wanna date other weirdos" app, please
So, MeFi Dating? I bet it'd be at least as popular as Jobs and IRL, and at least as good at matching as OKC, with the bonus that you don't have to answer a ton of questions, you can let your post and comment history speak for itself.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 7:38 AM on August 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
So, MeFi Dating? I bet it'd be at least as popular as Jobs and IRL, and at least as good at matching as OKC, with the bonus that you don't have to answer a ton of questions, you can let your post and comment history speak for itself.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 7:38 AM on August 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
What's broken with OKC now, exactly? Yeah you can swipe on there but the quizzes and %s and messaging are still there. You can absolutely send a message without matching first, to the point that I've seen some people adding "can't see likes, send a message" line to their profiles.
posted by coolname at 8:31 AM on August 31, 2023
posted by coolname at 8:31 AM on August 31, 2023
Heterosexual men have learned that they can't assume yes anymore, but many of them have not yet learned the emotional competency to be able to read nonverbal signals that indicate interest, and so they just kind of mutely hang around waiting for h/o women to make the first move and do all the work.
"Had this been an actual date, you would have been instructed where to go."
posted by AndrewInDC at 10:16 AM on August 31, 2023
"Had this been an actual date, you would have been instructed where to go."
posted by AndrewInDC at 10:16 AM on August 31, 2023
you don't have to answer a ton of questions, you can let your post and comment history speak for itselfImmediately and intensely regrets venting the past decade-and-a-bit's worth of personal and professional angst on AskMe
posted by btfreek at 12:36 PM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
I feel like I'm losing my mind whenever there's a discussion about the woes of modern dating, because no one talks about it, but it just seems so obvious to me that one of the big reasons it's so hard is because...finding true love is hard!!!! For most of human history, romantic love simply was not an expected part of marriage. It was nice if you had it, but really was not a requirement at all for two people to be considered suitable marriage partners. Marriage was an economic and social institution; you found someone respectable from a good family who seemed like they'd be a reasonably agreeable "co-worker" to toil away with in the factory called "the family" and you married them. And that was that.
Most of us today are looking for love, and I feel like we just have to accept that this is an inherently difficult, troublesome journey. Meeting someone who lights up your life, who truly understands you, who you vibe with or whatever, that's simply rare. But good things are worth fighting for, and finding love requires patience, persistence, and most of all, work. This is why I kind of hate when people complain about modern dating. I feel like they're asking for the moon, and then complaining that the moon is so high up in the sky.
And so, I feel like we're wrongly blaming dating apps by expecting too much from them. Why did we ever think technology would solve the messiness of human social life, as if finding love was like ordering an Uber? I'm no longer single, but I'm one of those freaks who actually really loved dating apps and hookup culture for what they are. Especially as someone who was lonely and isolated, I felt like it was magical that I could just swipe right on someone and then we could become friends, we could fuck, we could become soulmates, the possibilities seemed endless! Dating is good for exploring and learning about who you are, both the pleasure and the suffering that comes with that. Sometimes you find love, sometimes pleasure, sometimes heartbreak, sometimes just lots of surreal, eye-opening late night conversations at a dive bar at 2am. I can see how modern dating can be alienating for people who single-mindedly just want to fast-forward and get to the happily ever after part, but I feel there's something important in the journey it takes to get there.
posted by adso at 12:42 PM on August 31, 2023 [11 favorites]
Most of us today are looking for love, and I feel like we just have to accept that this is an inherently difficult, troublesome journey. Meeting someone who lights up your life, who truly understands you, who you vibe with or whatever, that's simply rare. But good things are worth fighting for, and finding love requires patience, persistence, and most of all, work. This is why I kind of hate when people complain about modern dating. I feel like they're asking for the moon, and then complaining that the moon is so high up in the sky.
And so, I feel like we're wrongly blaming dating apps by expecting too much from them. Why did we ever think technology would solve the messiness of human social life, as if finding love was like ordering an Uber? I'm no longer single, but I'm one of those freaks who actually really loved dating apps and hookup culture for what they are. Especially as someone who was lonely and isolated, I felt like it was magical that I could just swipe right on someone and then we could become friends, we could fuck, we could become soulmates, the possibilities seemed endless! Dating is good for exploring and learning about who you are, both the pleasure and the suffering that comes with that. Sometimes you find love, sometimes pleasure, sometimes heartbreak, sometimes just lots of surreal, eye-opening late night conversations at a dive bar at 2am. I can see how modern dating can be alienating for people who single-mindedly just want to fast-forward and get to the happily ever after part, but I feel there's something important in the journey it takes to get there.
posted by adso at 12:42 PM on August 31, 2023 [11 favorites]
What's broken with OKC now, exactly? Yeah you can swipe on there but the quizzes and %s and messaging are still there.
Okay. So when OKC first started out, the scores were AMAZINGLY accurate as predictive of who you'd actually likely click with as a human being. If you got someone over about an 85%, you would definitely have a good date. The spark might not be there, but you would at least have a fun date, they'd introduce you to some cool quirky music, or a movie or show you'd love. I still listen to a band I was introduced to by a high-80s OKCupid match that I now can't remember the last name of. But also....that applied to the other end of the scale. You could get 30% matches. 0% matches. And those people were uniformly terrible matches you wouldn't get along with. If they sent you messages, you were like "oh yeah those people are awful." If you saw their profiles, you'd be like "yep good job OKC."
But it turns out it's actually not profitable for people to match only with people they think they're likely to have a good time with, in part because of that aspirational dating thing talked about in the article linked above, where people like the idea that no one is "out of their league", and also because it turns out that honest answers make certain kinds of men largely undateable to most of the female population on dating apps. My sneaking suspicion is also because it's too good at pairing and then you leave the dating site if you find someone you actually like.
So all of a sudden - it was definitely an algorithm switch, because I remember around when it happened and it seemed to happen overnight - you didn't get those low matches anymore. Somehow everybody was at least a 60% match with you. And those previous 60% matches? Now they were 80% matches, which meant they were clogging up your actual feeds, and making your 80% matches useless as a predictor, which meant you could no longer guarantee that you would enjoy a date you went on. Which also meant that you had to spend more time on the dating app and less time on actual dates.
I used to, on old OK Cupid, go on dates with maybe 1/3 of the guys I sent messages to or from, or at least have scheduling talks about it. On the newer OKCupid when I got back to it, I maybe went on two dates *total* from there before entirely giving up on the thing and going back to friend networks, which I was lucky enough to be able to use.
posted by corb at 2:01 PM on August 31, 2023 [14 favorites]
Okay. So when OKC first started out, the scores were AMAZINGLY accurate as predictive of who you'd actually likely click with as a human being. If you got someone over about an 85%, you would definitely have a good date. The spark might not be there, but you would at least have a fun date, they'd introduce you to some cool quirky music, or a movie or show you'd love. I still listen to a band I was introduced to by a high-80s OKCupid match that I now can't remember the last name of. But also....that applied to the other end of the scale. You could get 30% matches. 0% matches. And those people were uniformly terrible matches you wouldn't get along with. If they sent you messages, you were like "oh yeah those people are awful." If you saw their profiles, you'd be like "yep good job OKC."
But it turns out it's actually not profitable for people to match only with people they think they're likely to have a good time with, in part because of that aspirational dating thing talked about in the article linked above, where people like the idea that no one is "out of their league", and also because it turns out that honest answers make certain kinds of men largely undateable to most of the female population on dating apps. My sneaking suspicion is also because it's too good at pairing and then you leave the dating site if you find someone you actually like.
So all of a sudden - it was definitely an algorithm switch, because I remember around when it happened and it seemed to happen overnight - you didn't get those low matches anymore. Somehow everybody was at least a 60% match with you. And those previous 60% matches? Now they were 80% matches, which meant they were clogging up your actual feeds, and making your 80% matches useless as a predictor, which meant you could no longer guarantee that you would enjoy a date you went on. Which also meant that you had to spend more time on the dating app and less time on actual dates.
I used to, on old OK Cupid, go on dates with maybe 1/3 of the guys I sent messages to or from, or at least have scheduling talks about it. On the newer OKCupid when I got back to it, I maybe went on two dates *total* from there before entirely giving up on the thing and going back to friend networks, which I was lucky enough to be able to use.
posted by corb at 2:01 PM on August 31, 2023 [14 favorites]
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I think that shellacks over a whole lot of likely differences in experience.
Also, I can't IMAGINE why dating's gone downwards since 2019. Gosh. It's almost like something happened to make dating more fraught! What could it POSSIBLY have been?
posted by humbug at 8:11 AM on August 30, 2023 [11 favorites]