
Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse” - declan
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-culture-end-of-dating
======
pavlov
_But others lament the way the extreme casualness of sex in the age of Tinder
leaves many women feeling de-valued. “It’s rare for a woman of our generation
to meet a man who treats her like a priority instead of an option,” wrote
Erica Gordon on the Gen Y Web site Elite Daily, in 2014._

If a woman doesn't want to feel like an option, shouldn't she stay far away
from Tinder? It's not like there isn't a million other ways for women to meet
men, if she has the slightest inclination.

~~~
Yhippa
I have been thinking about why Tinder seems like a bad deal for my lady
friends. It seems that women used to hold the power in online dating but for
whatever reason Tinder has turned into a site that reduces the cost (time
investment and biological risk) to sleep with strangers. It seems that as
that's picked up the new norm is a "race to the bottom" for women who want
traditional relationships.

~~~
bradford
You say that Tinder reduces the "time investment and biological risk" of
[sex].

I'm not a Tinder user, how does it reduce the biological risk? wouldn't the
risk of an STD be just as great, if not greater, than the status quo?

~~~
Yhippa
Just a theory of mine. I feel that the odds would be greater going to a bar
and doing the usual pick up routine vs vetting them ahead of time.

~~~
fredkbloggs
The only barriers to entry are having a smartphone and being able to push a
couple buttons and swipe. That's not creating an environment that's even
remotely exclusive, and there's zero reason to believe the few people who are
excluded by it are more likely than others to have an STI.

And vetting them how, anyway? You might be able to find out whether someone is
a felon, but I have no idea how I would (legally) find out whether someone has
a transmissible STI.

This seems like a product of some kind of cognitive bias.

~~~
xeromal
It buys you time. I think that's what the OP was saying. You can stare at a
match for as long as you want. In a bar, the deal expires rather quickly.

~~~
tripzilch
But you can't tell if someone has an STD by staring/looking at them, either.

------
hedgew
It's a problem of overvaluation.

Men are less selective about who they have casual sex with, so the most
attractive men consistently and constantly meet up with women they'd never
actually date.

For the few men it works great. For most women it works well for a while, but
ends in disappointment. For the vast majority of men, the deal is the worst;
they are considered unsuitable because women can do better (in 10 minutes, for
10 minutes).

~~~
storgendibal
This. Tinder has tremendously magnified the advantage of the most attractive
men. These same men, in a bar or club, would not spend the effort to pick up a
lot of these women - they would spend their time and energy on the most
attractive women in the bar or club. But with Tinder, there's no effort, so
these women have more and better options, but not for anything serious.

------
michaelchisari
This article makes a big assumption that women only use sex to get to
relationships, and men only use relationships to get to sex.

Plenty of women casually date with no interest in serious relationships, for
the same reasons that men do: They value their independence, they're focused
on their careers, they like to be able to travel or meet new people.

It's antiquated to think that women who go on Tinder are hopelessly pining for
love and commitment, and it's equally antiquated to think that there aren't
men out there who want those exact things, but can't get them because the
women they're dating aren't interested.

In fact, I'll posit that there's a much more positive outlook on this: People
nowadays are much more suspicious of moving too fast, of losing parts of your
identity and independence for the sake of just being in a relationship. The
warning signs are more visible, and we act on them with less hesitation,
instead of letting resentment of a bad situation fester into something awful.
We break up easier, divorce easier, and refuse to live unhappy lives because
the idea of being alone is no longer terrifying.

~~~
sheepmullet
> We break up easier, divorce easier, and refuse to live unhappy lives because
> the idea of being alone is no longer terrifying.

And funnily enough we seem to be a hell of a lot _less_ happy.

~~~
malandrew
That's a broad sweeping generalization. Does it have any basis in fact? Are
people more depressed today than 10-20 years ago, or do we diagnose more
people as depressed because we like labels? And if we actually are more
unhappy today, is that cause attributable to dating issues, or is it
attributable to some other shifts in society like the changing nature of jobs
and financial stability?

~~~
xyzzyz
> That's a broad sweeping generalization. Does it have any basis in fact?

Actually yes, it does -- though only for women. Men are happier than in the
past.

[http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969](http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969)

------
s_baby
>“For young women the problem in navigating sexuality and relationships is
still gender inequality,” says Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology
at the University of Michigan who specializes in sexuality and gender. “Young
women complain that young men still have the power to decide when something is
going to be serious and when something is not—they can go, ‘She’s girlfriend
material, she’s hookup material.’

That's just as much a reflection of what women are looking for. If a woman is
attracted to a guy who is "high value" relative to her then she is attracted
to a guy who has options. She is attracted to guys she has a power
differential with. These women could choose to settle for a relationship where
they have the options and power but that's not what they want.

~~~
chronid
I fear where that reasoning is going.

Should I expect to have no say on how much serious I want a relationship to be
in the future? In the name of "gender equality"? Holy crap.

~~~
s_baby
I don't see how anything like that would become a trend. But I think it makes
for an interesting double standard in how we talk about these issues. If a
sociologist was to describe a scarcity of sex for men as gender inequality she
would be informed that men aren't entitled to sex from anyone and that she is
promoting rape culture. A woman isn't entitled to a relationship from men any
more than men are entitled to sex from women.

------
jrdnmadrid
This article bothers me for several reasons, mostly given the interviews are
all based in NY and are a focal point of the article. As a 24-yr old coming
from outside Portland, OR, I don't see this trend much at all with my
coworkers or friends. Most have used it once or twice, but not as serious as
they make it out to believe. A lot of my friends are in committed
relationships or are looking for them. Maybe I am an outlier, but I think
outside SF, LA or NY, these dating apps aren't as prevalent as they seem.

~~~
davidcelis
I'm also in Portland, OR and have used OkCupid/Hinge/Tinder/etc. Thousands of
people here use these apps. They're in no way limited to SF/LA/NYC for heavy
use.

~~~
jrdnmadrid
Yup, makes sense. I was just speaking from my PoV (which of course can't be
extrapolated)

------
pekk
Speaking as a happily ugly old person who has never used Tinder: whether you
are a man or a woman, it is your decision to date someone or not. Nobody is
putting a gun to your head. When both sides get to say yea or nay without
coercion, this is one situation which is actually symmetrical.

So if you feel like you are getting a bad deal on the dating scene because you
are hooking up with people you really don't like and your life is a constant
churn, that should tell you that you are being too desperate. Put on the
brakes. Let the people who are impatient, demanding and rude move along. Learn
to live by yourself and to relate to people non-sexually. Then apply those
skills to develop more meaningful relationships. Otherwise, you're just
putting convenience first - then complaining that the result was optimized for
convenience over other priorities. Other people you'd never think about can't
even get any dates, and you're bitching that being non-selective doesn't give
you all the results of being selective.

This is a first-world problem for beautiful people with ample disposable
income. In many parts of the world, including New York, you might be lucky if
you can pick strawberries or make clothes for $2/hr to support a large family
you didn't choose to have. Most people who ever existed had no option to
participate in "hookup culture."

------
pmcpinto
"...the game is out there, and it's either play or get played..." \- Omar, The
Wire

Nowadays, if a single guy doesn't use Tinder and other apps, it's missing a
huge pool of single girls available to meet for a drink (or other things).

It's never been so easy to meet new people, so guys don't value so much the
girls they met like before, but it's the same for girls. If the pool of single
girls it's huge, imagine the pool of single guys on this apps.

I know a lot of girls who uses Tinder only to inflate their ego and play with
guys. They have never met one guy through Tinder. Sometimes they even mark a
date with a guy and "disappear" before that just for fun.

~~~
curiousjorge
I think people who aren't using Tinder aren't missing out much at all based on
what you described. It sort of feels like a pool for people that just want
large quantities of cheap commodity, and if you are into that then it totally
makes sense.

Fortunately, there still exists descent people with desires to be with high
quality people. I think it would be quite tragic if someone with decency caved
in to societal pressure and joined Tinder, looking for that special snowflake
and becoming heart broken when they realize what they've become.

~~~
pmcpinto
I know that and that's true. In the middle of that pool of people there are
some high quality people, but most of them doesn't stay longer in the app.

Probably most of the people aren't going to find a man/woman for the life on
Tinder but if you put a little effort on your matches you will find
interesting people. The problem is that after some time and some "tinder
scars" people put less and less effort in meeting better their matches.

------
patio11
There's a useful word from behavioral economics called "revealed preferences."
Briefly, it means that if you're given the opportunity to choose between X and
Y, and you say "Wow I really want X" but choose Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, and Y... then
your preference is actually for Y.

------
lqdc13
This should be in the onion.

Women use an "I'm not going to be serious" app and complain that all the men
on it don't want to be serious.

~~~
benatkin
I'm surprised this wasn't an nytimes article. This is very typical of them.

------
slr555
The "dating apocalypse" began not with the internet but the pharmacist.
Effective long term contraception and anti-infectives that worked against a
wide variety of venereal diseases removed the tangible consequences of
promiscuous sex. Those milestones are the real articulation in the history of
dating.

In the 60's there were the "happenings" where people metaphorically swiped
right and left. In the 70's it was discos, the 80's had pick-up bars. I'm
pretty sure Vanity Fair had long features on each of those phenomena as well.
Each generation starts to mature and are pretty sure that they are the first
to discover sex, which of course their parents never had, and the older
generation sees "little precious" out doing their thing and the end of the
world is nigh. 20 years on the youngsters are bouncing the kids on their knees
and the old ones are pushing up grass and so it goes. As the Thorton Wilder
said, "Once in a thousand times it's interesting".

------
notahacker
Meanwhile, in the gay community, Tinder's occupies the niche of the somewhat
_less_ sex-obsessed alternative to Grindr, the purely gay hookup app that even
Tinder's name seems to have been inspired by...

I'm not sure whether the author of the article would be more shocked by the
revelation that many Tinder dates actually don't end in sex[1] or the
revelation that ten years ago, the same demographic of men was bragging about
the ease of chatting to multiple potential one night stands per night in
_bars_

[1]especially ones with men that consider getting a female phone number (with
emojis!) to be a major accomplishment

~~~
thisrod
There might be a broader point here. It's now OK for gay men to act like gay
men in public, and straight people are starting to do it too.

------
psycr
Does anyone else have a feeling of total alienation from the people and
behaviours described in this article? I certainly do.

~~~
davnicwil
Yes, thank you! I've read a lot of the comments on here and you're the only
one who's (seemingly) raised the question of whether what's written in this
article is actually accurate in any general sense.

To me, it feels very sensational, exaggerated and very selective in its use of
interviewees and their quotes to describe a specific type of online dating
experience, and then projects that as if it's the average experience. It
isn't.

I've used online dating, and a lot of my friends have and do - including
tinder. Obviously you come across a few odd situations and people, just as you
do in 'real life' but I have never come close to experiencing anything like
what's described in this piece.

It paints an utterly depressing scene which just doesn't match up with my
experience of online dating at all. For people who've never used Tinder, it's
basically nothing like this, and it's not just my own experience or the way I
use it - I've never seen any of my friends use it like the people in this
article describe.

It's basically just another way to get chatting with people. I'm not saying
people like the people in this article don't exist, but they're rare, and if
you want nothing to do with people like this, all you have to do is not engage
with them in the first place. If you do engage with them, then know that the
consequences will probably be as depressing as this article makes out they
will be.

The broad conclusions the people in this article draw about 'the online dating
world' are simply not true for most people - they're only true for those who
subject themselves to it. If that's not what you want, just don't, and you'll
be fine. Problem solved.

~~~
d23
> For people who've never used Tinder, it's basically nothing like this, and
> it's not just my own experience or the way I use it - I've never seen any of
> my friends use it like the people in this article describe.

Same. Most of the people I've talked to that use it experience a typical
"funnel": a bunch of available people, a smaller pool that you're interested
in, a smaller pool that's also interested in you, and finally a few dates that
go from there. Not an orgyastic meat-market where all your wildest sex dreams
come true.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is a piece crafted by a PR team hired by
Tinder.

------
onewaystreet
There's the old story of the guy that walks around asking every women if they
want to have sex. Eventually one always says yes. On Tinder a guy can do that
without getting slapped 100 times.

~~~
jen729w
I went to university with that guy. I genuinely did. It was unbelievable to
watch, he was so brazen. He just didn't give a damn about rejection.

~~~
cpncrunch
Did he get laid eventually?

~~~
_sh
The guy at my Uni would stand stand at the door when they closed the Uni bar
every Friday night and proposition every girl as they filed out the door.
Every one. Never failed to score. He had no standards, but was amazing to
watch.

He was Danish, we called it the 'Scando Sweep'.

~~~
akshat_h
Did he actually bluntly ask "Will you have sex with me?".

~~~
emp_zealoth
Richard Feynman (in Surely you must be joking, mr Feynman) actually mentions
doing exactly just that - he wrote he later gave it up because it was too easy
and too effective

------
jokoon
The hardest part of making those websites work is attracting women on it, and
it's not easy. Men are natural predators.

In 2008/9 I used a french website "adopt a guy" (adopte un mec). It was really
disruptive because it gave women much more powers. Men can only "charm" women,
and women must "adopt" men if they want to talk to them.

To be honest I was really surprised, it worked so much better. Women were more
confident and it showed, I was having more discussions. Granted, I had to be
patient, but the experience was much better.

Obviously dating websites should not treat men and women equally.

~~~
static_noise
What you are saying is that not every human is created equal?

~~~
tomp
Obviously not, when it comes to sex. Men pay for sex, women get paid for sex.
That's all you need to know about the demand and supply dynamics in the sexual
"market" (which Tinder embodies).

~~~
dublinclontarf
> Men pay for sex, women get paid for sex

Some.

~~~
flinty
Payment isn't necessarily in cash. You pay with your time, commitment,
interest, attention. If there is literally anything else you could be
potentially doing but are spending time with a girl with the hope of getting
sex out of it then you are paying for it.

------
ThrustVectoring
The big issue with Tinder (and a lot of other dating apps) is that they have a
really shitty incentive structure for revealing your matching preferences.

For Tinder specifically, you can't reveal your preferences, save by "is this
better than nothing" and how much effort you put into initial messages.
Compare this to a ranking + deferred acceptance system, where you can match
every guy and every girl such that there's no alternate pairing that both the
guy and the girl would both prefer.

The end result is a lot of wasted effort and low signal-to-noise. The
alternative is something that looks a lot like ranking a bunch of potential
matches, and magically getting the best coffee or dinner date you can each
night. Much more efficient.

Unfortunately, efficient marketplaces don't automatically out-compete thick
ones. It's why I haven't done anything about the problem - the difficult part
of Tinder's success to reproduce isn't the app or the matching algorithms or
the UI, but rather convincing enough people to participate on their platform.

~~~
walterbell
Are there marketplaces, in any industry, which take your approach to improving
efficiency of matching?

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Sorry for the late reply, but yes, there are examples. The most famous is the
matching market between new doctors and hospitals.

I highly recommend this book for more information on the topic:
smile.amazon.com/Who-Gets-What-Why-Matchmaking/dp/0544291131

~~~
walterbell
Thanks for the book rec.

------
GuiA
For the most part, I find that most online social media just degrades human
interaction. Twitter encourages short shallow quips, Facebook shows me my
friends arguing angrily and pointlessly over random articles, dating apps
encourage some of the behaviors described in the article. Heck, even HN
encourages a certain kind of attitude that I don't find that great, all in
all. I know that it's not black or white, and that you get out of these things
what you put in them - but more often than not, those systems are designed in
such a way to tap into primal human drives (the need for sex, validation,
novelty, etc.) that makes it very hard to have constant good self discipline.

As I've realized this over the past few months (a big factor was reading the
biographies of some of my heroes, e.g. Dirac, Feynman, etc., and realizing
that they spent a lot of their time working alone in their offices
uninterrupted, and communicating with people either in real life over meals,
walks, etc. or by postal mail), I've been trying to pull out of most
technological communications; using text only for coordinating/logistics
("want to grab dinner tomorrow night?") and email for longer form
communication.

Then instead of dicking around on Reddit for an hour or chatting with people
on Jabber, I go hang out in a local bookstore, read a book in a coffee shop,
grab a beer (without my phone) alone at the local bar, go have a meal with a
friend. I've had interesting encounters and great conversations with complete
strangers; I was the first surprised, given that I'm not particularly
gregarious and it's hard for me to strike up conversation with a stranger. But
it turns out that there are plenty of people out there who will happily talk
to you for a bit.

I just recently moved to a new place, and have been thinking about how I can
structure my living space to encourage good habits (e.g. practicing music
regularly, reading books, working on electronic projects) and discourage bad
ones (e.g. spending too much time on social media, reading superficial online
articles, etc.). One of the things I did was not connecting my iMac (which I
still use for composing music in Ableton, programming, reading PDFs, etc.) to
the internet; if I need to look up restaurant times or something, I'll use my
phone. I do try to leave my phone in a drawer out of sight most of the time,
and have removed most of the distracting apps on it. It's only been a week,
but I like what it's doing so far.

I'm in the second half of my 20s, I work in tech, so I don't think I'm a case
of a grumpy old luddite. I'm just starting to realize that technology makes
things like hooking up easier, but certain things aren't meant to be made
easier. People designing those social apps and sites have, for the vast
majority, no regard for your time and your attention - so maybe you just
shouldn't give it to them.

I remember reading an article a long time ago
([http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/](http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-
hackers-a/)) about the misconception we have about the Amish refusing to use
technology. We think that the Amish refuse to use ALL technology; but really,
it's that our society accepts technology unconditionally as soon as it's
available, whereas Amish society accepts it only after it's proven a clear
benefit, and that they understand how to use it in a way that won't disrupt
their community. For instance, they found that phones are useful: if someone
hurts themselves, it's good to be able to call the hospital. But if you put a
phone in every home, then people start using it a lot, and local community
ties suffer. Their solution to that is to have a single phone booth per
village, a couple minutes' walk out. Another example is vehicles: it's very
useful to have a tractor to work on the farm, but then people start using them
as vehicles to go spend time outside of the village, again weakening community
ties. Their solution to that is to have tractors with steel wheels so that
they can only drive in the fields, not the open road.

Of course you can push that philosophy as strongly as you want to the point of
the absurd, and there are many things you can criticize about it. But overall,
I do find that mindset very refreshing and interesting, and that's what I'm
trying to bring to my life.

~~~
Osmium
> For the most part, I find that most online social media just degrades human
> interaction. Twitter encourages short shallow quips, Facebook shows me my
> friends arguing angrily and pointlessly over random articles, dating apps
> encourage some of the behaviors described in the article. Heck, even HN
> encourages a certain kind of attitude that I don't find that great, all in
> all.

I don't know. I think, perhaps, in the 'real world' we learn to become very
good at choosing who we associate with, and don't spend time with
'destructive' people (for lack of a better term), but perhaps this has yet to
be learnt properly online.

For myself, I literally have never seen an argument on my Facebook feed. I
have about 150 Facebook friends. I don't see flame wars on Twitter; I follow
people I find interesting, that's all. I subscribe to subreddits with sane
moderation policies. Generally, the internet I encounter on a day-to-day basis
is actually quite a civil, friendly place.

I just don't think the online world is that much different from the real
world. You choose where to spend your time, who to spend it with, and that
shapes the experiences you have–just like the real world. Is it really so
different?

~~~
GuiA
I absolutely don't disagree with you. I've tried a more temperate approach
like the one you describe; and I can get it with some degree of success for a
while, but it never lasts long. Hence why I'm a bit more aggressive in my
approach now.

I'm glad it's working for you though!

~~~
benten10
I thought I agreed with you about 'cheaping of human communication' until a
couple of years ago. I believed that Snapchat was the _worst_ thing to happen
to human communication, and somehow that human interactions had been
fundamentally changed for the worse.

Then last year, I went on a 2-month long backpacking trip. I don't have
facebook et al. and blogs are too tiring, so I decided to get snapchat _just
for the trip_. A year later, I've gotten ~20 people to join snapchat, just to
keep in touch with me. : )

For me, it's the model of human communication that matters: I don't
necessarily want you to remember exactly what I said to you 12.27465 years
ago. I know most of the HN and Reddit crowd aspire for the perfect object
Vulcan mind, with perfect recollection either, but for me, the value of
interpersonal communication lies in the fact that it's REALLY fallible. Not
only do we _NOT_ remember things as they are, even if we do remember something
right, the act of _remembering_ it messes up the actual memory. For me, that's
essential. Our social interactions haven't evolved to reflect a perfect
recollection but to accommodate our limitations. We are imperfect, and I like
my mode of communication to reflect that.

~~~
sebkomianos
Can you ellaborate on what, in specific, made you change your mind about
snapchat and the rest of that kind of communication?

~~~
benten10
I left facebook because it was too tiring. I HAD to have SOME way of
connecting with friends. The part I like about snapchat the most is that
there's no history -- you send an image, and it's gone, so there's no
particular 'baggage' associated with it: no long thread of comments, no
'history' to look at, no tedious 'you didn't like my comment/omg i got 300
likes'. For me, snapchat is somewhere between real-life interaction and
texting: as ephemeral as real life 'talk' and long-distance as well... a text
message. On other media, stupid things people (or you) say tend to stay around
forever, in snapchat, your mistakes last as long as the snaps do. A bad pun,
or a mistimed joke, for example... they don't hurt you like they do in other
media.

This may sound like exaggeration, but snapchat could be the social network for
adults in the longer term [not the 'look at my kid' kind, but 'we're having
fun, but don't want it too seem like we're bragging' kind.

------
meatysnapper
God I wish I was in NYC. The stories I've heard from buddies there!

West coast scene is not like this at all, especially not in Man-Francisco or
Man-Jose (unless you like men of course).

~~~
frame_perfect
Seriously. I flew out to NYC for a job interview. Was there for just 2 days
and I got laid. I wasn't even trying at all, I was just there for an
interview! And this was after a 2.5 year dry streak in SF.

My god I want to go back.

~~~
vonklaus
Yeah, my cousin lives in NY. He told me that the city is still there, it's
still between New Jersey, CT and Westchester County where you left it. So, you
can still go back.

------
austenallred
>“Tinder sucks,” they say. But they don’t stop swiping.

Well... stop swiping?

------
linkregister
For those lamenting the "quantity over quality" aspect of Tinder, I would
suggest using Coffee Meets Bagel [1] as a supplement or alternative.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/dating-app-coffee-meets-
bag...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/dating-app-coffee-meets-bagel-
lands-7-8-million-in-series-a/)

(I have no interest in this company nor have I used it; I have been told it
works well for higher quality dates by male friends)

------
pandatigox
Interesting to see that America (but as the other commenters have pointed _new
york_ ) that a culture of sex is well and truly alive, whereas places such as
Japan are suffering from a lack of this culture (men are now called
"herbivores" due to their disinterest).

------
flycaliguy
Any other non-photogenic dweebs with partners glad they got out of this game
before it went mainstream?

------
pervycreeper
Surprised they're still quoting Christopher Ryan, who has no scientific
credibility and whose work has been entirely debunked. He's essentially just
some kook proselytizing his own sexual perversions.

------
rhino369
People have been writing about the casual sex explosion for ever since the
internet hit mainstream but reports also say millenials have less partners
than their baby boomer parents did.

Hard to say what is accurate.

~~~
CmonDev
It's like app store 20% get the 80%. The subj article was focusing exclusively
on 20%. Let's hear the "dad bod"'s story.

------
mirimir
This reminds me of RFJason's Craigslist experiment.[0]

Back in the day, rude invitations with dick pics were odd enough to mock. Now,
according to this article, they've become almost accepted. Funny.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Fortuny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Fortuny)

------
narrator
Anyone remember Logan's run and the dating "circuit" thing they had[1]? We are
finally there.

1.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMlHZNMH5KA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMlHZNMH5KA)

------
rjurney
This is why I use okcupid. People there actually want to get to know other
people.

~~~
Navarr
Some. And some just want to have sex.

That's the way it's always worked online.

~~~
hackinthebochs
The problem is that our access used to be constrained by proximity, and so
there was a natural limit to the number of people we could reasonably
entertain the notion of a relationship with. With apps like tinder come an
unprecedented level of access. What happens to dating mores once it becomes
the norm to have "access" to tens of thousands of people within an X mile
radius? Considering how we judge worthiness of a partner is related to social
factors and quantity of access (e.g. someone with access to many people like a
college student is going to have higher standards), what will it look like
when every potential partner is judged through the lens of the last 10
thousand tinder swipes?

We've seen what modern media can do to self esteem, particularly in young
women. What happens when we're all now literally competing with the nearest
ten thousand most attractive people in your state? I predict that the effects
these apps will have on self-esteem, dating, social values, and even the
institution of marriage will be catastrophic.

~~~
Navarr
Blah at the institution of marriage. The institution of marriage hasn't had
any sanctity for the last x years (divorce skyrocketing). Which is perhaps
fine, a single partner for one's entire life isn't cut out for everyone. (It's
cut out for me, though, and I am happily married).

The "Tinder problem" does exist though, and perhaps it'll lead to a
segregation of those who want something meaningful and those who don't. Not
sure if that will be a good or a bad thing.

------
kltpzyxm
I imagine Twine would suit those who prefer a similar service for a dissimilar
crowd. I do wonder what actual experiences are like, since I'm attached and
have never encountered any males who use it.

~~~
steve-howard
Is that because you've only heard from women, or you just don't know anyone
who's used it?

~~~
kltpzyxm
The former.

------
benten10
There's been a lot of talk of the decrease in 'cost' of sex, etc in this
thread. I want to chip in as someone who has spent a LOT of time on tinder.

Last month, I was spending SEVERAL hours a day swiping on friends' behalf on
Tinder. We'd swipe till our eyes hurt, and we'd swipe again. You get a limited
number of swipes (and total 'targets') per day, so once someone ran out of
their daily quota, I'd swipe for someone else.

The process is TIRING! -- looking at attractive/ people at their best putting
on their best show is tiring! It's doesn't seem to be screen fatigue --
there's likely an upper boundary on how many faces/people you can process in a
day. We'd end up not checking people's profiles and swipe based on the amount
of skin showed on profile pictures. It sounds ridiculous, but being judgmental
of people's face/facial features apparently gets tiring at some point.

This leads me to believe that the interactions don't come for free -- they may
be cheap, but the costs exist.

So as someone who spent all that time on Tinder, it is not clear to me what
'friction' Tinder removes as compared to dating sites say, 10 years ago.
Having a hookup app on your lap, and on your cellphone is not that different.
Or sites on the desktop 15 years ago. I know people who think 'mobile' hookup
apps are the most godawful things to have happened in the world (and that
because, as a lot of people have said here, because they reduce the cost of
interaction), but that's not significantly different from say, 10/15 years
ago, is it?

If 'hookup stats' are really higher, it could be because not everyone agrees
on the definition. For a lot of my friends, going over to sleep at someone's
house constitutes a hookup. I'd imagine something like that would have
happened 20 years ago anyway in an offline setting, but you'd have met the
person in a bar, or a club or what have you. That you happened to have met
them on Tinder doesn't make it an 'apocalypse' for the dating type.

All the friends I swiped for ended up going on multiple dates, some in the
same week. Two ended in a committed relationship, and one who never wanted to
be in a relationship was almost dragged into one. I mention this because
without tinder, he would never have been out their anyway. So here's my
theory: tinder is bringing out all the 'marginals' \-- people on the
relationship margin who would otherwise not have been 'out there' anyway.
Since their ratio to the general population has increased because of increased
visibility, it seems that more people are NOT into dating. That's a fallacy
because it does not control for the marginals: they'd not be 'relationship
minded' without tinder anyway.

~~~
sebkomianos
I am super-tired to write an extensive reply to your comment - and it is worth
one - but I'll just say this for now and return to elaborate more once I have
gotten some sleep: The mere "possibility" of getting laid with a right swipe
on a small device your carry in your pocket, any moment you decide to perform
it, and a couple of messages makes the cost seem smaller. Sure, the candidates
against which you compete are now more, but still.

~~~
benten10
I'm not sure I agree with you completely there. Tinder hasn't created a lot of
'I want sex, and I want it NOW' \-- there's still a gap between communication
and hookups, in general [here, I'll accept anecdotes as data, if you have more
than few]. Now Grindr, that's a COMPLETELY different story -- I've known
people literally do the 'parking garage oral sex' thing in a matter of an hour
from start to finish. The general consensus seems to be that Tinder culture is
nowhere near that. If you strongly believe the opposite, for good reasons, I'd
reconsider my position though.

~~~
sebkomianos
First of all let me say I'm glad my comment reached you, I am not sure how
many people here get notified about replies to their comments.

Now, I don't strongly believe anything but I wasn't implying that the smaller
cost is because of the speed at which the "sex" happens. I believe that people
consider it smaller than before because even with the regular dating sites you
had to sign up, upload photos, fill in your profile details, etc etc, to even
get something started. All tinder asks for is a facebook account and a couple
of swipes (or maybe just one :D). Sure, a match might not end up as an erotic
partner but at least there was something.

Hope I made my point more clear.

------
dataker
When most women think " Ew, a dadbod" ,it's expected they will encounter the
most "despicable" kind of men.

Such paradigm is not a consequence of a misogyny; quite the other way around.

Downvoting me won't change this.

~~~
cpncrunch
I don't think it's either "way around". Both the men and women on Tinder are
shallow people who are mostly just interested in sex.

------
beatpanda
Boy, that sure is a parallel universe. Did you know striking up a conversation
with a stranger in real life can still get you laid? Less efficient, I know,
but if you're already saving so much time replacing food with Soylent you
should have some wiggle room.

~~~
bm1362
I found that Google Hangouts through my Glass allow me to date casually and
launch my startup with no time deficit.

------
zxcvvcxz
> “For young women the problem in navigating sexuality and relationships is
> still gender inequality,” says Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology
> at the University of Michigan who specializes in sexuality and gender.
> “Young women complain that young men still have the power to decide when
> something is going to be serious and when something is not—they can go,
> ‘She’s girlfriend material, she’s hookup material.’ … There is still a
> pervasive double standard.

Women try and find the best man they can possibly get. Just because 50% of the
population is female and 50% is male doesn't mean that they're going to pair
off equally. Women want the top 20%! [1] There are evolutionary reasons for
this that push our species forward, mating always has and always will be a
competition.

Now think of the perspective of these top 20% guys. They get all the sex and
need not give out their exclusive commitment. And why would they? From an
economic perspective, they can maximize their sexual strategy this way (spread
the seed, as it were). Monogamy just slows that down.

Furthering the economics analogy, these dating apps increase the _liquidity_
and _efficiency_ of the market. Want Chad, the good looking investment banker
guy? Keep swiping, you'll find him. No need to wait around for Bobby from your
programming class to finally ask you out (he probably doesn't even lift
weights).

There are two groups clearly disadvantaged by this current setup:

1) Those 80% of "below average" males. Because one of the top males can
satisfy many young women (you read the story, some guys sleep with 100+ girls
a year), these men get left out. Traditionally, marriage existed as an
incentive for the vast majority of men to be productive in exchange for
reproduction opportunities. I'm sure the discerning reader wouldn't be
surprised to learn that a girl sleeping with a bunch of top 20% dudes and
later "settling down" has a harder time staying in a happy marriage [2].

2) Which leads us to #2, unmarried women entering their 30s, or whatever
arbitrary later age makes them less attractive to the top 20% men. The reality
of male preference for physical attractiveness necessarily means that women
who engaged in hook-up culture during their earlier years will have to lower
their standards.

We had a period of time where strict monogamy throughout adulthood dominated,
and now that's becoming less so (hugely declining marriage rates as one
indicator, [3]). The question is whether or not this is a natural evolution
for our society, or a sign of decline.

\---

[1] - "As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys
as worse-looking than medium. " [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-
and-online-dati...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-
dating/)

[2] - "They claim this finding is especially true for women, writing in the
report, "We further found that the more sexual partners a woman had had before
marriage, the less happy she reported her marriage to be.""
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/more-sexual-
partner...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/more-sexual-partners-
unhappy-marriage_n_5698440.html)

[3] - [http://national.deseretnews.com/article/4535/US-marriage-
rat...](http://national.deseretnews.com/article/4535/US-marriage-rate-hits-
new-low-and-may-continue-to-decline.html)

~~~
bambax
Absolutely. Monogamy advantages non-alpha males, to the disadvantage of most
women. Women want to mate with the leader of the pack; if all females mate and
carry the children of the one leader, all other males don't mate _at all,
ever_.

Many (not all, but many) animal mammal societies work like this, and there are
strong indications humans were wired to work like this too. Some human
cultures still use that form of reproductive organization.

And then MALES (non-alpha ones) invented monogamy to get a piece of the
action.

It's extemely ironic that women would complain about the disappearance of
something that was designed to their direct detriment.

~~~
deciplex
> _It 's extemely ironic that women would complain about the disappearance of
> something that was designed to their direct detriment._

So-called 'alpha males' tend to define and shape the culture they're a part
of, a lot more than the 'non-alpha' males you just spent ten sentences
shitting on. It's interesting you think low-status males just 'invented'
monogamy, and in doing so turned the reproductive tables on 20% of men and
100% of women.

I think it's more like, historically speaking, cultures that allowed for more
males to have reproductive success, and that therefore gave more males a stake
in the society and culture they're a part of, saw more success and out-
competed the ones that did not. Which is to say, a society where near-100% of
the population have a direct reproductive stake in the future, will be more
productive than societies where about 60% of the population does.

Whether this remains true now is an interesting question.

~~~
zxcvvcxz
Bingo.

The beta males did not invent monogamy; it evolved as a system whereby more
productive abled bodies were invested in the success of a society. These
societies proliferated.

> Whether this remains true now is an interesting question.

I believe that when the benefits do not outweigh the cons, a lot of males
start checking out of society altogether. See Japan [1] as an example. E.g.
I'm going to have to work my ass off throughout life jumping through hoops and
then work 80 hour weeks at BigCompanyJapan and then maybe find a woman who I
won't have time to spend with? Fuck it, video games, porn, and basement sound
better.

For a more US-centric view, check out [2].

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori)

[2] - [http://www.amazon.ca/The-War-Against-Boys-
Misguided/dp/06848...](http://www.amazon.ca/The-War-Against-Boys-
Misguided/dp/0684849577)

~~~
rndn
These statistics provide some evidence:
[http://www.japancrush.com/2013/stories/30-of-single-
japanese...](http://www.japancrush.com/2013/stories/30-of-single-japanese-men-
have-never-dated-a-woman.html)

There is an antithetic trend in Japan though, since Japanese women are
emancipated and the high economic demands prevent them from investing time
into dating. So, the numbers could possibly differ even more. (I’m not sure
how emancipation affects the statistics for the males, though.)

------
curiousjorge
[http://www.icrw.org/media/news/commentary-does-access-
contra...](http://www.icrw.org/media/news/commentary-does-access-
contraception-empower-women)

