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I’m so glad I’ve never had to date officially. My first two girlfriends I met at school the latter of which I was in a relationship after school, which was good. My current partner is, strangely, also related to the school I’ve been to as we’ve met via a common acquaintance. Getting to know each other happened mostly via texts and then through meetings - unofficial dates, I guess - and the rest is history.
I can’t imagine the stress of using these dating platforms constantly. Putting yourself out the over and over again, meeting all kinds of people for a shred of possible companionship. Must be so exhausting. Don’t even wanna think about what the experience must be for women* and female-presenting people
sorry ladies, im exclusively looking for love on the Rumble forums
Ha!
As a middle aged man you think its great for us? You think all the hot, sane, independent women in their 30s and 40s are strugging for options? If you’re on there theres a 80% chance that you’re no catch either.
Last time my dude showed me a bunch of profiles it was easily 50% “applications to be a stepdad” and 25% women with a checklist (6 foot tall, good living, own house, etc.) Like 6 foot tall athletic lawyers who own their own home are having trouble meeting women.
Social media is raising expectations to unrealistic levels. As if Hollywood wasn’t bad enough for past generations.
Millennial here. Have recently dabbled with the apps. Honestly the guys I was shown were not objectively bad looking. Many of them were pretty attractive. But not my type at all. My interests were books and video games and nerdy sweetness…and it kept recommending me muscle gym divorced military dads. So I gave up.
Yeah at first it is. The algorithm learns about you over time and it gets a little better with regular use. It still has a bit of a blind spot around nerd/geek culture.
Literally fuck algorithms. Anything that has one is dead to me, if at all possible.
I don’t blame you. The algorithm is gonna force you to look at what people your demographic like despite whatever input you give it. At least it seems this way with how algorithms in general seem to work on social media. The amount of dick pill ads I get is way to high.
I still remember when bumble had to change their entire premise and business model because as it turns out women are worse at starting conversations than men lmao.
I wholeheartedly believe that the Internet and smart phones have been the biggest double edge swords in human history. We have the entire globes collected knowledge at our fingertips with the ability to connect with any other person on the planet instantly and it has caused the largest shift in loneliness and depression ever.
Humans simply are not wired for social media and the Internet. Seeing every single person you know posting themselves beautiful and dressed up doing the coolest things 24/7 will make anyone feel ugly and like they aren’t doing anything with their lives. It takes real focused effort to remember that people (generally) only post when they are doing something special and what you don’t see are the days or weeks between posts that show they live the same boring life you live.
I’m ranting for no reason. I think when we lost in person social gatherings as the primary method of meeting new people is when society kicked that concrete block off the cliff. Right now we are just waiting for the rope to snap taught and drag us all into the abyss.
Every starting conversation on Bumble was like:
“Hey”
If that happend, it triggered me so hard. Its like the insanest thing ever. Why are you even on bumble then.
Why are you expecting conversations to be otherworldly?
How many conversations in real life with people you like start with something akin to “hey”? I’m gunna bet most but I suppose I could be wrong.
In my experience the bot and scam scripts have become refined enough to seem exactly like a pretty disengaged or disenchanted user, or someone not confident in what they’re doing. It’s led to some awkward moments when I suddenly send “BOT CHECK”
This was eloquently written and I enjoyed reading your insights. I found your closing metaphor particularly apt!
Taut*
Humans simply are not wired for social media and the Internet. Seeing every single person you know posting themselves beautiful and dressed up doing the coolest things 24/7 will make anyone feel ugly and like they aren’t doing anything with their lives. It takes real focused effort to remember that people (generally) only post when they are doing something special and what you don’t see are the days or weeks between posts that show they live the same boring life you live.
I’ve never seen a friend post on social media about something and then felt sad. I’ve instead thought “That looks awesome! Good for them! I can’t wait to do something like that too, I’m inspired!”
I think when we lost in person social gatherings as the primary method of meeting new people
This is something only chronically online people say. Most people form almost all of their relationships offline. This is still extremely true of platonic relationships. Online dating has increased in popularity, but mostly this is among people with niche tastes or in remote locations, where finding a match is more difficult due to the rarity of finding potential partners in real life. Tons of people still date primarily via their social circle or community gatherings, and most people use a mix of all their options.
Given who runs “online”, that’s kind of worrying.
This is something only chronically online people say. Most people form almost all of their relationships offline. This is still extremely true of platonic relationships.
Where are you meeting these people, magic real life wizard?
Of the 5 I currently have in my roster, 2 came from online, 2 were friends of friends, 1 I introduced myself to at a rock climbing crag.
I also seek out partners at my job, at the climbing gym, at various meetups like for acroyoga or fire spinning or pickup ultimate Frisbee, at social bars or concerts or festivals, or just when I’m walking around in the park near my house. Importantly, I’m not just going up to every attractive woman I see and saying “nice tits, wanna bang?” - even though this is my truth in my heart of hearts. Instead what I do is show up, have fun, meet people, joke around, and just be a normal person. But then if someone is cute, I’ll do a little eyebrow wiggle or some shit during a break in the conversation, and if she eyebrow wiggles back, I escalate - like by tickling the back of her elbow or telling her that she’s, like, literally the worst why am I even talking to her. And then at the end of the night I say “hey, I think you’re cute - wanna hang out alone sometime and maybe do some smoochin’?” And then she says yes or no, I give her a high five either way, and I’m on my merry way.
Edit: I’ll point out that the number of partners I have from online is mostly because I have a good profile, so getting matches is pretty easy for me. Most people don’t have as high of a sex drive as me, and so won’t want to put in the effort. Going through social networks (real life social networks) or social hobbies is far more likely to net you compatible partners, since the choices you make in these arenas are likely to attract people with similar values and dispositions.
How do young people meet new people these days? I met my husband while at work. Became official via Facebook status.
Here’s the great part; you don’t! (I am American and only going outside for vital activities anymore)
Increasingly, they aren’t.
“that’s the neat part! they don’t!”
I got out of the game right before tinder became a thing. I’m just as lost as you
Dating is hard for everyone in one way or another, and, speaking as one, several ways for those who look pretty dead average but have trouble socializing and really only go between home and work. I don’t even feel like I’m that picky; no cigarettes, no kids, yes empathy, and a complementary flavor of weird/neurodivergence.
It’s hard for weirdos to find other weirdos because all weirdos have some level of social anxiety. Ask me how I know.
How do you know?
I would, but you’d be too anxious to respond! (yes whoosh, I get it)
Make a lemmy community for dating.
I wouldn’t want to meet other Lemmy users in person, let alone date them.
Being a Lemmy person isn’t a great point of connection but it would be nice to see how they interact with other users in other Lemmy communities.
l mean, yea, weird, but not that weird.
Pokemon Go will probably net you 2 of those at least.
Your weirdo will appear.
Survivorship bias.
:(
I am putting it out there for him. It’s all circumstance and luck.
I read this first as “it’s all circumcision and luck”. lmao
Sounds like the basis for a musical number.
Sometimes the no kids thing, can be a huge red flag, a lot of the incel / women hating types put no kids. There’s a lot of them out there and they’re really extreme, you might be limiting your dating pool by wanting someone who doesn’t have kids but then if you’re into never having kids, that’s a different thing, entirely.
first thing I tell my gf’s is I dont is don’t want kids. one was of agreement and now we have been together 10 years and got all sorts of money to spend to travel and pursue expensive dreams. Plus what if I had a ugly child I’d have to hug it? (just kidding)
It’s not necessarily a billboard I put up stating that I don’t want kids. I made the decision long ago, partially based on my upbringing and now the current world situation, to never have children, so I checked the boxes saying I don’t have, and don’t want, children. That’s it.
A confounding issue is the apps themselves have gotten worse over time. Like, old okcupid you could search. You could type in like “final fantasy” or “the Mets” and find people who liked those things enough to put them on their profile.
Now you’re limited to whatever the app decides to give you. Well, the app doesn’t want you to leave so that incentive doesn’t line up.
OkCupid used to actually work rather well at finding compatible people who were actually honest about what they were looking for.
Then it got bigger, got acquired, and the matching model of the whole industry was intentionally modified to be more monetizable, and to keep giving matches that are close, but not close enough to be truely long term compatible.
You aren’t using the app/website anymore if it works and gets you a successful long term match.
You are using the app for a longer time if you keep getting close but just missing the mark.
…
Do people not think their dating app is tracking… how many matches and text exchanges they have?
How much time elapses between you matching, chatting, leaving… and then going back to swiping?
And then multidimensional matrix comparing that to every other definable variable about you?
Including whether or not you say you’re looking for something long term, or serious… but you actually keep cycling through people?
These algos, these things… they know exactly to what extent you lie to yourself and others, and they weaponize that to keep people in a sort of optimal (for the app, not you), constant disappointment loop.
…
Everything digital is now way beyond ‘if its free, you are the product’.
The model is now entirely attention, addiction based, and manipulating your emotions in as close to real time as possible is absolutely integral to all this.
People forget that over a decade ago, Zuckerberg said his dream was to be able to predict with high accuracy what any given Facebook user would post next.
Nearly a decade ago, Netflix CEO or some such stated ‘our primary competitor is sleep’.
People largely do not realize the extent to which these corpo fucks have been running highly precise and targeted manipulation of every aspect of human behavior… all to drive goddamn ad revenue and market share, ie, entrench themselves as institutions the modern world is no longer imaginable without.
A lot of the more popular ones, okcupid included, all got bought up by Match Group and almost immediately started trending anti-consumer in their updates or removal of features. They want you paying, they don’t give a shit about success.
100%. Match group should be broken up.
It’s an especially insidious type of monopoly to me because it deals with relationships, they can manipulate millions of people, affecting the creation of their families and kids.
Close, they actively fight success. Legally obligated to, even. It’s their fiduciary responsibility to keep you using the app.
That’s not really how that works.
So capitalism is incompatible with dating apps. Who woulda thunk?
You also had decent profiles where you could write more texts about you. That could give you an idea of who that person is. There is a difference between “Tea or Coffee? - Tea.” and “Tea or Coffee? - I like green teas but also some black teas like assam. I sometimes bake scones to eat with the tea.” A lit of modern apps don’t even give you the option to show your personality more.
Fetlife is like that too. “Find people with the same interests as you!”… select an interest: 120K people! Okay, let me filter by location? No. Filter by age? No. Filter by sex? Guess what, also No. So instead you have to hand scroll through all the entries. I don’t want to spend a lot of time connecting with someone with a common interest if they’re on the other side of the world.
I just got so sick of using the apps and their crappy interface. I can never remember if left is good, or right is good. Who designed that was a good idea?
The interface literally tells you as you do it which is which…
They are making a mentally ill frankenspecies.
Fuck me that’s bad, last I used it was in 2019, and even then it wasn’t fantastic.
As a single (Maybe neurodivergent?) 30 year old male, what other option I have?
join IRL clubs, the first 5 to 10 times you go it’ll be painfully awkward, and I mean painful.
and the 5 few clubs you try will also feel painfully awkward.
but you’ll find a club you can’t wait for the next meeting. and you’ll make real IRL friends and connections.
just force yourself to attend.
Leave the house and find a hobby that women might also be into. Computers, cars? Mostly male dominated hobbies/women are afraid to actually go. Dance class? Now that’s fun, good exercise, and forces you to interact with other people, and there’s plenty of women there. Just make sure it’s something you’re at least kinda into. If you lie about your interest they’re gonna know and dislike you.
The other day I went to a watch party for the show Love Island and not joking, it was > 10 women to 1 man. I think there was over 100 women in that tiny room (definitely a fire code violation). But as soon as I started talking to a group about the show they were all over it.
This can backfire too though, since women assume any man coming to these events is just looking to hook up, so their guard is high. It’s also kind of shitty to make all extracurricular activities into dating events imo. People should have a space away from that pressure.
Honestly for me the best way to meet single is to have married friends who can play matchmaker. Of course that requires you to have friends, which brings us back to square one.
It’s also kind of shitty to make all extracurricular activities into dating events imo
You are telling me im not allowed to date. I personally hate going out to social events alone, its nerve racking, it makes my skin crawl. The ONLY reason I would consider it is because the alternative is I will never meet new people, and thus I will have a dating pool of 0 people. You don’t go out to social groups like some sort of creep hitting on every person, you go out to find people you enjoy spending time with, and maybe some of them are also people you consider pursuing romantically.
People should have a space away from that pressure.
Id argue that a social group is not and should never be that place, and that if you think it should be you should reflect on what responsibility a person has for their own emotions.
As someone who is overly worried about making myself an outcast for ever admitting my intentions with someone, but who knows this is just a fabrication of my own fear of rejection, it really upsets me to hear someone effectively confirming my own neurotic fabricated mindset. But again, this is my emotion, and is my own responsibility.
Honestly for me the best way to meet single is to have married friends who can play matchmaker
While this might work for you, id warn against externalizing the responsibility of finding you a date, because if they stop doing it, you stop dating.
I mean the flip side of what you are saying is that people aren’t allowed to have a social life free from romantic pursuit. Yes, it’s a thin line to walk but you are only seeing the view from a person with limited romantic opportunities, not the person who is tired of every social interaction being hijacked by dude number 67897 “out to find people you enjoy spending time with, and maybe some of them are also people you consider pursuing romantically.”
Like I totally get your perspective here. Doing things, and then… Organic relationship with no pressure. That’s ideal. The problem is that horny dudes hold this ideal in their head, and then use it to justify blowing up every coed activity in existence. You might think, “ok, if she says no, I’ll drop it” but the counterpoint is that this ritual becomes a chore for the other side of the fence. You are socially awkward, now imagine that any time you socialize in a group you have to awkwardly defend against someone’s iterative advances. And that this happens so often, it begins to color the way you interact with every acquaintance.
Yes, meeting people in group settings often leads to dates. But going into those settings with the intention to find a date is a recipe for problems. This is a subtle, but important distinction which seems lost on a lot of people.
When the ratio is that high, you can be certain there will also be women looking to hook up.
I can vouch that the friend of a friend connection works really well.
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Stop giving a fuck about that, work hard, eat right & exercise, get some great guy friends, community, get some hobbies you love.
It’s a great part of the human experience, but it’s not worth rushing or forcing a fit. I know a handful of guys that forced the fit, wasn’t worth it when they got run through the divorce courts. 😔
Book clubs.
38 year old man here: you’re gonna be alone whether your dick’s in a woman or not. If you want companionship get a golden retriever and if you want your dick serviced be advised the Japanese do some pretty interesting things with silicone rubber these days.
No disrespect, I really dig your style. But man, this comment section keeps on giving 😂
So does the golden retriever!
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Casting a wider net.
Some people just have to work harder in certain fields than others. You’re skills may be in building, writing, gardening or something else but they’re not in attracting a wide variety of matches and that’s ok. I also suck at making dating profiles, don’t photograph well and don’t have the most interesting job.
I just need to put in more hours on Hinge and reach out to more people than a friend of mine who says he just opens the app and can get a date within the hour.
For context, if I’m actively looking I can usually swing one or two dates a month which is fine for my schedule as I work and have other things I’m doing in my free time. I’m also in my 30s so am matching with people who also have busy schedules which makes scheduling even harder.
nooo! can’t you see, as a male, that you want to be with a woman means you’re sexist, because you’re reducing the women to something that you want to be with for your own well-being. how selfish of you. men are the blight of society!
i’m so sick of today’s “feminism” which plays women and men against each other, setting society up for a great divide, all to distract from actual issues such as social safety-nets, eroding wages and exploitative working conditions.
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When woman say, that men are poor quality commodities it’s funny you see?
I’m a man and I need a bro to explain me
why are men attracted to younger women?
I’m interested in women my age ± like 5 years ish.
when I was a teen I was into teens, in my 20s I was into girls in their 20s…
the idea of dating a 20 years old as a 36 year old man seems gross and annoying.
Because they don’t want to date (i. e. have some kind of personal engagement), they want to play nut and bolt.
Nut and bolt? That the new Ratchet and Clank?
i get that, I also want hook-ups, but I don’t see the attraction of someone 18 years younger than me.
I mean, people in their 20s are incredibly un-chill and very not sure who they are. Dating someone like that sounds kinda awful.
I am on your team with this.
I may not want kids but I still want to be called daddy
🤮
Apart from obvious attractiveness in younger adults, I’d probably chalk it up to societal norms (and maybe there’s an evolutionary component to it as well) for males’ perceived value on being the bread winner.
So dating younger is how you ensure they are dependent on you, and thus fulfill your purpose as a man.
even more gross
dating younger women to take advantage of dependence.
Purely physically speaking, pretty much everyone gets less attractive as they get older.
There is, of course, a maturity gap, which is a whole different problem.
So many mid responses to this question, so here is the actual answer.
Men are raised to be more overtly sexual and have the most income (yes yes… my culture, my country, not worldwide, stfu we all know…) , because of this advertising has been focused on men while bombarding us with their image of perfect feminine beauty (which tends to be youthful qualities) to get us to focus on their products, seeing this your entire life you adopt that framework of what beauty is.
Ultimately though its because the majority of the world are NPC’s following a script.
This post is pointing out that few men want to date ‘older’ women while men of all ages want to date younger women.
It’s wild how discussing age and gender inequality in dating is considered misandry.
I thought it was a “all the good ones are taken” post
So on sites like these, the primary context inside of a specific thread is the thread itself, the secondary context is the post. Hope that helps.
I want to date older women. 🤷♂️
Married an “older” woman.
🙄 I think you’ll be okay
feminism! /s
I’m always surprised to hear people unimpressed with others on dating apps. A couple of my friends have shared their “feeds” and I was struck by how many good-looking people are out there. But they would swipe away from just the smallest turn-offs becoming deal breakers. Like if I saw these people in real life, I would think of them as average looking at worst, many being remarkably attractive. This is in the 20s to mid 30s range like the tweet. I definitely understand deciding you’re incompatible based on politics or religion or culture but most of the time it would be for minor quirks. It felt like they were spoiled for choice in my eyes.
But then again, they’re in serious long term relationships with conventionally attractive and supportive partners now so maybe being picky pays off. At the time, their reluctance to settle was a very frustrating experience for them.
There’s definitely a lot of people who overestimate what they bring to a relationship, and I think women are more prone to it than men because they’re typically the ones being pursued.
Reluctant to settle, spoiled for choice, great ways of describing the situation.
the apparently-bottomless firehose of faces that makes you desensitized, the anonymous dismissal of them makes you callous.
The apps are just another dopamine slot machine, so the companies don’t care and in fact would rather keep people in their app.
‘Look at all these people that think I’m pretty, who I could have if I wanted to.’’
It’s the mirror from Snow White, but it lies better the more you pay it, the more time you spend staring at it.
Skinner box.
Wire the rat up to stimulate its pleasure receptors if it pushes button.
Rat will push button untill it dies of dehydration.
Any dating app that was any good at its stated aim wouldn’t be able to make enough money to survive.
By definition dating apps don’t want you to meet a partner, they want you addicted to swiping and tapping and almost finding a partner. If you hook up a few times along the way then that’s just a secondary benefit and keeps that carrot dangling in front of you.
Yeah, if you actually find someone app usage will drop for at least some people, maybe even most people. The more exclusive some/many folks are the less they’ll open the app. Up to finding someone(s) that fully satisfy them for at least a while, and for that while that user may even be completely off the app. Maybe they even delete it. Certainly they won’t compulsively be using it the same way they are when they are trying to connect.
For many (not all) users, successfully finding connections is detrimental to engagement, advertising, active user stats, etc. The incentives for the company are not geared towards helping users connect, and are geared towards always having users continually trying to connect.
Apps will selectively group more attractive people together to increase the like/dislike ratio. So YMMV depending on whether you’re currently in the attractive group or not.
Whats it like in general? I uninstalled after I realized I can only pull porn bots shilling Instagram. I rather just die alone.
Welp seeing as how garbage dating apps are due to being optimized to keep you using them instead of actually finding a longterm partner, and all being owned by about 2 or 3 different holding companies…
Might as well shoot my shot here:
36 m, opinionated autist seeking female autist within … i dunno, +/- 5 my age.
(trans fem ok, ambi gender ok, just please don’t be a fully advanced, PHD level bedroom = pigsty goblin)
For more details, see my comment history.
Brave that you’re using your Lemmy profile for your dating profile and that you’re willing to tie those comments to who who actually are in the real world.
If you can figure out who I am based on my Lemmy profile, I’ll be extremely impressed.
Yep, even giving out as much personal info as I have in my comment history.
I do not exist on any other social media sites.
Pretty sure I’ve never uploaded an image to lemmy that has any useful exif data, just download and repost memes.
I would also be impressed if even a mod or admin could geolocate me based on IP to an accuracy of better than a 100 mile radius.
Were I to theoretically find someone who wanted to move beyond messaging on lemmy… we’d be moving to signal.
Not saying its impossible, just saying I’d be impressed.
Okay MacGoober, my point was if you ever did meet anyone as a result of your post here, you’d be tying your profile to who you are IRL.
Only if the person I met decided to basically dox me.
But hey, that’s how trust works in a relationship, eh?
Gotta take that chance.
… I guess this all serves as a neat little illustration of how much I value privacy, haha.
I’d very much prefer someone similar, who isn’t attention/validation seeking on social media all the time, isn’t an ‘influencer’… isn’t really any kind of a public figure.
I’ve had too much drama in my life already thus far, and would ideally like someone who is also rather private and discreet.
Right? I’m using my real name for my BlueSky account and I end up having to delete almost every comment I make for the same reason. It’s a little paralyzing to have yourself on display like that.
It’s strange to admit that now, because I went to college in 2004 when Facebook was just getting big and literally everyone was on it. I miss those days. It’s hard to believe now with what an absolute shit show it has become, but early Facebook was wonderful. It genuinely made it easier to have a social life.
Early Facebook was cool, and then all our parents joined.
I nuked mine… a decade ago? Around when the Cambridge Analytica story broke.
This reminds me of the conversation I had with my co workers the other day. They basically warned don’t do to your 10th/15th year class reunion, especially if you’re in a relationship. All the girls who were used to constantly being in demand suddenly… aren’t. And they’re HORNY. And not in a very good way. In a very sad/depressing way.
Hey, can I come to your reunion?
I’m gonna tell you a secret, but you can’t share it ok?
X year reunions happen every year. Kids graduate every year.
Asking for a friend
Somehow I feel like this is wishful thinking.
Wishful thinking? It was a warning.
I don’t really see the point in them anyway, why would I care about a dick measuring contest between people I no longer know
Are you’re kidding, that’s the best time to go. Make them regret their choices, both then and now.
All the girls who were used to constantly being in demand suddenly… aren’t. And they’re HORNY. And not in a very good way. In a very sad/depressing way.
Had a friend who joked that if anyone questioned whether she was still hot, they only had to count the rings.
But to do that you’d have to cut her in half
I’ll be honest. I developed more engaging relationships through sugar daddy websites than I ever had through dating sites. And I didn’t spend any money on the sugar babies. I would let my personality carry the relationship and it worked out for a while. Then I made fun of someone trying to do what seemed like. A set up to mug me for money. That got me banned from the site. Miss those days.
Just make a new account
It’s a bit harder than that. They have your POS info and block from that.
