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

I met my wife the old-fashioned way, I hired her to work in my lab. Dating is the worst.

the trick is finding someone who is willing to cut through the artifice of it all; that can happen either online or in person.

― (曇り) (clouds), Sunday, December 14, 2014 6:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ding ding ding! This is so otm my hand hurts ringing the ding bell.

I get where Stevie D is coming from. But there are actually people out there who try internet dating or whatnot whilst feeling the very same. That it is artificial. And those people hope to meet other people who recognize the flaws of the very means they employ. Wether it be okc, tinder, or whatever.

The means don't necessarily change or say something about the people using it. I've met some terrific people through online dating, got all I ever desired and more - and one of the ideas we shared was how shallow it is to use internet dating! I'm not the "I'm from internet dating inc and I'm here to help" advocate, but people who dislike the idea or concept of okc or tinder or what have you, still use it nowadays. And you are bound to find those people if you look for them.

In the end it's not about which website or app you use, but about your intentions, desires, needs; and you will find people who match that. Even if it is through a website or internet culture you deem shallow. Because surprise, loads of people using these places think it is shallow, and want to meet people who think so too.

Tinder where I'm at (Bible Belt) isn't much of a hookup culture - tons of people mentioning how much they love Jesus, pictures of their kids, etc.

how do people go about using tinder for casual sex? i've gone on four or five tinder dates -- mostly at coffee shops -- and they kind of felt like job interviews.

I just dated someone I met on Tinder for a couple months. She's great, we're going to stay friends. I don't know anyone who uses Tinder for casual sex. Tinder dates are just dates.

how do people go about using tinder for casual sex?

tinder won't even run on my phone but I assume

1. want to meet someone for casual sex
2. meet someone off tinder and see you if you want to have casual sex with them
3. ask them to have casual sex

is casual sex when u keep ur adidas stan smiths on lol

flaccid casual

I think it has to do with asking for sex casually rather than submitting a formal request with notarization but idk for sure

dating in a feminist culture is increasingly difficult so these sites should hopefully provide a timely anecdote to the problems of female supremacy

:-/

Don't know if you are being sarcastic but still

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date outside the feminist culture u fool

they sure do produce anecdotes tho

Now adding various caveats to my post upthread about stuff like, if you're new to a city these sites might be useful.

Probably dismissed it too readily

Some of us also probably get a bit high-minded when it comes to 'telling the truth about who we are to others'.

Like does it really matter if I put a very carefully angled and lit picture of me on there, and if I cobble together my various damp squib career attempts and say I work in the creative industry?

The idea of doing that knocks me sick, but then I guess the reader might in fact expect me to be doing that kind of 'polishing' on my profile, and so it wouldn't actually be a deception?

Actually not so much that it knocks me sick, more like a wave of what's-the-point weariness coming over me at the thought of yet another ruse

clouds gloriously otm itt

tinder seems ok, w/e. for all its flaws okcupid seems the best way for me (altho hopefully I won't have to use it again). just a matter of finding people who don't use it so reductively. they're still people, not internet ciphers. sometimes people you'd fall madly in love with regardless of how you met them

my only contribution to this thread is that I get that Pitbull/Ke$ha song stuck in my head whenever someone mentions Tinder

now, hopefully, you do too

yet another ruse
all dating

(placeholder for when I feel like contributing to thread)

why? it's not like you can edit posts...

sigh

this is how two people can really hit it off online fwiw

clouds otm

unconvinced that any mode of meeting people is inherently more ~real than any other, real is what u make of it

I've interacted w/women on tinder, including meeting one (happened to be at the same place at the same time) but no hook-up materialized. Most others I've talked to are, in fact, using it as a dating community much like okcupid or other sites.

I saw some college kids online trying to figure out what grindr is and one was like "it's like tinder only gay" which is completely backward and wrong, afaict.

I don't think there's any wrong way to find other people attractive, but the physical attraction/emotional connection/lifestyle compatibility ratio is definitely balanced differently depending on how you meet and interact. If I meet someone in person and there's a mutual physical attraction, I'm more likely to overlook other differences. Maybe that's wrong, but judging from past experience, idk, seems fine

i almost feel like an asshole saying this but isn't the primary concern for initial meet, in fact, physical attractiveness?
obviously, long-term, you want someone who is compatible with your life, personality, soul, what-have-you. but let's be honest, most people won't give others a chance if they don't meet a baseline standard of desirable looks.
honest question - i have no experience with this stuff

there's a pretty large range of physical attractiveness, from "kind of attracted" to "I am so attracted I can't use words properly," with the former worth looking into if you get along well, and the latter possibly being so intense that you overlook entire realms of compatibility problems in the short term

if you find someone flat-out unattractive then, sure, that's a non-starter

also, if it's a hook-up as the latter part of the thread title implies, the meet-up is mostly to ensure the person is true to their photographic representation, and also use instinct to see if they seem like a serial killer

i've been in a monogamous relationship for 11 years, have never really participated in "hook-up culture" or used any app or website for meeting people. seems kind of exciting but almost immediately scares the shit out of me and feels super gross.

stevie deux, treeship, and la lechera relentlessly otm itt

In my extremely anecdotal experience I know a handful of people who seem to be stuck in a kind of okc/tinder loop for the last several years, serial dating, nothing ever going further, and zero people who have met a lasting relationship partner or spouse that way. To be fair, I do actually know one married couple who met online a while back, in the earlier days of internet dating.

I think it's something about the limitless choices, especially in a city with an endless supply of single young people. Maybe in a small city or suburb online dating wouldn't have that quality.

fwiw most of them also seem to be unhappy about it by now.

out rural the broadband rly limits the amount of swiping you're willing to do before u just settle

still trying to figure out how Treeship thinks Tinder is *only* the picture yet has gone on four or five Tinder dates!

imo people like it more than sites like okcupid or match _because_ of the brevity, not despite it. I'd rather people decide whether to talk to me based on seeing a couple shared interests, shared acquaintances, a short sentence and a general idea of what I look like than judge me on how I choose to present my detailed personality inventory via mini-essay and questions?

btw, the article linked in the intro post here is, in my opinion, kind of garbage?

when relationships seem strong, and there is mutual trust and affection and all that stuff, vulnerability is precisely what you don't feel anymore

― Treeship, Saturday, December 13, 2014 10:56 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Mutual trust" means that you are open and responsive and have empathy with your romantic partner, which is impossible without the sort of emotional vulnerability the article skirts around. the binary that is set up between "partying until 30" and being in loving romantic partnerships is kind of garbage, because without experience, all many people have is emotional vulnerability. It's necessary in a committed relationship -- the ability to open up, to love, leaves you vulnerable to being hurt, but it's the same thing that gives you the ability to love.

If anything the article seems like a reaction to the new status quo? It used to be that we'd shame youth for having sex, and then shame them when they didn't use protection/birth control/etc. Now there's a generation that is, by most accounts, not approaching sex as casually so they're being painted as emotionally barren. I know ilx is an outlier, but the average marriage ages of 29/27 still seem low to me!

29/27 is approaching the tail-end of prime offspring-making years, so it's not really that young for marriages intended to include children, especially since I'm guessing most marriages today don't involve starting at kids immediately.

that is pretty true, but that impulse is also behind some of the worst relationship decisions I've heard from people

it depends on what you mean by "immediately," too. most people I know who have a strong impulse to have kids in that age range have gotten pregnant around two years in?

Well assuming two years before pregnancy, first kid is born close to 32/30, assuming you want more than one and not irish twins say next one is 35/33, then pretty soon after that you start getting into "high risk pregnancy" years. Science hasn't 100% caught up to this generation's idea of how long what I guess you could call young-adulthood should last.

yeah, this is a sidetrack

back on track: what is with people who strongly identify as parents or have their kids in their primary dating profile picture? I have no problem with dating women with kids, but to me dating is about discovering how someone relates to you and vice-versa, not an immediate dump of their entire identity. I guess the dating hook here is "I'm a mother?"

Maybe it's sort of a "get this out of the way up front" strategy, like just eliminate all the people who are going to bail once they find out you have kids.

So far, from experience, the status quo has been: college students are extremely busy, having sex is an impersonal affair that checks off like laundry and grocery, virginity is mocked and almost all communication are via text/FB and now Tinder. Other alternatives are very rare. There is a huge malaise right now, and perhaps it's always been the case that sex and relationships in your early twenties was a difficult affair, but don't we want to be smarter about it?

Are you a college student, VHS? I am interested in hearing more about this

I was until not very long ago, planning to go back to it for masters.

I would recommend the End of Sex by Donna Freitas, it's a rather short read and she did superb research in different types of colleges to understand how relationships work and don't work now. I don't agree with absolutely everything, but most of it I could relate with, and she makes sure everything is backed by numbers, which is solid. She doesn't discuss Tinder, it didn't exist the way it does now during the time she researched (around 2009-2012).

virginity is mocked

by whom and in what social situations?

Basically what happens in my case, and in the case of many friends and acquaintances, male and female is:

Most people have spent the past 4-5 years hooking up and very little more.
Outlier cases of married couple by their mid-20s exists, they are rare.
If you go on a date, chances are, you have no idea what you are doing. (I think I've been on my first real date at age 25, it seems to be the case for a lot of people around me to)
So if the other person has a clue about dating, it doesn't work.
So if the other person has no clue about dating, it reverts back to hooking up instinctively and usually don't go beyond.
If you are both comfortable with dating, then it still has little chance to work out because dating is a brutal experience on it's on.

I mean, what I'm bemoaning here is that having first real dating experiences are pushed back in favor of a culture of hooking up that benefits no one.

not to pry, but where are you geographically if you don't mind my asking?

maybe it's a different bunch I've run into, but the younger new hires at my workplace and our interns seemed a little more socially conservative

White upper middle class Montreal. Donna Freitas arguments is that it's worse in universities like Oberlin, where there is little else to do, at least we have a whole city to explore.

ahhhh

yeah, Montreal and the midwest US are very diff worlds for many reasons

I mean that's personal experience, but I've seen the numbers corroborate this experience from different US cities.

"Also women are generally bombarded by dudes on these sites. Looks overwhelming to deal with."

For real. I was comparing notes with a friend who has Tinder Gold and has just about given up on the Sisyphean task of weeding through the 3k+ likes she has. Meanwhile I've received like 7. That's why I don't mind using the super likes. At least it lets women know, "Hi, I'm interested in you specifically"

maybe this is the year I actually do this ... idk ... i kinda was ok with the old school bars and parties model (not like, ok, as in wildly successful, just like, comfortable) ... i know there are people older than me on these things, but, the one time I made a profile and then inactivated it a few hours later, I got "matched" with 4 dudes I knew, one I think I had a friend date with years ago and the chemistry was not there, two dudes I would never be interested in, and the creepy coke-addict ex-bf of a former bandmate ...

Sarah, I mean no disrespect when I say this, but based on your account of setting up the app and deleting it a few hours later, you are at high risk of making yourself miserable. I speak from experience here: all of my experiences with dating apps have been miserable up until the past 2 or 3 months.

What changed was that I started to think of myself like one of those dudes you see fishing at the seashore with a dozen poles standing up in the sand. Cast your line, then forget about it and move on to the next one, because there is nothing you can do now to make the fish come sooner. Recognize that there is a good chance the person you're angling for doesn't even have the app installed on their phone anymore. (If you're using one of the apps that tells you "so&so has been active today," pay attention to it! Those people may be worth spending a little more energy on reading their profile and crafting a personalized intro.) Work in short bursts, sending intros to a few people who seem interesting, and when you feel your standards start to lower as you try to force something to happen -- it's time to log off for the day! Turn off the app notifications, go read a book, crack a beer (N/A for me), come back later in the week and see if you've caught anything. And never ever ever worry about how long it takes someone to reply, because every halfway datable person on these apps will occasionally forget to check them for a few days.

The part after you match is a little harder to give advice about. How long to talk before planning to meet, what red flags you want to look for before agreeing to a date, at what point you decide that they're wasting your time or catfishing you -- these are personal judgments you have to make for yourself. Fortunately, they get easier with practice. You *will* have a few bad experiences; don't feel too bad, because everybody does.

I hope this advice is at all useful to you. Happy hunting!

Sincerely,
A man who has used dating apps to meet women

idk, people feel things differently but when on a date do you have a moment when you share a look or conversational moment when you're emotionally charged? shared eye contact that you both take a second to break because you're mutually enjoying it, pausing because you're a little shocked by how something your date said just clicks with your personality? the thing is, those things are what you hope for on a date, but they can be completely serendipitous and shared by people who are not currently sizing each other up. I think experiencing those is what turns some people off of online or arranged dates -- they seem natural and not part of a selection process, even if it's with someone who might not have made the cut if you'd sized each other up online

― mh, Sunday, August 7, 2016 8:20 PM (six years ago)

Not having a great couple of months, and I keep thinking about this, though the first half tells me "hang on, just keep at it, the moment will arrive" while the second half tells me "delete, then have much more romantic presence of mind throughout the day, so you can recognize and honor those moments outside of formal date scenarios."