The weirdest thing is I don't remember what I used to talk to my friends about when I was in high school. We didn't have much shared media to talk about (e.g. periodic TV shows people obsess about today). None of us so much picked up a newspaper at the time so current events were out. None of us had that many specific interests and the interests we had weren't shared. But somehow we spent hours talking about something. I wish I could be a fly on the wall of my prom table to just take in what was discussed.
I heard in an interview that 50 years ago, people used to basically used to fall in love with heir neighbours and coworkers. Modern dating means browsing hundreds of other people in your city like they're products on a store shelf, always with the feeling there might be someone better just a couple swipes away.
I find there's actually a lot of success to be had online dating, if you just know how to talk to people and learn about them! It seems like such a tautology but I think it really is that simple.
For every relationship I ever had, I had the opportunity to observe them, get to know them in person, maybe flirt, sometimes be friends. Sometimes for weeks. Sometimes for years, without any express intent. With online dating you’re both saying upfront that you’re evaluating each other as dating material, knowing only the fluff they wrote about themselves, or I take it with this generation only what they look like. All that will probably always feel too weird for me.
This has been the story of my life. I think there is a certain type of person - physical attractiveness is part of it, but charisma is even bigger – who can "get away with" flirting in unsanctioned spaces. It's a combination of being confident enough to break taboo, perceptive enough to read subtle interest cues, and being attractive enough for those interest cues to be non-zero.
I've tried to be that person from time to time, but it almost always breaks down on one of those axes, thus consigning most of my dating efforts to the soul-crushing grind of dating sites/apps.
I think the real unwritten rule is, don't flirt with someone unless you're reasonably confident that they'd like to be flirted with. Some people might be able to figure that out in a matter of minutes, and others might need to get to know someone over the course of weeks or months in a casual group setting to figure it out.
I am sorry to say, but I think people who believe flirting is not allowed probably have not put in the effort to be able to read social cues, don't have an aptitude for it, or never learned to flirt in a non-offputting way.
I agree that if you're charming and fun, flirting with strangers is pretty straightforward, and I especially agree with the point about getting to know people over a longer period of time before trying to gauge potential interest. Worst case, you get a cute friend!
That's totally true! But that's one thing about flirting, it can be very light and non-committal.
If she is being extra friendly, smiling a lot, and giving you a little extra eye contact, you can do the same and see how she responds. If she gives you a positive feedback, take it one step farther. If she gives you negative feedback, just forget about it no harm done.
Maybe she was smiling at you in the first place because she also doesn't know if she wants to flirt with you and she's testing the waters.
I think where people get into trouble is they see someone go from 0 to 1, and they jump straight to step 7 which comes off as aggressive and off-putting.
I think people have been dealing with rejection forever. Everyone has to start out awkward, and most people get over it.
Maybe that is one place where technology hurts us. Maybe 30 years ago, a young person would have tried and struck out, and then they would have gotten over it and tried again. Whereas maybe today people try and fail, and then they can retreat into video games and online communities, which offer a superficial sense of success or belonging without the same risk of direct rejection.
Any explanation of the shittiness of straight dating apps has to center gender norms and roles.
dating is a two way street. If the other party just gives one line answers and does nothing to try to move a conversation forward, then it just becomes a job interview. You can't just magically get someone to open up when they refuse.
It doesn't help that, at least from a guy's perspective, it seems about 80% of women are really just trying to get instagram followers.
Dating also becomes a problem once you finally meet. You will never be more interesting than the smartphone in front of the other person. That person has the entire world in their hand. You can't possibly compete with TikTok or Tinder. You go to the restroom and the other person will go swiping on Tinder.
I really do believe humanity is doomed. Like really, actually, doomed. The internet is too much for our monkey brain.
These days they aren't even trying for of subscribers or ig followers, they just straight up put their cashapp in their bio. I have friends who have done that and made 100s of $ before their accounts got banned. And some didn't even get banned.
It's also true that a lot of people are on there but not realy to date. Like just to get compliments/validation. Not all girls either, just guys it doesn't work as well. Instead, a lot of us are on there just to look at/rate girls. At parties these days you will sometimes see a group of guys looking around somebody's phone "rating" girls on tinder.
"Dad, you're old (in his 60s), and short (5'5")"
You're going to be filtered out of everyone's automated search.
But my Dad is funny and can talk to anyone. I kept telling him, OkCupid isn't your scene! Meetup.com is!
Unfortunately, he didn't listen to me
Dating coworkers is now forbidden in many companies, especially if there are differences in hierarchy. In some countries it becomes a possible legal liability for the one in the higher position.
Some large organizations that require traveling even forbid dating the “local population” when deployed abroad.
Podcasts are similar to books though, you have to dig through a bit of garbage to find one that works for you. Here's my list:
- crime in sports
- Linux unplugged
- software engineering radio
- the knowledge project
- coinsec
- persona
- ten percent happier
- quanta podcast
- physics world weekly
- ologies
- darknet diaries
- stuff you should know
- the joy of why
- fall of civilizations
- smartless
- money talks
- planet money
- small town murder
- offensive security
- the journal
- programming throwdown
- timesuck
- Conan O'Brien needs a friend
- philosophize this
- against the odds
- levar Burton reads (no longer running)
- curiosity daily
- science weekly
- future of journalism
- wtf
- broken record
- idea cast
- swindled
- malicious life
- views room
- behind the bastards
- the exchange
- stuff to blow your mind
And for the "junk" I listen to just about every comedian podcast that exists: Bill Burr, Bobby Lee, Chris destefano, Stavros!, Tom Segura, (this list goes on a while...)
Along the same lines, I also came to theorize that books that were written to be read don't make good audio candidates. Yes, doable. But I found lectures and speeches to be better suited for listening (as it was their original and intended medium).
That said, my gut impression is that people are less sociable and less socialized than we used to be. I believe we simply spend less time around other people, and we are less adept at building relationships. It’s easier to remain sexually, socially, financially, and resource independent from other people - so we do and sexual relationships become less frequent.
If you are fully immersed in your raw, human sexuality - that’s great. For many, sex and sexuality is more nuanced than mere fucking.
What is this "sex life" you speak of? (haha).
On a serious note they helped me learn to be content with being alone or at least not worry about "looking" for it via dating apps, and I would say not playing that game (dating apps) is what is "ruining" my sex life (or lack of).
You can just say Cum Town ;)
It's basically a few pixels on mobile.
I think this is an illusion. When I check some films with awards (let's say "do the right thing", not a blockbuster but a well-known film) I cannot find them in any streaming service (maybe criterion collection). I can definitely think of tons of tv shows I cannot find on dvd, let alone on streaming platforms. Not even on torrent networks.
This idea that the internet has everything is fine for some topics (like programming), but I believe it does not apply to some contents, and films are one of them.
EDIT: grammar
It makes me think that the prom table would be full of nonsense, expletives, and talking about women, but isn't that what you'd normally expect?
Gossip, mostly. Talking about your peers, who said what, how terrible teachers are for making us actually do work, commenting on style or the lack thereof, etc. Also, while there were fewer TV series, they still existed. Star Trek, B5, Knight Rider, Airwolf, etc.
I would have laughed if someone had told me that I'd be turning it on, but I frequently do. Basically whenever I'm not sure what to watch, I flip to that and throw on one of the channels.
I had to stay once in an old hotel in a small town. It had an old CRT analog tv with analog cable. It brought back memories. Like the TV tuner changing channels really fast.
Fast channel surfing is something I hadn’t been able to do since switching to a digital tvs and digital cable about a decade ago.
The movie, The Big Short, was on heavy rotation about a year ago. Good movie. They have an entire channel dedicated to Narcos, so I'm basically fluent in Spanish now - well, "drug dealer Spanish", at least.
If you Google “rt <name of movie>” you will get the rating too.
Anecdotally, I myself and many otherwise healthy, sociable young men I know have pretty serious porn addictions. I really wish there would be more research done on the negative impacts of pornography, especially on young men and teens/pre-teens.
I know typically any anti-porn sentiment is met with "Oh you're just being a puritan", but the reality couldn't be further from the truth.
On social issues, I'm very liberal. Yet so much porn during my developmental years has done so much damage that as an adult I'm just now really understanding the full extent of it, and breaking that addiction is incredibly difficult
I haven't met many women into porn, probably because a one night stand is just a zero effort tinder swipe away, from the comfort of your pijamas in your living room.
As a man, you end up turning to porn or paying for sex, or drinking or doing drugs, to compensate the lack of intimacy in your personal life, as that just leads to depression and lack of any self worth.
And yes, having _sex_ is only a swipe away for women. But having decent sex that you enjoy and is another matter altogether. And that's before thinking about safety.
If I was looking for reasons why fewer women seem to be into porn, I'd say it's because the vast majority of porn is explicitly made to cater to male desires.
For many of these "porn addiction" cases, there's more going on than just "he is addicted to porn and now he won't have sex with me". Communication is a two-way street and women are a little eager to play the 'passive princess who can do no wrong' without realizing most of society is training men to avoid making assumptions.
Not to go into too much detail, but I've had to seriously recalibrate my "respect women" upbringing to make my wife happy. And I'm not even talking sub/dom stuff or outright rape-fantasy things like I've heard tell of from my (somewhat shell-shocked) unattached and actively-dating friends.
Sex is weird.
But it's really hard to hear all day long from every source how terrible men are, and how we need to be gentler creatures.
And then a shocking percentage of women actually do seem to want you to be that animal they decry as soon as you get into the bedroom.
I've seen tons of "the media" contradicting your point, but I guess if you said "some people say this, others don't", your point wouldn't be as compelling
Whenever someone pretends that modern mass media is not overwhelmingly in favor of the current zeitgeist, it seems to me that person is either arguing in bad faith, or is startlingly naive. Finding one minute counterexample of a publication that no one has ever heard of does not imply an overall balanced media landscape. It would be as strange as arguing that western 'the media' doesn't support Ukraine over Russia; just absurdly incorrect to a cursory inspection.
yes, literally dozens, like fox, OANN, breitbart (I will happily continue to follow suit if you want to as well)
> Whenever someone pretends that modern mass media is not overwhelmingly in favor of the current zeitgeist
modern mass media is a product of the people, who determine the zeitgeist, so it is pretty unsurprising that the attitudes of media overall reflect the attitudes of people overall
similarly, we would obviously expect to see less content advocating extreme views that society largely rejects like "all abortion should be illegal", compared to content conforming with social norms
but let's get off this tangent and back on topic: whether you say "the media" or "media", my original response remains true: "media" says plenty to the opposite of what you claim it says, and you're simply cherry picking observations that fit your own narrative around "media" itself
but I guess "media says this sometimes, and sometimes the opposite" doesn't make for as compelling of a narrative
That's not to mention the onus of taking charge is still put onto men, while men are actively punished for making a mistake, and women tend to get off without social repercussions despite continuing to play passive. We're already seeing the cracks forming.
Do you expect any of this getting better if porn vanished overnight? If anything, it would get much worse.
When a porn addiction is developed before you hit your teens it's hard to blame a dysfunctional sex life on externalities.
What has changed is the availability of porn introducing an extremely low cost alternative to sex, reducing the impetus for making the effort to find a partner (relative to previous times). Maybe even reducing the impetus to putting in the effort to seduce an existing partner!
Of course, it is not uniform across all men of course. I suspect those who are able to attract/interact with partners more easily will opt to do that, and those that are not will opt for the easier, lower cost option (even though there may be other long term costs).
That makes intuitive sense, but is far from the reality. Many men, even in otherwise healthy relationships, prefer porn.
Again I really wish more data was collected on this but anecdotally I've seen hundreds on online discussions from both women who are concerned about their partner and declining sex life and from men who want to quit using porn to better service the needs of their partner.
Porn addiction is real, serious, and more common than you may think.
With porn, it is the brain making a cost benefit calculation that putting in the effort for the real thing is not worth the cost relative to cost/benefit ratio of porn.
As in do I make all the effort to get my wife in the mood, or do I open a website and be done with it. Or do I control my diet and exercise, or do I open a website and be done with it.
Brain scans show the pathways for porn addiction are very similar to those found in cocain and amphetamine addicts. Perhaps this is true for you, but don't discredit porn addiction as not a "real addiction" when it's an established fact that it is one on par with substance abuse.
Not according to the American Psychological Association [1]
A brain scans showing a similar response to other pleasure stimula is far from "addiction".
GP has a valid point. Blaming porn for sex issues is an oversimplification of a very complex issue involving deep interpersonal dynamics.
[1] https://www.insider.com/guides/health/mental-health/porn-add...
I didn't blame porn alone, but I said I wouldn't discount it's contribution to the issue as GP did. I agree it's a complex issue.
I said nothing of the outcomes, though I wouldn't be so sure. We don't have any data on the outcomes of porn addiction. I wonder how many young men have committed suicide in large part due to their porn addiction, or how many have lost their jobs. It's certainly a non-zero number.
-I want porn, because I carve intimacy
-I want to smoke, so I can relax or be seen as Y.
-I drink a lot of coffee because I dont have time for Quality Sleep.
The fact that these reasons exist doesn't make the addiction any less of an addiction. It's often a reason why rehab centers try to take a holistic approach and not only tackle the addiction, but the surrounding lifestyle choices that further enable the addiction.
It's not "addiction is a masked emotional needs problem" it's, "addiction is often accompanied by emotional needs problems". Subtly different, but different nonetheless.
Ive experienced the effects of porn addiction, and/or viewing from a young age, from both sides.
I have pretty niche tastes since i started watching in my very early teens, and though i find men very attractive its harder to finish with them.
Ive been with several partners who preferred porn to me. The latest had very, very unrealistic standards. They objectified my body, hard, and I swear their porn use affected their capacity for empathy. They said and did things that made me feel like a replaceable thing, they compared my to porn stars (and found me lacking).
They would collect massive amounts of porn and run off to use it multiple times a day… which wouldve honestly been fine, except for the fact that it did really affect their ability to connect with me. After theyd use porn their mood and empathy / behavior towards me would markedly change for the worse.
I am a fairly attractive, _very_ willing and attentive partner.
These experiences have honestly really damaged my self esteem and willingness to date.
I have also since stopped using porn a) to fix the first line and b) i cannot watch it without being reminded of my experiences with these men and their criticisms of my body.
Do you have data of this phenomenon?
You obviously know the answer to your question since I repeatedly stressed my lack of data and how it was anecdotal.
We don't have any data either supporting or debunking that claim, I only am repeating what I've seen play out hundreds of time in various digital spaces. Some phenomena just haven't been studied in good enough detail to have hard data in either direction. A lack of data for an assertion doesn't disprove that assertion, it just makes it temporarily unprovable.
I'm sure the majority of men in healthy relationship prefer sex with their partner to porn. I'm also sure there are a non-trivial amount who do prefer porn.
I think anecdotally you may be right. But preference is a very hard thing to determine. It's unfair to compare porn to sex the same way it is unfair to compare watching a sport to playing it. One requires very little effort, the other monumental effort comparatively.
Ah yeah, fair enough. My mistake.
>Again I really wish more data was collected on this but anecdotally I've seen hundreds on online discussions from both women who are concerned about their partner and declining sex life and from men who want to quit using porn to better service the needs of their partner.
1: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/s.htm#sexualact... 2: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/n.htm#numberlif... 3: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/sexual-fantasies-our-mispercepti... 4: https://bespokesurgical.com/2021/06/24/sexual-history-by-sta...
Fuck it I’ll lead or be part of a crew to get on a space ship and maybe never come back. Being stuck at a laptop all day is so fucking boring now because work from home means I’d rather not.
I want to be out and about. Not stuck inside ALL day (along with everyone else).
We don't want them here, though, which is why they can't do it. If pre-contact America/Australia had strong passport controls, Europeans wouldn't have been 'venturing out to it', either.
Worst case scenario if I move across the Atlantic is that I don’t go bankrupt because I had a medical emergency. You know what? That doesn’t sound so bad.
My chances of going there are slim though so you're going to have to do it alone.
A one night stand is way way more risky for women in most ways whether with regard to the risk of being assaulted or catching STIs or unplanned pregnancy. On top of that, society heavily views sexually promiscuous women more negatively than the same behaviour in men. All of this means women can't treat no-strings sex as flippantly as men can and you shouldn't discount those risks and costs by saying sex is a swipe away for them. It is very much like if I were to say any man could get laid whenever they want by hiring a sex worker while ignoring the risks and costs involved.
These arguments also seem to ignore that the vast majority of women are not so universally attractive that getting on a dating site immediately results in a plethora of matches that they would want to have sex with (even ignoring my first point). If they lacked any standards and were willing to have sex with anyone yes it would be very easy to find a partner, but thats true for the vast majority of men as well.
The fact is most people, quite reasonably, only want to have sex with people they find attractive in situations where they feel safe, even when its only meant for physical pleasure, and this limiting factor greatly reduces the number of opportunities that are available regardless of the person's gender.
These arguments also don't fit with the real world statistics. In the US men on average have sex sooner than women[1] and have sex with more partners during their lifetime[2][3]. It differs by country and its possible to find studies and demographics where the more promiscuous gender switches, but the numbers never align with an assertion like "women don't like porn cause they can just go have real sex instead".
While its true a larger percentage of men consume porn, its very clear a large number of women do as well. You likely think you haven't met women that enjoy it because of stigma making them unwilling to discuss it openly. The biggest pornographic video site finds more than 1/3rd of their visitors are female[4].
Its also possibly because most discussions you see use a too narrow definition of "pornography". For instance, academic analyses often do not include types of pornography heavily preferred by women. When they do include things such as written erotica and not just images or video they find a majority (60%) of women enjoy porn[5].
And hopefully its clear I'm not trying to attack you personally. One study I came across while digging up the numbers found American men think women on average have 27 and men 21 sexual partners in their lifetime while the real numbers they found were 12 for women and 20 for men[3]. The perception that women have more sex is quite common and shared by a large number of men despite not being true. I simply hope my wasting an hour of my life writing all this up with citations will do a bit to change that.
1: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/s.htm#sexualact... 2: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/n.htm#numberlif... 3: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/sexual-fantasies-our-mispercepti... 4: https://www.pornhub.com/insights/yir-2021 5: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30358432/
Personally I would blame social media much more than porn, especially on young women and teens/pre-teens. Porn addictions, if such things exists (WHO is currently undecided on that fact), seems a minor issue compared to addictions caused by social media. Remove access to internet for a large group of teens and lets observe which kind of withdraws will firsts pop up.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex...
Fewer men are sleeping with more women.
but assuming your hypothesis is correct, to what do you think that choice can be attributed?
If we observe that women are choosing from a smaller pool of men, one way to describe that would be that women turning into more tournament-like in their strategy for reproduction and away from pair bonding. Tournament and pair bonding strategies have both benefits and drawbacks, and both are related and possible influenced by perceived social status of potential mates.
>the cause of this can also be attributed to the choice of the women
I’m not against porn, but believe for some (many?) people it can develop into an addiction, and/or warp their view of normal bodies, and reduce their capacity to relate / be intimate / empathetic.
For some people, I think viewing porn is mostly harmless; for others, they are not able to consume it without negative effects on themselves and their potential partners…
I’m also very progressive, sex positive; i find its hard to discuss this with friends or strangers because theres such a stigma against decrying porn. It’s difficult to discuss with nuance.
I found 4Chan when I was maybe 11 or so and grew up on /b/ where I saw all manner of horrific deaths and shock porn.
Nowadays I don't really find the idea of porn interesting because I've seen so much of it.
I wonder if people are simply more selective about what they want in a partner.
Which sort of lines up with the polarisation we see in other aspects of society.
And so they go into dating with much higher expectations and less open-mindedness.
Did you mean "Platonic friends"?
Although it sounds kinda nice to have Plutonic friends as well, since they'd have yachts and what not.
Sex is beautiful, but I would always prefer a meaningful human relationship with common interests and good communications without sex over an sex-filled relationship without the rest. Or to put it simply: Love without sex is greater than sex without love. Prefarably both, but it is a thing two people need to want : )
Online dating apps which have a huge incentive to keep people on their site as long as possible too...
The bigger issue is that figuring out good matchings is a crapshoot and users' self-described desires and priorities aren't actually in-line with what will make them happy. Everyone wants someone hot (almost by definition), and so the hot people get a lot of interest: the ones actually interested in relationships quickly end up off the market, and those remaining are more than capable of soaking up all the available interest.
I think the effect can be true without anyone having ill intent. The dating app companies are generally trying to make as much money as they can, which will indrectly lead to decisions that optimize for serial dating.
As a parallel I don't think Facebook is full of evil people who want to increase the amount of hate and anger in the world, but it does have a lot of people who just want to make money and encouraging negative reactions happens to be an effective way of doing that, so that's what we get.
I mean even OKCupid is being turned into Tinder, so it might not be so indirect after all.
Be real.
Another way to consider this is that people find it easier to divert themselves than to exert themselves only to be disappointed. (Think of the universal pain of the characters in "Marty". [1])
Even though the cost to "view" people has been cheapened by technology, what we find is that disappointment remains the likeliest outcome.
The article is written for humour, but it is worth noting that although "sex" cannot go out of fashion, the illusions of Bernaysian manipulation [2] certainly can. And, as a society with a changing set of prevailing group behaviours, the delights of companionship can certainly be lost.
An enjoyable sexual relationship isn't just a matter of presenting (or hunting for) some pastiche of beauty: people must want to charm and please one another. This cultural trait definitely has gone "out of fashion" in Western society.
Add to these discouraging considerations the fact that the financial calculation of a relationship (even if children are not planned) has much more risk today than even just 10 years ago.
This is an exceptionally succinct description of the problem, thank you. A societal shift from exertion to diversion. Creation to consumption. Scary stuff.
> the illusions of Bernaysian manipulation [2] certainly can
What do you mean here, in reference to Bernays? For context, I’m familiar with his work and legacy — the documentary ‘The Century of the Self’[1] is still perhaps the most important piece of media I’ve ever consumed.
By "Bernaysian" I mean much of what is discussed in that documentary by Adam Curtis. The out-sized notion of self in pursuit of the baubles, bangles, and beads of a glorified pageant of passion and love.
When two such highly-conditioned specimens meet, they probably will reject each other. Or if not, they will test each other's endurance in the illusion.
You'd be suprised at the amount of males that want to have sex but just can't get any.
There is a serious case of looks inflation nowadays with Tinder etc.
Every time I broke up I was mildly welcoming some time for myself but never managed to be single more than a handful of weeks. And I don't consider myself particularly more attractive/interesting than everybody out there.
Perhaps I am reading too deep, but you make it sound like someone needs to make some great effort to meet someone else. No, just a slight hiccup in their daily routine can introduce them to another person whom has very similar, low energy interests. Think: Buzzfeed dating videos from 5 years ago.
Really? Tell me where these people are! The vast, vast majority of couples I know just coast through life and sometimes they "hang out" and sometimes they take some photo and sometimes they partecipate in some friend's celebrations and so on and on. If they asked each other about their interest they would not have any.
Pretty handy to make all the fault of "males" while never ask them what desires they have, what they want in the other person while constantly emphasize females' desires. Have we ever question women about their own standard? Are they too high? Are they what men want? Do they bring something on the table or it's the usual "I'm a passive princess: entertain me, jester!", because if it is I prefer porn, it usually doesn't ask to pay for a date.
Go on Tinder and see what you get.
Not just dating.
Not just sex.
Marriage.
Now the looks required for that have basically skyrocketed. Being kinda cute doesn't cut it nowadays. You have to be tall broad shouldered and have a decent career.
Watching most people continue to be addicted to systems that take more than they give (social media) is difficult. And it affects the people around them deeply, too. It doesn't happen in a vacuum; the emotional un-presence is palpable. It is so common it feels very difficult to bring up.
And those "dating" apps can hardly be called dating apps in most cases. They're designed to mess with the underlying sexual dynamic of men and women. If they were meant for romance, they'd have more mechanisms in place to help strangers actually date and get to know each other. Instead, they're a meat market, and the sad thing is more and more people are growing up in a world where they know no different. If you think about it, dating apps have no incentive to try and get people to actually meet in real life. Not only does that raise the potential for liability, but that means fewer eyeballs on their product at any given time.
Tinder knows very well that their product is selling attention to women and the promise of sex to countless men they know have next to zero chance based on their looks alone. As OK Cupid was losing its position as a dating app, I remember them putting out an advertising campaign featuring the initialism "DTF", which tells you all you need to know. They might even still be doing it, for all I know. I remember it from billboards and posters in Santa Monica.
> I don't think tech or porn is the main culprit. It's that people now have way more entertainment options other than sex. Of course, a lot for those entertainment options are being driven by tech.
I don't buy this one bit. The number of entertainment options is correlative, but who has demonstrated that it's causative? Yes, there is a chance that the proliferation of entertainment options is the primary cause, but unless a double-blind study has or will be done to test whether the sex drive is actually in competition with entertainment, I have very sincere doubts.
Furthermore, the porn industry is in no way declining. If people were losing an instinctive interest in sex, why would they be watching porn? What if people actually want sex, but they are too ill equipped to obtain it IRL?
And we haven't even brought up declining androgen levels in males.
Sex isn't going out of fashion. If anything, we are hypersexualized. The goal of sex isn't merely to propagate genes, but to propagate selected genes. Our current environment allows us to select our mates to such an extent that even more people are seleced out of the gene pool for a variety of reasons. Either we're perpetually thinking we can do better, or that we're never good enough or are too ugly, or are totally clueless because Boomer and Gen X parenting have been a disaster.
This is analogous to how regular social networks actively encourage unreasonable maximally-controversial discourse because it maximizes engagement, to the detriment of rational discussion of social and political issues. If people can reach a solution to issues like tradition vs. personal freedom, abortion, guns, etc., then they might spend less time on social media debating them and trolling and fighting about them and social media engagement might decline.
As far as porn goes, it's absolutely a substitute for sex for some people. It's less fulfilling but it's enough to get off and have the desire go away and it requires far less effort.
Another thing about porn I haven't seen mentioned much in this thread is how unrealistic it is and how people raised with a lot of porn probably have really unrealistic ideas about what sex is like. If they try to literally act out porn in the bedroom with their partner, it's likely not to go that well. In some cases they might go right for things many partners won't be interested in or would only be interested in after establishing a lot of trust and a real relationship.
Yes. This is absolutely a fundamental problem not just with dating apps but with any business whose employees and/or customers have surpassed Dunbar's number. It's not so much a problem of money or capitalism as it is with the dehumanization of financial transaction.
> As far as porn goes, it's absolutely a substitute for sex for some people. It's less fulfilling but it's enough to get off and have the desire go away and it requires far less effort.
It is a substitute as far as it can surpass the cost/benefit of meatspace. If too many people are ill prepared to be self-reliant adults and attract the other sex, and thereby unable to be sufficiently attracted or aroused by their peers, then porn completely makes sense. The proliferation of isolation only further encourages porn use, as it does with any form of escapism.
But this is coming from the standpoint that I have which is that far too many adults from my generation onward are objectively less self-reliant and have more pathologies than their proximal ancestors. Not everyone agrees with this, but I know enough Millennials and have enough Gen Z and Alpha family members that my experience is informing me that said generations aren't destined for greater success than the previous.
My point being that I think if more people were socially functional and able to make themselves attracted to whichever sex(es) they are attracted to, porn might not be quite as normalized as it currently is. (it would still be normalized by virtue of the internet)
> Another thing about porn I haven't seen mentioned much in this thread is how unrealistic it is and how people raised with a lot of porn probably have really unrealistic ideas about what sex is like. If they try to literally act out porn in the bedroom with their partner, it's likely not to go that well. In some cases they might go right for things many partners won't be interested in or would only be interested in after establishing a lot of trust and a real relationship.
I generally agree... it can set people up to have expectations that lead to disappointment and even personal failure that leads to poor self esteem, animosity, and lack of fulfillment.
I almost want sex-ed classes to find a way to teach about this, but that's a whole can of worms that I ultimately think would backfire and be a bad idea. My intentions are good, though. :)
However, I don't entirely agree with the use of the word "unrealistic." Putting aside the theatrics in porn, telling people that porn is unrealistic can give them the impression that their particular sexual interests are abnormal and can't be lived out in real life with consensual partners, which is by no means true. I'm not sure I know what the best alternative is, but there's got to be some way to communicate that. It's actually a very nuanced point of discussion, I think.
> If they try to literally act out porn in the bedroom with their partner, it's likely not to go that well. In some cases they might go right for things many partners won't be interested in or would only be interested in after establishing a lot of trust and a real relationship.
Yes. I think this is where parents (and unfortunately probably teachers of some kind) are going to have to grow the cajones to actually talk about these issues with their kids at an appropriate age. We can't pretend like we live in a world where young people can't watch explicit material online instantly and for free. The "birds and the bees" doesn't cut it anymore.
On a related note, I've found it interesting that apparently girls get way more sexual education from their mothers than boys do from their dads. My dad tried... not well, but he tried. And it was way too late. I already knew what he was trying to say by tip-toeing around the words. Most of the men I know have told me their fathers didn't tell them anything about sex or girls at all. The most advice my best friend got from his dad was to "wear a condom."
I wonder if younger people know what it's like to go a week or two without orgasm. I don't know many teens/young adults, much less well enough to ask about sex culture. I came of age in the 2000s, when online porn was a thing, but not ubiquitous, not HD, and still taboo. I do know that deprivation of orgasm makes it that much better when it does happen, and it changes your mind in both increase of sexual drive, and for me, increase in the desire for true intimacy, rather than just an anxious need to get off. When I kick the habit, my interest in talking to women goes higher than normal, and not "simply" because I'd like sex - it's because my entire mind is changed to wanting intimacy and to meet people.
So ubiquity of porn and its normalization is a big factor in people not seeking true human contact.
I think that people are also becoming more and more shy/anxious in general, at least by my flawed observations. Between rapidly changing social cues/acceptable behavior, being constantly connected, etc., it is difficult for people to connect and disconnect appropriately.
I think about the pre-Internet era when people could maybe date or hook up, and if it didn't work, it was out of sight, out of mind. Now with social media, I see people staying connected despite falling out. Maybe out of curiosity, maybe thinking they can still be friends, but I think that the inability to have a clear head/fresh start makes things difficult.
At least in my area/life, there isn't a huge sense of community. It takes a lot of effort to find non-bar oriented things to do that has a decently high number of people attending, who are all interested in the same things, and where it's likely to find a person to date. Say what you want about religion, but church really does serve a valuable purpose when not used to direct people toward bigotry.
Gotta run to a meeting, this was a bit of a braindump, but the topic of human interaction and macro loneliness is an interesting topic, and a serious one that truly scares the shit out of me for my society and myself.
I certainly didn't when I was a teenager in the 80s, and I had zero access to porn or sexual partners.
Obesity was much lower and bodies were much healthier and more vigorous. Erectile dysfunction was much less common, and average serum testosterone levels were higher.
I guess it's uncouth to suggest that physical acts are more enjoyable with more physically attractive and capable populations, but I don't think it's something that should be discounted.
I have no doubt that self-reports of erectile dysfunction were probably less common at that time.
I will say that information about it was certainly less common, and the stigma associated to it was stronger and more prevalent.
> I guess it's uncouth to suggest that physical acts are more enjoyable with more physically attractive and capable populations
On "capable": Erectile dysfunction can be caused by low levels of testosterone, as well as sexual desire. However, sexual prowess doesn't orbit around the male penis as much as our fathers thought. That is but one dimension.
On the subject of attractiveness: I question that men with high levels of testosterone are actually more attractive to women. High testosterone has some obvious advantages (higher strength, bigger muscles, stronger sexual desire) but it also bring some things that are not so universally appraised (more body hair, less head hair, stronger body smell, mode violent behavior, less empathy). That group of traits, and the fact that we live in a more informed society, might be making high-testosterone males less attractive to women, overall.
Perhaps that is what is making the testosterone levels go down - the same thing that is making us taller: artificial selection. My (totally unverified) impression is that this is what happens in Japan. Most famous male Japanese actors tend to look "effeminate" to me, as an European. There seems to be very little "strong jaw, big muscles" amongst that group, compared to Europeans or Americans.
I believe Cicero, in one of his speeches, complained about women being into young clean-shaven men, and not the robust full-bearded patrician look.
When I was younger I wanted it badly enough that I did stupid things like that but I can understand why people like me are in a tiny minority.
Additionally, those of us who grew up in the 80's had the absolute fear of AIDS drilled into us. IMO, the AIDS epidemic blunted the libido of at least one generation.
Looking back at the 80s/90s AIDS hysteria now, it was the same as COVID hysteria. Same people even, guys like Fauci. They were telling people you could get AIDS from drinking water fountains and similar crap. No wonder people were crazy about it.
Incidentally the whole concept of a virus that primarily targets gay people doesn't make much biological sense, does it? Nothing the size of a virus can detect your sexuality, nor is there any evolutionary reason to select for such a thing even if it could. That's why the 'experts' predicted it would quickly stop being primarily a gay disease. Nope. That rather makes the theory that a lot of AIDS cases were driven by drug abuse more plausible, doesn't it, especially because this preference for gay men mysteriously vanishes in Africa.
At any rate, the public health community has pretty consistently and for a long time misled heterosexual people about the risks of any disease that's known to primarily affect the gay community. They're doing it again now with monkeypox. It almost exclusively affects gay men which is why the official CDC guidance is to - no kidding - hold socially distanced gay sex parties. But to listen to the early announcements about this you'd not have suspected this reality. There is of course no question of the state enforcing any measures against the at-risk community to "crush the curve", like banning pride week sex parties: the LGBT community is special. For the rest of us, we get lockdowns. For them, nothing. It's this sort of thing that destroys the credibility of public health (not that they had any left after COVID). It's just one long string of ideological driven "science".
By the time I was a teenager that fear had subsided, but that’s was a pretty dramatic thing to hear at a young age.
As one of those people, well, it didn't stop me. But the terror was real.
As far as I know, people moved out either when they married, or when they went to a university in a different city. Around 1990 I knew one guy who had a job and still lived with his parents, and I thought that was odd (he spent all his money on fancy audiophile equipment).
I am 29 and was finally able to purchase my first home. I am one of if not the only person in my large friend group to purchase a home without assistance from parents
If you think people in their 20s are buying homes and starting families en-masse well I've got bad news for you
> People in their 20s having their own digs is, I think, a decidedly American phenomenon. In most of the poorer parts of the world (including, for example, Central and Eastern Europe), 30+ years ago younger crowd managed to have sex just fine, using dorm rooms, snatching time while parents were away, etc.
I think them not having their own digs is much more an American phenomenon, at least recently. Though houses have gotten ridiculously expensive in a lot of countries. Still, back when I was in my 20s, it was quite common in Europe for people to at least rent their own place, and possibly even buy a small apartment. I've got an entire branch of my family where everybody married at 21 and moved out at that age. In my parents' time, it was not much different, though they did live in my grandparents' massive house briefly after their marriage, and bought their first home when they were 34. But it was definitely common for people to move out of their parents' home when they got married. Once going to university got more common, that became the time they moved out.
The situation was bad. It wasn't legal to rent.
> People in their 20s having their own digs is, I think, a decidedly American phenomenon. In most of the poorer parts of the world (including, for example, Central and Eastern Europe), 30+ years ago younger crowd managed to have sex just fine, using dorm rooms, snatching time while parents were away, etc. My 2c.
is true then. It's only talking about the situation in the poorer parts of the world and not elsewhere, and gives CEE in 1980s as an example.
Combine that with the value extraction from rent/debt (everyone has to own a car and since they probably can't afford to just buy one most are in debt over it) and no one can afford sex.
The awful part of all this is that young people blame women. Women are just the messengers.
>The awful part of all this is that young people blame women.
I don't want to blame women in particular, but from personal anecdotes, women in particular place huge importance on a guy having his own car and place, despite both being massive wastes of money here and actively hurting one's ability to get housing later. The opposite, not so much. This in a country where even rent is now mostly a dual-income market.
You can see their role as messengers of the truth pretty often. I saw this one video that I thought was pretty great where a group of three women were out. The videographer/interviewer had the two friends call up the first's boyfriend and ask to "hang out" behind her back as a sort of joke. The first woman then freaked out, not at her boyfriend for wanting to cheat but at her friends for showing it. If you watch carefully this sort of thing happens pretty often.
This is a phenomenon in most of young generation US and EU too. Both housing and the ability to get on with someone are far cheaper and easier in Tokyo in particular, than most metropolises in the developed world. If that doesn't tell you there's more going on than "just your own place bro", I don't know what will. If women are continuously taught and telling each other that a guy must have their own place or they are bad / deadbeat, the entire thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Given our species as a whole has been procreating with less for most of our existence, I'm more eager to place my bets it's a cultural phenomenon rather than "biologically hardwired".
>You can see their role as messengers of the truth pretty often.
You can just as well say men are "messengers of truth" because they don't want to marry single moms. The only thing you're showing is that their words mean jack compared to their actions, as is the case with every human being under the sun.
Yup. It flips when everyone gets older.
The reason people buy instead of build is that the house is already there, whereas building anew takes a lot of time.
As interest rates grow, it becomes more expensive to do so, and waiting starts paying off.
But inflation is still high in spite of the high interest rates. And then, maybe the central banks will overshoot the interest rate, which will lead to another crash...
Other than that, living in a walkable area has its advantages, and codes are much stricter in high densities, so you can't build.
Back in my dad's days, they were poor so the only entertainment options in their free time was drinking cheap home made alcohol, dancing and sex, while now we have gaming, Netflix, tic-tok, porn, traveling to the infinite Instagramable places around the world, plus the grind of keeping up with spiraling living and real estate costs, which IMHO, is the real bummer here.
Also, adult dating and meeting people for the post-college working professionals, has largely moved from clubs/bars/the office to online dating apps, or lonely depression in your apartment, eating or drinking your feelings away, for those without success in the WFH, remote-everything, online dating world. Especially with the lockdowns.