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Yeeeah, I found myself single again after a divorce, and I have not even tried to date seriously after seeing what’s currently on the market.
Folks out here thinking that dating is a replacement for some much-needed therapy.
If you only have first dates you never need to move past identifying your problems. No work needed to push through them. Check Mate psychos!
No need for self-improvement if you decide that issue lies with everyone else! ♡
No. Marriage is a failure. Glad to see people turning their backs on that bullshit.
What does this mean? How is Gen Z dating?
The data says mostly through dating apps, for one, which seems so impersonal and frustrating from the outside.
Did Millennials not use dating apps?
I met my (now) wife in college in 2002. Never touched a dating app
Same, but 2012
I’m sure those who are still dating do now, but dating apps didn’t really start becoming popular until the mid 2010s, and millennials were well into their 20s already. Lots were able to take that last chopper out.
Man, I wasn’t even trying to settle down in my 20’s a little. It wasn’t until my 30’s that I thought about slowing down with the casual hook ups and happened to reconnect with a nice man from high school.
Do meet up groups not exist anymore? Does Gen Z lack any space to explore mutual hobbies and meet new people?
I mean it seems the same as it ever was to me, newly single younger Millennial here and I’m seeing a Gen Z woman.
Seems the biggest change in the last 4ish years is there are a lot more ethical Non-monogamy people, but I’m wondering if that’s just a youth culture thing.
The woman I’ve been seeing says that she is ENM, but all her actions indicate otherwise to me. Which I don’t mind, Im not really non-monogamous, just pretty open and flexible with things. Also below age 25-30 have a lot more “doesn’t want kids” vibes going on
FWIW I know plenty of Millenials who practice ENM or polyamory in some fashion, but I think that may just be more common in the queer community and I don’t see as many straight people doing it, or at least doing it well.
Does Gen Z lack any space to explore mutual hobbies and meet new people?
Shared interests have pretty much moved online, free/cheap places for physical meetups are disappearing, and in a car-dependent world you’re not gonna meet someone randomly in-between your planned out destinations.
It was more late 00s. I met my wife on OkC in 2008, and Match and it had been around for awhile at that point. It was still something vaguely embarrassing, and people didn’t usually talk about using those.
I got 2 bots that wanted me to pay a Instahoe. No humans around.
No, we just kinda stumbled into each other in social situations and went from there.
Those of us who are right on the cusp (let’s say 95-99) all use the apps but end up finding partners irl instead anyway. Either that or not at all. Just not on the apps.
That’s how I ended up finding any decent relationship. Tried the app thing for a bit, which was mostly fun for hook ups, but awful for finding any kind of actual connection.
Many millennials developed relationships / got married before dating apps really blew up. Plus, the cultural pressures of today make being single look very different from when I was.
I met a couple girls on IRC lol
The apps hadn’t been so thoroughly ruined by Match Group yet. OKCupid used to publish interesting detailed reports about dating habits. Plenty of Fish wasn’t full of bots and scammers. The apps that charged you for basic features were largely avoided. The experience was weird and new.
The dating app landscape as it is now is basically just whichever is the latest one until Match acquires it.
I started dating my partner before Tinder existed and when I watch my friends play Tinder it looks like such a depressing nightmare. It’s like… got microtransactions and shit. Wondering when they’re adding a battlepass.
Makes for a good dick menu, but for actual relationships it makes me sooooo happy I’ve found my eternal person before all of this shit existed.
They did and still do. Anybody dating today regardless of their age is likely to try a dating app at least for a bit. Don’t buy into this generational division.
Gen z and millennials are the only cohorts now? Get off my lawn.
No no of course not, I simply forgot Gen X existed and I don’t care how earlier generations did it, they seem miserable and bitter.
I simply forgot Gen X existed
This has been our plan all along.
That made me laugh!
I mean you’re not entirely wrong, but have you considered that might just be a side effect of getting on in years rather than not having dating apps 30+ years ago?
I’m glad the joke was well received, sometimes flippant sarcasm lands flat online!
I think there’s a lot of factors that could play into my parent’s (I’m in my mid 30’s, fwiw) generation seeming to suffer such marital woes. I think there was a lot of social pressure to marry and have children quickly that put them in relationships they may not have ideally chosen and at younger ages. People seem to change a lot during their 20’s. I absolutely found myself connecting well with some people at age 21 who I couldn’t stand by age 24. I think there was a lot of sexual repression as well. I wonder if my parents generation had had more freedom to explore LGBTQ and polyamorous relationships without fear of ostracization or worse consequences if they’d be overall happier in their marriages, even if they ended up in a heterosexual relationship.
I think the contemporary ideas on divorce also influenced people to stay in relationships they did not want to be in, and, frankly, the lack of social mobility for women seriously negatively impacted women’s abilities to leave toxic relationships. That was lessened in my parent’s generation from their parent’s, but it still existed and it still exists to some extent today.
Maybe it’s simply getting older? But I think it’s partially that older generations happen to stay in relationships longer, they’re less likely to split when things turn sour. Or even sour-ish.
I’m not sure if dating is truly easier or harder today than it was ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty, etc, but it sure is different and, yeah, the apps are pretty much just a data collection program that covers itself with the thin veil of a yenta
I simply forgot Gen X existed
We’re used to it.
Gen x is not considered, as they are the middle child of generations.
As a generation x middle child, there’s no point me even replying.
Shh
You’re like the butt of UDP joke.
Oh you. Packet in.
The idea of meeting people online seemed so exciting back in the 90’s and 00’s. How ever did it go so wrong?
i don’t know about the exact point/year, but probably when it went from meeting someone online to the only thing that matters being exterior looks
There have always been people who only care about looks. That’s never changed.
Turns out everyone else online in the 90s and 00s got to meet Chris Hansen.
Paid apps is where it went wrong. It stopped being something that happened organically and became a gamified P2W experience that catered to narcissists.
And the narcissistic aggressive assholes made it 1000x worse for everyone else…
So many “upgrades” were made to “protect” people but all that really amounted to was: people won’t see your messages unless they already like you (so no introducing yourself). Message limits so you can only send one new message a day, so for us guys who get ignored 99.9999999999% of the time we’re now stuck on the site 10000x longer. No browsing method, only swiping so people “disappear” once you’ve made a decision in that moment. Etc etc…
Now sites like plenty of fish have fucking live steaming … Talk about narcissists… They even have messages like “not looking, only here to stream.” They’re just milking the desperate guys who throw money at them for validation or whatever…
Dating, especially as a 30+ in 2024 is disgustingly depressing…
I don’t get all the hate dating apps get. I met my wife on bumble, so maybe I’m biased. But still, it seems significantly better than the methods previous generations had (blind dating, speed dating, getting introduced to random friends that might happen to have something in common).
What’s the alternative? You just happen to get lucky enough to meet someone in your daily life that’s a good fit? One of the advantages of dating apps is that you get introduced to a much larger pool of potential partners than you otherwise would, which makes it significantly easier to filter out the wheat from the chaff and find a good fit.
I mean, that’s what every single one of your ancestors did since the beginning of mankind
Not really. Humans live very differently today than they did throughout the past several millions of years. Cities and 9-5’s were not the norm until relatively recently. Unless you have a group you hang out with where you constantly meet new people it can be very different to find a partner in modern society without some form of dating.
Sometimes I forget cities were just recently invented in the 2010s
That’s funny. Obviously cities go back thousands of years, but I don’t think that was the norm for the majority of humans to live in them until the last several hundred or less. But in general, I do believe humans have fewer group social activities than we used to, and therefore fewer opportunities to meet new people.
There’s a cultural aspect to this too. I know in China it’s common for parents to be matchmakers and find other parents that have single kids for them to go on dates with. And historically in India arranged marriage has been common. So I’m probably looking at this from a western lens. But still, as far as dating goes online dating seems to be the modern evolution of it. And in my opinion an improvement.
Well if you were in a rural area you would just trade like 2 goats for a dowry. Times were much more simple back then.
I think part of the problem is dating apps keep getting worse and worse as they try to squeeze as much profit out of their users as possible. Tinder just came out with a $500/month tier
May as well pay for a legitimate match making service at that point
Pretty much this. I remember OG OkCupid and it was rad. It was a site ran by data nerds who wanted to help nerds find each other, and they wrote pretty frequent blog posts about their findings and how they were changing things up all for like ~$15 a month. All that started eroding until they got bought out by Match and its a cesspool of microtransactions now.
Dating apps are designed to keep you on them. They cant make money of you use them for a few months and then delete it.
Young people are actually using social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat to date. People you sorta knew in high school or college, share some mutual interests, and then hang out from there and see what happens.
I’m old enough to be in this relationship for nearly 20 years. It started on a dating site, in the early 2000’s Internet and that site managed to get two introverts into happy union. I think that would look rather different for more social butterflies.
That’s an incredibly accurate way of describing what looking at dating today feels like.
Ab so lutely
Found Tim Heidecker’s dad’s account
For those of us still in Nam, kill me, please.
I am sorry. If it makes you feel any better I only had one healthy long term relationship in my life, I dated plenty before I met my wife but yeah best not speak of it. So given my track record of like 20-1 if I became single again I am just going to call it.
Please kill me too, right after this guy 😭
Please kill me three, but before these two I’m impatient!
:P
Kill me fourth, but before these first three
Im trying to solve this like some sort of logic puzzle
Arent you the guy everyone says to touch
Dibs on thirdsies
Now kith
Uhhh, no?
Idk dating seems fine, much easier and safer through apps where people can easily be filtered and sorted based on compatibility rather than the rapey in person approaches where you don’t know if someone is there to steal your wallet or entrap you into something.
On the other hand, it’s much easier to miss red flags via a dating app than in person.
Also, Dating Via Algorithms(aka via apps) is hell. Women get bombarded with bad apples and men have to fight through bots and (s)camgirls, and then hope the algorithm on the site even shows you people you want to date.
Does eHarmony still exist? That seemed promising back in the day.
Bad apples exist irl too, but on apps I can filter them out easily. Back when I used dating apps was in the pre-swipe era with OKC and it was very evident from the profile what exactly we matched on and why and what we didn’t match on.
Dunno Hinge works fine for me as a guy. Not many bots and no camgirls. But compared to my gf I have to like more while she can just sit back wait for likes to come in. It’s true tho that the girls liking me match better with what I’m looking for compared to the guys my gf receives. It’s not like super random or proportionally less attractive girls either.
What I really enjoy about it (so far) is that intentions are clear beforehand. I don’t have to overthink a hookup convo in a bar with some random person who will most likely reject me anyway.
This. I realize as a woman it’s easier for us when it comes to dating apps to just receive likes but the sheer volume of desperate people who will swipe right on literally every single woman can be annoying as they haven’t read your profile.
But they can be filtered out rather easily with a good system unlike people approaching IRL. Harmlessly ignored or ghosted rather than painfully turned down in a scene in some sort of public place.
Yeah I feel you. It’s defo some work to go through it haha. My gf unpauses her hinge for a minute and gets like 7 likes lol.
Facts. I feel like dating apps work great for people who struggle to approach strangers. The people I met with also struggled with this, but are actually super social individuals.
Same, nowadays I think approaching IRL is just too dangerous both for neurotic people who will suspect ill intent automatically and people with said ill intent.
I don’t see how the app will protect you if someone lies on there to meet someone and then rob them
Much easier to spot bullshit on an app. Duh obviously don’t meet at a place where you can get robbed either.
“Don’t meet at a place where you can get robbed”… hmm, big public spaces where an individual person lifting a pocketbook goes unnoticed are out, as are more private spaces where you can be held at gunpoint… so that leaves… where exactly?
City centre? Hands on pockets and bags at all times, keep to the wall and observe the crowd, be mindful of exits, all the usual stuff?
Yes of course easier to spot BS when you are limited to only what that person wants you to see through a predefined interface.
Sure maybe if you’re older and fall for fake news just because you believe everything you read on Facebook, but it doesn’t take much to spot baloney
I’ve seen too many horror stories about dating today
I do thank the stars I didn’t have to try the dating app scene. It seems soul crushing from the outside
Absolutely lol
I’m getting close to 40 and feel like I got left behind. It’s rare that I even meet someone I would want to date let alone them want to date me as well. I don’t have any interest in dating apps because they require too much information and putting pictures online so unless I happen to meet someone in real life I’ve just gotten comfortable being single.
It can work out. I met my wife on a dating site when I was 38. Happily married over 15 years now.
You do have to be careful though; you can meet all sorts of weirdos on the internet. She’d agree with that.
Also dating apps are a privacy nightmare
And a waste of money
I paid $0 for the app I met my wife on.
I paid a little bit and met my wife on one. No idea why anyone has a problem with paying for something they use. Two children later, I would say a lifetime the woman of my dreams made the few months that I paid for the tinder subscription was worth it. There were useful features then that came with it. No idea about it now.
Which app, and how long ago was it?
Tinder 2020 for me, we get married in August.
OkCupid for me and we’ve been together over 10 years now.
Yeah same meme then. OKC and every other dating site have gone so far down hill they’re underwater at this point.
I was on OKC 10 years ago and I really liked it. I’m OKC now and my fucking god is it useless… It’s tinder 2.0 along with every other dating site Match Group bought… Oh and it’s like $50+ a month if you’re crazy enough to pay.
I’m sure I’ll still be on there in another 10 years when it’s just swiping from live stream to live stream…
Yikes! I make sure to buy my wife flowers ASAP. I don’t want to end up dating again.
Things have gotten a lot worse since then
Same.
It was MySpace.
Same :)
I just asked this to my wife and she said “I mean yes, the answer is yes”
I watch single millennial friends dating at it looks fucking miserable.
Very lucky to be hitched
I have a friend who is recently divorced.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re both better off, but it’s bleak out there for singles.
I was divorced at 36 and found a girlfriend 6 months later. It’s really not that bad out there. Just make sure you’re taking care of yourself and it makes it a lot easier.
It’s an age thing.
People with desirable traits for pairing up do so more frequently than those who lack these traits. As individuals pair up, the average quality of the remaining unpaired pool declines.
So the dating pool for early 20 year olds might be 1 dud: 20 mediocre: 1 winner. By the time people hit 40 the dating pool is 500 duds: 5 mediocre: 1 winner.
I dont think this is accurately describing people and how they develop. You have many people that are fine partners but got stuck in toxic relationships. You have people that were great “matches” in their twenties but turned to become terribly self absorbed arseholes in their thirties and vice versa you have people who developed to become very decent. You have people that were fine but wanted to sleep aroung in their 20s and then became monogamous and people who did the opposite.
Also you entirely ignore that as more people are permanently in relationships with increasing age that also means the “competition” reduces.
Finally this assume the observer to be somewhat static in their relation to other people being duds, mediocre or winner. But given your numbers they would become more likely to be duds or mediocre as they get single at higher age. Two “mediocre” can make a fine couple. And quite frankly, if the only people someone ever get to know are “duds” chance is he or she needs to work through some issues.
Of course it doesn’t match the data. It is the just world fallacy. Failure occurs because a person is a failure and you know that because our world only allows just results. Success occurs because a person has merit and you know that because our world only allows just results.
Could be a million reasons why a person is single in their 30s? Nah only one.
How about you try reading what I wrote again. Apparently my simple analysis was too complex for you to understand.
A few basics for the logically and statistically impaired. This is a simple analysis of the probability of pairing up.
Having desirable traits for pairing up: I didn’t mentioned what these were to for a very good reason. It doesn’t matter to the analysis. What matters is the resulting rate of pairing up. Those that have traits desirable to pairing up are removed from the dating pool more quickly than those that don’t.
This creates a constant strong selection pressure of removal on the pool.
I also used to terms to describe the potential relationship not the people. Because who or what these people are is immaterial.
Dud = no chance of pairing up.
Mediocre = moderate chance of paring up.
Winner = pairing up.
Seriously…
Yeah so this type of narratives is why I am very very glad I am happily married. I don’t rank humans, I don’t think of humans in terms of what they can do for me only. I am also aware that a disturbing high degree of what we are is what situation we are in.
I make six-figures and I have been homeless. Generally your brain works worse as you get older so homeless me was smarter than uppermiddle class me. I know he was in a lot better shape physically and had a full set of hair.
I can make you a shitty person by giving you a foot injury. I can make you a loving person with women weed. And you know what? We are all shitty judges of character.
