• hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
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    2 years ago

    That seems like a return to the norm. 21% is a lot of people to use what pre-Tinder was an old person activity. When I was young (chomsky-yes-honey) using a dating app when you’re like under 30 was considered weird. Imo when you’re young and actively socializing constantly it doesn’t make much sense to use an app for dating.

    • Vampire [any]OP
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      142 years ago

      Well, yeah, that’s what I thought (I’m 378 years old) but I’m surprised Gen Z agree with you and me

    • edge [he/him]
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      352 years ago

      Imo when you’re young and actively socializing constantly it doesn’t make much sense to use an app for dating.

      haha yeah, I’m definitely actively socializing…

    • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]
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      172 years ago

      I’m talking out my ass here but it doesn’t feel to me like young people have returned to socializing and finding dates mostly in-person. Or at least, it doesn’t feel like the amount of IRL fraternizing going on has correspondingly increased to match the headline stat. Though the group of uni students is relatively small and self-selecting so maybe

    • Mardoniush [she/her]
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      122 years ago

      I have thus far managed to avoid the hell of the dating app and I hope to never, ever, have to resort to it. it does help that as a communist I am so very very attractive.

  • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]
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    2 years ago

    College students =/= young people

    even looking at just 18-24 it’s like 1/3 of them and not a representative sample, and grad students are an even tinier group of mostly mid-late 20s

    College provides (usually) a built in community and likely even a walkable neighborhood, and many opportunities to meet people that the general working public often lack. Didn’t stop apps from becoming popular on campuses, but I feel like it was always destined to be a fad in that context, because the apps suck so much

    • MF_COOM [he/him]
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      462 years ago

      Also what exactly is the control group here? How different is 79% from that of other demographics?

      I’m in a different age cohort, and I would be very surprised if more than 1 in 5 of my friends were using dating apps as often as once a month.

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
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        212 years ago

        Presumably most people in relationships aren’t on dating apps, and a lot of people are in relationships… it doesn’t even limit this to single people lmao

        • JohnBrownNote [comrade/them, des/pair]
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          112 years ago

          you’d think that but there was a post a while back where the only reasonable conclusions were that bros have shady standards of “in a relationship” or everybody under 30 is way way more gay than anyone thought because “maybe women tend to date older men” didn’t explain how big the gender relationship gap was.

      • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]
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        2 years ago

        so much this

        “News” sites should stop trying to do statistics or anything resembling science communication, they’re dogshit at it

        At least some of them will have historical data to compare, but this doesn’t even have that

  • ElectronNumberSeven [she/her]
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    312 years ago

    Apps are awful. It feels so shitty to like “shop” through people’s profiles, it’s dehumanizing. There is no real way to find like an actually relationship on those, doubly so if you’re queer.

  • joaomarrom [he/him, comrade/them]
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    202 years ago

    I don’t know if I should be glad or not that people are dropping this hell app. To me, Tinder was always a horrible, horrible app, simply radioactive. A swiping session always felt to me like an equal amount of time spent chilling next to the Elephant’s Foot in fucking Chernobyl.

    I suppose some people knew better than me and were able to use Tinder in a way that did not corrode their sanity. Maybe people with more confidence and self-esteem. To me, though, it was always a horrible thing that did quite a number on my mental health.

    • ReadFanon [any, any]
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      92 years ago

      I know that this is going to be an argument that the anti-science types make for how Big Pharma is suppressing the cure for cancer because a sick customer is a return customer but…

      Dating apps are based on engagement. Engagement on a dating app is based on your being single (generally speaking) and feeling incapable of connecting with people outside of the app.

      So you have this situation where punters use dating apps to connect with people and to find relationships and yet the design of the app exists in complete opposition to these aims as it requires that you stay single and to not connect with others.

      With that in mind, the fact that your experience of dating apps was really negative and harmful shouldn’t come as any surprise. You can look at it as if this is a reflection of some sort of personal deficit on your behalf but I’m not convinced tbh.

      I think my experience of slot machines is similar to yours, and maybe as a metaphor this works well too, but I knew people who would enjoy playing slot machines. Or at least that’s what they reported. I think I’ve played them twice in my life total, as in putting in a dollar and playing a couple of rounds and then walking away disaffected by the experience. (Disaffected in the true meaning of the word btw.)

      Maybe it’s because I’m autistic or something but I really hated the overstimulation, all the flashing lights and blaring sound and the background clamour. I couldn’t understand how the game worked or the mechanics behind it and it left me feeling confused and uneasy. It was all frenetic and uncomfortable for me. If I stayed at it for more than a few minutes I’m sure it would have had some negative effects on me commensurate with how long I played it for. I suspect that slot machines are designed this way to make people on edge and kinda frantic to put them into a state which makes them susceptible to just one more game (and they are designed as elaborate and exquisitely refined Skinner boxes, of course.)

      I don’t think that there’s something wrong with me personally that meant I had a negative experience with slot machines. I think they’re weird, uncomfortable, exploitative machines. And I have a lot of sympathy for the people who enjoy them or who get addicted to them but I don’t consider those people as having personal qualities that make them somehow better than I am for it.

      Maybe there are few people who hit the jackpot with slot machines and another small group who truly enjoy them but I think they’re few and far between.

      Persistence is an admirable trait generally but persisting under conditions which are seriously harmful to your wellbeing is not. Maybe your experience of dating apps is a reflection of the fact that you’re more aware of your own needs and you figured out that dating apps are bad for you, where someone who is more persistent would have continued to persevere despite the negative impacts on them?

      • joaomarrom [he/him, comrade/them]
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        52 years ago

        Maybe your experience of dating apps is a reflection of the fact that you’re more aware of your own needs and you figured out that dating apps are bad for you, where someone who is more persistent would have continued to persevere despite the negative impacts on them?

        I think this makes sense. What makes me feel particularly bad about Tinder is how you were treated as a huge weirdo (at least a couple years back, but still a bit now) if you were not actively swiping away, trying to get laid. I suppose this is a general feeling that I have, as someone with very low libido and who no longer drinks. If you’re not drinking and/or fucking, you’re doing things wrong.

        This is why I said I didn’t know whether or not I should be glad that the popularity of Tinder is fading. For me, that’s one less expectation that other people put on me (or maybe that’s just my own twisted perception). For others, it’s probably the end of something that actually brought them positive, meaningful relationships - I have two friends who have married their Tinder dates.

    • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]
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      2 years ago

      train-shining

      Hanging out at dive bars alone has never been super good to me but I think I might have just been going to the wrong places (too many old creeps). Even at the shitty bar I was going to the other year I did meet one cool person, but I was so caught off guard it fizzled after chatting for a bit.

      Idk. I’ve always felt like nobody ever taught me how to chat up strangers (and I honestly for a long time felt people my age just simply didn’t do that anymore… now I’m not so sure), but otoh learning from my older family members would’ve probably just taught me to be a sex pest so I guess its for the best that I have to figure it out myself as an adult.

        • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]
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          92 years ago

          Nice!

          No train service worth a damn where I am and I’m not about to go find a dive bar near the airport lol but yeah. I just don’t love crowds is part of the problem. There are more young/not creepy people when the place is busy but packed bar karaoke just isn’t my vibe especially not solo lol. There are some maybe-cooler places in a different part of town tbh, so maybe I’ll go down that way eventually

    • bigboopballs [he/him]
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      22 years ago

      I hate it, I didnt match with anyone and if I did, it was a spam bot. I ran more luck hanging out at a dive bar near the waterfront (took the train to it btw).

      I’d kill to live somewhere that public transit is decent + some kind of third space where people who I find cool (and who would find me cool) just hang out randomly

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
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    242 years ago

    I remember the slightly gooder old days when OKCupid was the dominant dating “app” (because it was a website). You answered a ton of survey questsions ranging from serious philosophical and political question to silly personal preferences and weighed how important they were to you, then the website matched you with people who had similar values. You could write a big complicated profile if you wanted, upload some pictures. There were fun, silly quizes to take. It was actually designed to be user friendly and help you find people who had similar interests and values.

    online dating doesn’t have to be absolute bullshit. In theory it could work really well. We just have to, you know, kill capitalism.

    • Omniraptor [they/them]
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      12 years ago

      They also published various funny/depressing statistics on their blog, worth a Google if you’re into that sort of thing

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
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      82 years ago

      I remember the slightly gooder old days when OKCupid was the dominant dating “app” (because it was a website). You answered a ton of survey questsions ranging from serious philosophical and political question to silly personal preferences and weighed how important they were to you, then the website matched you with people who had similar values. You could write a big complicated profile if you wanted, upload some pictures. There were fun, silly quizes to take. It was actually designed to be user friendly and help you find people who had similar interests and values.

      That was my experience years and years ago.

      I don’t even know what changed from there but I know it’s gotten worse since the site was bought and rebought by larger and larger techbro corporations after I left. Actually successfully dating isn’t as profitable as keeping people around, and they learned that well. capitalist-laugh

    • Vampire [any]OP
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      142 years ago

      https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.5964/ijpr.v3isupp2.78

      Marriages resulting from the online matchmaking service were observed to have significantly higher scores for marital adjustment. We conclude that online matchmaking services based on predictive inference and proscribed selection can be observed to have a significant and meaningful impact on marital quality

      https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1222447110

      marriages that began on-line, when compared with those that began through traditional off-line venues, were slightly less likely to result in a marital break-up (separation or divorce) and were associated with slightly higher marital satisfaction among those respondents who remained married.

  • GaveUp [she/her]
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    182 years ago

    Young people in the best possible social environment they’ll be in their entire lives with constant opportunity every single day to meet people exactly their age aren’t using apps? What a surprise

  • DoiDoi [comrade/them, he/him]
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    372 years ago

    I met my partner the old fashioned way: Chinese language classes where we got to screen all of our potential romance partners with hard hitting questions like “do you prefer apples or watermelon” and “do you use the telephone or email to talk to your mother?”

  • GarfieldYaoi [he/him]
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    152 years ago

    Based gen Z. We’re with the boomers on this one.

    I’m headed back to college to become employable, and thank god that so many zoomers decided to find partners/friends the old fashioned way rather than an algorithm.