This is really a monumental societal change.
3rd spaces are nearly completely destroyed, and online seems to be the main option for ppl now.
Wonder who were the people who met online in the 80s. Like nasa engineers?
This is the real question
I’m going to start dating again sometime soon, so this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot.
I hate that if I go on an app and make a contact, the ostensible purpose will be to date. When that’s the purpose, at some point an evaluation will have to be made. Either that purpose is met or it isn’t. You could have a conversation about being friends or considering your options, but I’m sure starting that conversation feels awkward and hurtful. It would feel like downgrading them from the original intent behind meeting.
Not starting that conversation could be delaying the dreams of two people though, so there would be a time crunch to make a decision before I might be ready. It feels like this will inevitably end up with throwing aside people who could be great to have as friends.
A connection shouldn’t be a decision, it should be something that happens. I’d rather just hang out with someone with the expectation that we’re hoping to be friends, and if there is a connection we’ll see it in each other sooner or later. Unfortunately for me, striking up conversations with single women to be friends with while having the thought of going further in the back of my mind might as well be the definition of creeper behavior.
Here is some friendly advice from someone who online dated since the beginning (and I mean starting using online personal ads with eloquent long-form stories on Craigslist of all places, which would look like AI with more personality wrote it given how long): don’t do it.
You are aware of the basics with the toxic pattern of online dating. The other elements are more insidious. But all of that aside, the biggest problem is nobody really says who they are and nobody really understands what they want.
The only real option is to live in a way that makes you happy, with no expectation of anyone joining you. In the course of ACTION, you may meet someone taking the same action, and that is a bond that cannot easily be forged online.
If you want a real connection, live in a real way. Do the things you dreamed of but never dared. Take risks living the way YOU want, not the way you’ve been taught. The closer you come to living how you truly want, the closer you will come to Someone living the same way. You can never meet them as long as you live someone else’s life.
When you give so much thought and attention to dating, you will find others giving so much thought and attention to dating. That is a consuming identity. Consider what it means.
- emotional states tied to someone else
- mind always on feeling good based on finding the right person
- calibrated to “the search”
- believes in a companionship as the saving grace, the thing missing
- my person isn’t making me feel good, so I need to find a person that does, good thing I can passively browse online, no harm in that…
…and so on. Online dating as it is now is an addiction and a disease. You might be able to have (bad) sex on it, and you might be able to learn more about yourself and random people you’d never otherwise cross paths with, but for the most part, it is nearly impossible to meet an ideal match.
The top 10% of men “get” the top 50% of women online. The top 50% of women all compete over (and mostly share) the top 10%, thinking they deserve more. The curve is exponential so the numbers at the 1% are insane. And what does “top” even mean?
People look enviously at the “top”. But they shouldn’t. Sure, they’re banging “hot people” all the time along with spreading their hot diseases, but that is where the depth of connection ends. Many of them evolve into SNAGs (spiritual new age guys) for this reason. They are trapped in a cycle of being on top, never exploring other options because they are receiving everything society has deemed as the purpose of it. Yet inside, they rot away, more alone than anyone. There was a person in them once. A child with dreams. Now there is a dark empty void that keeps growing.
Anyway, this hellish online landscape doesn’t have to be this way. If the systems were designed right and culture evolved, it could be extremely possible and downright prudent to find healthy connections. It would operate passively and automatically and we would organically encounter amazing matches. But right now, online dating is captured by greedy corporate interests and is a toxic wasteland to keep you addicted and longing, desperate, and hungry.
This is true for man or woman. Men are turned into ravenous & desperate worms that gyrate at the slightest possibility. Women are turned into tyrant queens believing they are laced in gold with infinite options, yet all the options are diseased maggots living as a shadow of their being. Both create a desperately alone populace longing for something more, and they don’t even know what that “more” is.
It’s the real you dude. Go take a hike, hug a tree, focus on hobbies, and stop chasing broken dreams. Real people aren’t drawn to longing. They’re drawn to living.
The reason I’m inclined to turn to online dating is because the real me is someone whose dream life would be spending most of his days sitting around with a good friend playing with cats. It’s not like I have no solo interests at all, they’re just not ones that can invite a connection by doing them in public. Sometimes I read math, I have papers on the arXiv on category theory and categorical homotopy theory, but I’m out of academia right now so that’s not a way to connect with real people.
I absolutely love talking to people and forming connections, but just with one other person at a time, otherwise I get behind the conversation and go into deep introversion. I like getting to listen to someone tell their stories and talk about themselves. One of my favorite activities is reading books out loud with a friend. I don’t know how to go out into the real world and just do that with one other person. Online I can, and have made some wonderful connections. It’s just that dating apps specifically look like a nightmare.
If I were really into hiking or whatever I would be all about living that out. Unfortunately, the person I am is someone who would be doing activities as a means to socialize, rather than the other way around. Doing those things would very much not be the real me. It’s not easy to live a solitary life for an extended period and not dream about more, and those dreams start to feel like an ulterior motive if I’m seeking out new connections.
I don’t think at all about what “top” should mean in a dating pool, it hadn’t even crossed my mind, so I’m not sure why you’re bringing that up. I don’t care about whether I find someone in a top percentile of anything, I just want to find someone who is empathetic and who I connect with.
Needing an app through a business to find love is fucking depressing.
Why is it a blue whale?
Yes, absolutely. But also: I wonder how much of the online stat is stuff like people who met in online communities/groups compared to, say, dating sites and apps.
Because I could absolutely see a large portion of that line being people who met after joining a local meetup group for a shared interest like tabletop games, hiking, sports, etc.
It used to be that the dating pool was very limited in the way that making friends and dating in school is, where the odds are good that the thing you and your friends have most in common is your age and the distance that you live from each other. It wasn’t until college that I really met a diverse group of people who all shared a common interest in what they were passionate about. Nowadays I can go online, find people nearby who share a hobby of mine (or even meet people through an online hobby first and then physically meet years later), and maybe find lifelong friends or partners through that rather than somebody my friend happens to know or somebody I work with.
Fuck the commodification of human relationships. I wish people wouldn’t support that
Nobody finding love in brothels anymore :'(
Alabama folk don’t even need to leave their home to find a life partner!
Perfekt graph to display a shit society
I mean, we met online but not on a dating site.
First long term relationship, brother of my friend who came down here from up north. Had kids, never married, at midlife he got radicalized and hella racist and abusive, we split dramatically after 21 years, (not all his fault, I also did regrettable things in response to what was going on).
Second round met online, had a date, hooked up for awhile, really got on well. He’d had a string of 2 year relationships (from “good on paper” matches from eHarmony) so I said after 2 years we can live together. Our kids all got along, his parents liked me after awhile, he wanted to get married, I said you can ask after we’ve lived together 2 years. We are happy a dozen years in.
I don’t think it matters how you meet but it DOES hurt to think of people as a commodity, all that swiping and trying to maximize compatibility. People are people not clothing or toys.
all that swiping and trying to maximize compatibility. People are people not clothing or toys.
Exactly, all these apps need the user to be self absorbed. “Who’s YOUR right fit? Who is YOUR type? Who fits YOUR personal fantasy narrative?”
Love is about two people giving themselves toward each other, not obsessing over their “ROI” in some transactional economic thinking. But that simply doesn’t compute to a CEO and natural human friendship doesn’t return 4x to investors every quarter, so it’s gotta go, right?
Building a relationship should be out of interest in the other soul, and finding that person isn’t what these algorithms promote. They turn dating into just another job hunt with metrics to meet, a “market” of desirability, bullshit interviews, performative fakery, marketing, and ego.
I also met my partner online, but ~20 years ago on World of Warcraft LOL. Younger people ask me for dating advice and I’m like “Stay off those stupid apps and just go meet people who might like what you like and see what happens!”
Yeah that does bother me about the graph. It’s the digital age, you can’t just lump one value to “online” and expect it to be a representation that makes any sense, did they meet on a dating app? As gamers? Facebook friends? I met my fiancee on deviantart after she liked one of my photos and messaged me to tell me so.
Society is online now, third spaces are still a thing but they’re in a different form. This data is presented in a way to make you feel bad about the globalization of the Internet
This is the most upsetting graph ive seen in many years… and this is why so many people are single. Its the reason I am single. I absolutely abhor “online dating”. The couple times I did try it it was regrettable, and I dont want to do that again. Lord, help me find a suitable wife.
Yeah those apps are predatory. Good call.
I’m praying for you there, friend. This is really sad seeing what’s happening to human relationships. It’s very INhuman.
The best thing you can do is be your best, genuine self, and go engage in what’s left that other people do together. Meetups, volunteering, interests, hobbies, social book clubs, whatever.
Don’t think about “dating” like “trying to score a wife.” Be your very best self and find a person with a mutual interest in being very best friends forever with you, and then see if romance can bloom from there.
An innocent shared coffee laughing about favorite movies is WAY less pressure than some formal “date” where two strangers dance around awkwardly feeling each other out for “flags” and sidestepping “deal breakers”.
That’s my 2¢ anyway. I hope you find genuine connection. :)
Love it! Thanks for helping me be positive :).
Ive been very unstressed about find a wife my whole life, but I am 41 now and I think I need to put a little pressure on myself. :)
Maybe by thinking of women as people and not wives? Hooking up & hanging out with people until one sticks has been the only way for me. Though to be fair the only two really good jobs I’ve had were temp to perm too.
Approach it like fun, see what happens.
Maybe by thinking of women as people and not wives?
Lol omg… this is priceless. Hypersensitivity is what this is. Somehow you have assumed “wife” to be offensive?
You have to be a young guy trying to white night this crap like this. I blame the public school system…
Sorry…
I am a woman, a mom, a wife, and certainly not young. But you can’t just go around trying to immediately wife people. You have to meet as individuals and see how it goes, and it’s husband and wife, not “find me a wife” or “find me a husband”. You can’t know that until you know the person as a person.
(And by all means, continue blaming factors other than yourself, when the only one you actually have some control over is yourself.)
Im sorry, I didn’t mean to be a rude ass hat. First, who hurt you? You’re making a whole mess load of assumptions. Im not blaming any other factors, again, I just haven’t felt any pressure to get married really, so far. Im not “immediately trying to wife” anyone… save your lecture for someone that might need it, and stop assuming crap.
It was just the “send me a suitable wife” comment, and your post history, my sincere apologies if somehow I have misconstrued all of that.
Only goes to 2020. I think that after 2020, the online dating scene has seen a pretty sizeable decline.
I assumed the same thing and searched for a updated version of the study. I found this video showing the results up to 2024, contradicting this assumption.
Thats good news, but now I go to find newer stats.
No… no newer stats.
Grade school?
I can’t remember the stats, but a significant amount of people never make it more than a few miles away from where they grew up. That would mean, especially in rural areas where a large geographic area is concentrated into a single school, you likely have been near or around your eventual partner, and if you’re close in age you probably were aware of each other.
It’s something crazy like 25% of Americans will die within a mile of the house that they grew up in, and more than 50% will never leave the state they live in.
People had cooties back then. What gives?
I’m not in the US but I met my wife online, as did a few of my friends. The overall process of finding someone compatible took years though and it wasn’t very much fun. It’s probably worse now that dating apps are actively invested in keeping you single and swiping.
Looks like a whale, mouth on the left
