The great millennial garbage gyre
-
Every starting conversation on Bumble was like:
"Hey"
A couple times I asked people directly if that opener worked for them.
One of them said, "I used to write more thoughtful first messages, but I didn't get good results so I don't bother anymore." I told her that writing a bad opener is likely turning away whole classes of people, likely the more thoughtful and interesting ones, but she didn't care. I said we weren't a good match and moved on.
Another one said, "But you responded so it worked!". Her profile was also largely blank. I said yeah, but it didn't make me want to date you. It was a bad first impression that made me think you're a half-asser. Rude, I know. The conversation ended shortly after.
I think communication is a skill that requires practice and feedback. Writing messages on dating apps is a more specialized form of that skill. I have years of practice now (sad, but here we are). A 30 year old woman downloading bumble for the first time, asked to write first messages? That's kind of like putting someone on the baseball field who's never played before. They probably know most of the rules intellectually, and in other parts of life they've done all the little pieces like throwing, running, and catching, but doing it all together at the right time? Not likely to go well at first.
-
Why are you expecting conversations to be otherworldly?
How many conversations in real life with people you like start with something akin to "hey"? I'm gunna bet most but I suppose I could be wrong.
There is a whole universe of possibilities between "hey" and a conversation so good it is otherworldly.
Most of these apps, the user has a profile. If they're not fucking it up, the profile has topics to talk about.
"Hey! Your profile says you love the mets. Do you go to a lot of games? I used to go with my pop, but he just watches the game on TV now" isn't stellar but it's significantly better.
If the other person responds with "Nah [end of communication]" then they're doing a bad job. I'd see that all the time and it drove me crazy.
-
Honestly, 90% of the need for dating apps would vanish if people had more free time away from work and well-kept public spaces for entertainment that didn't expect you to purchase anything.
So rather than a government-run dating app, how about a government-sanctioned 4 day work week and well kept public parks?
Yet again, low-density exclusionary zoning causing car-dependency (which is why the "third spaces" you're talking about have all-but disappeared) is revealed as the root cause of almost every problem we have.
-
There is a whole universe of possibilities between "hey" and a conversation so good it is otherworldly.
Most of these apps, the user has a profile. If they're not fucking it up, the profile has topics to talk about.
"Hey! Your profile says you love the mets. Do you go to a lot of games? I used to go with my pop, but he just watches the game on TV now" isn't stellar but it's significantly better.
If the other person responds with "Nah [end of communication]" then they're doing a bad job. I'd see that all the time and it drove me crazy.
You both seem to ignore the fact that conversation is two way and that conversations from nothing ie. Small talk is extremely off-putting.
-
You both seem to ignore the fact that conversation is two way and that conversations from nothing ie. Small talk is extremely off-putting.
How am I ignoring that conversation is two way? I specifically mentioned it's a bad job when one person engages and the other half-asses it with one word responses.
I don't see what small talk being off-putting has to do with anything. I don't know if I even consider talking about your interests small talk, but okay. How else do you expect it to work?
-
short answer:
Dating Apps/Sites are basically social media sites, they only really work via the network effect, by being so huge that they necessitate significant financial investment.
...
long answer:
A dating app is only broadly, mass appeal successful if it can scale to have a wide selection of people, users, ideally, in as many places as possible.
This requires a large amount of servers.
A large amount of servers requires a large amount of money.
A large amount of money requires investors.
Investors require as much profit as possible.
...
A conventional dating site/app, as we think of the big ones today... its a social media platform.
Just with a different, more constrained feature set, a different UI... but roughly similar levels of network infrastructure and overhead.
...
You could actually make a reasonable argument for running a non profit, or ... some kind of collectively owned and operated dating service that is restricted to say a city or small region, or maybe a neighborhood in a larger city.
(Indeed, many of the older ones kind of began this way, pitched more like a ... a club that you join and pay membership dues for, thats how they were marketed in the late 90s / early 00s... though these of course were largely actually privately owned, but the marketing angle was that of 'exclusive community')
The technicals of exactly how to do that, legally and financially, might end up being impractical though... and if the government is directly involved, well... 10, 20 years ago I would say thats a rather serious privacy problem, but at least in the US right now, I am sure Tinder will sell your info to a data broker who sells it to the FBI if they want to investigate you, so.... yeah.
The other obvious problem is that the best dating app is the one you use the least... so... some kind of unconventional payment structure would have to be figured out, to counteract this massive and glaring incentive conflict between app and user.
Maybe high upfront fixed costs to the user, but if you don't find a good match after a year, 75% gets refunded to you?
Not sure. Could be legal nightmare.
...
Other than that, privately owned and operated dating communities can work fairly well without huge server overhead... if they are precisely targeted at a pretty specific kind of people, be it a religion, or a bdsm community, or a specific ethnicity, who knows... those can at least theoretically work at a larger geographic scale, because that kind of scale doesn't also massively ramp up user count.
But there's nothing stopping them from being bought out if they get too big.
...
Bonus!
Job application / recruiting sites are also basically dating apps/sites.
Its just person vs job instead of person vs person.
Broadly, guys on dating sites have been flooding women with match requests for years now, women have been overwhelmed by the volume and believe they can be very picky.
Now replace 'guys' with 'job seekers', 'match requests' with 'applications' and 'women' with 'companies'.
Both scenarios result in wasteful amounts of energy going into 'match-making', which is horrendously inefficient.
Wow, that's an incredibly insightful answer. I suppose I never considered the scale of it. Most are fairly bare bones, but you are right, there are so many users and repeat users that it would scale very poorly.
You're also right on the social media part of it. There kindof needs to be secondary engagement thing to attract and support the community.
Always felt that dating apps were a little too ?accesible? That is to say that they are exceedingly easily flooded by no or low effort profiles, abandoned and duplicate profiles. Especially by desperate men who are completely undiscerning and undereducated (consent, sex, sexuality, etc...).
I feel like there should be engagement/social/education tiers that grant more access to more features. Like literally give points if you can pass tests on consent, relationships, kink, whatever. Get social points from good engagement and behavior. These don't show your profile more or less, but like if the medium has NSFW features, forums, criteria/location filtering it gives access to them based on community trust and such. Maybe offer a paid shortcut, but have that declared on their profile somehow.
Could be nice. But I'd also probably have the swiping style app be accessory to a more traditional forum.
-
Wow, that's an incredibly insightful answer. I suppose I never considered the scale of it. Most are fairly bare bones, but you are right, there are so many users and repeat users that it would scale very poorly.
You're also right on the social media part of it. There kindof needs to be secondary engagement thing to attract and support the community.
Always felt that dating apps were a little too ?accesible? That is to say that they are exceedingly easily flooded by no or low effort profiles, abandoned and duplicate profiles. Especially by desperate men who are completely undiscerning and undereducated (consent, sex, sexuality, etc...).
I feel like there should be engagement/social/education tiers that grant more access to more features. Like literally give points if you can pass tests on consent, relationships, kink, whatever. Get social points from good engagement and behavior. These don't show your profile more or less, but like if the medium has NSFW features, forums, criteria/location filtering it gives access to them based on community trust and such. Maybe offer a paid shortcut, but have that declared on their profile somehow.
Could be nice. But I'd also probably have the swiping style app be accessory to a more traditional forum.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I feel like there should be engagement/social/education tiers that grant more access to more features. Like literally give points if you can pass tests on consent, relationships, kink, whatever. Get social points from good engagement and behavior. These don't show your profile more or less, but like if the medium has NSFW features, forums, criteria/location filtering it gives access to them based on community trust and such. Maybe offer a paid shortcut, but have that declared on their profile somehow.
I like this line of thinking.
I more or less used to use OkCupid in this way... it has so many questions you can answer that basicsally, if you have your own set of hard red flags... just look through their answers to questions.
...
You could theorerically do a paid shortcut for some things, but not others.
...
With my gamer brain, the first thing that comes to mind is pay to win games:
You can design a game such that... you can reasonably progress through the game, get good items, level up reasonably quickly... without having to spend any more real world money.
Warframe is arguably a good example of this.
You can just play a fleshed out and enjoyable game and progress at a reasonable rate without spending any real world money, everything in the game is obtainable without more money if you're good at the game... but if you just have cash to burn, you csn just outright buy some high level gear, basically, to say, join up with some friends who've been playing for a long time, without playing for 50 or 100 hours to be on their level.
...
But you can also make it just an absolutely hellish slog to progress through the game, such that you finally get tired of grinding and have that 'fuck it!' moment, and just pay to progress... and then you at first find those payments are rather cheap actually... but if you keep playing, the actual money costs ramp up faster and faster, alongside your time devoted to the game, so now you've got sunk cost and your brain sunk cost fallacy's you into just still playing and spending.
This is pretty much how WarThunder is designed.
...
But uh yeah, ramble ramble... I like your basic framework here, but again the problem with monetization is thag is has to be reasonable and apparent to everyone, your idea of badges that show everyone this is I think good.
I am just very worried that if this whole app is privately owned... it will inevitably enshittify and subvert itseld to being an evil money draining skinner box as it attracts more investors or gets new owners or goes public or whatever.
...
EDIT:
oh right
Wow, that's an incredibly insightful answer.
Thank you! =D
-
Our first date was a walk in the park because we couldn't decide. We walked for hours. I felt safe enough to even go back to his spot after where we smoked cannabis and talked still, for many more hours. Our first date was like 6 hours long and cost nothing but a bit of gas for the drive.
The spool of wire guy, is that the fella who's sitting outside reminiscing when he first bought that giant spool of wire and now it was gone? A very sweet, sentimental moment for thst guy.
Not gonna lie, some women are like that I've heard. I've never been friends with those types. Shallow people gonna shallow. Before I met my husband, most commonly my first dates were usually bar dates, where I would pay my own drink, or be turned down when I went to pay for it. I'll insist to pay, but if they insist again to pay, I'd let them, and in response to a free drink, I'd tip the server that extra instead. That was my personal code.
Of course, dating online from me started 15 years ago, and ended 7 years ago when I met my love. What's it like today? I don't know. If I didn't have my husband I know I wouldn't go back to an app today everything humans touch has been heavily monetized, if even before it was only lightly monetized. I always used Plenty of Fish, idk if that matters.
It's not good to generalize men, nor is is good to generalize women. You end up boxing yourself in. Better to treat each person you meet with no expectations, and you'll never be disappointed. I've had some guys I've dated do really shitty things. There are guys who are willing to talk to you everyday for six weeks, spend two weeks more to hit the three date marker, sleep together, and then- they ghost. Some men will put two months of effort in to get laid, then ghost. It hurts a lot, especially when you think you have connection.
I never let it make me resentful towards all men, because I've also dated total sweethearts, they're out there. I found one. Im lucky.
Keep hope, and maybe you will too. I truly believe I was able to score such a baddie (who btw at the time had the same income as I did) because for the year and a half leading up to him I did a lot of self work. Not working out, but addressing my flaws, my judgements, my quick temper. Stress management was what I needed most. Just at the moment I felt nearly whole as a single, I met my husband.
I serve him coffee in the morning, not because he expects it, in fact if I ask, he'll say "no I'm going to get up in a second", so I don't ask, I just bring him one. I do it because for one, I like doing acts of service, it's self serving as it makes me feel like im being helpful, and in return I feel good. It's totally selfish first because "he'll think I'm sweet and appreciate it if I do this for him". The "aw babes you didn't have to" gives me dopamine like nothing else. He always denies my help, so I deny asking and just find ways I can. It doesn't go unappreciated, he is always greatful, and if I bring him coffee four days in a row, and on the fifth day don't, he doesn't even mention it, he'll get up, kiss me and ask if I want Dunkin. He supports himself without complaint, and is always appreciative. My doing kind things is "extra" for him, and I feel the same. (Lol edit: I could absolutely describe my husband and strong and independent)
I've dated men who you bring coffee for four days, and not on the fifth, they've now expected my service, and complain. Some will even poke, "why didn't you bring me coffee today? Are you mad? Did I do something?" And it would turn to a fight. Those men, are not the type I entertain much longer. As soon as I don't feel appreciated and like I've expectations not my own, placed on me by someone else, I am out.
But second, my husband deserves it. Because whether I look good or like shit, whether I bust ass and handle business, or I lay on the couch frozen depressed, he still loves me the same. He's earned my service over and over and over again, just by being a kind and helpful human to me over the years. So I return the kindness with more.
And to be honest, I don't always know how to support him on depressed days. I don't think he knows what to do for me either, but we both respond to each other's moments with thst kindness. I'll make a special dessert for him, or run an errand he doesn't want to run that day. I make myself available if he wants to talk, He does similar for me. I annoy him sometimes with "is there anything I can do for you to help?" But I still ask, and give him love when he says no or idk. Sometimes what he needs is space, (hey me too) and we do that for eachother.
Give kindness and you get it back. It's so silly but it's how I've lived. It hasn't shielded me from pain, but it sure does make more opportunity for kind moments in life. If you're looking for a fight, you will find one. If your looking to spread kindness, you'll find that returned too.
Best of luck out there, I know it's tough. I hope you find someone, even if it's a dog or a friend or a life partner, that shows you the kindness your heart needs.
Edit: it's so corny, and I doubt you'll watch it. But as a teenager I watched the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun". Its a cheesy film, but with a really sweet message.
The woman is looking for love, and finds it, but not in the way she expected, it's very sweet and I think helped me personally, in those formative years to drop expectations or at least, allow room for them to adjust. If you're feeling lonely, no one will know you watched an old chick movie, and it might help you feel better to look at love differently as the woman is faced to in the movie. No one has to know you watched it lol
Yeah, I can see why you got the old nut and bolt, if that's your take from Dan The Spool Of Wire Man. You didn't get it anymore than his wife did. "I've had this spool of wire for 40 years, it used to be this big, now it's about out." He's having some pretty heavy thoughts about his life, where he is in it, how much of it is left, what it's all meant. And before he even gets a real chance to articulate all that, didn't even get a chance to get to the feelings part, his wife interrupts him to give him shit about his hat. And just watch him shut down.
A woman that views that clip and perceives it as a "sweet sentimental moment" isn't empathizing with men. Those men that pumped and dumped you, that you thought you felt a connection with? Yeah they didn't, and I can see why. Gave you the old Phillip J. Fry: Just make up some feelings and tell her you have them.
As for all that crap about cups of coffee...In my home, if I want something to drink, I prepare it and drink it. If I want something to eat, I cook it and eat it. I've been single for a shade over 5 years now and not a single meal in my house has turned into a game of feelings jenga. And if I'm going to live the next 40 years of my life alone, sleeping alone, waking alone, eating alone, drinking alone, working alone, resting alone, dying alone, it will be a bargain price to pay to never again emotionally posture over who makes a fucking cup of coffee.
-
Where are we getting the funds for Lemmy and its instances?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Donations and many self hosted volunteers, helped by the unique nature of the fediverse architecture also distributing burdens, fewer users, and lower computation/storage/availability requirements (compared to a more centralized service like a dating app).
-
It’s almost as if men are a little bit hornier than women…
wrote last edited by [email protected]That's an outdated, lazy, and inaccurate generalization.
Women are just as horny as men but straight women experience higher risks engaging in dating than gay men experience resulting in more caution and selectivity engagement.
Straight women who are able to have as much sex as they want tend to be those who are in stable, long-term relationships. The bottleneck is safety as a hard requirement for sex.
-
It may be more profitable to have regular success stories getting churned. The algo looks out for the best interests of the company's profit. Sometimes things line up.
A fair point, so it's in its favour to help maybe a tiny percentage find a tiny bit of success and then promote that success while everyone else pays.
-
A fair point, so it's in its favour to help maybe a tiny percentage find a tiny bit of success and then promote that success while everyone else pays.
Yeah. It's just profit, whatever makes line be as up as possible. I doubt there's any regard, good or bad, for the user's experience beyond that.
-
Not being a lazy bum or misogonyst is the bare minimum (as it should be).
Idk, just judging by any post containing gender discourse on Lemmy.....seems to be a pretty big hurdle for a lot of dudes.
You have to jump over all of them. Everything below that and the other person will feel as if they are settling.
That may just be a product of being younger. By the time you get to my age both men and women seem to be wanting to settle down and are more likely to compromise with the idea of an imperfect partnership.
That may just be a product of being younger. By the time you get to my age both men and women seem to be wanting to settle down and are more likely to compromise with the idea of an imperfect partnership.
I dealt with my share of toxic relationships. Happened in my late teens and early twenties. Late 20s and early 30s is when I and all my friends met good people we wanted sticking around and all got married.
-
Yeah, I can see why you got the old nut and bolt, if that's your take from Dan The Spool Of Wire Man. You didn't get it anymore than his wife did. "I've had this spool of wire for 40 years, it used to be this big, now it's about out." He's having some pretty heavy thoughts about his life, where he is in it, how much of it is left, what it's all meant. And before he even gets a real chance to articulate all that, didn't even get a chance to get to the feelings part, his wife interrupts him to give him shit about his hat. And just watch him shut down.
A woman that views that clip and perceives it as a "sweet sentimental moment" isn't empathizing with men. Those men that pumped and dumped you, that you thought you felt a connection with? Yeah they didn't, and I can see why. Gave you the old Phillip J. Fry: Just make up some feelings and tell her you have them.
As for all that crap about cups of coffee...In my home, if I want something to drink, I prepare it and drink it. If I want something to eat, I cook it and eat it. I've been single for a shade over 5 years now and not a single meal in my house has turned into a game of feelings jenga. And if I'm going to live the next 40 years of my life alone, sleeping alone, waking alone, eating alone, drinking alone, working alone, resting alone, dying alone, it will be a bargain price to pay to never again emotionally posture over who makes a fucking cup of coffee.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I didn't watch the whole video not gonna lie. Sorry about that, maybe the clip I saw wasn't the whole thing, because I missed all that.
Im glad you're preparing for your loneliness. The men of my father's gen didn't seem as prepared as you. I didn't know being kind to my love was "a feelings game". We don't see it that way, but least you know who you are, that's good.
Have a good day and best of luck to you in your endeavors.
Edit, watched the whole clip. I thought to review it yesterday and didn't, my bad honestly, I wish I had. I see what you mean now. I totally missed the wife's role when I barely saw it months ago. Saw where he says, okay I'm done.
Remembering why I dismissed the video, and many videos- because who goes to check on their partner with their phone in hand like that? What type of person, sees their husband feeling emotional and drags out their phone to record them? Its weird. The whole thing is fucking wierd to me. If my husband came out to me, phone in my face, my first address before speaking would be why are you recoding me? Stop.
I don't know these people, and I am certainly not about to assign a generalization to society based off these two folks encounter. She is being dismissive in a moment he is being introspective. How many times have generders been reversed, or the same as eachother, where one person is being insightful/ introspective, and another human comes along to rag on them about it? We also don't know what these two history is, nor do I care. Time fascinates me, especially it's passage, 40 years is a long time, I get the sentiment, which is why I only remembered his voice not hers when recalling my memory of the video.
Im not going to base my own outlook on life on some person not understanding the sentiment, she was recording, why was she recording? She clearly had the joke in her head already, it would not have mattered what he said, she was already planning to say that it seems. The type of person who records/uploads videos of their family so often if fills a data center probably doesn't have much introspection themselves. Those types I'm not friends with. It's so weird. The dude was totally having a moment, and a sweet one at that, and yeah, she turns it to a joke. "Aww can't you take a joke?" I can hear the voices from people who have said this to me. This isn't some isolated incident- like, raise your hand if youve had a sentimental moment interrupted by someone being rude for laughs.
Anyway, agree with you about the video, still hold a different outlook on finding and holding love.
Wishing you the best man, I'll give the next dog I meet extra pets for being a good boy in your honor.
-
That's an outdated, lazy, and inaccurate generalization.
Women are just as horny as men but straight women experience higher risks engaging in dating than gay men experience resulting in more caution and selectivity engagement.
Straight women who are able to have as much sex as they want tend to be those who are in stable, long-term relationships. The bottleneck is safety as a hard requirement for sex.
I mean, maybe we need to define horny, this may be a semantics issue,
But no, you’re very wrong. In general men are way more horny, but we may be looking for different things to solve the horniness issue…
Men's sex drive is not only consistently higher than women's, but it is more consistent over time and more consistent across individuals as well
-
if you use these apps as a woman you'd know
Just not answering the question and throwing out vague nonsense. I can do that too.
You'll understand better when you get older.
-
I mean, maybe we need to define horny, this may be a semantics issue,
But no, you’re very wrong. In general men are way more horny, but we may be looking for different things to solve the horniness issue…
Men's sex drive is not only consistently higher than women's, but it is more consistent over time and more consistent across individuals as well
wrote last edited by [email protected]I feel like you haven't provided any reasoning and evidence to support your opinion besides, "This is what I see from my perspective so that must be true at large."
It seems to me that you're implicitly defining horniess with a narrow interpretation of sex drive: how often people think about sex, which men very well may. To that I go back to my original point that using that to make claims is an outdated, overly simplistic, and lazy generalization. It's one that isn't very insightful and one that offers little utility.
-
I feel like you haven't provided any reasoning and evidence to support your opinion besides, "This is what I see from my perspective so that must be true at large."
It seems to me that you're implicitly defining horniess with a narrow interpretation of sex drive: how often people think about sex, which men very well may. To that I go back to my original point that using that to make claims is an outdated, overly simplistic, and lazy generalization. It's one that isn't very insightful and one that offers little utility.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yea we can maybe try to define some of the words etc, I understand what you’re saying…
Gay couples have more sex than hetero couples who have more sex than lesbian couples
Men think about sex more, men masturbate more, men visit prostitutes more, men look at more porn,
How are we going to define horny?
I do understand that women throughout history have had their sexuality policed, and that women do in general care more about relationships and the emotional intimacy before they can fully enjoy sex, etc… but still, men are way hornier…
All of these statements are general for the group of men and women, not specific to any individual, obviously there are specific women who are more horny than specific men
I also don’t think it’s a bad thing if it is in fact true that men are hornier, it’s just part of being human… there are natural differences between men and women and that’s okay!
-
Yea we can maybe try to define some of the words etc, I understand what you’re saying…
Gay couples have more sex than hetero couples who have more sex than lesbian couples
Men think about sex more, men masturbate more, men visit prostitutes more, men look at more porn,
How are we going to define horny?
I do understand that women throughout history have had their sexuality policed, and that women do in general care more about relationships and the emotional intimacy before they can fully enjoy sex, etc… but still, men are way hornier…
All of these statements are general for the group of men and women, not specific to any individual, obviously there are specific women who are more horny than specific men
I also don’t think it’s a bad thing if it is in fact true that men are hornier, it’s just part of being human… there are natural differences between men and women and that’s okay!
wrote last edited by [email protected]Well the claim was your's and I'm of the opinion that comparing who's hornier isn't a worthwhile endeavor.
Even if you take horniness to mean session frequency, why frequency, and why only that when there are also duration and intensity. There are also hard to quantify variables like met and unmet satisfaction. It could very well be that the integral of the product of all those variables over dt for all time ends up being close for all groups of people.
Differences are fine, but if those differences are a result of a very specific meaning, you should just that then than to potentially perpetuate an outdated and unhelpful stereotype.
-
Well the claim was your's and I'm of the opinion that comparing who's hornier isn't a worthwhile endeavor.
Even if you take horniness to mean session frequency, why frequency, and why only that when there are also duration and intensity. There are also hard to quantify variables like met and unmet satisfaction. It could very well be that the integral of the product of all those variables over dt for all time ends up being close for all groups of people.
Differences are fine, but if those differences are a result of a very specific meaning, you should just that then than to potentially perpetuate an outdated and unhelpful stereotype.
I don’t know that it’s a worthwhile endeavor either, but I’m pretty sure it’s true… the original thing I said I think was making fun of men for being hornier in the context of dating apps?
In the end what matters I suppose is everyone being happy in their personal and public relationships etc…
