How has dating gotten ‘worse’?

21 comments

1. I don’t think it’s gotten worse. Dating apps give you the opportunity to interact with more people, so you get exposed to more creeps and weirdos, not because there are actually more creeps and weirdos, but because you’re talking to more people.

   Like if you talk to 4 people in a month, maybe only one will be awful but if you’re talking to 20, the odds of meeting someone awful go up.

2. I feel like every generation thinks this lol.

   But I will say that in this digital age, I really do think technology has hindered many peoples dating experiences.

   Now with texting at the tip of our fingers, people are less reliable. Gone are the days of making plans over your landline phone and making sure you arrive at a meeting place because they’re expecting you. Nah- just text them an hour beforehand that you’re not going.

   Online dating has made it easy for guys just looking to get laid, often at the expense of ladies hoping for a relationship. And they don’t feel bad because, hey, she’s just some random chick from the internet, who cares?

   Also porn. Some people use porn as a replacement for intimacy in their relationships, and that works out about as well as you’d expect.

   Despite us being the most “connected” generation, we’re also the loneliest.

3. Dating has gotten so much easier for females and males. A guy can find another guy within the hour and females get to pick between hundreds of guys wanting them.

4. I kind of wish I could experience “old school” dating. Like, the guy asks you out for coffee or lunch, then you take your dogs for a walk or meet in the park, and you slowly learn about each other and your interests and things like that. Things don’t move so fast.

   Today you do that over text or email before you ever actually meet up, and you already know so much about each other. I’m probably making too much of it, but I feel like some of that magic is missing.

5. I had an expectation that folks in their 40s would have done work on themselves and not act like fuckface 18 year olds. So many of them haven’t. Like, what have you been doing in the intervening years since we were all idiot kids?

6. I could literally spend 5 minutes on my phone and have probably over a dozen people messaging me who want to have sex. Hooking up is so easy, and damn near promoted. Open relationships and poly lifestyles are far more prevalent- or public at least.

   Getting laid is easier. And good for those who want that but in my eyes that makes dating, where my goal is to get monogamously married (not have kids and not marry someone with kids already), much worse and more difficult.

7. Dating has always been bad for me, and now it feels like my best isn’t even good enough because someone better could just be a swipe away.

8. With women: There’s hardly any lesbian bars anymore (where I live at least), so you really can only meet other gay girls online.

   With men: for some reason, I find that more and more guys these days don’t want to be chivalrous for fear of coming off as a simp. It’s extremely off putting.

9. I think social media can be a curse in the fact you can find out so much about a person before they tell you a lot about them. I have actually stopped following their accounts or looking them up until I have had a few dates with them, as I don’t feel excited about seeing them and trying things pit

10. I’m not sure it has – but there’s more options for communication and meeting others and ways to interact. Also increases the chances really of meeting some bad people as well.

11. Read a story the other night on Reddit how a girl almost got mugged by her hot date from tinder. It’s not enough they want to f up your life and devour your soul now they also want your lady purse and documents ☠️☠️☠️☠️

12. Maybe I just met my boyfriend in an “old school” way (through mutual friends), but this whole narrative that dating culture has become this wildly degenerate and unhinged thing just seems…off to me personally. E-dating isn’t new, one night stands and hookups aren’t new. I really don’t get what’s so bad about meeting someone on tinder, genuinely connecting with them over text, and then meeting in person and dating. We all form connections to the people we date in one way or another before ACTUALLY dating, I don’t get what’s so different if it’s just online? Idk I feel like my experiences have been super normal. I met my boyfriend through friends, we became friends, figured we liked each other a lot, started dating in the pandemic, spent tons of time together, and now we live together and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been with a partner. My best friend met his boyfriend on tinder, they became friends, figured they liked each other a lot, met up, started going on dates and spending a lot of time with each other, made it official, and now they’ve been dating almost a year. Don’t see much of a difference

13. Online dating turns nuanced people into overly-distilled versions of themselves within a courtship culture that begins with immediate judgment (swiping left or right) rather than exciting, empathetic exploration of another person.

    When relationships begin with us seeing a potential partner as a relatively dehumanized set of discrete parts and qualities being offered up for our consumption, acceptance, or rejection…and then we all feel pressed for productivity by society’s innate capitalist underpinnings…how can we *not* see each first date as a mere process by which we should quickly assess and then reject or optimize further relations with a potential partner?

    It makes me so sad. 🙁

14. Well in one way it’s gotten better with my standards. I never had a boyfriend but I dodged a few bullets in my life. Ugly men are usually the most misogynist people you’ll meet, so are older men looking for a lady in her early 20s when he’s in his mid-30s. Plus if he’s not into cute animals, red flag.

15. That it’s so confusing. I hate the confusion of the “talking stage” I hate some people’s reluctance to be definite or label something but still want full access to your feelings and time.

16. The rise of hookup culture. Men will buy you a $5 meal and expect to have sex as payment on the first date. I’m Christian so maybe I’m more conservative when it comes to taking it slow, but I would love to be able to date a guy who isn’t rushing into being sexual and who acts chivalrous. I don’t expect them to pay for absolutely everything but I want the feeling of being taken care of – carrying bags, holding the door open, walking closer to the road/behind a woman. Not because women can’t do things for themselves, but because the man wants to protect us. Idk why it’s so attractive, but it is.

17. I guess I don’t know if it’s really worse, since I didn’t date prior to online dating being a thing.

    But the expectation of sex with someone I literally just met and have shown no sexual interest in is absurd.

    I quit online dating because it just got too uncomfortable.

18. No one is into making effort to meet people, even if they say otherwise.

19. On apps, the quality matches from last year to this year seem to have decreased

20. All I know is that when my Mom was dating guys seemed to think less that they were OWED sex for the pleasure of their company. A weird side-effect of the whole good girl/bad girl thing was that if you were considered good, nobody got mad if you refused sex on the first (or even subsequent) dates.

21. The online “catalog shopping” it feels so impersonal to me as a 90s baby from before the digital/social media era.

    Ooh and I have no problem with those who are poly and have open relationships but that’s not me and I just *feel* like that’s the expectation now.