And now the links, which include some of the referenced statistics. They are a bit sensationalised, yes. I did that on purpose, because there is something creepy about an old man looking too deeply into Tinder research. I got some from Rob Henderson's excellent substack.
And hopefully only one section of discussion after that.
It was pointed out that a few of these links are subscription, so I put in a bit of them to at least give you the idea.
Tinder is bad for young women.
Tinder becomes a relationship for (some) women in itself. "I’ve had so many long-term text-only encounters that for a moment I wondered if I was a digisexual. I’ve strayed and used Hinge (why don’t I get any matches?) and Bumble (just because I can message first doesn’t mean you’ll message back) and Raya, and I once downloaded something called Headero, but I’ve always come back to Tinder. I’ve had a lot of fun. I’ve run out of matches on more than one occasion. I’ve never made it to a fifth date, which means the longest-term relationship I’ve had from Tinder is with Tinder itself."
Married Women on Tinder. I'm annoyed with myself for clicking on it. I knew what it was going to say and what its conclusion would be. And now I'm doing that to you. "I told him (her husband) it wasn’t that they hated him, they just wanted things he didn’t have to offer — commitment of time, resources, and exclusivity.They wanted the things I used to want, and I in turn wanted what they had — freedom, excitement, interesting conversations that didn’t center on styles of child-rearing or real estate, the experience of moving through the world not exclusively as a wife or mother but as a sexual being, a full and complicated and multifaceted person, the experience of being wooed, wanted, admired, acknowledged, and seen. Perhaps married women were simply beginning to want what married men have always wanted and come to expect: more." My comments. 1. Bleah. 2. I do not predict a good future for this marriage. 3. When was it that men could expect this "more" of admiration, wooing, and attention? I'm not finding it in the record. When I have have read (or heard in person) women say things like this...
First Base Is Hooking Up. "Some findings on dating apps:
18 to 25 percent of Tinder users are in a committed relationship. source
Women aged 23 to 27 are twice as likely to swipe right ("liked") on a man with a master's degree compared with a bachelor's degree. source
Men swipe right (“liked”) on 62 percent of the women’s profiles they see; women swipe right (“liked”) on only 4.5 percent of the men’s profiles they see. source
Half of men who use dating apps while in a committed relationship reported having sex with another person they met on a dating app. All women who used dating apps while in a committed relationship reported having sex with another person they met on a dating app. source
30 percent of men who use Tinder are married. source
In terms of attractiveness, the bottom 80% of men are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men. source"
28 comments:
It didn't enable polygamy for me :(
Man. Nor for my second son, and now my fifth. Underneath the many discussions is the idea that this is exactly the point.
So it did work for your other three?
Hahaha! One of the dating apps, maybe Tinder, did find son #2's wife a couple years ago. Son #1 married in 2002, Son #3 is in Nome and found his wife in the old-fashioned way. Son #4 is in Tromso, Norway, so it does not apply. Son #5 is still on the market in Boston, so we'll see.
Mark Twain was asked if he could find a scripture prohibiting polygamy. “Nothing easier,” Twain replied. “No man can serve two masters.”
It seems to me that the polygamy horse is long out of the barn and Tinder is but its most pure manifestation. We don't have harems, but we have a minority of the most attractive men who "date" whom they please, a large number of women who are eager to sleep with them, and a large number of people of both sexes who practice serial "monogamy". What's left?
I hosted a discussion about polygamy many years ago when the Hall was much more active. I recall that Elise, who used to run her own blog back then, came up with a novel argument out of that discussion that polygamy would prove so incompatible with our legal -- rather than social/moral/religious -- traditions as to be impossible. It had something to do with the assignment of benefits if I remember correctly. I'll ask her if she can recall how it went.
I can't believe that girls didn't swarm my Tinder profile. I even included pictures of me with my cat. He died a few months later. :(
It sounds like you need to find a way to get your sense of humor on your profile. I understand it is a difficult trick to pull off.
Tinder matched me with two girls. I told them I was the cat. They didn't message back. Not appreciating humor, apparently.
I think what AVI is talking about is not necessarily legally recognized polygamy but more like de facto polygamy, though I think it would not be as difficult legally as people would like to think. I see from Elise's comment at Grim's associated post that she may have changed her mind about the impossibility of legal polygamy.
Social Security, for example, is already set up to deal with serial monogamy. An unmarried person is eligible to claim benefits based not just on their own income history or from their last marriage but on the highest earnings of any prior spouse if they were married at least ten years. This has no impact on the former spouse if they are receiving benefits, either. It's just a calculation of the benefit amount. The rules also have to deal with two-income households now, extending that to multiple income households would be a minor tweak. We recognize the existence of multiple dependents in a household, and I've been seeing indications that tax rules have been propagated to deal with multiple adult dependents. Right now that would seem to be mostly dependent parents or children with mental or physical disabilities but there's nothing to prevent similar logic from being extended to a legal relationship among multiple people. Obviously bigamy laws would need to be repealed but that's something of a minor detail once other laws and regulations will accommodate multiple related adults in a household, and it looks like we're well on our way to doing that.
Do you have any links for the figures you cite for Tinder?
I think the advent of sperm banks and lab-assisted conception has done more than dating apps to discourage marriage. It's just my opinion, but I do think there are many women who, in times past, would get married in order to have children. They may not have wanted to be married to a man, but that was the only respectable way to create and support a family. And all that has changed today.
Actual live-together polygamy (as opposed to multiple simultaneous dating & sexual relationships) requires the women involved to get along with one another as well as with the man. How often is this really likely? I can think of several examples where there are two women I both like, but who either don't like each other, or I'm pretty sure would not like each other if they met.
Perhaps this mode is viable only in societies and subcultures where male dominance is so strong that the conflicts among women are considered unimportant.
The more popular old-style polygamy is, the larger the pool of "involuntarily celibate" men. The received wisdom is that this produces a body of men suitable for shipping off to wars. That may not be a popular option.
If we continue with the premise that everybody deserves sex, maybe the government will issue supplemental nookie assistance program cards.
Related chart and thread at Twitter:
https://twitter.com/hunt4change/status/1582166917174808577
Yes, some people do take that notion seriously.
More on-topic, the old-style polygamy is for the rich and near-rich. People seem to feel it daunting to raise more than 2 kids (it's really not); maintaining 2 households would make it even more expensive.(*)
If the modern model is "You get a fraction of the high status man and then get to support yourself and your kids"--that seems to provide noticeably less stability for the woman and a lot less for the kids. In fact, the model seems to be the same as the "bad boy's" stable of women--she gets some status from being with him, but not much else, and maybe abuse thrown in.
(*) One of my father's friends had two wives. He had a good income job as a driver, plus he had a farm that both women helped work on. He was upper middle class in the local economy, with effectively two jobs: driver and farmer.
David Foster's link points to something important in this discussion. While the % of young men not having sex has gone way up, the % of young women not having sex is also increasing. In general, fewer young people are having casual sex than even 10-15 years ago:
https://www.insider.com/teens-less-casual-sex-generation-parents-did-2021-3
These stats all appear to be pre-pandemic. I cannot imagine the last 2.5 years have done anyone any favors here.
Update since I commented: someone noted on Twitter that the chart David Foster linked to is outdated (2018), and the trend actually shifted in the latest release of the numbers (2021). The number of women <35 who haven't had sex in the last year is now greater than the number of men in a similar position. Small sample sizes for all, but between the pandemic and technology, things are getting weird out there:
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1582365702526103553?s=20&t=8yPzB2DzOeql_XMzAHlFag
Well, young adults are the most-medicated generation ever. From a quick internet search, it seems antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications affect libido. And ADD medication can affect sex drive and a male's ability to maintain an erection. (https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-sex-drive-do-medications-help-or-hurt/)
Another point is that it's much easier for people to report physical side effects such as vomiting, but if they've been medicated through their adolescence, they may not have an innate sense of sexual attraction to anyone. I suspect the effects of medications may also explain in part the wild increase in people declaring outré genders.
@Cranberry - I have seen that theory posed previously and even seen people (anonymously) assert they believe this happened to them. I find it pretty plausible myself...impacts to sex drive are well known side effects of those medications and adults report them frequently. Teens may simply not realize what's happening, or that they are missing feelings they had yet to fully develop.
Plausible as a contributing cause, but I know of instances without psychotropic drugs involved.
"Women have superior Theory of Mind, of being able to put themselves in the heads of others, especially female others"...probably true. Important to note that putting oneself into the heads of others does not necessarily mean one's intensions are benign....con men, sleazy salesmen, and malign political leaders can be very good at this.
How did Tinder get to be considered the iconic on-line dating platform?...there are several platforms in the market, is Tinder's market share really overwhelming?
One more: "Their genes don't know this is a less dangerous world"...there is an interesting question of *time constants* in evolution. Looking at things from a gene's point of view, over thousands of years there will be intervals where the world is relatively safe...but, then, maybe a century or two later, it is again a very dangerous world. If evolution were to optimize for the safe world, then progeny could all be destroyed when the bad times return.
Unless...unless what evolved was an ability to quickly assess the danger level and respond accordingly, rather than in an entirely preprogrammed fashion. Which comes back to rationality.
TheCut and RonHenderson are subscription sites.
Returning briefly to your discussion of balance, I think that generalizes beyond age, both in terms of age differential and age at marriage.
Your older woman is less likely to become pregnant, both from physical changes over time and because she has a better understanding of her fertility cycles.
She also has better access to resources outside the marriage, both those she has collected and in terms of connections and relationship.
These can be made available to women at all ages, if a society decides to move in that direction.
@ james - I have a subscription to Henderson, and he provided the Cut links which allowed me in. I don't know if he has an arrangement, but i don't have a sub to that. I'll try to figure something out, maybe a brief summary and a quote fir each. Thanks for pointing it out.
@ David Foster - Theory of Mind - yup. Charisma, intelligence, courage - all are good things that can be put to evil uses. Genes: I agree that this is what has evolved. The swiss-army knife, the modularity is what needs to be preserved, not the specific strategy. Tinder. I will address this in the last part.
@ Christopher B - That is also going into the last part.
@AVI .. I expected you had thought of it.
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