this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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What does this mean? How is Gen Z dating?
The data says mostly through dating apps, for one, which seems so impersonal and frustrating from the outside.
I don't get all the hate dating apps get. I met my wife on bumble, so maybe I'm biased. But still, it seems significantly better than the methods previous generations had (blind dating, speed dating, getting introduced to random friends that might happen to have something in common).
What's the alternative? You just happen to get lucky enough to meet someone in your daily life that's a good fit? One of the advantages of dating apps is that you get introduced to a much larger pool of potential partners than you otherwise would, which makes it significantly easier to filter out the wheat from the chaff and find a good fit.
I think part of the problem is dating apps keep getting worse and worse as they try to squeeze as much profit out of their users as possible. Tinder just came out with a $500/month tier
Pretty much this. I remember OG OkCupid and it was rad. It was a site ran by data nerds who wanted to help nerds find each other, and they wrote pretty frequent blog posts about their findings and how they were changing things up all for like ~$15 a month. All that started eroding until they got bought out by Match and its a cesspool of microtransactions now.
May as well pay for a legitimate match making service at that point
Dating apps are designed to keep you on them. They cant make money of you use them for a few months and then delete it.
Young people are actually using social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat to date. People you sorta knew in high school or college, share some mutual interests, and then hang out from there and see what happens.
I mean, that’s what every single one of your ancestors did since the beginning of mankind
Not really. Humans live very differently today than they did throughout the past several millions of years. Cities and 9-5's were not the norm until relatively recently. Unless you have a group you hang out with where you constantly meet new people it can be very different to find a partner in modern society without some form of dating.
Sometimes I forget cities were just recently invented in the 2010s
The idea of meeting people online seemed so exciting back in the 90's and 00's. How ever did it go so wrong?
Paid apps is where it went wrong. It stopped being something that happened organically and became a gamified P2W experience that catered to narcissists.
And the narcissistic aggressive assholes made it 1000x worse for everyone else...
So many "upgrades" were made to "protect" people but all that really amounted to was: people won't see your messages unless they already like you (so no introducing yourself). Message limits so you can only send one new message a day, so for us guys who get ignored 99.9999999999% of the time we're now stuck on the site 10000x longer. No browsing method, only swiping so people "disappear" once you've made a decision in that moment. Etc etc...
Now sites like plenty of fish have fucking live steaming .... Talk about narcissists... They even have messages like "not looking, only here to stream." They're just milking the desperate guys who throw money at them for validation or whatever...
Dating, especially as a 30+ in 2024 is disgustingly depressing...
i don't know about the exact point/year, but probably when it went from meeting someone online to the only thing that matters being exterior looks
There have always been people who only care about looks. That's never changed.
Did Millennials not use dating apps?
I'm sure those who are still dating do now, but dating apps didn't really start becoming popular until the mid 2010s, and millennials were well into their 20s already. Lots were able to take that last chopper out.
Man, I wasn't even trying to settle down in my 20's a little. It wasn't until my 30's that I thought about slowing down with the casual hook ups and happened to reconnect with a nice man from high school.
Do meet up groups not exist anymore? Does Gen Z lack any space to explore mutual hobbies and meet new people?
Shared interests have pretty much moved online, free/cheap places for physical meetups are disappearing, and in a car-dependent world you’re not gonna meet someone randomly in-between your planned out destinations.
I mean it seems the same as it ever was to me, newly single younger Millennial here and I’m seeing a Gen Z woman.
Seems the biggest change in the last 4ish years is there are a lot more ethical Non-monogamy people, but I’m wondering if that’s just a youth culture thing.
The woman I’ve been seeing says that she is ENM, but all her actions indicate otherwise to me. Which I don’t mind, Im not really non-monogamous, just pretty open and flexible with things. Also below age 25-30 have a lot more “doesn’t want kids” vibes going on
FWIW I know plenty of Millenials who practice ENM or polyamory in some fashion, but I think that may just be more common in the queer community and I don't see as many straight people doing it, or at least doing it well.
It was more late 00s. I met my wife on OkC in 2008, and Match and it had been around for awhile at that point. It was still something vaguely embarrassing, and people didn't usually talk about using those.
The apps hadn't been so thoroughly ruined by Match Group yet. OKCupid used to publish interesting detailed reports about dating habits. Plenty of Fish wasn't full of bots and scammers. The apps that charged you for basic features were largely avoided. The experience was weird and new.
The dating app landscape as it is now is basically just whichever is the latest one until Match acquires it.
No, we just kinda stumbled into each other in social situations and went from there.
That's how I ended up finding any decent relationship. Tried the app thing for a bit, which was mostly fun for hook ups, but awful for finding any kind of actual connection.
Probably not a coincidence the app doesn't work out. They earn money as long as people stay on the app, so you finding a long term partner is bad for their business, so they want you to keep dating.
Those of us who are right on the cusp (let's say 95-99) all use the apps but end up finding partners irl instead anyway. Either that or not at all. Just not on the apps.
I met a couple girls on IRC lol
I started dating my partner before Tinder existed and when I watch my friends play Tinder it looks like such a depressing nightmare. It’s like… got microtransactions and shit. Wondering when they’re adding a battlepass.
Makes for a good dick menu, but for actual relationships it makes me sooooo happy I’ve found my eternal person before all of this shit existed.
Many millennials developed relationships / got married before dating apps really blew up. Plus, the cultural pressures of today make being single look very different from when I was.
They did and still do. Anybody dating today regardless of their age is likely to try a dating app at least for a bit. Don't buy into this generational division.
Gen z and millennials are the only cohorts now? Get off my lawn.
No no of course not, I simply forgot Gen X existed and I don't care how earlier generations did it, they seem miserable and bitter.
This has been our plan all along.
That made me laugh!
I mean you’re not entirely wrong, but have you considered that might just be a side effect of getting on in years rather than not having dating apps 30+ years ago?
I'm glad the joke was well received, sometimes flippant sarcasm lands flat online!
I think there's a lot of factors that could play into my parent's (I'm in my mid 30's, fwiw) generation seeming to suffer such marital woes. I think there was a lot of social pressure to marry and have children quickly that put them in relationships they may not have ideally chosen and at younger ages. People seem to change a lot during their 20's. I absolutely found myself connecting well with some people at age 21 who I couldn't stand by age 24. I think there was a lot of sexual repression as well. I wonder if my parents generation had had more freedom to explore LGBTQ and polyamorous relationships without fear of ostracization or worse consequences if they'd be overall happier in their marriages, even if they ended up in a heterosexual relationship. I dunno what it is, but the gays of every generation just seem happier on the whole.
I think the contemporary ideas on divorce also influenced people to stay in relationships they did not want to be in, and, frankly, the lack of social mobility for women seriously negatively impacted women's abilities to leave toxic relationships. That was lessened in my parent's generation from their parent's, but it still existed and it still exists to some extent today.
Maybe it's simply getting older? But I think it's partially that older generations happen to stay in relationships longer, they're less likely to split when things turn sour. Or even sour-ish.
I'm not sure if dating is truly easier or harder today than it was ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty, etc, but it sure is different and, yeah, the apps are pretty much just a data collection program that covers itself with the thin veil of a yenta
We're used to it.
Obligatory...
Gen x is not considered, as they are the middle child of generations.
As a generation x middle child, there’s no point me even replying.
Shh
You're like the butt of UDP joke.
Oh you. Packet in.
I met my (now) wife in college in 2002. Never touched a dating app
Same, but 2012
It was more of a "dating site" situation, compared to a "dating app" one.
The dating sites generally showed at least something of a profile at the same time as the picture(s), so it wasn't 100% based on looks.
Grindr, growlr, and scruff were good for one thing, and (basically) everyone on them knew what the deal was.
I got 2 bots that wanted me to pay a Instahoe. No humans around.
I'm old enough to be in this relationship for nearly 20 years. It started on a dating site, in the early 2000's Internet and that site managed to get two introverts into happy union. I think that would look rather different for more social butterflies.