Another 'all's well with the world of men and women NOT' post. So while Sall had to raise millions and go to the higher courts to fight for the right to exclude men from her app for women and girls only, and fail to win that right even so, and be punished with another fine, these pretend women cross-dressing narcissistic men, gay and straight, continue to be entirely free to insinuate themselves into all the spaces where they are not welcome, ruining it for the genuine sorts looking for companionship and love, like your friend. It's a social disaster for our children's generation that I fear we have only seen the beginning of.
Hope you're right. But I worry that this present young-adult generation raised on the internet, and bouyed up with all their likeminded echo chamber online friend groups, don't have the real world skills, including perseverance, needed to make a good match and partnership without digital help. But perhaps it will save the next generation of YAs.
There are no longer as many affordable and real-world spaces (pubs, clubs, house parties in flats) to meet in either. For each generation it’s become harder.
Yes, that's true. Flat parties were the best and cost nothing - much. Although what we did wasn't really dating - more like getting drunk and finding yourself with someone. Not always ideal. My daughter and her mates do things like going to the gym, or climbing walls or escape rooms. People want to connect and I'm optimistic that they will find a way.
Interesting! I actually met my husband online. I won the lottery. Didn't see any obvious transmen.
I found there were so many guys on my profile wanting to talk with me. There was desperation from some of the men and I felt bad for them "I want to marry within a year" was one first paragraph message. It was a jungle.
Hubby found it was a desert. Very few ladies returned his messages. Not sure why. I feel very lucky!
Most of my friends who are single have completely given up on apps. There are so many dating horror stories. Don't get me started on the influence of certain online videos and "breathplay". It's tough out there. My sympathies to your friends. Maybe it's time to get the women and men in the same boat in the same room and cut the internet out of it.
That’s great to read you met your husband online. Online dating is just one way of meeting the opposite sex. It’s definitely a jungle out there for many. Both men and women daters have valid complaints about what’s on offer. I found the sight of the women posing as pseudo porn stars worrying. What kind of man will that act attract?
Probably a man looking for something temporary at best? I hate the 'you wore x, you were asking for it' attitude but at the same time, what one wears and non-verbally communicates will impact on how others perceive you (that goes for the men too, but in different ways).
I like numbers, but I think height, and other things get less important if you meet someone in person. And it's messing with the prospects of some guys.
"While people perceive dress to have an impact on who is assaulted, studies of rapists suggest that victim attire is not a significant factor. Instead, rapists look for signs of passiveness and submissiveness, which, studies suggest, are more likely to coincide with more body-concealing clothing."
Yeah. Walking is non-verbal communication. That study scares me!
In dating, you will be judged for how you dress. When I dated men, I judged them for how they dressed. If they couldn't groom themselves, I was not interested, as an example.
Another example was when I did an interview and a man turned up in jeans. We were a suits company. He didn't get the job.
It will be interesting to see now that X became a subsidiary of xAI which was then merged with SpaceX and forms part of the $1.25 trillion USD SpaceX IPO ... mind-bogglingly big numbers!
Interesting Yvonne. Thank you for the article. Dating Apps seem to me (never used them cos way too old and married - happily) to be rather wicked avenues via which to find a soul mate. More like a 'let's get together and shag'. Not really a model for societal wellbeing to my conservative eyes. I have some respect for Musk and what he has done, putting his money where his mouth is. Not sure if I love him completely, but certainly he has done much for restoring honesty in the cyber world. I asked Grok, Chat GPT & Gemini recently if folk with Maori ancestry should get special rights. Two said 'well, it is a nuanced & complex situation blah blah blah...'. The other came right out and said 'Nope, race based rights are wrong, resources should be allocated on need alone'. Go Grok.
Grok all the way! I applaud Musk for de-wokifying X. If that’s all he ever did in life, it should earn him the Nobel prize. Dating apps are gruesome. Best thing they can achieve is incentives for people to meet in the flesh. This digital life is so impersonal and frustrating. I’m trying to get a parking permit for a frequent visitor to my house and I’lm told I can’t go into the council offices and talk to someone. It’s all got to be done online. I hate it!
Just more proof, not that any more was needed, that it is indeed sex, not gender that is the important factor in adult relationships. Plainly put, you are either OK having sex with someone else's penis, or you are not. Gussying up the remainder of the body doesn't mean much once the costume is removed. As with so many other things; sports, birth, breastfeeding, sexual intercourse is not a gendered activity, it's sexed all the way baby...
I worry about the demise of dating apps and women leaving in droves as what’s the alternative? Society is different now, there are fewer pubs and clubs, workplaces don’t go to the pub, people don’t have house parties or dinner parties, neighbours don’t talk, sports and other club attendance is down, going out is expensive. There are still some decent 30 something guys on the apps but my single female friends won’t try, and have given up. I think we can all help by doing whatever we can to support real world socialising. Just talking about how terrible the apps are etc etc doesn’t help. When I was still looking, only one person ever introduced me to someone, whatever happened to matchmaking?
Di you think AI might come to the rescue? It might end up knowing people so well that it could act as a super-brain match-maker. I do agree about the demise of social gathering spots though the young people I know have strong friend networks. Maybe they need to go to church. That's one place to meet people who would at least be open to family formations. I find the growing cohort of the childless really sad. Not that everyone wants or should have children but I wouldn't have missed the experience for the world. Damn near killed me at times and it's not without heart-ache but, gosh, the rewards are immense. A deep satisfaction and sense of belonging unmatched by anything else be it career, money or hedonistic experience.
Not much use being sad for the childless if young people are having trouble meeting someone. Most women don’t want to go it alone, I know a few couples who are childfree by choice, but more to the point know many women who are childless through lack of sane, stable, mature, employed etc males, or, they are or were in a couple with a man-child who didn’t want kids. Telling women how much they missed out on something wonderful has no point directed at those who chose not to, and doesn’t help those who would have liked to and never met the right person.
I know, I know. My daughter is in that boat. Mind you, it’s never been easy finding a good man. Some of us did our best with what was on offer - and it worked for some of us and not for others. She’s a hard road, finding an average decent man.
Oh I didn’t know that. I’ll look for it. Although many have met their partners through apps, too many report feeling exhausted by it. I think it’s the dilemma of choice and also approaching the whole exercise like shopping. Too much choice was never a good thing if you want to flog off products. Overwhelming.
Too fat, too plain? So I'm guessing your friend either looks like an All Black or a young Brad Pitt. Things are getting serious when a genuinely super hot man is being asked to settle for an only ordinary and human looking woman. Cry me a river.
You’ve obviously never listened to males and females talk about the online choices on offer. It’s brutal! Online dating is like the cruelest kind of shopping.
I've not only listened, I belong to the generation who have found a lot of their partners online. I have had a longish term relationship with a partner I found online. (The sex was great, but we just didn't have much of a connection). My bestie had two kids with one. (He was an abusive alcoholic who hated her daughter from a previous relationship). One of my friends from playcenter, who I later worked with at a community mental health center, bought a house with one. (A detective who went off the rails and left her for a prostitute). Believe me, I know how dispiriting it can be to go on a lot of first dates with people who you feel no connection to whatsoever when you meet them in real life, and how difficult it is to find someone that you feel connected to via online dating.
However, I am also mature enough to realize that looks aren't everything, that you can be very unhappy in a relationship with a man who looks like Keanau Reeves or George Clooney, and that you can have a wonderful romantic and sexual relationship with someone who looks like an ordinary human being: one of those too plain too fat sort of women who your friend rejected without meeting, perhaps. You never know, some of them might be really nice ladies with wonderful senses of humour.
Actually I think my young friend needs to learn those lessons - the beauty of ordinary people who get you - and I don't think he's going to learn them while swiping left and right. I'm so over dealing with all things digital in my own hum-drum life. Seems like it's getting nigh on impossible to ask for assistance from a real human since so much is done online. I can't tell you how much I hate it. The digitising of travel arrangements has also sucked the joy out of travel for me. Once upon a time you travelled to muddle through foreign parts with the assistance of the locals. Now you hardly need encounter them. So much is mediated through a screen. I pray this is just a blip on the road to making this tech work for us -and not against us the way it sometimes feels now.
I agree. It's not a good place to find someone you can feel deeply connected to. It used to be a place where you could find someone who ticked all boxes in theory and was a perfectly pleasant person but who you just don't feel that special spark with, or someone you could have casual sex with if that's your thing. I gave up on online dating long ago because neither of those things is what I was looking for. My bestie finally left the abusive alcoholic who she has two kids with and currently says that she would rather chew her arm off and beat herself about the head with it than try dating again, so she's not looking right now either.
Okay so how do you know all this? Suspicious if you ask me. Also skoliosexual - does that mean you only fancy someone with a spinal deformity or you're open to deformities in general? Honestly, some things should not be put into words.
OMG there seems no end to the new stupid words that seem to be added daily to describe variations of sexual desires/fetishes for an extremely small % of our population. Please make it stop!!
After the dissolution of a 23 year marriage, I actually found the love of my life through an online dating site and we have been very happy together for the last 20 years, but that was long before all this nonsense started....
The saying "trans ruin everything" proves to be correct time and time again.
May they bring about their own demise quickly then.
Another 'all's well with the world of men and women NOT' post. So while Sall had to raise millions and go to the higher courts to fight for the right to exclude men from her app for women and girls only, and fail to win that right even so, and be punished with another fine, these pretend women cross-dressing narcissistic men, gay and straight, continue to be entirely free to insinuate themselves into all the spaces where they are not welcome, ruining it for the genuine sorts looking for companionship and love, like your friend. It's a social disaster for our children's generation that I fear we have only seen the beginning of.
I’m encouraged to see young people are leaving online dating in droves. That’s got to be a good thing for all concerned.
Hope you're right. But I worry that this present young-adult generation raised on the internet, and bouyed up with all their likeminded echo chamber online friend groups, don't have the real world skills, including perseverance, needed to make a good match and partnership without digital help. But perhaps it will save the next generation of YAs.
There are no longer as many affordable and real-world spaces (pubs, clubs, house parties in flats) to meet in either. For each generation it’s become harder.
Yes, that's true. Flat parties were the best and cost nothing - much. Although what we did wasn't really dating - more like getting drunk and finding yourself with someone. Not always ideal. My daughter and her mates do things like going to the gym, or climbing walls or escape rooms. People want to connect and I'm optimistic that they will find a way.
Interesting! I actually met my husband online. I won the lottery. Didn't see any obvious transmen.
I found there were so many guys on my profile wanting to talk with me. There was desperation from some of the men and I felt bad for them "I want to marry within a year" was one first paragraph message. It was a jungle.
Hubby found it was a desert. Very few ladies returned his messages. Not sure why. I feel very lucky!
Most of my friends who are single have completely given up on apps. There are so many dating horror stories. Don't get me started on the influence of certain online videos and "breathplay". It's tough out there. My sympathies to your friends. Maybe it's time to get the women and men in the same boat in the same room and cut the internet out of it.
That’s great to read you met your husband online. Online dating is just one way of meeting the opposite sex. It’s definitely a jungle out there for many. Both men and women daters have valid complaints about what’s on offer. I found the sight of the women posing as pseudo porn stars worrying. What kind of man will that act attract?
Probably a man looking for something temporary at best? I hate the 'you wore x, you were asking for it' attitude but at the same time, what one wears and non-verbally communicates will impact on how others perceive you (that goes for the men too, but in different ways).
I like numbers, but I think height, and other things get less important if you meet someone in person. And it's messing with the prospects of some guys.
"While people perceive dress to have an impact on who is assaulted, studies of rapists suggest that victim attire is not a significant factor. Instead, rapists look for signs of passiveness and submissiveness, which, studies suggest, are more likely to coincide with more body-concealing clothing."
source https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1109&context=djglp
Yeah. Walking is non-verbal communication. That study scares me!
In dating, you will be judged for how you dress. When I dated men, I judged them for how they dressed. If they couldn't groom themselves, I was not interested, as an example.
Another example was when I did an interview and a man turned up in jeans. We were a suits company. He didn't get the job.
Some women pose as if they're porn stars. Probably because so much online content has become pornified. It's not a good strategy for anyone.
Or exposure to such things at young ages. It's a big problem.
It will be interesting to see now that X became a subsidiary of xAI which was then merged with SpaceX and forms part of the $1.25 trillion USD SpaceX IPO ... mind-bogglingly big numbers!
Interesting Yvonne. Thank you for the article. Dating Apps seem to me (never used them cos way too old and married - happily) to be rather wicked avenues via which to find a soul mate. More like a 'let's get together and shag'. Not really a model for societal wellbeing to my conservative eyes. I have some respect for Musk and what he has done, putting his money where his mouth is. Not sure if I love him completely, but certainly he has done much for restoring honesty in the cyber world. I asked Grok, Chat GPT & Gemini recently if folk with Maori ancestry should get special rights. Two said 'well, it is a nuanced & complex situation blah blah blah...'. The other came right out and said 'Nope, race based rights are wrong, resources should be allocated on need alone'. Go Grok.
Grok all the way! I applaud Musk for de-wokifying X. If that’s all he ever did in life, it should earn him the Nobel prize. Dating apps are gruesome. Best thing they can achieve is incentives for people to meet in the flesh. This digital life is so impersonal and frustrating. I’m trying to get a parking permit for a frequent visitor to my house and I’lm told I can’t go into the council offices and talk to someone. It’s all got to be done online. I hate it!
Just more proof, not that any more was needed, that it is indeed sex, not gender that is the important factor in adult relationships. Plainly put, you are either OK having sex with someone else's penis, or you are not. Gussying up the remainder of the body doesn't mean much once the costume is removed. As with so many other things; sports, birth, breastfeeding, sexual intercourse is not a gendered activity, it's sexed all the way baby...
I've long thought that I'm a dinosaur when it comes to social media; your piece has confirmed this!
Totally though I do enjoy X.
Nah Aroha, you're only in your 80's... Still young at heart. And with all your marbles it seems.
I worry about the demise of dating apps and women leaving in droves as what’s the alternative? Society is different now, there are fewer pubs and clubs, workplaces don’t go to the pub, people don’t have house parties or dinner parties, neighbours don’t talk, sports and other club attendance is down, going out is expensive. There are still some decent 30 something guys on the apps but my single female friends won’t try, and have given up. I think we can all help by doing whatever we can to support real world socialising. Just talking about how terrible the apps are etc etc doesn’t help. When I was still looking, only one person ever introduced me to someone, whatever happened to matchmaking?
Di you think AI might come to the rescue? It might end up knowing people so well that it could act as a super-brain match-maker. I do agree about the demise of social gathering spots though the young people I know have strong friend networks. Maybe they need to go to church. That's one place to meet people who would at least be open to family formations. I find the growing cohort of the childless really sad. Not that everyone wants or should have children but I wouldn't have missed the experience for the world. Damn near killed me at times and it's not without heart-ache but, gosh, the rewards are immense. A deep satisfaction and sense of belonging unmatched by anything else be it career, money or hedonistic experience.
Not much use being sad for the childless if young people are having trouble meeting someone. Most women don’t want to go it alone, I know a few couples who are childfree by choice, but more to the point know many women who are childless through lack of sane, stable, mature, employed etc males, or, they are or were in a couple with a man-child who didn’t want kids. Telling women how much they missed out on something wonderful has no point directed at those who chose not to, and doesn’t help those who would have liked to and never met the right person.
I know, I know. My daughter is in that boat. Mind you, it’s never been easy finding a good man. Some of us did our best with what was on offer - and it worked for some of us and not for others. She’s a hard road, finding an average decent man.
Great piece, Yvonne.
Reminds me of Glinner's story of posting a photo of himself with a tilted head on a lesbian app - just to show how easy it was to do
Have cross posted
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-men-of-hartford
Dusty
Oh yes, I remember that. He’s a trick, that Glinner, Thanks Dusty.
Spectrasexual? Skoliosexual? This huge range of invented terms are ridiculous and laughable.
Matt Walsh has done great exposures on why dating apps are dying (which may well be a good thing)
Oh I didn’t know that. I’ll look for it. Although many have met their partners through apps, too many report feeling exhausted by it. I think it’s the dilemma of choice and also approaching the whole exercise like shopping. Too much choice was never a good thing if you want to flog off products. Overwhelming.
Too fat, too plain? So I'm guessing your friend either looks like an All Black or a young Brad Pitt. Things are getting serious when a genuinely super hot man is being asked to settle for an only ordinary and human looking woman. Cry me a river.
You’ve obviously never listened to males and females talk about the online choices on offer. It’s brutal! Online dating is like the cruelest kind of shopping.
I've not only listened, I belong to the generation who have found a lot of their partners online. I have had a longish term relationship with a partner I found online. (The sex was great, but we just didn't have much of a connection). My bestie had two kids with one. (He was an abusive alcoholic who hated her daughter from a previous relationship). One of my friends from playcenter, who I later worked with at a community mental health center, bought a house with one. (A detective who went off the rails and left her for a prostitute). Believe me, I know how dispiriting it can be to go on a lot of first dates with people who you feel no connection to whatsoever when you meet them in real life, and how difficult it is to find someone that you feel connected to via online dating.
However, I am also mature enough to realize that looks aren't everything, that you can be very unhappy in a relationship with a man who looks like Keanau Reeves or George Clooney, and that you can have a wonderful romantic and sexual relationship with someone who looks like an ordinary human being: one of those too plain too fat sort of women who your friend rejected without meeting, perhaps. You never know, some of them might be really nice ladies with wonderful senses of humour.
Actually I think my young friend needs to learn those lessons - the beauty of ordinary people who get you - and I don't think he's going to learn them while swiping left and right. I'm so over dealing with all things digital in my own hum-drum life. Seems like it's getting nigh on impossible to ask for assistance from a real human since so much is done online. I can't tell you how much I hate it. The digitising of travel arrangements has also sucked the joy out of travel for me. Once upon a time you travelled to muddle through foreign parts with the assistance of the locals. Now you hardly need encounter them. So much is mediated through a screen. I pray this is just a blip on the road to making this tech work for us -and not against us the way it sometimes feels now.
Yep, things digital - soul-destroying!
I agree. It's not a good place to find someone you can feel deeply connected to. It used to be a place where you could find someone who ticked all boxes in theory and was a perfectly pleasant person but who you just don't feel that special spark with, or someone you could have casual sex with if that's your thing. I gave up on online dating long ago because neither of those things is what I was looking for. My bestie finally left the abusive alcoholic who she has two kids with and currently says that she would rather chew her arm off and beat herself about the head with it than try dating again, so she's not looking right now either.
Let's clear up the confusion.
Monosexual: Sex with yourself. Or with someone with glandular fever.
Skoliosexual: Sex with someone with a spinal deformity.
Greysexual: Pensioners need sex too.
Androsexual: Sex with androids/robots. (Cold and painful if you ask me...)
Allosexual: Using a polite English greeting before getting down to it. May also be called "foreplay".
Demisexual: One breast or one testicle missing.
Demifemale: X-. Just X-.
Okay so how do you know all this? Suspicious if you ask me. Also skoliosexual - does that mean you only fancy someone with a spinal deformity or you're open to deformities in general? Honestly, some things should not be put into words.
You seriously think that promoting fascism and racism is ‘saving free speech’? Musk is doing all he can to shut down speech he doesn’t agree with.
Absolutely nuts.
Fascism? Racism? And no proof offered. Name calling is not an argument.
Just take a look on Twitter. It’s all there.
Specifically look at Musk’s retweets.
If you’re still denying it, you’re part of the problem.
Haha, you’re hilarious. So fantastically predictable. At any rate if you think I’m part of the problem, jog on.
OMG there seems no end to the new stupid words that seem to be added daily to describe variations of sexual desires/fetishes for an extremely small % of our population. Please make it stop!!
After the dissolution of a 23 year marriage, I actually found the love of my life through an online dating site and we have been very happy together for the last 20 years, but that was long before all this nonsense started....
Def not an incel. Just one of the many jaded dating app users. My daughter is another and declining usage stats show they're not alone.