I really hate the fact that ‘incel’ has become this catch-all insult for a low value man, and frankly find it offensive that you are comparing me to the kind of people that glorify and worship school shooters. These people shouldn’t be the reason to outright dismiss male woes with online dating, especially when a lot of online dating sites have zero interest in helping you find love and just want to make your experience as miserable as possible so that they can sucker you into paying triple the price of a WoW subscription to see what fake users ‘liked’ your profile.
I do not associate myself with the manosphere because these communities are toxic-a-f. At the same time I find it greatly concerning that they are growing in prominence (just look at Andrew Tate’s social media following) and think there’s loads of factors at play. Big tech has a lot to answer for.
Also, no basis in reality? There is an evolutionary basis to explain this. Humanity had evolved over millions of years to find certain traits attractive in a mate. For men, being physically strong, healthy, having status in a tribe and being able to provide for a family would have been strong factors in ensuring the survival of the next generation back when we were still foraging and hunting. We had only shed our status as a hunter-gatherer species hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. Is it outlandish to conclude that our human biology has not caught up to the millennia of societal and technological change that we’ve made as a species?
If you use the same talking points and terminology (“low-value man” lol) as they do, then I have every reason to draw comparison. The problem lies with the fact that y’all insist on framing this as exclusively a men’s issue, and that women are somehow to blame for having unrealistically high standards that you make up and project onto them.
Indeed, there is no basis in reality that women have it easier. You can speculate that it’s a product of evolution but that at best only points to surface-level differences, while the overall negative experience that has come about from the commodification of dating affects both sexes.
Edit: Also, let’s say that it is men who are disproportionately affected, I find it interesting that the first reason you go to are all the things that men are commonly insecure about (height, penis size, etc.) despite those things not being the focus of the sources you provided later.
This is the main reason why I compared your post to incel talking points. Their whole tactic is playing off of the insecurities of men, making them feel bad about themselves, and framing it as the opinions of women despite no input from actual women being present. Which, unfortunately, is exactly what you were doing with your initial post, whether you’re aware of it or not.
Side point (& I’m not the person you were responding to), but I have to ask: Do you not see online dating in the same vein as most other online corporate sites that commodify their users and devalue them for profits?
I personally think online dating is a “meat market” or “horse show” for everyone of every gender & orientation. There’s little to no real effort on behalf of these sites to actually increase the number of connections (e.g. via coming up with features that actually encourage making connections), instead their entire ecosystem is designed to encourage the same type of “doom scrolling” that sites like FB encourage so that you stay on their sites/apps for longer viewing ads for longer, or shell out more & more money for their “premium” offerings.
It’s hard to deny that online dating does not provide avenues for diversity in presenting people’s strengths. Some people are more appealing in person than they are in text for example. Some people aren’t photogenic (even if they are actually physically attractive), some people are livelier or funnier in person than they will ever appear in an online dating ad, some people just don’t know how to create “eye catching” dating ads…etc.
It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with those people at all, it just means those sites don’t provide avenues for their strengths, which is a problem because people are extremely diverse, but instead these sites create the “meat market” dynamic because it’s the only thing they apparently know how to do & it increases their profits to do so.
This piece from the Atlantic back in 2016 touched on what I mean:
Moira Weigel is a historian & author of the recent book Labor of Love, in which she chronicles how dating has always been difficult, & always been in flux. But there is something “historically new” about our current era, she says. “Dating has always been work,” she says. “But what’s ironic is that more of the work now is not actually around the interaction that you have with a person, it’s around the selection process, & the process of self-presentation. That does feel different than before.”
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“The thing with design is, at risk of belaboring the obvious, how all of these apps make money is by keeping people on the app,” Weigel says. “Yes, there’s better & worse design, but there is ultimately this conflict of interest between the user of the app & the designer of the app.”
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But getting as many people in front of your eyeballs as fast as possible doesn’t end up saving time at all. “I have women saying that they spend 10 to 15 hours a week online dating, because that’s how much work goes into producing one date,” Wood says.
So if there’s a fundamental problem with dating apps, one baked into their very nature, it is this: They facilitate our culture’s worst impulses for efficiency in the arena where we most need to resist those impulses. Research has shown that people who you aren’t necessarily attracted to at first sight, can become attractive to you over time, as you get to know them better. Evaluating someone’s fitness as a partner within the span of a single date—or a single swipe—eliminates this possibility.
I don’t really give a shit how Incels perceive dating (seriously, no one is “owed” sex), but it’s hard to deny that online dating sites, like several other online “experiences”, have not negatively impacted their “space” for profits, similar to how sites like Reddit & Facebook were supposedly supposed to “help people communicate & make & keep connections” & only became more & more enshittified to improve corporate bottom lines, resulting in the opposite outcome (E.G. Shit like FB heavily encourages divisiveness instead cause that’s what gets the ad views, news sites resort to click bait instead of actually reporting news cause again, profits…etc.).
Of course paywalled dating sites might be better on this, but considering the financial status of a lot of people (especially the younger demographics that are having a harder & harder time even finding the time & money to pursue relationships as one of your sources pointed out, which is also a HUGE part of the problem IMO), it makes sense why many would assume the freemium sites are representative of online dating as a whole (since they do have a larger market share as well)
& of course there are some efforts to address the issues I’ve listed (like Swan)
I don’t know for sure since I’m not a sociologist nor have I personally dug deep enough into this topic, but I imagine that while not the sole reason, these for profit dating sites definitely have a sizable impact on the rise of incel “culture”.
I really hate the fact that ‘incel’ has become this catch-all insult for a low value man, and frankly find it offensive that you are comparing me to the kind of people that glorify and worship school shooters. These people shouldn’t be the reason to outright dismiss male woes with online dating, especially when a lot of online dating sites have zero interest in helping you find love and just want to make your experience as miserable as possible so that they can sucker you into paying triple the price of a WoW subscription to see what fake users ‘liked’ your profile.
I do not associate myself with the manosphere because these communities are toxic-a-f. At the same time I find it greatly concerning that they are growing in prominence (just look at Andrew Tate’s social media following) and think there’s loads of factors at play. Big tech has a lot to answer for.
Male virginity has more than trebled in the United States from 8% of men aged 18 - 30 reporting no sexual partners in 2008 to 27% in 2018. That is an alarming statistic.
But wait that’s one source, I hear you say. Here is an archived post from the Okcupid blog which was taken down after Match got their money-grubbing paws on the site, which showed trends of how badly male users were ranked. Of course Match Group had to remove that from their blog because they have to keep up the illusion that it’s worth paying a £37/month subscrption.
Also, no basis in reality? There is an evolutionary basis to explain this. Humanity had evolved over millions of years to find certain traits attractive in a mate. For men, being physically strong, healthy, having status in a tribe and being able to provide for a family would have been strong factors in ensuring the survival of the next generation back when we were still foraging and hunting. We had only shed our status as a hunter-gatherer species hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. Is it outlandish to conclude that our human biology has not caught up to the millennia of societal and technological change that we’ve made as a species?
If you use the same talking points and terminology (“low-value man” lol) as they do, then I have every reason to draw comparison. The problem lies with the fact that y’all insist on framing this as exclusively a men’s issue, and that women are somehow to blame for having unrealistically high standards that you make up and project onto them.
Since we’re cherry-picking surveys, here are some for you: https://www.salon.com/2022/11/06/why-are-so-many-young-people-are-having-less-and-fewer-friendships/ https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/n-keystat.htm https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/nearly-half-of-u-s-adults-say-dating-has-gotten-harder-for-most-people-in-the-last-10-years/
Indeed, there is no basis in reality that women have it easier. You can speculate that it’s a product of evolution but that at best only points to surface-level differences, while the overall negative experience that has come about from the commodification of dating affects both sexes.
Edit: Also, let’s say that it is men who are disproportionately affected, I find it interesting that the first reason you go to are all the things that men are commonly insecure about (height, penis size, etc.) despite those things not being the focus of the sources you provided later.
This is the main reason why I compared your post to incel talking points. Their whole tactic is playing off of the insecurities of men, making them feel bad about themselves, and framing it as the opinions of women despite no input from actual women being present. Which, unfortunately, is exactly what you were doing with your initial post, whether you’re aware of it or not.
Side point (& I’m not the person you were responding to), but I have to ask: Do you not see online dating in the same vein as most other online corporate sites that commodify their users and devalue them for profits?
I personally think online dating is a “meat market” or “horse show” for everyone of every gender & orientation. There’s little to no real effort on behalf of these sites to actually increase the number of connections (e.g. via coming up with features that actually encourage making connections), instead their entire ecosystem is designed to encourage the same type of “doom scrolling” that sites like FB encourage so that you stay on their sites/apps for longer viewing ads for longer, or shell out more & more money for their “premium” offerings.
It’s hard to deny that online dating does not provide avenues for diversity in presenting people’s strengths. Some people are more appealing in person than they are in text for example. Some people aren’t photogenic (even if they are actually physically attractive), some people are livelier or funnier in person than they will ever appear in an online dating ad, some people just don’t know how to create “eye catching” dating ads…etc.
It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with those people at all, it just means those sites don’t provide avenues for their strengths, which is a problem because people are extremely diverse, but instead these sites create the “meat market” dynamic because it’s the only thing they apparently know how to do & it increases their profits to do so.
This piece from the Atlantic back in 2016 touched on what I mean:
&
&
I don’t really give a shit how Incels perceive dating (seriously, no one is “owed” sex), but it’s hard to deny that online dating sites, like several other online “experiences”, have not negatively impacted their “space” for profits, similar to how sites like Reddit & Facebook were supposedly supposed to “help people communicate & make & keep connections” & only became more & more enshittified to improve corporate bottom lines, resulting in the opposite outcome (E.G. Shit like FB heavily encourages divisiveness instead cause that’s what gets the ad views, news sites resort to click bait instead of actually reporting news cause again, profits…etc.).
Of course paywalled dating sites might be better on this, but considering the financial status of a lot of people (especially the younger demographics that are having a harder & harder time even finding the time & money to pursue relationships as one of your sources pointed out, which is also a HUGE part of the problem IMO), it makes sense why many would assume the freemium sites are representative of online dating as a whole (since they do have a larger market share as well)
& of course there are some efforts to address the issues I’ve listed (like Swan)
I don’t know for sure since I’m not a sociologist nor have I personally dug deep enough into this topic, but I imagine that while not the sole reason, these for profit dating sites definitely have a sizable impact on the rise of incel “culture”.
But I digress.