Wow, these guys seem really shitty. It's one thing to want to hookup but another thing to openly objectify and look at this as numbers game. See also: And suddenly the article got very sad. I've always felt weird and uncomfortable with Tinder, even when I was using it fairly often (and with some success - though not in the fashion as the people in this article). This article is right about one thing - almost everybody is on some sort of dating app, Tinder / OkCupid / Hinge / whatever else and I don't think there's anything wrong with it depending on your attitude. There were a lot of things wrong with the attitudes of the people in this article though, and to be honest I couldn't really bother finishing it. Is dating dying? Maybe? It's hard to say because I'm clearly not in the audience of people interviewed for this article because even my friends who use these apps don't look at dating / hookups / Tinder in the fashion of the people in this article. It's much less sinister, more of a lets have fun and leave it at that, there's no misogyny, no looking down on people for performance, no sharing a text with 7 people. Bleh. I'm all for sexual empowerment but there are varying degrees of healthy ways to go about doing it.“Guys view everything as a competition,” he elaborates with his deep, reassuring voice. “Who’s slept with the best, hottest girls?” With these dating apps, he says, “you’re always sort of prowling. You could talk to two or three girls at a bar and pick the best one, or you can swipe a couple hundred people a day—the sample size is so much larger. It’s setting up two or three Tinder dates a week and, chances are, sleeping with all of them, so you could rack up 100 girls you’ve slept with in a year.”
But Marty, who prefers Hinge to Tinder (“Hinge is my thing”), is no slouch at “racking up girls.” He says he’s slept with 30 to 40 women in the last year: “I sort of play that I could be a boyfriend kind of guy,” in order to win them over, “but then they start wanting me to care more … and I just don’t.”
“And it reaches a point,” says Jane, “where, if you receive a text message” from a guy, “you forward the message to, like, seven different people: ‘What do I say back? Oh my God, he just texted me!’ It becomes a surprise. ‘He texted me!’ Which is really sad.”
American Psycho was written in 1991. Bonfire of the Vanities was 1987. Fuck, What Makes Sammy Run was 1941. Douches are douches are douches to the beginning of time. I mean Per Se is five blocks from where Studio 54 defined "hookup culture" in nineteen diggity seven.“If you had a reservation somewhere and then a table at Per Se opened up, you’d want to go there,” Alex offers.
That was kind of what I thought about it. I'm older admittedly (34) and I've been safely married off for a good long while, but even when I was young and single, there was always the complaint that "Men don't want to commit!" I've always found men to be as quick to commit as women are, and it's not as though I'm an amazing prize. I just didn't run into any douches, I think. Maybe on Tinder, your chances of running into a douche are higher?
...no comment. But I do have a thought and question and this ties into kleinbl00's comment. How much of this do you think is driven by a fear of feeling like a person hasn't attained the absolute best partner? Or, more plainly, a fear of feeling like you have settled? If we're all striving for something, running, what's to convince someone to stop and say "yes, this is worth the chance" when there are so many possibilities.
It's driven by status. Pure, naked status. The minute people pursue their own best interests they seek happiness. When they're pursing their best outward outcomes, they constantly trade up. "A man tells the world who he is four ways: his house, his wife, his car, his shoes." - Warren Adler, War of the Roses
Is it possible that both of those fears are really manifestations of insecurity and so as a result possible to say that what makes a person able to stop running is confidence? Edit: I will now add to this by saying I am watching the series Gilmore Girls for the first time in my life, and in today's episode Rory and Lorelei are playing "one, two, three or pass." If I understood it right, the game is that the next three people who pass that would be attractive to you, you must decide immediately : yes, 'marry' that one or no, pass, believing the next one will be better. However you are limited to the first 3 passers-by so your choices are limited and if you pass the first two you are stuck with whoever the third is. It was too relevant not to mention although I suspect it adds very little insight.