It’s been trending this way for years, but seeing it graphed out like this is shocking.
What do you think are the effects of this drastic change?
I think the online thing is about to start dropping. The sites are so full of looky-loos who just want to chat and never actually meet in person they’re hardly worth the time. I expect as the bot infestation continues to grow, they’ll be even less useful.
some of recognize that and use it to enrich themselves & entrench their positions; a few others who also recognize it decide to use it to try improve humanity’s lot in life; and the overwhelming majority are only vaguely aware at best, call the latter tankies while idolizing the former.
There is also the enshittification that intentionally make the sites worse and harder to use… I will never in a million years understand why useful features are removed completely other than “the longer you are stuck on the site the more likely you are to pay for premium.”
POF used to have a section for you to add tags and a function to search by tags. Completely gone. Not even a premium feature. OKC used to have an additional text entry to elaborate on the questions you answer, now completely gone. “do you believe animals have spirits like people” yes or no… No, but that makes me sound like an asshole. I don’t believe either do, but I can’t explain that now… OKC used to let you browse profiles instead of just swipe swipe swipe. Match group bought every successful dating site and absolutely destroyed them to make them all seemingly identical “Tinder 2.0” clones.
I’m not 100% sure on this one, but there aren’t even direct messages on OKC at first, just an “intro” and I’ve seen on women’s profiles they say “I read all my intros.” There’s a tab for intros, so I’m assuming their intros show up there. I’m a guy, I NEVER have had an intro in that tab, but if I happen to stumble on a profile where she sent me an intro it shows up on her profile. Not trying to be sexist, I think they are playing the bullshit game of “men are more desperate and willing to pay so we’ll do what we can to make them stuck here longer.”
POF is even more of a joke now, they are moving more towards streaming and paid rewards… Fucking streamer profiles “not here to date, just here for the streaming.” It’s so absurd what happened to online dating.
A lot of people are ok with tinder or hinge, but I need more information about a person I’m not one of those “unga bunga she pretty, lemme smash” types. I need a profile to read…
Totally agree with this. I’ve been on and off the apps for years and they get worse each time I try again. There is a population of people that use dating apps like a game trying to get the high score with the points being likes and matches. It’s just another form of social media at this point.
Most of the “people” on there aren’t people. They’re either bots or occasionally those looky-loos that are just hired actors to keep people engaged to the site and try and get as much money out of them as possible. Especially the paid dating sites are mostly just that. They’re just sucking money out of people that are genuinely emotionally invested and sometimes even desperate. It’s real sad, and disgusting from those sites.
I think online dating will still remain. But it’s less of actual interest for long term stuff, and more want to have a fun one night stand kind of deal. I feel like most other things on that chart turned into that as well though.
“online” doesn’t necessarily mean dedicated dating/match making apps.
The Internet connects people in a way that nothing ever has before. You use the Internet to seek out interests of yours, as will other people. So like minded people tend to meet even incidentally.
I met my partner online, but it was on a game, not a dating service. Neither of us were really looking for love. We became friends, then started dating, and now married for years.
…Even now, though, if we have an argument I shout, “noob! EZ! Uninstall!” and she waits around awkwardly for some moderator to penalize me.
“Do you take this woman, to have and to hold, to draw aggro and tank for, in MSQ and DLC, so long as the NA servers stay up?”
“Roger that”
“And do you take this man, to have and to hold, to heal and to buff, in grinding and in raids, so long as the NA servers stay up?”
“I do”
chockobo music starts
I once moved across the country for a woman I (re)met during a random Words with Friends match. Took us a dozen games before I realized I’d originally met her through LiveJournal, about a decade earlier.
Many years later, my wife moved across the country to be with me, after we met on Reddit. (Clearly the previously mentioned woman was better as a friend.)
“dating” (fucking) apps: ew ❌
becoming a furry and then dating exclusively within the fandom for a much smaller pool of candidates but that are generally much more intelligent and just as socially awkward as you so the awkwardness cancels itself out: ☑️
My first unofficial bf (really early in my teens) was a normie, and when that collapsed I went furry-only for relationships, never looked back. Had some amazing relationships due to it. The intelligence bar is much, much higher, so when you get into a conversation, it’s a deep, insightful, intriguing topic. My ex, he has adhd, autism, and several other quirks, and I could listen to him talk about stuff for hours, literally. The excitement he got from discussing something he was interested and passionate about, made topics I know nothing about and/or care nothing about, interesting; and I would always learn a nugget or two of information. And because furries are typically all weird as fuck, nothing is really weird. It’s liberating to just speak your mind without being worried about being judged or criticized.
I tried to dip my toes into the traditional dating/hookup apps a decade or so ago. Assholes as far as the eye can see, nothing meets their standards and they will demean you because of it. Fuck them all, and not in the fun way.
I want to know which couples were meeting online in 1980.
Bulletin board systems (BBS) go back to 1980. Men have tried everything to get laid since the dawn of humanity. It checks out.
As someone who was using BBSs by 1984-ish, I can believe that people met this way. What I can’t believe is that it was at a percentage high enough to be represented as anything above zero on that graph.
I think this is the data collection info: https://data.stanford.edu/hcmst2017
The data are nationally representative, as the Ipsos KnowledgePanel recruits subjects into the panel by by Address Based Sampling, and subjects without Internet access at home are given Internet access.
…
Response rate was 3510/6753=52% in 2017, 2107/2431= 87% in 2020, and 1722/2073=83% in 2022.
Half of all randomly selected subjects (by address) responded to their survey? I’d need to read a bit more about what exactly is going on there.
University nerds with early access to early forms of Internet would definitely never utilize such serious world changing technology to chat and dawdle amongst themselves to the point a connection would form. It’s not like the entirety of video gaming was created by a nerd severely misusing an extremely expensive oscilloscope.
Why the rise in meeting people at work in the 1980s? Was this when there was an increase in office jobs?
Probably a number of economic factors. We see a corresponding bump in Bars and dips in College and Family, so I would guess there was an uptick in young adults going straight into the workforce due to compelling non-college opportunities, and then spending their hard earned wages on after work recreation. High inflation or overwork culture may have induced folks to spend more time at work or unwind more after work. Improvements toward gender equality in the workplace probably also contributed.
Whether any of that is accurate or not, I have no clue, but the dip corresponding to the 1990-91 recession leads me to believe the main driver for the 80s rise is economic.
I wouldn’t have expected schools to be so low tbh
There is a big change these days to keep predators out of grade schools. It used to be the norm for a man to be 10 or even 20 years older than his bride. So I am not surprised to see grade school dropping.
Why does the graph use 5 shades of gray for some categories?
