It's a waste of time for everyone who isn't just looking for quick hookups. Sure there are the odd long lasting couple here and there who found each other on such apps, but they're the lucky few. 99% of the time i've used dating apps it's been to scroll out of boredom. If i've agreed to a date it's been out of boredom. And us women typically get flooded with messages. It's true that we are more picky, but it's because we can be lol, because the men on there aren't. Honestly it's just a bunch of BS. It's not much better to get a shitload of messages either as you start to develop a grass is always greener-type mindset. Less options means you're more willing to give those few options an honest chance and makes you more likely to meet someone it could work with.
I've stopped using dating sites and honestly, preferably, I want whomever I meet in the future to not use them either. I hate the knowledge of the person i'm texting being on those sites all the time even if they aren't texting anyone else getting messages from others. Always being distracted by that and knowing that they have other options on there. It's a toxic culture.
Shortly after the turn of the millennium, an American academic came up with a concept that has some relevance to what you say: "The Tyranny of Choice".
A trivial example: Say you're looking for something to eat for breakfast in a store and the only boxes on the shelves are one type and brand each of oatmeal, granola, corn flakes, and some highly processed crap that's 50% sugar. Most people would find it easy to make a choice. But if you're confronted with 300 different types of breakfast cereal, none of which you recognise and all in boxes that are designed to draw the eye and be visually different to the competing products, and you know that you can't entirely trust the packaging to tell the truth about the contents, that creates some degree of stress. Not only when you're making your choice, but also afterwards when eat your cereal and wonder if you could have picked something better.
Of course, it's an article of faith in modern capitalism that being free to choose exactly what you want is always a Good Thing and maybe even a human right. So we're constantly confronted with having to make choices in every single aspect of our lives, and there's always a niggling feeling at the back of our minds that we've screwed up and could have made a better choice. It's very difficult to get away from the idea that, somewhere out there, hidden in a multitude of possibilities, there's the perfect breakfast cereal for us, the perfect car for us, the perfect fuck for us, the perfect life-partner for us.
It seems to me that Voltaire summed it up very well when he said that the best is the enemy of the good. People haven't really changed at all in the 300 years since he was alive, and even back then people were wasting their time and energy constantly searching for some ideal rather than focusing on enjoying the positive aspects of what was already in their lives.
What has changed since Voltaire's time is that choices in virtually every sphere of life have proliferated, and modern capitalism relies on constantly pushing the idea that everyone deserves to have a perfect life and you can have it if only you acquire the right products.
Dating apps are just the logical extension of this into the field of sex and relationships.
IIN to think that dating websites are a waste of time for a guy?
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It's a waste of time for everyone who isn't just looking for quick hookups. Sure there are the odd long lasting couple here and there who found each other on such apps, but they're the lucky few. 99% of the time i've used dating apps it's been to scroll out of boredom. If i've agreed to a date it's been out of boredom. And us women typically get flooded with messages. It's true that we are more picky, but it's because we can be lol, because the men on there aren't. Honestly it's just a bunch of BS. It's not much better to get a shitload of messages either as you start to develop a grass is always greener-type mindset. Less options means you're more willing to give those few options an honest chance and makes you more likely to meet someone it could work with.
I've stopped using dating sites and honestly, preferably, I want whomever I meet in the future to not use them either. I hate the knowledge of the person i'm texting being on those sites all the time even if they aren't texting anyone else getting messages from others. Always being distracted by that and knowing that they have other options on there. It's a toxic culture.
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Boojum
1 year ago
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Shortly after the turn of the millennium, an American academic came up with a concept that has some relevance to what you say: "The Tyranny of Choice".
A trivial example: Say you're looking for something to eat for breakfast in a store and the only boxes on the shelves are one type and brand each of oatmeal, granola, corn flakes, and some highly processed crap that's 50% sugar. Most people would find it easy to make a choice. But if you're confronted with 300 different types of breakfast cereal, none of which you recognise and all in boxes that are designed to draw the eye and be visually different to the competing products, and you know that you can't entirely trust the packaging to tell the truth about the contents, that creates some degree of stress. Not only when you're making your choice, but also afterwards when eat your cereal and wonder if you could have picked something better.
Of course, it's an article of faith in modern capitalism that being free to choose exactly what you want is always a Good Thing and maybe even a human right. So we're constantly confronted with having to make choices in every single aspect of our lives, and there's always a niggling feeling at the back of our minds that we've screwed up and could have made a better choice. It's very difficult to get away from the idea that, somewhere out there, hidden in a multitude of possibilities, there's the perfect breakfast cereal for us, the perfect car for us, the perfect fuck for us, the perfect life-partner for us.
It seems to me that Voltaire summed it up very well when he said that the best is the enemy of the good. People haven't really changed at all in the 300 years since he was alive, and even back then people were wasting their time and energy constantly searching for some ideal rather than focusing on enjoying the positive aspects of what was already in their lives.
What has changed since Voltaire's time is that choices in virtually every sphere of life have proliferated, and modern capitalism relies on constantly pushing the idea that everyone deserves to have a perfect life and you can have it if only you acquire the right products.
Dating apps are just the logical extension of this into the field of sex and relationships.