Throw in the future technology of VR and AR and it looks pretty grim for real life romance.
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Yea things are pretty weird now.
The online dating thing gets women a lot of attention and turned a lot of dudes into simps nowadays.
Guys need some basic non-simp training. She. Is. Not. Going. To. Fuck. You.
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Itās been the same damn story for 3000 years.
Evolution isnāt helping apparently or maybe itās the best for evolution.
Men chase what they think they can have easily.
But the good match women donāt give it up so easily.
Okay itās not that simple and a bit of a generalality and Iām just being humorous but you know
Itās not affection. Itās not even really attention.
The saddest thing is that I think more and more men and women donāt even want real sexual experiences, let alone relationships of any meaningful kind. Because relationships require effort and can bring about emotions and situations that are uncomfortable.
Who wants that?
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You guys are overthinking old school or something.
Millennials and after are actually less sexually focused, not drinking alcohol as much, plus getting more in tune with nature and you know other things like going green and making the world a better place.
Yes there are those that still go to the crazy side but the trends are backing away.
Also a lot of outliers so to speak on social media like onlyfans that could be a few people that think this way and social media gives this huge voice to even one person that gets a lot of attention but doesnāt mean itās really a movement.
Having less sex = less socially adept and less capable of forming meaningful bonds with others.
Getting more in tune with nature = looking at pictures of nature on their phones.
Going green = liking posts about āsaving the planetā on social media.
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Not really, nowadays those dudes are getting so much stimulation from social media. zillions of unavailable women to look at. It wasnāt like this before. It canāt be healthy.
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This is true, but only the symptom. What is actually the concern is the cause. We are working longer hours than ever before, the path to financial security is more difficult, most have student debts, wages have stagnated and the job markets have been very difficult in various periods since the financial crisis and older generations are retiring later. Everyone is packed into cities now.
All this added stress is making human connections take a back seat. Of course instant gratification of paying to simulate affection and sexual desires are going to be what younger people seek after with all of this.
We will see the impact of this in the coming years.
And also impact women as men are less capable of holding relationships. Social media use is strongly correlated to mental health issues for women, the younger they get on it, the more they have mental health issues. Itās been a common complaint from younger women that they feel forced to behave in a way that porn and these only fans girls do as men become numb to sexual stimulation.
Itās basically impossible for 1 woman to compete against the ability to get sexual stimulation and affection from unlimited amounts of women from porn and social media.
Your comment makes it sound like men are at fault and women are victims in all this.
It takes 2 to tango. Donāt fool yourself into believing that women are totally helpless and have been forced to show skin on IG and OF because young men are pornhounds.
Modern society has messed up men and women. Both sexes have major issues and unrealistic expectations.
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That is not what Iām implying. Iām talking about the consequences of these issues.
Women have utilized social media for their own purposes thatās harmful to themselves and to relationships with men. Dating apps have inflated their perception of their own position in the dating and sexual market place. Conflating a man wanting to have sex with them with them also wanting a relationship with them. Itās also a common complaint that men are tired of trying to date women when the women believe they can have all these other guys.
Itās a bad cycle. Many young men have checked out of dating for this reason. And many of them turn to other forms of getting sexual gratification and affection like above.
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Pretty sure we work less hours and itās easier now than most times in the past to get financially secure. I hear you on other points though.
The way I see it, younger generations are used to get stimulation quicker, with less effort and less human interaction than previous generations. Relationships and sexual encounters (excluding prostitution), by nature, are processes that you canāt press and that require the same level of effort and interaction as at any point in the past. As @BHL4life mentioned, porn has become the digital alternative to sex for guys. As for relationships, unfortunately for women I donāt see any such thing, apart from Japanese dating simulation games maybe.
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Ok, I was just taking issue with the way you presented it, like:
Hereās a good anecdotal example of how messed up things are on both sides.
I have a friend. Late 40s. Married 25 years. 2 kids. Very successful. Big house. Vacation home by a lake. Nice cars. Kids go to private schools. Family never wants for anything.
He does the sugar baby thing because, he says, being around young, fit women makes him feel young again. One of his sugar babies was an undergrad at college. Top of her class planning to go to med school to become a cardiac surgeon. Apparently from a good, normal family without any financial issues.
He said one time he asked her āWhy are you doing this? Donāt you want to date men your own age?ā Her response was that men her age were not mature and sophisticated enough and she preferred the company of men like my friend, who are worldly, experienced and can provide fun experiences. When he asked about marriage and kids, his sugar baby told him she wasnāt in a rush to get married and would be fine not getting married if she never met a man who lived up to her standards. She even mentioned she could have a kid on her own.
My friend told me he feels lucky that itās so easy for a man like him to get the company of young women these days but also remarked, āIf my wife had held men her age to the same standard when we were young, boy I never would have stood a chance!ā
Of course I think my friend is not right for cheating on his wife, even though I think she knows and basically accepts it so long as everything else is fine. But god itās messed up all around.
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That might be a different topic but I see no problem with that, as long as itās been negotiated. By nature males want to have sex with as many women as possible, while females are looking for stability and security in order to raise children. The institution of marriage heavily leans on satisfying the female criteria; I think itās only fair that both sexes are allowed to get satisfaction in this contract.
All the data Iāve seen show we work more hours.
In many ways it is more easy to get financially secure, but gone are the days when you donāt need a college degree to get to middle class working at a factory. And gone are the days when you can just walk into a building with a degree and get a job. You are set for STEM and probably finance and accounting. But you arenāt going to have a good time with a liberal arts degree these days.
Iāve talked to many people around my age that have parents that donāt understand why they canāt just a job like they did with a degree.
I was talking on the expats group for London asking what kind of salary I would need to be comfortable. I was shocked at the salary people have, especially starting out. I have no idea how they survive London like that, I make way more in finance just starting out compared to people even past entry level in other fields and I think you are in tech so you probably make a good salary. And these people are educated with UG and masters.
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The takeaway for me was more about expectations. Here you had a young woman with totally unrealistic expectations about men her age, paying a significant opportunity cost because she obviously didnāt appreciate the fact that she was in her prime years to date and potentially meet a stable long-term partner who she could grow with.
There was absolutely no potential for this young woman to have stability and security from my friend. She was a toy to him.
Instagram is largely the same.
I donāt āfollowā any accounts that are remotely sketchy - my mother could flip through my wall and itād be fine though sheād miss most of the memes. Mostly friends and outdoors kind of things.
However, the āpromotedā posts are, very typically, young local girls whoā¦delight in posing rather provocatively. Iām all for people doing whatever they want to do and assume that Iām seeing it based on a simple algorithm that knows my gender, age and location but the fact they are paying for strangers to let them see such picturesā¦makes me feel that things have gone a bit astray.
Sort of an odd conversation. A woman who lives in Taiwan that I met, briefly in passing, sent me a note that sheās onā¦some site that is like OnlyFans (but I donāt remember the name). I visited andā¦I will leave out the details but itās an interesting gig (and, considering that we have had less than zero interactions of a remotely flirtatious nature, sort of an odd thing to spring on a person).
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As OnlyFans, a site that allows creators to upload X-rated content for paying subscribers, becomes more popular thanks to celebrities and viral social media posts, online sex work is becoming more normalized to the point at which questions about what sex toys count as business expenses arenāt that unusual. For the record, according to the official IRS website, self-employed folks can consider any expense that is āordinary and necessaryā in their industry as tax-deductible.
Donāt know what year youāre comparing from but these days 9-to-5 is still very much a thingāthatās a 35-h-work week.
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history
I agree things have changed. I disagree things are harder.
London is very much an exception, with a reputation for having a pretty bad salary/cost of living balance. Provincial towns and cities have much better balance with that respect.
I just checked the list and I know only one or two of these ācelebritiesāā¦
How famous one needs to be to be called a celebrity?