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from the post-traumatic-swipe-disorder dept.
Are 'swipe left' dating apps bad for our mental health?
Dating apps have taken the world by storm, but has the trend for swiping right or left to like or reject potential matches contributed to many people's unhappiness and low self-esteem?
Following the end of her last relationship, Kirsty Finlayson, 28, did what many people do - she turned to dating apps to find love. But the incessant swiping and the stream of small-talk conversations that soon fizzle out left her feeling dejected. "Dating apps have definitely increased my anxiety," admits Kirsty, a solicitor who lives in London. "It fuels the idea of a disposable society where people can match, date once, and not give it much effort," she says. "I find it difficult to distinguish between those who are just using it as a way of passing time on their commute or ego-boosting and those who actually are looking for something serious."
[...] Despite the huge popularity of dating apps - and the millions of success stories worldwide - many users report that some apps make them feel low and experience self doubt. [...] Such experiences echo the results of a study two years ago by the University of North Texas, which found that male Tinder users reported lower levels of satisfaction with their faces and bodies and lower levels of self worth than those not on the dating app.
Trent Petrie, professor of psychology at the University of North Texas and co-author of the research, says: "With a focus on appearance and social comparisons, individuals can become overly sensitised to how they look and appear to others and ultimately begin to believe that they fall short of what is expected of them in terms of appearance and attractiveness. "We would expect them to report higher levels of distress, such as sadness and depression, and feel more pressures to be attractive and thin."
Earlier this year a poll of 200,000 iPhone users by non-profit organisation Time Well Spent found that dating app Grindr topped a list of apps that made people feel most unhappy, with 77% of users admitting it made them feel miserable. Tinder was in ninth place.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @02:45AM
If you want an alcoholic, go to a bar.
If you want a cheater, use an app.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 08 2018, @02:49AM (5 children)
Look, I forged my experience in dating online from the Jews running OK Cupid. For years.
Dating online is what you do when you're strong and have thick skin. First of all, the administrators of dating online are all run by Jews. So from those first-principles you learn to trust nobody. You wade through the sea of garbage and find somebody you like, occasionally.
But sometimes you are not strong, and learn to simply not give a fuck. Whatever happens from then on is the problem of others, and not yourself. The people who administrate online dating are Jews, after all.
Free the problem of dating online from the Jews and their experiments, and what you are left with is a happier society.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 08 2018, @02:58AM (1 child)
I see a JEW modded me down. We may lose battles, but we will win the wars.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @04:41AM
You lost the war in the 4th century when Constantine converted to Christianity. You know, the Jewish founded faith that's trying to take over the world?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @03:28AM (1 child)
Match Group owns most dating sites/apps including PlentyOfFish, Match, Tinder, and OkCupid.
Here are the people running it:
https://ir.mtch.com/corporate-governance [mtch.com]
It seems Ethanol-fueled was correct, at least according to surnames. I doubt many of them actually practice the jewish faith, but there you go. They are in fact jews.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @11:16AM
I doubt many of the men reading this post actually practice the incel faith, but there you go. They are in fact men.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday September 08 2018, @12:47PM
Thankfully it's not all of us they're after, just you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @03:19AM (1 child)
Do a dating service that is funded entirely by a fixed mark-up on verification of things that people wish to claim.
If you can verify something for free, do so. Various common things can be standardized and cheap. Custom verification could get very expensive indeed. In any case, stick to a modest percentage, such as 10%.
You could verify:
height, weight, salary, control of a specific email address, hormone levels, citizenship, degree, ability to bench press, IQ, lack of cancer-promoting genes, lack of an STD, presence of a foreskin, presence of a hymen, expected remaining life according to life insurance statistical data, criminal record, pure ancestry, tribal affiliation, house is clean, owns a Ferrari, able to drive, has all natural teeth, control of a specific phone number, geographic presence in a particular area, actually looks like the posted photos, owns a business, served in the navy, owns 17 guns, has a pet rat, has still-married parents, isn't on welfare, is not a bastard child, is a confirmed Catholic...
Verifying control of an email address is nearly trivial. Other stuff might mean flying a lawyer or doctor out to investigate. The markup is always the same fixed percentage, except that a fraction of a cent isn't worth charging for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @03:30AM
Hey, I've got a Ferrari!
https://www.ebay.com/i/253637261261 [ebay.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday September 08 2018, @03:19AM
In retrospect, I finally found something serious (and permanent) after I started dating as a way of passing the time / ego-boosting. Taking dating seriously was having the opposite effect.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @03:21AM (6 children)
So, exposing yourself to rejection en mass can lower your confidence and self esteem? I am shocked.
BTW, this happens at clubs and bars all night every night all around the world. It's not on the scale of an app, and it's in person rather than via an electronic device, but it is how natural selection works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @03:34AM (4 children)
Natural selection: you are slow, so you get eaten by a lion and thus fail to reproduce
Sexual selection: you are slow, so you don't impress the opposite sex and thus fail to reproduce
Natural selection: you are short, so you can't reach fruit well, and you starve during hard times
Sexual selection: you are short, so the opposite sex doesn't even recognize you are a possible mate
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @04:52AM (3 children)
Assholes are assholes, and nice guys finish last.
So the hot women end up with the assholes, while the nice guys get expensive toys.
Not really the best outcome, but its what seems to happen in the real world.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @07:42AM (2 children)
Then there are the people who choose to operate as advanced monkeys called humans, rise above that bullshit and find someone to be happy with. Best of luck with your attitude, you just selected for a horrible cross section of humanity.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @09:00AM (1 child)
Hi Pollyanna,
He didn't do the selection, evolution did, and he's right. Women are hardwired by evolution to be attracted to tough bad-boys.
If she settles down with a nice-guy-provider, there is a much higher probability she will cheat on him, and it will be with a bad-boy, at her most fertile. Study evolution for a while and you will see it is almost inevitable.
Modern society is screwing this paradigm up though, because now the nice guy can check whether the kids are his, and she is much more likely to get caught. The basic emotional drive to fuck bad-boys is still there, but now there rational reasons to avoid pregnancy. It is hard to see where this will lead long term, but I think it will lead to a decrease in the bad-boy genotype, and an increase in nice-guys.
No real effect on the basic drives so I think in a couple of generations the few bad-boys left will get all the pussy they want.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @01:11AM
Based on what I see around me, it appears that the women find the "nice-guy provider types" boring; their only use being a charge-card charger and general payer of bills.
We are in competition with the Government on that level, and no way to win that one. The government has all sorts of safety nets in place as long as the woman can keep her babymaker running. SNAP cards, WIC cards, EBT, and all sorts of Social Services, backup when the bad boy won't provide anything more than a romp in the hay.
People like me are taxed to pay for it.
Personally, I feel its futile to compete. Having a female companion to me is like trying to maintain a nice car in a bad neighborhood. Everybody is always trying to steal it. And I simply do not have the time, energy, or resources to maintain the "attraction system" running 24/7 to try to foment and keep a woman's interest.
Its like constantly preparing for interview, then in interview, but someone else gets the job, because he will do things I have ethical problems with doing.
Yes, I have "given up". I would like companionship. I have lots of animals. I have lots of porn. But I do not feel that I ( or anyone else as far as that goes! ) has the resources to keep her happy. Don't take my word for it.... documentation of the wealth angle is all over the supermarket tabloids. No amount of money is enough.
Paid sex is meaningless to me, as is "met in a bar" sex. Its companionship I am after, and I really do not care if its male, female, gay, transgender, whatever. My dog is a great companion, sex is not a factor. But it looks to me like it stops there. I feel I have an enormous media machine running wooing everyone that their present companion is not good enough, and go meet and greet someone else... especially if there is a cash register on the premises. And I feel about as helpless as a dad trying to keep his daughter clean of hounding testosterone filled adolescent boys in a free-for-all party with no chaperones.
Based on what I have seen, its not really a problem for humanity, but it is a problem for me. I feel its kinda backwards to how a farmer may want to breed docility into his livestock, while we seem to be breeding it out of the bourgeoisie.
We can continue this breeding program as long as our Government can print up the money to fund it. And leave them to figure out how to control the new breed of livestock they have thus bred.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Saturday September 08 2018, @09:46AM
"exposing yourself to rejection en mass can lower your confidence ... BTW, this happens at clubs and bars ..."
That nails it exactly, and not just en-mass.
I find it incredible that we hear criticisms of on-line dating like "You don't really know what they are like"; "You should never meet anyone you have not already met" (that's paraphrasing my mother), "They could be telling lies about themselves", "They might not be genuine" etc etc, and it never occurs to the critics that every one of their points applies just as much to meeting someone in meatspace.
It would not be so bad if you got meatspace introductions, like matchmaking matrons used to do in Jane Austen novels or even as recently as 1999 in the social commentary film "Notting Hill". That does not happen any more though, only once ever in my lifetime anyway.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Saturday September 08 2018, @03:29AM (2 children)
Really, all forms of dating has this effect if you do it in a massive enough scale with a high rejection rate (unless you go into it with a "devil may care"-attitude).
Or put another way - not getting validated will suck for you if you try to find self-validation, repeat experiences are cumulative in both directions.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @04:47AM (1 child)
I have come to the conclusion that dating/marriage/family stuff is yesterday's paradigm, rendered moot by today's technology and social systems where anything one can possibly need or want is just a cellphone call away.
Why would a woman want a man when she has a phone?
And why would a man want a woman if he has all the free porn he can possibly watch on the 'net? And you don't have to spend all that time wooing it, and you can get exactly what you are after, guaranteed, no rejection.
If I did not know any better, I would think Dr. Paul Ehrlich , "The Population Bomb" author , oughta be pretty damn happy.
Our technology-laden lifestyle has successfully thrown a monkey wrench in the baby machine showing women that men are no longer needed - a phone and a credit card will do anything a guy can do, and all they have to do is go to work to make money to keep the credit card charged. While also showing men that women are an extremely inefficient use of time and finances when one can get the end result much faster and more economically over the internet.
Leave the breeding to the lower class, which needs the tax deduction.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday September 10 2018, @01:24PM
It's not the end of sex, it's just a matter of converting sex from a biological necessity into a form of entertainment. It's still going to be many years before any technology can do that better than a skilled human.
Ever read Torvald's biography, Just For Fun? He's got a decent argument in there about things progressing from biological need to social need to entertainment, and I believe sex is one of the examples used to chart that progression. And I think that's exactly what we're seeing.
Now, consider making a site for other hobbies the same way people are starting to use dating websites for sex. Suppose we have an "extreme sports" matchmaking service. 90% of the people reject you outright because you wanna go skydiving and they're looking for white water rafting or mountain climbing or something. Another 9% reject you because they're far more experienced and don't wanna drag along a newbie, or they're less experienced and intimidated. Only a tiny fraction are going to be a match.
People have trouble finding a partner to go jogging with too...the difference is there's a lot more social pressure to be dating someone. But that will fade with time I think. The problem is merely the transition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @03:41AM (8 children)
If you're lonely and desperate you may decide to ignore certain aspects of reality and go ahead and spend time with online dating sites.
But if you care enough about yourself you will choose not to ignore the reality that online dating is a terrible way to meet people.
Spending time in the real world is a far better way to meet people. As a bonus, you're not sitting in front of a computer screen
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Nuke on Saturday September 08 2018, @10:22AM (4 children)
Then tell us your secret because it never worked for me. And while you are at it, tell us where to find your "real world".
When I was single I could tick all the boxes that women are in theory supposed to like (and can now) - well-off, fit, good job, sane, educated, courteous, intelligent, kind, not even bad looking, although not especially charming. But in every social situation that I was ever in, the men outnumbered the girls of my age by at least 4-to-1 and as much as 10-to-1, and there would always be more charming men than me there. So I never got any chance to show those "tick boxes", and it did not help that I tended to be among Alpha males. So I was cold-shouldered. The only exception was to go to a public dance venue where there were possibly more girls than guys, but every girl I tried approaching there either ignored me, or told me to get lost, or told me to fuck off. I suppose if I had tried for ever and approached the ugliest girls I might have found someone that way, but it would have been a "huge waste of time".
Instead I joined a dating club (pre-online) and my first ever GF (at the age of 24) was, believe it or not, a busty jaw-dropping red-head who had been a Bunny Girl at the London Playboy club (that dates it) - albeit she left after one day. She had a nice personality too, but was like a girl from the "East-Enders" soap opera, quite dim, and (the deal-breaker) admitted to being sexually frigid despite every appearance. Anyway I met a number of nice girls through the dating club after that and married one. I discovered that working class girls (the ones that were never in those "Alpha" circles) really liked me, and they tend to make an effort to be more sexy too because sometimes it is all they have going for them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday September 08 2018, @02:26PM (1 child)
> well-off, fit, good job, sane, educated, courteous, intelligent, kind,
Society and science still don't have that right. There is social pressure in those directions, and both men and women will claim to want those qualities, but many really want something else. As for scientists, they've been squeamish about trying to study such squishy, subjective trash as love. However, that attitude has changed and we are at last seeing good research on what makes us tick in the area of love and mate selection.
My two aunties are smart, but they didn't want smart men. They wanted average, even a bit below average intelligence, so they could be the intellectually dominant ones in their marriages. Their men chafed and rebelled a bit under that, and sometimes slipped their leashes. The younger auntie was also a competitor, and unrealized by me when I was a youngster, kept track of the ways her kids were better than me and my brother Her husband, my uncle, showed us what namby-pamby, weakling, girlie boys we were because we sucked at sports and at chopping wood for the fireplace, and didn't even want to go hunting or fishing.
The older auntie got deep into religion, and she went all "holier than thou" on everyone. Naturally she determined that we were all going to Hell-- me, my sublings, and all my cousins. Constantly prayed for our salvation. Didn't matter if you went to church every Sunday, you just weren't good enough, not for her. I was an especially bad boy because not only did I play Dungeons and Dragons, I actually brought that Satanic stuff into her house! She told everyone that Gorbachev's birth mark was the Mark of Evil, and during the collapse of the Soviet Union predicted-- no, prophesied-- that Gorby would emerge as the absolute dictator of the Soviet Union, which would then invade Israel, and start Armageddon and the End of the World. That was just one of many zany, nonsensical things she latched onto, and you might be wondering, how can I say she is smart if she ate up crap like that? But she was top of her high school class. No, she's not insane either, certainly not in the clinical sense. Watching her in action is like watching Major Kong employing his considerable ingenuity and resourcefulness at enabling the dropping of the A-bomb in Dr. Strangelove.
I found my aunties and their life choices very discouraging and depressing. If smart women didn't want smart men, then it seemed I might never find a woman i like and who liked me. Average high schools girls sure as heck didn't want the smart guy, they wanted a combo of Prince Charming and Fabio, or at least the captain of the football team. Smart guys were disgusting nerds, regularly slandered as socially inept, and with some justification though not near as bad as the "in" crowd liked to make out. Women also love, love, love dancing. For most men, dancing is something you have to learn and retain long enough to help win a woman's heart, after which you can forget it. A pregnancy tends to shut down the dancing. People can be a real mess of contradictory thinking.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Nuke on Saturday September 08 2018, @07:42PM
There are a number of disconnects between what women say they want and what they really (perhaps subconsciously) want. Looks, for example - you often hear women claiming that men's looks dont matter to them; but they do matter, but not how you might assume. For example, they don't like nerdy looks (that's not particularly me BTW) even if they are actually handsome (Clark Kent, Hugh Grant) and do like bad-boy looks (not me either) even if they are actually ugly (Pete Postlethwaite - remember the bad guy in The Lost World: Jurassic Park). The girls who might have liked the more gentle sort of guy are likely to try lesbianism instead these days. There are exceptions to everything of course.
I have a Chinese friend and he is constantly being approached by women being friendly (never did to me in my life), because they assume he is lost, lonely and confused. It is just the appearance of it - the very thing women claim does not matter. But he is nothing of the sort and finds it funny.
Women are also said to like money, but then go for men who clearly do not have much, perhaps because they can then feel superior. In my case most never even bothered to find out how much I had. Nerds tend to be better and more stable wage earners but that does not make women like them. As women can (must) earn as much as men these days perhaps they are not so worried about a good wage-earning partner any more, although there will always be the top-end gold diggers. Also, Western women have become spoiled with an excess of men in social circles. Consider how many girls become single mothers in the west; unless they can afford to employ a lot of baby-sitting they have to retire from society and dating, while OTOH the Jocks who are the fathers are back in the dating scene the very next day. Add a predominance of male immigration and you have the social sex imbalance.
I found that working class girls with less than dazzling intellects were the ones I was most likely to get on well with - they were not trying to compete with me. Also immigrant girls who were just lonely and looking for stability in a world that was less friendly than they had expected. I always avoided "strong", career minded or opinionated girls.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @02:32AM (1 child)
"Then tell us your secret because it never worked for me. And while you are at it, tell us where to find your "real world".
.
.
.
My "secret" is no secret at all. It's important to be yourself and not pretend to be a person you are not. We all want to project a good image but where doing so
goes wrong is when you act like you are a person you are not. In the end this is a winning strategy though it may not seem so at first. The reason it is a winning
strategy is that if you are genuine, then a person who is attracted to you will be attracted to you for who you are, and that is the best foundation for a relationship between two adults.
*
RE : Where to find the real world - anywhere but bars or clubs pretty much describes it. Go do things you enjoy and you may meet a person who also enjoys
doing those things. This is closely related to the "secret", above. Do what you enjoy doing and be who you really are. You may not attract all the girls ( or guys )
but you may attract the right ones.
*
Lastly, finding a person you can relate well to on multiple levels is not an easy problem to solve. Too many people expect that it should be easy and they become frustrated or disappointed when it is not easy. The bottom line is this : LIFE itself is hard. Relationships are part of life, so they are hard too.
*
Never give up. Learn how to enjoy life without having a companion and you will be FAR more attractive to a potential companion when you cross paths with that person. I could go on, but I have other things I'd rather do so that's all I have for now.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday September 14 2018, @03:12PM
This thread is getting a bit old now, but anyway ...
As usual with this sort of advice - not pretending to be who you are not etc - starts with the assumption that you are already having a conversation with each other eg across a table, on bar stools, or even standing talking somewhere; in fact you have already met them at that point. Surprise, I did not have so much of a problem from that situation. It is getting to that point that is the problem. Believe it or not I never had a conversation (>15 seconds) with a girl of my age until I was 23 (except to a bar hostess once). As I said, in any social situation where I might have had a conversation (ie > 15 seconds) there were always guys outnumbering girls by 4-to-1 or more, and another guy would very soon butt in, and they were always louder and more charming (superficially anyway) than I am. So the girls never had any time (or inclination) to find out what I was like, and I did not have time (or inclination) to pretend anything
It was not until joined dating organisations that I had any conversations >15 seconds with girls of my age, because on such a date we were in a kind of captive situation, at least for an hour or two. The irony is that having met and been given the chance to converse with them, women have actually tended to like me.
As for meeting people in general activities - never happened to me. I was never introduced to any girl either - outside work I was considered to be "brainy" and brainy people are supposed to be uninterested in romance. I have been in plenty of activities clubs (athletics, special interests, etc) but the only females there were other members' wives/partners and usually over 50, and wherever I have worked has been a man's world. I'd now be a middle-aged single incel if I had not joined dating clubs. Other people might be content to sit back and let it happen ("It just happens" they say - BS), but I wasn't.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @03:51PM
I don't think this is the right site for you...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @11:25PM (1 child)
Ok, and if you're in Seattle or one of those other places where nobody interacts, then what? I rarely meet women that are single in person, let alone ones that aren't complete bitches, feminists or princesses.
People here rarely talk to each other in public, so the moment you start she's probably already shooting you down. Never seen it work for anybody here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @02:36AM
"Ok, and if you're in Seattle or one of those other places where nobody interacts, then what?"
.
You need to find new places to hang out.
People interact with people virtually everywhere on earth.
I've spent time in Seattle. There are a lot of hipster idiots there, but there are also places where more genuine people hang out.
You need to seek and find those places where the hipsters are not and where people who are less pretentious are.
(Score: 4, Touché) by lentilla on Saturday September 08 2018, @03:58AM (1 child)
I think we finally have a contender that defies Betteridges's Law of Headlines [wikipedia.org]. "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @04:23AM
For the vast majority of people, anything involving a computer is bad for their mental health.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @04:42AM (1 child)
I stopped reading TFA because it started to give me headache.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @11:18AM
I stopped reading SoylentNews because it started to give me a headache.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday September 08 2018, @05:03AM (4 children)
Rejection? That's life. I've had plenty of chats go horribly wrong, dates that were disasters, and dates that were meh.
On the evening that Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Uranus, I was walking fast, hurrying back to the lobby in the dorms to watch. A lovely girl fell in step beside me and asked what I was doing. I said, in all innocence, "I'm going to see Uranus tonight!" At that time I was not aware of all the puns around that name. She vanished into the girls' dorm without asking for or leaving me any contact info, and I never saw her again. No doubt she was ignorant of planetary astronomy, and thought the worst of what she heard.
Another one that might have been a mean joke was the phone call from a mysterious woman who acted as if she knew me and I knew her. I had no idea who she was and I didn't recognize her voice. I made polite conversation and listened and listened, hoping she'd mention some names or events or something to clue me in, but she never did. She called back the next night, and I tried again to pick up something, anything, but no. I wondered how long this could go on before I blundered, and said something that would reveal I had no idea who I was talking with. I had already waited far too long to just ask who she was without it being very embarrassing, but I finally did ask. Click. Never heard from her again.
A weird one was this woman who evidently called men in the dorms more or less at random-- not hard to do as dorm phones all had the same area code and prefix. So there was no pretending we knew each other. But that too soon ended badly. I said something a little too geeky for her tastes and she asked if I was a nerd, as if that was a bad thing. Oh shit, now what do I say? Trying to console myself that I wouldn't be happy with a woman who thinks nerds are uncool, I confessed that yes, yes I am a nerd. Click.
Lot of single women are very skittish and anxious, seeing the world as full of creeps, perverts, criminals, rapists, misogynists, male chauvinist pigs, and plain sexist assholes who just can't believe women aren't mentally inferior. While most women are not blatant gold digging material girls, they all have tendencies in that direction. Women and men both make hasty and wrong judgments of people based on their cars. All they see is how new and expensive, or not, your car is. The people who make such hasty, superficial judgments miss a lot of great catches. A dating app that entices people by hinting that it will weed out the bad matches nice and fast, saving the dater time, is bound to throw out a lot of babies with that bathwater and inadvertently help hurt a lot of feelings.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Saturday September 08 2018, @05:46AM
They would sure look the other way if I came around wouldn't they. Old diesel van.
But you know, that thing would take a lot of trips to our national parks, room for the kids and animals. And be tolerant of messes and accidents. You know, puppies and kids grow by leaks and bounds.
A child playing and striking the van with his bike or toy? What? Yet another dent? Along with all the rest? Oh well, it still runs fine. I would rather spend my time with other things rather than fussing over a little scratch here and there. Besides, if she wants the kind of guy that stuff like that matters so much to, then she better not get old! She'll be traded in just as fast as last year's model too!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Saturday September 08 2018, @08:39AM (1 child)
Another one that might have been a mean joke was the phone call from a mysterious woman who acted as if she knew me and I knew her. I had no idea who she was and I didn't recognize her voice. [...]
Jokes can be mean.
One joke was to call soon after the door shut and say two words, "paternity suit", if some bro had a chick in his room.
A nasty one was when a friend once really did not like one particular guy and so when she found out he had blacked out from alcohol one weekend she waited until Thursday to call him, without identifying herself. She started immediately with how he was going to call for the weekend but she just couldn't wait and would call first. Without giving any details at all she went on about how special it was to meet him and how they really connected over what he had said to her, etc, etc. She played him for a few minutes until he made some mistake and then she called him on it and turned on him like a harpy, getting more hysterical as she went on about how cruel it was for him to have played her like that and said all those things to her if he hadn't meant them, hinting that some physical romance had taken place as well, and how she could see know he was just using her, etc, etc, going off into tears before sobbing into the phone and hanging up. It shook him up rather well.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday September 09 2018, @04:07AM
That was no joke! That was fair warning!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @07:11AM
Same applies for women? Men and women are rather the same in this department of weirdness and creepiness. It's just they are playing sometimes a little different game. So you have to be careful too.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday September 08 2018, @05:45AM
The last time I googled it I got so many hits I couldn't find the actual one I'm referring to.
Tinderella and some guy with a tattoo hook up in the style of a Disney animation.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday September 08 2018, @05:47AM (1 child)
- love.
My ex and I fell in love with each others' voices through the telephone.
While we met online it wasn't through an app or a dating site. On October 6 1997 she sent me an eMail to commend me for publishing my first web page about my mental illness [warplife.com].
And no that's not why she fell in love. That came much, much later.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @07:14AM
http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ [bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday September 08 2018, @01:05PM (1 child)
Dating is bad for mental health period. As near as I can tell, it generally takes at least half a year after meeting the person for the brain to kick the majority of the hormones that've been telling you "it is the most important thing ever in the history of the universe that I be with this person" out so you can go back to thinking somewhat rationally. That's entirely discounting teenagers who weren't thinking anything like rationally to begin with, mind you.
People who think that hormone flood is love engender extreme pity in me. It's not even close. That hormone flood causes emotions that are all about your desire; it's entirely selfish infatuation. Love is the exact opposite; it's about what its object desires, what's best for them, and what will make them happy.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2018, @02:22AM
"People who think that hormone flood is love engender extreme pity in me. It's not even close. That hormone flood causes emotions that are all about your desire; it's entirely selfish infatuation. Love is the exact opposite; it's about what its object desires, what's best for them, and what will make them happy."
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Nice post.
A lot of misery could be avoided if people would read what you wrote and take it seriously.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @11:34AM
And I've never even used one. And I'm not even single.
But I've been on the internet since the mid-90s, and like all the other old-school bearded net nerds, I saw this shit coming, and have had to sit powerlessly by and watch it happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10 2018, @03:02PM
Not sure when Tinder stopped being the app for one night stands and started being used by people looking for relationships, but anyone paying attention since the start knows it was never designed for the latter job.
As for hookup culture, well, it's not for everyone.