[StopTheWorld]

Professor Michael Rosenfeld at Stanford does research on how heterosexual couples in the US meet ( https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/ ).

In 1940, over 50% met via friends or family. About 36% met at school.

In 2021, about 20% met via friends or family. About 10% met at school. Over 50% met online. So the majority of US couples are now meeting via profit-maximizing corporations. He has a 2019 paper on this (and it has only increased since that paper).

[jrussino]

Interestingly, there was another big shift happening from 1940-1980:

- in 1940, the top 3 were: met through family, met through friends, met in primary school. In that order, but pretty much equal

- From 1940-1980, two of those three (family, primary school) trended sharply downward, as did "met in church", while these trended upward: met through friends, met in bar or restaurant, met as or through coworkers, met in college. "met through friends" was by far the most common circa 1980

- starting in 1995 "met online" sees a sharp rise, and by 2010 it has overtaken them all.

The only other category that was still on the rise after 2010 was "met in a bar or restaurant". Is that really increasingly common? I have a strange feeling that some of those are just people too embarassed to say they met online...

Anyway, my point is there was (perhaps unsurprisingly) already a big shift going on 1940-1980, namely that the immediate family, church, childhood friends became less dominant in people's lives and friends, work, commercially-facilitated interactions (bars and restaurants) became more central. Did we learn anything from that adjustment? Were people in the 80's and 90's talking ad worrying about this the way we're talking today about the way social interactions are replacing the "old" ones?

(also, the values for "met online" on that graph seem to be small but non-zero in the 1980s! I'd like to hear the stories of some of those couples...)

[5-]

> stories of some of those couples

this one, about two people having met online, was written in 1879 (not a typo):

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24353

[atribecalledqst]

> (also, the values for "met online" on that graph seem to be small but non-zero in the 1980s! I'd like to hear the stories of some of those couples...)

IIRC Jason Scott's BBS documentary mentions this a bit. There's a couple that shows up a number of times that met on a BBS.

[silisili]

> I have a strange feeling that some of those are just people too embarassed to say they met online

Probably right. I don't really get the stigma, but I've known a few people personally who told the same lie and found later it was online. One in particular had a huge elaborate story about their bar meeting. His wife told me later one day he basically selected her from a website.

So like most questions, probably worth taking self reporting with a giant dose of salt.

[tenacious_tuna]

Also interesting insofar as what "met online" means. Dating apps are certainly the most common, but one of my partners and I met on a Discord server for a shared interest, which is certainly "online" but not necessarily in the same context as "dating apps"

[littlestymaar]

This. I have a couple of friends who actually met their partner on World of Warcraft in the mid 2000s. But I suspect it's a very small fraction of the “online” group, especially nowadays with dating apps being so prevalent.

[throwaway48540]

I'd expect that the fraction is much bigger, actually. In mid 2000s the couples that met through online games were the "weirdos", "normal" people met online on dating sites. Today gaming is pretty much mainstream and while dating apps are probably a majority, it's now absolutely normal to meet people while playing games.

[mewpmewp2]

Selected... What? Not matched? You are making it seem like she just listed herself for selection on a website and went with it?

[silisili]

She was from a foreign country. I'm guessing whatever the modern day equivalent of a mail order bride? I didn't ask for specifics past that.

[throwaway48540]

Older dating sites were basically lists of profiles and you could send a message to anyone, without "matching".

[anovikov]

In many countries where dating balance (i am not saying gender balance... because it's not really about numbers of guys and girls but about difference in their interest in dating), is not as skewed as in the West, this is still the case. You can actually write anyone, even on a free version of a dating app or website. Girls' feeds get a bit spammy, but not terribly so, it can still work. I know it sounds crazy but that's an upside of life in the Eastern Europe let's say, or ex-Communist bloc.

[Der_Einzige]

Most westerners don’t understand that the modern “phenomenon” of incels is mostly due to shitty 80s movies that connected cerebral people to nerdy stereotypes.

Rewatch wargames and note how insane the kids skills are, and how this acts as something which makes the MC more interesting to the fairer sex. Compare this to today, where busting a command line out in public is more likely to get you arrested by some idiot dogooder thinking you’re hacking the airplane instead of acting as some kind of evidence that you’re intelligent and thus possibly good partner.

Meanwhile go to the third world where life is hard and stereotypical “jocks” or “bullies” are the poor, downtrodden of society. Often these societies love nerds and cerebral people, and physical prowess isn’t valued as much here.

John Hughes is the father of the modern western incel and all related phenomenons.

[dyauspitr]

You question the stigma and then finish your paragraph with “just selected her from a website”.

[silisili]

Explained a possibility in another comment.

When an older, morbidly obese person is with a much more attractive and younger foreign person, you can work out most of the details in your head. Is it not more embarrassing to make up some Top Gun-esque story? I don't know.

I met my first wife in person, second on Facebook(8ish years and going). I feel zero shame in the meeting place, more shame for having married the first. So yes, personally, I don't understand the stigma.

[CPLX]

If I message with someone on a dating app a few times and then make arrangements so the first time I encounter them in the physical world is a bar where did I “meet” them?

The subjective answer to this question might be at least part of this statistic.

Also you may be underestimating the number of people who pair up as part of nightlife outings. Based on my many many outings in cities around the world in recent years it does seem at a glance that people are still engaged in the practice.

[lawlessone]

I'm surprised dating sites work well enough that 50% of customers meet via it. They've no incentive to help you leave.

[chongli]

I'm surprised dating sites work well enough that 50% of customers meet via it

It’s not that surprising when you think of selection effects. Suppose you have a sack full of marbles. Half of the marbles are pink and the other half are random assorted colours. Now reach into the sack and pull out two marbles. If they match then they get married and you set them aside, otherwise return them to the sack.

It’s easy to see that it won’t take very long until hardly any pink marbles remain. After that it’s going to be a total crapshoot to pull out a pair of matching marbles. Maybe some more pink ones get added at a later date but they’ll match and get removed.

The fundamental problem with dating sites cannot be solved by any business model: marriageable people (or otherwise people who can form and maintain a longterm relationship) are removed from the pool of potential dates. What’s left are all those who can’t or won’t form relationships. These “misfits” (for lack of a better term) tend to get concentrated in the pool over time. Perhaps it even gets so bad that marriageable people give up and just avoid dating sites.

[roenxi]

> The fundamental problem with dating sites cannot be solved by any business model

Well, it can be solved but not by a dating site (evidence: this was a solved problem in the past). But it'd have to be very radical compared to modern dating. Arguably the branding couldn't be as a dating site, but as a stable community where people don't get removed over time so the concentration of non-pink marbles never rises.

That is something like the old model that church communities would have used. The marriageable ones pair off, but they are still in the community of people talking to each other. New marriageable people entered the community, didn't feel overwhelmed or different and eventually pair with other new entrants. The business model has to be that drawing a pair isn't ever expected to result in marriage and is fun by itself but serious dates might happen. Then the system would be viable.

[Hnrobert42]

This describes what I have intuited happens while dating in ones 40s.

[bravetraveler]

Seems to start in the 30s, in your 20s there's still hope. After that finding someone unscorned is rare, becoming such yourself. Ask me how I know

[autoexecbat]

They probably have some internal churn targets to hit, else people will start to figure out that the app isn't worth their time and try a different one

[flappyeagle]

It creates a much worse problem actually. Why have a committed relationship when you can always press a button to look at hotties and have a pull at the sex slot machine?

If they design the system right, their audience just won't marry or have long term stable relationships

[ta_1138]

Only the people that have really huge success rates, which is very small, and gets way worse as one ages. Have you seen the swipe stats from many Tinder users? What you describe is not a reality for even the top 1% of hetero male users.

[tsss]

It is true for the top 99% of women.

[mlloyd]

I think committed relationships are on the decline more because of the change in how women interact with and are viewed by society, than technology. Each successive generation of women over the last several decades has increased their ability to earn an independent successful living, control their sex life without negative labels, and remove the expectations that their only value is domestic-oriented.

Where in the past women settled for a number of reasons, including economic and societal/familial expectations, they no longer do. And because women are much less apt to settle down, men settle down less too. More free women = more free men = less committed relationships. (assuming we are seeing fewer committed relationships - I didn't fact-check that)

Not at all scientific, just a vibe.

[lotsofpulp]

Also, being in a relationship with a bad partner is worse than being in a relationship with no partner, especially for women who are in more physical danger.

Therefore, with increased ability to live independently, expect more risk adverse behavior, which means a larger percentage of the “bottom” of the dating market goes uncoupled forever.

[Der_Einzige]

Women claim this but the success of dark triad traits and the “I can fix them” meme imply that most people actually do want to be in a “bad relationship”.

I’ve heard women unironically say “I want him to fuck my life up”. Risk aversion is only a trait in the poor or those with significant trauma, which the dating market reminds us, are dysgenic traits…

[naveen99]

Fewer children -> fewer commitments

[sulandor]

online dating (apps) did not invent uncommitted sex.

debatable if it got more prevalent because of them, as afaik the statistics indicate both, less short _and_ less long term relationships, so :shrug:

[mewpmewp2]

I think it really depends on the people. The slot machine would always get more boring and meaningless as time goes on and if someone wants meaningful relationship because they find the slot machine boring, this is what they will look to make happen. Maybe it is for the good to get it out of their system faster so they know what they want and get something meaningful.

[kevinob11]

I can think of a few reasons why people want (either already or after enough pulls of the slot machine) a committed relationship.

Though to be clear, just because I think the other more stable thing is valuable to folks even with the availability of the sex slot machine, I still don't love businesses trying to push slot machines or any kind really.

[XMPPwocky]

Do people go on dating sites to look at "hotties"? I've heard there are better websites to do that, many free of charge!

(Not a rhetorical question - as a queer person who's never used a dating site or app and who's been in a long-term relationship (now married) for almost 8 years now, I really do have no idea what people do on there.)

[jprete]

That's both a horrible thought and a near-certainty.

[ZoomerCretin]

Good thing Match is a monopoly that owns all of the giant dating apps except for Bumble!

[smcameron]

50% of heterosexual couples meeting online is not the same as 50% of customers of dating sites entering a relationship.

It could be the case that say, only 10% of dating site customers end up in a relationship, and this 10% amounts to 50% of the total couples, and the math would work out.

E.g.: suppose the total population is 1000 people, 500 of which are on a dating site, and the total number of couples is 20, 10 of which were formed via the dating site and 10 of which were formed by other means, and 960 people are out of luck.

[throwaway48540]

That's a possible theory, but we know the reality is opposite.

[KittenInABox]

It might not be dating sites. I've heard of people in WoW guilds dating back in the day.

[itishappy]

I have a friend who met her husband on an old Dance Dance Revolution forum!

[duskwuff]

Let me guess: DDRFreak?

[itishappy]

Believe so!

[chasd00]

I had a couple of very fulfilling relationships with people I met on a band fan site.

[fsckboy]

>They've no incentive to help you leave

they have plenty of incentive to get you some dates, after that what are they gonna do?

[dyauspitr]

Get you bad dates with incompatible people?

[ars]

There is no shortage of potential customers, there is a shortage of actual customers. Anything they can do to attract more business helps them. So if they have tons of success stories they'll get far more business.

It would be different in a saturated market, where they might want to try to keep people on the site, but that's not the case here.

[itishappy]

Customer success stories are free advertising.

[loa_in_]

And the need for the service doesn't need to be fabricated, it's innate.

[darby_nine]

They just need to work once. Who knows how many failed attempts at finding someone preceded the one that suck.

[kelipso]

Wonder what that percentage would look like as a function of relationship length.

[maeil]

FWIW here in Korea the 1940 statistic still holds, yet I don't think youth mental health is any better.

[mensetmanusman]

There has also been about a 70% drop in number of marriages since the 50s.

[nozzlegear]

And as someone else noted, a significant drop in the number of divorces since its peak in the 1980s.

[SoftTalker]

Does that include breakups? Can't get divorced if you were never married.

[littlestymaar]

No, unfortunately. And the number of divorce + breakups with kids involved is still rising…

[dv_dt]

Hasn't the divorce rate also gone down. So one question is if the method of meeting is improving that rate

[lolinder]

Marriage rates are also plummeting, so it's more likely that the divorce rate has gone down simply because people wait to get married until they've proven it works. A couple that cohabitates and then separates doesn't get logged in the divorce rates.

[bilbo0s]

Yeah.

Marriage rate and divorce rate have plummeted since 1940.

Probably not much to do with electronic media there. A lot more likely that financial and social pressures are squeezing what were previously considered cultural imperatives. ie - church, marriage, home ownership, etc.

[s1artibartfast]

Or simply that fewer marginally good fit marriages are occurring.

Fewer teen marriages, shotgun weddings, ect.

There were always a lot of financial imperatives to wed.

[bilbo0s]

There were always a lot of financial imperatives to wed.

The point is that now the financial imperative is not to wed. ("Girlfriend get serious! Why marry some loser who can't even buy a house?" or "Bro what? Do you know what will happen if you get divorced?")

The financial imperative is not to go to church. Working on Sunday has become the norm as people are regularly expected to be available on the weekends. This is especially true in the startup or tech space. And don't even get me started on how workers in the services sector, who would in any other era be the most likely to attend church, get so few weekends free between their multiple jobs, that church is now an afterthought for them.

The financial imperative is not to purchase a home. ("Bro! You don't have that kind of money! And what if you have to move for your job?")

[s1artibartfast]

I think we have very different perceptions of the world, but I don't have much interest in having a discussion predicated on quotes from imaginary characters.

[knighthack]

You take a morally superior position, and you are condescending.

As if discussions and examples using imaginary characters are somehow 'lowly', and can't be used as a fair commentary of society.

In comparison, Plato's works often feature dialogues where characters, including Socrates, engage in arguments, which present various perspectives on philosophical issues through fictionalized conversations. That style of writing and the use of imaginary characters in argumentative discourse is actually hallmark of Plato's work.

The OP's style of writing (who you responded to) is therefore not out of the ordinary; just because you disagree with his or her "perceptions of the world" doesn't mean you should put it down as unworthy of reply for using "imaginary characters".

[Dalewyn]

>A lot more likely that financial and social pressures are squeezing what were previously considered cultural imperatives.

We are living the most affluent lives ever known to mankind, even so-called low income people. We all have more money than we know what to do with, let alone more money than our forefathers.

Rather, I think the drop in marriage (and by extension divorce) has to do with increasing individualism and jade-ism.

The more humanity (namely the west) advances, the more it is drilled in that all men are created equal with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. People are increasingly more concerned with living their lives the way they want to the exclusion of spouses and children if such things are not what makes them happy.

Combine that with the brutal realities of life, because life is fucking hard at the best of times (no matter how rich you are), and the media constantly sensationalizing on everyones' fears and anger aren't helping matters either.

Also as an aside and anecdata: I'm in my mid-30s now, not married, never married, and never intend to marry because I do not find it appealing at all. I can more than afford to marry, but I am far too busy with other matters more important to me and I frankly find marriage to be nothing short of a human rights violation anyway.

[paulryanrogers]

> I frankly find marriage to be nothing short of a human rights violation anyway.

Just curious, but how could marriage be a rights violation?

[Dalewyn]

First the axiom so we're all on the same page: I truly and wholeheartedly agree with and believe in the notion that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights.

Marriage is many things, but chief among them is that marriage is an inevitable compromise of each others' liberties and therein lies the violation. Who am I to compromise my would-be wife's unalienable right to liberty? Who is my would-be wife to compromise my unalienable right to liberty? This is absolutely irreconcilable and thus I consider marriage to be a violation of human rights.

If we also were to have children, I/we would also be imposing my/our will upon them. I/we would be violating our childrens' unalienable right to liberty and potentially pursuit of happiness. I cannot accept that.

I am also of the position that if I were to get a divorce for any reason, I must question why I got married in the first place. Marriage is not a thing that can nor should be taken lightly; divorce is an out, but I consider the entire premise of marriage is that it is a permanent thing until death do us part.

As such, if we end up in an unhappy marriage (eg: constant bickering over the kitchen or finances) then this is also a violation of our respective unalienable rights to pursuit of happiness and we both wasted significant amounts of our limited time that each of us have in this world.

Therefore, along with other personal convictions, I find no appeal in marriage and have no intentions of ever pursuing it or finding myself in such an arrangement of my free will.

[XorNot]

> I consider the entire premise of marriage is that it is a permanent thing until death do us part.

Right so you invented a notion of marriage which doesn't apply in the society you live in and then invented a problem created by that invented supposition.

This all sounds very normal.

[CPLX]

> If we also were to have children, I/we would also be imposing my/our will upon them. I/we would be violating our childrens' unalienable right to liberty and potentially pursuit of happiness. I cannot accept that.

What? The only way to avoid mass human rights violations is the extinction of the human race in one generation?

[edem]

So... you're part of a suicide cult basically.

[nearlyepic]

I think that axiomatically quoting the US declaration of independence is a deeply unhealthy way of approaching the world the world at large.

[tivert]

> Over 50% met online.

Is that actually true? I read something recently (in an recent article in a major publication about how online dating sucks and people are getting tired of it), that the proportion is much lower. Like people put all this money and effort into dating apps, but must successful relationships still form outside of them.

[watwut]

Online is not necessary the same as dating app. It can be any online group where people have an in person meetup once in a while.

[slightwinder]

"Online" these days more likely means social networks, games and other services where people with common interest meet. Meaning, you meet through your hobby, instead of a dedicated service for meeting or because you just happen to live in the same area.

[SergeAx]

Since around 1997 all my romantic partners did have a solid online footprint. However, I can't say I met any of them online. Every time it was 1) getting merely acquainted on a forum or in a social network, 2) some kind of offline event initiated by users took part 3) "oh, hi, are you <handle> from <site>?"

I don't think it may be counted as "we met online", and specifically I never had any meaningful relationships via dating sites/apps.

[Animats]

Well, of course. Today, approaching someone of the opposite sex whom you haven't previously chatted with online is creepy.

[BoredPositron]

Really? How old are you? There are still school, work, parties, clubs, bars... I even know a couple that met in their church.