If Books Could Kill - Are The Straights OK [TEASER]

00:00:00.000 Peter. Michael. What do you know about online dating? I'm a big fan because getting brutally

00:00:05.820 judged by a hundred people every single day is my love language. So as Peter mentioned a couple

00:00:23.780 bonus episodes ago, we still don't really know what the format of the bonus episodes is going

00:00:27.700 to be so yeah while we're in this interregnum period we basically have like a bunch of leftover

00:00:33.540 research that peter did for the game and i did for the rules we didn't really get a chance because

00:00:40.480 these books are fairly old to talk about the paradigm shift from traditional or you know

00:00:46.880 since the 1950s style dinner and a movie dating to online dating right i read an entire extra book

00:00:53.840 for The Rules podcast that I didn't get a chance to mention. And we just thought it would be fun

00:00:58.800 to have a kind of freewheeling conversation about this shift and what it means and what we've been

00:01:05.260 reading and our deranged stories of online dating. And by extra research, what Michael means is that

00:01:13.240 he read countless studies about the impact of online dating on our collective psychology.

00:01:19.820 and I went on the most toxic subreddits I could find for weeks on end and I'm ready to talk about

00:01:26.960 it now. I can tell this is happening because every time I've texted you in the last two weeks,

00:01:30.540 you've waited four hours to get back to me. Damn, I'm really, I'm really into Peter. What, 0.98

00:01:35.440 what's happening with my feelings? The longer I wait to text Michael back,

00:01:39.200 the stronger my position on the podcast becomes. When, when, when you double text,

00:01:46.320 that's when I know that I'm the main host. So since we so often talk about bad graphs and

00:01:52.180 charts on the show, I wanted to start by sending you a good chart that is actually genuinely pretty

00:01:57.920 interesting. So I'm going to send this to you and I will let you describe the story that it tells.

00:02:03.820 Okay. The title of this chart is how heterosexual couples have met data from 2009 and 2017.

00:02:11.300 and it's a graph that maps actually from 1940 to roughly present and you can see

00:02:21.860 starting a little before the year 2000 and then skyrocketing met online so like met through

00:02:31.240 friends decline starting in 1990 fucking tanks yeah it goes from like 35 of couples met each

00:02:39.800 other through friends to 20 percent of couples met each other through friends in the space of 0.96

00:02:43.420 like 15 years, which is crazy. Right. And yeah, met online is now the plurality. It looks like

00:02:49.780 it's also very interesting that it's mostly cannibalizing met through friends. Right. Met

00:02:55.180 through church is relatively standard. The met in school or met through family have both been

00:03:02.660 declining basically since 1940, just steadily like people don't meet through family. People don't,

00:03:07.320 you know, marry their high school sweethearts the way that they used to. So these are like

00:03:10.500 much more longstanding trends. Met through co-workers appears to have declined quite

00:03:16.160 drastically in the 1990s. Part of that is probably like sexual harassment and like more of these

00:03:21.880 kinds of policies at work. Sexual harassment is ruining love in the workplace. You could easily 1.00

00:03:28.360 do like a Ben Shapiro podcast, like out of this graph. Absolutely. But then, okay, so I actually

00:03:33.300 did a lot of research on like this paradigm shift and like what it means so there's basically a

00:03:38.880 couple different waves of increases in online dating match.com is founded in 1995 we then get

00:03:46.360 ok cupid in i believe 2003 that's when like it it goes kind of more mass market before this it was

00:03:52.560 like it was seen as very sketchy and the rules actually has like a kind of interesting chapter

00:03:57.580 on online dating where it's all like safety tips but there's now been this rolling snowball that

00:04:01.940 like the more people do online dating the more appealing online dating is right because that's

00:04:06.600 not seen as like something for weirdos so it has a big jump up in the okcupid era in the early 2000s

00:04:12.940 and then it has another very significant leap up when smartphones take over so tinder is founded

00:04:17.920 in 2012 and then we're like really off and running because the the sort of modern generation of

00:04:24.000 dating apps essentially narrow the information about dating partners potential dating partners

00:04:28.440 down to like the things that people actually care about which is like what do you look like and how

00:04:33.080 close are you to me right like how much of a hassle is it gonna be to meet up with you god i can't

00:04:38.280 believe there's just like an app for relationships and we let that happen you know like just like a 0.73

00:04:43.140 human human engagement app it is there is something so fucking capitalistic about the whole thing

00:04:52.740 right left or right left or right quick yeah yeah do you like them it used to be sort of 0.81

00:04:57.660 integrated into the rest of your life. Right. Like it could happen organically. And now it's

00:05:01.540 just like a completely separate activity that you do. There were moments in my life when I would

00:05:06.980 just be like hung over on a Sunday morning, eating Doritos in bed, like swiping left on some poor

00:05:14.000 girl. Oh, yeah. Like, no, no. Lives in Hoboken. That's a big no for me.

00:05:23.720 That thing is, even as you're commodifying everybody else, it's still so fucked up to 0.91

00:05:27.360 think about how they're commodifying you right that someone glances at a photo of me for like 0.75

00:05:31.320 a tenth of a second there's like nope ouch but of course that's what i'm doing to everybody else

00:05:35.840 if you saw a montage of everyone seeing your profile and swiping left or right it would ruin

00:05:42.940 your life this is another thing with like ghosting i feel like where obviously it's like it's rude

00:05:48.700 behavior to just kind of disappear on somebody but also i have had people tell me why they don't

00:05:53.800 want to see me again and like it really hurts to know the specific reason and i kind of like the

00:05:58.800 plausible deniability of like oh maybe that person's like dog died and that's why they didn't 0.50

00:06:03.780 text me back which is not fucking true and like i know it's not true but unless i have confirmation 0.67

00:06:08.400 of it i can just like tell myself that right i once got an email after like a couple months of 0.89

00:06:15.220 like a friends with benefits situation with like a full accounting of like every reason ranging

00:06:23.460 from like her own introspection to like my problems and i was like i would rather you just 0.89

00:06:30.760 text me than i'm an asshole yeah like this is this is awful do you remember her specific complaints 0.84

00:06:37.720 it would like it would it would sear itself into my brain if i ever got an email of course i remember 0.99

00:06:42.120 i could almost recite the fucking email verbatim that whole i have like like i can tell you i can 0.58

00:06:50.280 literally tell you what day she sent it on, which I'm not going to do on the off chance that she's 0.97

00:06:54.280 a lister and will know that she's fully living in the side of my head a decade later.

00:07:03.180 So the way that academics talk about this paradigm shift is most couple formation in

00:07:10.000 the United States before the advent of the internet was done through what they call weak

00:07:14.220 ties. So your sort of pool of potential dating partners was like friends of friends,

00:07:20.280 co-workers, friends of co-workers, this sort of two to three degrees of separation

00:07:24.620 from people who you know, right? People who you share institutions with, people who you're around.

00:07:29.280 What the internet allowed us to do was to expand this circle of potential dating partners to

00:07:35.340 basically complete strangers, right? If you live in New York City, your potential mates are now

00:07:40.060 everyone in New York City. So you've gone from maybe 1,200 potential matches to, I don't know,

00:07:45.840 three and a half million yeah this has changed the paradigm in a lot of ways in that people

00:07:50.760 tend to date concurrently more like you would have kind of two or three irons in the fire

00:07:55.920 and everyone you're dating also has kind of two irons in the fire in a way that like was

00:08:00.460 kind of seen as like promiscuous or untrustworthy or unethical in a previous generation it's just

00:08:05.940 sort of like well i have two dates in one day and she probably has two dates in one day as well and

00:08:09.540 like whatever i don't want to say it's a necessity but if if you're like swiping right and you match

00:08:16.340 with someone unless you stop and let that play out you will inevitably end up with situations

00:08:23.160 where you've matched with two people and you're chatting with two people and i think like

00:08:26.920 the inevitability of talking to multiple people on these apps just led to it being accepted when

00:08:33.540 i think you're right like if you described that sort of dynamic to someone from like 15 years ago

00:08:38.920 they'd be like oh god yeah that's bizarre and unhealthy and uh and yeah promiscuous and in

00:08:45.600 some regard dude a personal story my grandparents lied about how they met for 50 years they told us

00:08:54.160 on their 50th wedding anniversary they had always told us that they met on the capital steps because

00:08:58.820 they were both living in dc it turns out they actually met in a nightclub where my grandma was

00:09:05.040 there with another guy she was on a date with a dude and she met my grandpa my grandpa sort of

00:09:10.320 like made a move like sent a risky text and then she was like okay and they started dating he did

00:09:15.640 he did the charleston right next to her and she was like whoa who's this guy it's also very funny

00:09:22.320 to me that no one in the family ever asked any follow-up questions for 50 years they're like we

00:09:26.580 met on the capital steps none of us were ever like how right why like what was it like we're

00:09:30.640 just like, yeah, an old person story. Sure. I'll tell you what, 50 years from now, there will be

00:09:36.480 grandparents telling the opposite lie because they did meet on the Capitol steps on January 6, 2021.

00:09:48.220 But I also think, I mean, I think that there are pros and cons of online dating. Like it would be

00:09:54.740 very silly to say like, this is bad for society or like, this is good for society. Every technological

00:09:59.220 shift is very complicated but most of the pros and the cons come from this shift from like third 0.90

00:10:06.900 degree friends to complete strangers so there is some data that interracial marriages are increasing

00:10:14.080 yeah yeah that makes sense the the idea of that is basically that like when you cast the net wider

00:10:19.000 you're not relying on your friends like most people have fairly homogenous friend groups

00:10:23.160 once you expand out to complete strangers it's like well then you can you can do like people

00:10:27.900 of different ages and races and classes and like there's actually more diversity in dating.

00:10:32.580 You call it Bumble. 0.98

00:10:33.800 I call it White Genocide.

00:10:38.600 That name wouldn't have hit as hard.

00:10:40.460 It's harder to download.

00:10:42.300 Hey, are you on White Genocide?

00:10:43.880 Yeah.

00:10:45.940 There's also some, I honestly think kind of janky survey data indicating that marital

00:10:51.980 satisfaction is actually higher for people who meet online.

00:10:54.640 the idea is that you're able to more tightly narrow down your field of partners to people

00:11:01.920 who have like the same ideas of you like i want kids and you want kids you're like i'm catholic

00:11:05.560 and you're catholic or you can be more specific when you have more choices and so yeah there's a

00:11:10.740 lot of debate about this a lot of a lot of the sort of gripes about online dating are this idea

00:11:16.300 of like infinite choice like there's just too many people out there so you're not really going

00:11:19.360 to value the person that you're with. But the other theory of that infinite choice also means

00:11:24.860 that you're able to find somebody who's like more tightly suited to you. Yeah. You can just put a

00:11:29.680 weirdly bitter list of demands in your profile. I want to know the races and the types of people

00:11:36.020 you don't want to date. That's the first thing I want to learn about you. Give me some body types

00:11:40.440 that you're not into. Exactly. But no, but honestly, like this does feel like, you know,

00:11:46.040 obviously there's sort of, I understand the problems of infinite choice, but the opposite

00:11:50.260 end of this is like, I don't know, like 150 years ago, there were towns where like there would be

00:11:57.460 one person of the opposite sex that was your age. And you were like, well, that's my wife.

00:12:03.000 Yeah. Obviously. 0.83

00:12:03.940 I think there's also like a sort of second order effect of this too, where I think the

00:12:09.160 expectations of marriage have changed over time too. I think it's become much less of like a

00:12:12.900 business-like relationship or something that has property ownership or a business partnership.

00:12:17.580 It's much more like people are now looking for soulmates. So it's also jacked up the expectations.

00:12:23.200 But then also this shift to complete strangers is also, I think, behind a lot of the downsides

00:12:29.700 of online dating. There's a lot of studies that show an association between heavy use of dating

00:12:37.140 apps and higher rates of anxiety and depression. Although, of course, we don't know the cause,

00:12:42.560 like the direction of the cause it could be you're depressed because you're on tinder it could also 1.00

00:12:46.860 be you're on tinder because you're depressed yeah there's also the thing of like just women being 0.99

00:12:50.940 like constantly fucking harassed and having like dick pics sent to them and like the insane levels 0.99

00:12:55.840 of just bullshit that especially women have to deal with on the internet it's like well i'm a 1.00

00:12:59.580 complete stranger you're a complete stranger i can just send i can send a thousand women the 1.00

00:13:02.780 same dick pic on the chance that one of them is going to respond right positively although i've 0.99

00:13:07.360 never actually heard of that working but i think people just find it really humiliating to be 0.97

00:13:12.200 treated like this just to have other people constantly treating you like a stranger right 0.50

00:13:16.580 like they're canceling on you they're saying fucked up like the the things that people send 0.98

00:13:20.360 in these messages to each other are like really fucking mean it really grinds you down and i 0.99

00:13:26.020 think a lot of that really does come from this idea of like you are replaceable it also just 0.87

00:13:30.780 speeds up the entire process like in the same for the same reasons that you're often you know

00:13:36.500 juggling multiple people that you're kind of dating at once that also means you're experiencing

00:13:43.000 an amount of rejection yeah that uh someone from 1945 would be totally unfamiliar with let's say

00:13:52.000 right you're just going through volume yeah it can become a real numbers game i mean dating has

00:13:57.160 always been a numbers game but like the the degree to which it's a numbers game has significantly

00:14:02.360 increased, right? That you, you match with 2,500 people and then you go on 500 first dates and you

00:14:08.420 go on 82nd dates and you go on 33rd dates. It's like, you just kind of run through the conveyor

00:14:13.620 belt, but in that process of narrowing it down, there's a huge amount of just like emasculating,

00:14:19.680 humiliating, terrible behavior that you have to just accept. I'm, I'm in this process. I I've

00:14:25.580 been single for the last six months or something. And like, sometimes you do meet up with people

00:14:29.420 who just have this like weariness about them where like you can tell they've done this a

00:14:35.060 million times and they don't really want to be doing it and there's like how many siblings do

00:14:39.640 you have where did you grow up and you're like look man i don't want to be here either we just

00:14:44.740 have to get through this we're gonna do it together we were talking about the i was making

00:14:49.960 a joke about the angry profile rant which is like a type of a type of dating profile you come across

00:14:55.880 where like their about section is basically just like this super bitter, either a list of demands

00:15:03.080 or maybe like an outward facing complaint of sorts. Sometimes I kind of get it, right? Like,

00:15:09.740 I think if you've had like a bad few weeks on the apps or whatever, I get the impulse to just

00:15:16.240 pop into the, you know, the about section of your profile and be like,

00:15:20.680 can i read you a bumble profile that i saved absolutely i cannot stop like saving these

00:15:27.340 he's 50 by a 50 year old gay man he says not interested in over 50 or anyone with depression

00:15:34.060 insomnia or anxiety i like my high iq and earning a good salary at what i do so if you don't then

00:15:41.460 we're not a match i seek to build a life god i love it i love these people in his mind there are

00:15:47.720 a notable amount of people who are bothered by high iqs yes so much so that he's like i'm gonna

00:15:56.120 put it out there yeah i'm not going to lower my iq for you on gay dating like on grinder a thing

00:16:02.140 you see a lot is like no time wasters i'm not i'm not here for time wasters as if someone's

00:16:07.100 gonna look at that and be like ah i'm a time waster okay this guy's not this guy's not in it 0.92

00:16:10.760 for me it's like no idiots like no one identified like no one thinks that that's them so it doesn't 0.95

00:16:17.040 it doesn't weed out one guy i still my favorite grind this was like a decade ago uh someone on 0.93

00:16:23.100 their grinder profile just wrote hot people only nice right we that's everyone everyone would like

00:16:29.180 people they're attracted to the absolute worst part of those profiles is when they put a physical

00:16:36.420 requirement in that you can see in profiles yeah when people are like white people only it's like 0.97

00:16:43.680 this is a fucking app with pictures so obviously the whole purpose of those types of profiles is 0.99

00:16:50.160 just to like inject a little bit of negativity into someone's day yeah that's awful if you're 0.99

00:16:56.220 fat and you're swiping not only do you have to like deal with whatever general stress you have

00:17:01.580 from being uh being on the dating scene but then every now and then you get to see someone be like

00:17:06.560 no fat people please i came up in the era of grinder where like i swear to god like one in 0.97

00:17:12.640 profiles had like no fats no fems no asians right and like people this was so fucked up people would 0.98

00:17:18.940 like try to be fucking cute about it so people would put no rice no spice jesus christ to be 0.99

00:17:25.620 like no i guess like no asians or africans or like it's not even clear to me what the fuck that means 0.98

00:17:30.060 but it's like so not only have you done like the racist text it's like oh you're trying to be 1.00

00:17:34.660 fucking cute about your racist text right like wow you're like you're a complete fucking asshole 1.00

00:17:40.140 And also you're just like not funny and like don't seem remotely like bothered by it. 1.00

00:17:44.920 I wish there was something more that I could do beyond blocking people.

00:17:48.380 Now, you should be able to pick one person that you can kill through the apps.

00:17:52.460 Exactly.

00:17:53.560 That's also another I don't have straight people do this, but another like genre of online date is where they just want to complain about online dating the whole time.

00:18:01.540 Yeah, that's a thing.

00:18:02.200 I always find it like a weird sort of like Mobius strip Escher painting of an interaction

00:18:07.600 where it's like you're on a date and you're complaining about how hard it is to get on

00:18:12.220 a date with someone and like, right, you should do the date.

00:18:15.520 You're on it.

00:18:16.400 Yeah, I don't know that I've had that exact experience, but I have I have had online dates

00:18:22.480 where they were like, how's Bumble going for you or something like that.

00:18:27.460 It's funny because it makes sense.

00:18:29.540 a big part of your life is that you are going on these dates trying to find someone and then you're

00:18:35.340 trying to get to know someone right and they're trying to get to know you what's something about

00:18:39.520 you well you're going on three dates a week that's a pretty big part of your life what are

00:18:43.860 your hobbies i spend about 20 hours a week in various stages of online dating exactly weird

00:18:48.760 to like edit that out yeah exactly also it's like weirdly self-referential to be like dating is

00:18:54.160 going really well for me i had sex with three people today what's your afternoon been like

00:18:57.680 it's like breaking the fourth wall. 0.86

00:19:00.420 Like everyone,

00:19:01.380 everyone knows that we're all play acting to a degree,

00:19:04.940 but like you don't really talk about it.

00:19:06.700 One of my pet peeves is like people who do like meta conversations who are

00:19:11.040 like,

00:19:11.200 let's change the subject or like,

00:19:12.740 I don't want to talk about that.

00:19:13.760 I'm always like,

00:19:14.760 you can just change the subject if you want to change.

00:19:16.400 You don't have to say,

00:19:17.100 let's change the subject.

00:19:17.900 You can just actually change the subject,

00:19:19.220 but that you then get these people who have like a script in their heads of

00:19:22.240 like how the first date is supposed to go.

00:19:24.700 So you like ask something and they're like,

00:19:26.140 I don't want to talk about that on the first date.

00:19:27.680 right okay i'm i i failed the test now i guess anyone who like overtly talks about the topic of

00:19:36.000 conversation weirds me out because then it makes me think about the structure of the conversation 0.99

00:19:41.500 rather than just having a conversation yeah yeah i hate that shit that's very weird and that's 0.97

00:19:45.960 actually very common where people are like expressly dictating the terms of the conversation 0.99

00:19:51.380 to you you're just like what the hell what the fuck's going on we talked about this in the game

00:19:55.440 episode but we ended up cutting it out that i think also because online dating creates this 0.80

00:20:00.560 kind of numbers game people then try to like gamify it or like make it as effective as possible

00:20:05.880 i think there's like a kind of a ted talk brain thing of like i want to have the most efficient

00:20:09.400 first date right so like i'm gonna skip over the small talk i don't talk about the weather like

00:20:13.340 what you do i want to skip to like the meaningful stuff so i've also gone on dates with people that

00:20:18.360 you know you're like oh how was your day and they're like no no no no what are your three

00:20:21.740 passions no what's the last thing that made you cry i will be getting up and exiting immediately

00:20:27.400 that is game over for me but the weird thing is like i get it because like small talk can be 0.51

00:20:33.320 fucking excruciating but also something that endears you to someone else is like can you just

00:20:38.560 make pleasant small talk with a stranger like i want someone who can like go through a talk about 0.98

00:20:43.780 the weather and not make it weird for the other person or try to essentially make themselves the

00:20:48.000 center of attention by being like, no, no, we're going to do my essay questions.

00:20:51.220 What I think is if someone if someone gives you this like staged, like describe your ideal 0.96

00:20:56.900 vacation bullshit, you're not going to learn anything. 0.92

00:21:00.540 But if I ask you, how was your day? 0.99

00:21:03.460 I'm going to learn a lot about you because I cannot be with someone who doesn't take

00:21:08.120 that as a prompt to complain about their job.

00:21:11.840 If I when I was on a date and I was like, how was your day?

00:21:15.320 and someone was like it was great and like walked me through their day and everything was fantastic 0.98

00:21:20.100 i'm like no yeah this is this is over yeah if someone was like my boss is an asshole i'm like 0.92

00:21:25.960 yes yeah that's let's talk about date number two i'm already there it's like when you ask somebody 0.91

00:21:30.940 what was high school like and they're like everything was fine i was popular like the kids

00:21:34.800 they liked me i'm like all right this i i have places to be check please i want trauma from you 0.74

00:21:40.880 I want hurt.

00:21:43.360 But that's the point of small talk.

00:21:45.320 You're getting at the little edges of a person's being.

00:21:49.220 I actually did a decent amount of reading on the conventions of small talk for the rules

00:21:54.140 episode because I genuinely find small talk like extremely interesting.

00:21:57.420 And, you know, everyone understands the purpose of small talk very differently.

00:22:01.600 But one of the reasons why these like essay question approaches, I think they're very

00:22:05.880 understandable, but they're not as effective, is that the purpose of small talk is to speak

00:22:10.440 about something very superficial that you have in common to look for other commonalities right

00:22:15.440 like oh it was raining today oh i hate it when it rains oh i like being inside i also like being

00:22:19.260 inside and it's like okay we're both introverts right you can zigzag your way into deeper forms

00:22:24.060 of commonality and just sort of feel somebody out like are you a weirdo do you take turns in

00:22:28.360 conversation yeah yeah you can't sort of skip that part because the purpose of small talk is like an

00:22:34.240 audition yeah okay now i'm comfortable going deeper with this person but if they basically

00:22:38.860 fail that test then you want to pull back right and so whenever people try to leapfrog it it's

00:22:44.120 always like well the boring part is kind of important like we have to sort of work our way

00:22:48.940 up to like when was the last time you cried you can't skip to that i need to build a rapport with

00:22:54.340 you to know that i can trust you and a lot of rapport is also just like like do we have chemistry

00:23:00.300 and by chemistry i don't even always mean do we have things in common i mean is there like

00:23:04.860 a dynamic to our conversation that i enjoy do we do we pitter-patter effectively how's our

00:23:11.220 rat-a-tat-tat no so is she sarcastic is she feminine do i want to stroke her long hair

00:23:15.560 these are the things that you're trying to determine about michael putting yourself in

00:23:20.980 the straight in the straight guy's shoe that's just what i assume that you guys look for staring

00:23:24.340 across the table like i want to touch her hair speaking of which do you want to talk about this

00:23:28.960 toxic subreddit that you've been reading female dating strategies yeah i feel like so much of the

00:23:34.740 toxicity that we see from men on dating like the men's rights weirdos and pickup artists and incels

00:23:41.220 is in some ways an output of this rapid shift to online dating like people just aren't really set

00:23:48.300 up for it and we don't really have like rules or norms established absolutely but yeah i have never

00:23:53.260 looked into like how this has manifested among women or like kind of what this looks like among

00:24:00.620 female-oriented online communities, so take me down the rabbit hole, Peter.

If Books Could Kill - July 13, 2023

Are The Straights OK [TEASER]

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