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This is a bad chart with lots of data issues. It apparently consists of two points, 1995 and 2017. The source is some data aggregator that isn’t clear, and of course the differentiation between the categories is non-existent. what is the difference between “church,” “friends,” or “neighbors?” What is the difference between “school” and “college.”
That said obviously there are more “online” couples between 1995 where the only options were AOL or IRC chatrooms and 2017 where actual dating apps existed that were easily accessible via your phone.
My Take: I agree the internet has changed society in the past 22 years. Thanks shitty chart from reddit. I now have a greater awareness of the significance of the internet.
The perfect colinearity of most of the lines is very suspicious too.
c/dataisugly
This doesn’t even look like it’s from r/dataisbeautiful. It looks like r/coolguides. Not a compliment
I don’t buy that Bar/Restaurant has steadily increased as people have become more isolated.
My guess is it’s a self-reporting error, where people meet on dating apps, but are reporting where they first met in person.
The data ends in 2017. 6 year old data is pretty useless considering how much has changed in just the last 3
It’s not steadily. They only have two data points. All lines are straight. You can pretty much ignore what happens between the two years at the start and end, and you can also ignore any apparent trend because, hell, the last year might be an outlier, or maybe bars has been higher and is now trending down.
Gotta remember it’s only a percentage. Maybe the number didn’t grow at all, just didn’t decrease much as the others (and might include nightclubs too)
I met my wife from a friend who I met online. So I indirectly met my wife online.
Did you meet your online friend through your college’s online church group and then discover they lived next door to you? :P
Which happens to be a restaurant and a bar at night.
I can’t bring myself to try online dating, my friend that hit the jackpot and ended up marrying the first girl he went on a date with through whatever app he used tells me it works, as if his experience is absolute, but I hear about too many people getting ghosted by shallow dates to want to try. My self esteem couldn’t take it.
Oh yeah that happens a lot, especially if you’re a dude. You just kinda have to learn to not take it personally, it’s just the nature of those platforms unfortunately, they want you to use the app for as long as possible.
Dating apps shouldn’t be for-profit businesses IMO, it just fucks everything up.
Yeah, it sucks that you really have to treat dating as a numbers game (as in if I meet enough people, I’ll eventually meet someone who likes me) and suppress the part of yourself that wants to get invested in each person you date.
I ended up together with my SO who I met online, but I wouldn’t wish the process leading up to meeting her on anyone.
This is anecdotal of course, but probably a good 60% or more of my friends and younger family members have met their long-term partners “on Tinder.” I started dating my wife just weeks before the app launched in our area, but as far as I’ve seen it’s a valid way to find yourself a spouse if that’s what you’re into
It helps if you have thick skin. It is definitely tough if you don’t deal with rejection well. Though I will say that it can help you develop some of those traits.
If you’re a male seeking female you are in a crowd of 10-20 males per female on any given app or website. Good luck.
Those seem like depressing trends.
Why do you say so?
It seems like the methods that would have a better chance of lasting bonds are trending down, while more shallow stuff is in the rise.
Meeting through friends would, you’d think, mean there are some similar values and interests, as well as social circles, which would all serve as a decently solid foundation. That’s dropping (probably because friendship in general seems to also be on the decline), while stuff like meeting in a bar is going up… which is generally more associated with hook up culture.
Considering the extreme gender disparity of online dating, I’m inclined to agree. Funny how no one cares about that inequality.
No one cares about any inequity where men are on the losing side.
Male rape: exists
Comedy writers: oh man this would be a hilarious scene in a movie
A portion of men have no control over their sexual desires so I can’t say I blame those people for not caring.
Huh?
How is that relevant?
Perhaps I’m just paranoid, anxious and completely unfixable but I personally hate the concept of online dating. I feel like it’s the same problem I have with most online services, being a product to advertisers and nothing more then a number. Once again it’s probably me being paranoid but I’m at a point where I would rather just not go through the trouble of dating at all, especially since this data is from 2017 and has most likely favoured online dating further
Same, I agree mostly. Though I find being able to date offline and in real life, for lack of better terms, to be worth it. It also puts you ahead of all the people who just use online dating in a way, because you have a real connection with the person you are talking to.
I guess you’re just using that as an excuse, because you’re afraid of actually opening yourself up to the gender of your interests.
I’ve never been the most confident or outgoing person, it’s just not who I am. I’m also not gonna fill this thread with outcry or a winded sob-story. Instead I will say, use whatever medium you choose to find the person you wish to spend your time with. It’s a short life, live how you wish to live, I’ll do the same.
Assuming they’re a man it makes sense considering online dating has overinflated women’s sense of worth to a ridiculous level to the point that even the smallest flaw is an “ick”
That’s never been different. The fact that women don’t just take anyone isn’t a sign of “overinflated worth”, it’s a sign that the market is working.
There are roughly as many men as women. So almost everybody should be able to find someone. If there’s too many men on Tinder, that only means that men are too eager to go on Tinder.
Yes that’s how most relationships start. The man is the one initiating contact. If a man doesn’t initiate contact he doesn’t get a girl. Men are left wanting while women have several options almost at all times.
I know the current view of men is that we’re all just potential rapists or abusers but that’s exactly why so many men are trying to prove themselves. They’re just trying to prove they’re not what most women today think all men are.
Meanwhile women just exist. That’s literally all they have to do.
That’s almost a textbook incel comment.
If women don’t want you, that’s because you are not desirable. It’s that easy.
I’m not a “chad” by any stretch and rather introvert. Yet even I was hit on by women. And I had good times with them. Didn’t always work out, but that’s expected.
What you’re trying to do here is essentially shifting blame. As I wrote above, there are about as many men as there are women. That means, if you can’t find anyone, that means your imagined “worth” and your desired partner’s “worth” are not the same - and not in your favor.
I’m not desirable because I have resting bitch face. I always look like I’m angry even when I’m not. I’m also 6’3" so I’m imposing. I’m also covered in tattoos and scars some of which are obviously from self harm.
All of these individually are reasons for women to be uninterested in me. All of them together make me damn near impossible to approach.
And even when I do approach women they’re so busy being afraid of my physical appearance they can’t see that I’m not even close to a threat to them.
And that is not any women’s fault.
BTW: there’s a good chance, that your way of approaching other people is far more threatening/aggressive than you might think.
the implication of this, is that algorithms now have actual influence on the natural selection of humans. small influence of course, but, unsettling to think about for too long.
So tinder’s long term goal is eugenics?
from the tinder algorithm’s perspective, it “wants” to select for babies that will grow up and use the app when they are older too
expired
The implication…
My wife and I met on match.com. We bonded over our love of cats. We celebrated our 20th anniversary of our first date in March. We lived 5 miles apart before we met. We never would have met without the Internet.
Odd to see so much hate on this thread for online dating. Maybe half of my relationships as an adult came from online dating, including my wife.
“Online” needs to be broken down into “dating app” and “met playing World of Warcraft”
I know people that met in Everquest 2
Absolutely everything in your life can and will be turned into a commodity of capitalism for someone else to profit from, including the simple act of meeting other people. Community? That will be destroyed if it will help a millionaire make more money. Society will be atomised into little individual boxes for each person where they can then be turned into numbers and easily fed into algorithms that allow someone to profit.
Something that has been natural through community building and real social relationships people care about for thousands of years will be destroyed, there is in fact a profit motive to do so.
It’s no wonder that loneliness is also at an all time high.
Yeah I hate the commodification of every aspect of our lives. I’ll hold out from using the dating apps for as long as possible
Even setting aside dating apps, most irl spaces where it’s generally socially acceptable to meet people are already profit oriented. I’m sure that a big part of this is because of creeps ruining it for everyone else by hitting on everyone at a park or whatever, but sometimes I wonder if part of it isn’t also business owners trying to push people into bars and clubs.
In a lot of irl spaces where I live, women can enter on discounted prices or for free, and this is done by the ownership to prevent the bar or club from becoming a sausage fest. Online dating doesn’t have that, so it ends up with 80% of the userbase being guys, and all the issues that causes.
I’m not saying that online dating needs to copy that model and start getting gross/sleazy promoters, I’m just saying there’s a reason why it’s used at clubs and bars. A more equal gender split would do a lot to improve the online dating experience.
That is super depressing
Why? Online spaces can be great places for strangers to meet in safety, especially introverts.
The reason online dating sucks isn’t because of anything inherent to online dating but because of the profit motive.
But the profit motive is inherent to all the online dating apps. It’s what decides how the algorithms work. There is no app for just meeting people seperate from that.
True, but I feel like they got much worse over the last 3-4 years. Before that they weren’t trying to nickel-and-dime you for every single button press.
10 years ago when I met my partner online I didn’t pay for anything.
It’s definitely getting worse across the board with everything lately, that’s true. 5-10 years ago online dating was probably a ton better.
The reason online dating sucks isn’t because of anything inherent to online dating but because of the profit motive.
I agree, if things were different they’d be different. However, things are like they are.
Well, that and because humans kinda suck in general.
why?
Because I find the idea of letting some profit driven algorithm decide who you date, and the commodification of dating, a bit sad.
Isn’t that what real life is anyway? Bars have a profit motive (and incidentally they’re going up to). And your circle of friends, family, coworkers is primarily profit driven too by the job you have, the social class of your family, etc. If anything, online dating has helped expand the pool as you can actually find people with similar interests and likes outside of a small circle you previously had access to that may not have anyone in.
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Because OP has friends but no Internet. They’re dating like it’s 1999
at least people with similar interests are meeting eachother
Are they though? Isn’t loneliness at an all time high among young people in industrialised nations? Could the commodification of relationships though apps be a possible reason for that?
This is a really weird graph and kinda the opposite of “data is beautiful” lol
Yeah, it’s more of a “data exists, kind of.”
Data is man made horrors beyond my imagination
care to expand on that?
There’s nothing particularly pretty about this graph. It’s basically an infographic that has two data points and a bunch of lines.
My 3 year olds made prettier graphs from “join things on the left with things on the right”.
In the spirit of this comm, the data itself is secondary to the graph itself. So replace the text with gibberish and ask yourself if it’s still a nice graph. It isn’t particularly beautiful, no. You can feel strongly about the topic, but that’s not important.
what would you have done differently to communicate the data then? assuming the numbers are correct.
Use more than two data points. It is possible that online dating was huge in 2017, but not before or after it. It’s also possible that online dating was much bigger in 2015, and went down in 2017. This graph paints a fake tendency.
As haohao said, more data would make for more interesting lines. Also, since the data should add up to 100%, maybe use a stack graph? Don’t use straight lines. I would also try to experiment with pivoting the data; show evolution over time of a single trend (in multiple graphs). Merge a bunch of low percent items into “other” to clean up.
Just ideas, making a great looking graph is mostly art.
Data is manmade horrors beyond my imagination
Visualization of our society becoming hyper atomized in real time. Can’t meet via friends if you have no friends.
Were 11% of people in 2017 really out there dating their coworkers? Isn’t that hella awkward? What are you going to do if you have a messy breakup and you still have to see each other every day?
“As coworkers” just mean “met through work”, nothing else. It could also be that a majority of those 11% met in conditions that make is “sane” to date, meaning people who have absolutely nothing to do with one another at work, or one left, was about to leave, or temps (sales reps, contractors, etc).
If nothing else this shows how prevalent work is in life, and how lacking the other general dating options are…
I have a friend who’s a nice guy but seems hell-bent on dating at work. I keep telling him not to shit where he eats, so I’m hopeful he’ll turn around some day.
After seeing how stupid people have been exposed to be over the last several years, I fully believe 11% of the dating world were just that dumb.
The answer is they’re going to be adult about it. Even if the breakup gets a bit messy, it’s still possible to maintain a good professional relationship. I’ve got several such ex-couples in my bubble. They’re mature enough to make it work.
Anecdotally there are 4 couples at work in my small division of about 60 people. All longterm employees.
I’d be curious to see a more year-by-year breakdown. I feel like a lot of those would fluctuate.
