Shifts in How Couples Meet, Online Takes the Top | FlowingData

[rcjordan]

https://flowingdata.com/2019/03/15/shifts-in-how-couples-meet-online-takes-the-top-spot/

This is related to recent discussion here about kids & teens not getting together with friends..

The above was down the rabbit hole which started with this impressive, somewhat shocking, static graphic on /r
https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_how_hetero_couples_met_through2021v4.JPG

root info is by this prof
https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/

[Travoli]

I'm very surprised that "met in bar or restaurant" is currently higher than the '90s and '00s.

[grnidone]

Online dating is a shitshow.

There is no other way to say it.

[ergophobe]

I've seen the Rosenfeld graph around a bit lately. I've also seen some pushback but I forget the rationale. Is it based on online surveys?

>> shit show

On the one hand, when my wife and I hear tales from the front lines, we think we are so glad we are not dating today.

On the other hand, we are heading to a family gathering right now where my amazing niece will be with her amazing husband, who she met online, got married a year and half ago and are expecting their first child in July. But they were in a major metro and young, and took a volume approach to finding someone (meaning, go on lots of dates with low expectations for any particular date, until, Ka Ching!)

[grnidone]

> numbers approach

I've just joined an online dating group on facebook called "The Burned Haystack Dating Method" and it's actually giving me some hope. It teaches you how to use the apps to find what you want.

The apps are designed to keep you swiping and swiping and interacting with them, not to actually find someone. So, instead of "swiping left" which will, after some time, feed you the same people you've seen in the past only to have to swipe left again to get them out of the list, you have to BLOCK that person so you never see them again.

Soon, you will get to a point where there is nobody in the queue to look at. But then, there are always new people joining every day.

The theory is, in order to find a needle in a haystack, you have to burn the haystack down, because the needle won't burn.

I hope so much the app developers don't disallow blocking people because weeding through the BS is exhausting. 

The person who started the Burned Haystack method is an English professor and goes into Rhetorical Analysis. What the words actually MEAN when people say them and what kind of behaviors you can infer from them. Much of what we say is subconscious.

Here's a link:  https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5EAbbIuHgE/

[creative666]

My wife (of 17 years) and I met on WebmasterWorld - she was in Cape Town and I was in the UK, that was 22 years ago.

[buckworks]

My husband and I met in a church youth group.

In 1971.

[ergophobe]

My wife and I met in a climbing club in 1995.

Brother and his wife met in high school. One sister met her husband at work a work party when someone bumped into her and she literally fell into his lap. Other sister met her husband at a Sadie Hawkins party - she wasn't having a good time with the guy she invited and her future husband wasn't having a good time with the woman who invited him. They met and, well, 42 years later I'm at their house as I write this.

I have two friends who met in the Hong Kong airport. He was going from Fiji to Switzerland and she was going from Japan to the US. He was a super shy guy who had never approached a woman cold in his whole life but while in Fiji our mutual friend convinced him that nothing bad would happen if he just tried once. He tried once in 1991 and they are still together.

The mutual friend was on vacation on a chartered boat. Went windsurfing and was gone so long they were starting to worry. He had landed on a beach and met a woman. They have Super 8 video (or maybe VHS - this was mid 1980s) of him coming back to the boat with someone holding onto the back of the windsurfer. Still together.

It's crazy how random it all can be

[littleman]

>Online dating is a shitshow.

I've been off the market for so long I would be absolutely lost these days.  Thinking about my kids they've met their SOs mostly at school or work.  One of tried did online dating for a bit, but stopped after a while.