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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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how these two groups of people are even meeting? Their social circles scarcely overlap, if they overlap at all.

On Hinge. Putting some effort into your dating profile and including "Electrician", "Elevator Mechanic", etc. is definitely gonna get you dates. I honestly don't know how men who make $40-50k a year are going to get married. The only friends of mine in relationships are the ones making $80k+.

I'm in a major west coast city, and in-person dating seems to be dead. I got 5-7 phone numbers from girls last year, and only one ended up getting coffee with me. This was going out every other weekend. Compared to 16 matches, which became six dates from instagram, Hinge, etc.

I may be too broke to date in person though. The bars and events that are $50-100 per night may be active.

I somehow doubt that one third of all college-educated single women in the future are going to resort to online dating apps and also be willing to marry working-class men in order to alleviate their relationship issues.

resort to online dating apps

Are you posting from 1999? Boy, are you in for some nasty surprises [edit: this link seems to work better]. Online dating never gets any better, mind you; the alternatives just keep getting worse. I recommend trying to find a spouse before OKCupid gets bought out. Oh, and if you find yourself on a plane getting hijacked, ignore all the "just cooperate and don't get hurt" protocol; they're not just flying to Cuba next time.

To be fair, "online" in this graph does not differentiate between dating apps and non-dating-app online locations (such as forums and chatrooms). It would be funny if someone were to take a closer look and discover that everybody has switched from Tinder to Discord for romance.

That's not a bad point. I'm old enough that "find a spouse before OKCupid gets bought out" was actually an actionable strategy for me, so I'm hearing the awful reports of modern dating apps second-hand, and I don't actually hear anything about modern non-app-based online dating.

Does it really exist, though? Naively, I'd have expected random Discord channels to be subject to the same social dynamics that work/school/etc were, wherein now that there's a "Find Your Dates Here" Schelling Point of the apps, more and more of the younger generations are starting to consider any but the most slow/careful flirting in ostensibly non-romantic contexts to be intrusive and creepy.

Does it really exist, though?

4chan's /soc/ board is chock-full of invitations for messaging (both group and one-on-one) on Discord, Telegram, and Kik.

Resort to online dating apps in general? Sure. To do so in order to find a husband? Rather unlikely. What percentage of college-educated middle-class women are on dating apps anyway? I mean as a lifestyle choice, not as a fad that they engage in for 3 weeks.

The reddit URL returns a deleted post.

What percentage of college-educated middle-class women are on dating apps anyway?

I’m going to guess the vast majority, this is just how people meet now, it’s how I met my wife ten years ago. And every year women become more conditioned to find cold approaches at markets or bookstores more creepy and less acceptable

Huh - it goes to that "Removed By Moderator" page for me too. I swear I just copied and pasted straight from my browser's address bar. Actually, this is weird - I copied and pasted a www.reddit.com address, I see a www address in the markdown when I hit "Edit" on it, but when I hover over the link I see an old.reddit.com address. Looks like that might be an rDrama bug "feature"? Then, while the www.reddit.com address works, the old.reddit.com address doesn't.

Try this link for the full post rather than just the png - both www.reddit.com and old.reddit.com work for that so it should survive any mangling.

Rather unlikely. What percentage of college-educated middle-class women are on dating apps anyway?

For heterosexual couples as a whole, a majority now are couples who met online. I don't know if there's any way to get a breakdown by education level for internet dating specifically, but more-educated people have never been less likely than less-educated people to use the internet in general.

I can see it now, thanks.