Hookup culture: The end of civilization, or the biggest NBD ever? According to a recent barrage of news stories, apps like Tinder have turned dating into a dehumanizing form of online shopping, catalyzing some sort of sexual Armageddon and the death of courtship itself.
Dark times, apparently. Why are there so many sexual assaults on campus? Look no further than hookup culture. You can blame hookup culture for that, too. Casual sex has become too easy, the consensus seems to be, preventing young people from making meaningful connections and turning us into sex-crazed, diseased sociopaths speeding toward a broken, lonely future. But like. The entire article functions as a doomsday warning against dating apps, which Sales claims offer only romantically impoverished and ultimately damaging interactions.
Reading the piece, I felt like I had traveled back in time. Essentially, men are fuck machines with no feelings, and women are victims who are used for casual sex when all they really want is to settle down with a nice guy. You want to resuscitate this stereotype? To make her case, Sales tells a one-sided, myopic story through interviews she conducted with a selection of highly promiscuous and unsavory something men.
But is this sampling of guys really representative of the majority of young people on Tinder? For a second opinion, I called up Dr. So if you have a very unrestricted sociosexuality—meaning you want a lot of casual sex and novelty—then Tinder is perfect for you.
But that represents a modest minority of the people on Tinder. There are all sorts of people on Tinder, just like there are all sorts of people everywhere. The majority of my friends found their partners on Tinder. Jeez, there are Tinder marriages! I personally have slept with multiple guys from Tinder who are kind and respectful. Of course, at the heart of her case is a familiar and unfortunate premise: the idea that, by having sex, men are getting something, whereas women are giving up something.
