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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31998 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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New Yorker article on Feeld: A Hookup App for the Emotionally Mature.

I'm curious what reactions and discussion this sparks.

  • -12

Please don't post bare links with minimal commentary.

I've used Feeld and this is such a bizarre description. I did not recognize it at all from the article until they named it. AFAICT the app is aimed at people who are interested in kink and/or polyamory. Most of the profiles that have any information at all include one or both of those things. This group is not necessarily more mature than anyone else, the age range seems pretty similar to other apps (maybe slightly more late 20s than early), and it's not any more hookup-focused than the average non-relationship-type-specific app. Lots of people on it are looking for serious, longer-term relationships. It's probably more progressive than average, but few people explicitly put anything like that on their profiles--again, not much more than any other app if you're in a big city. They would probably rate higher on the Big 5's openness to experiences measure, and are more likely to be upfront about what they want out of a relationship, but that's about it.

Yeah, the app itself sounds perfectly fine and, on a personal note, probably better-suited for me than the others. The site itself is also phrased quite reasonably. I got no problems there.

The author's description of it is kinda painful, but, y'know, journalism.

As irritating as it is, I don't think "journalist turns a niche product into a culture war issue" is particularly notable.

I wonder who the market is for these long-form New Yorker and Atlantic articles? You know the ones that start with long rambling sequences like: "Susan Hernandez was enjoying her coffee sitting at the Whistlestop Diner as was her habit on Tuesday."

When I was younger I read this stuff because I felt like I was supposed to. Now I just... don't. It's almost physically painful when the information content to fluff ratio is so low. Does anyone actually read this crap or does it just sit on one's coffee table for a week before heading to the recycling bin?

What Hanania said about books applies double to legacy magazine content:

https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-case-against-most-books

I wonder who the market is for these long-form New Yorker and Atlantic articles? You know the ones that start with long rambling sequences like: "Susan Hernandez was enjoying her coffee sitting at the Whistlestop Diner as was her habit on Tuesday."

That sort of writing is how you win a pulitzer/other awards. "Writing for Story" (unintentionally) discusses that sort of shift, from news/facts to long-form journalism. The idea is that giving it that human element draws the reader in.

This is one of the more ridiculous articles I’ve ever read. Thank you. This journalist and her friend are the future. Post-wall women with no families, aged out of Twitter and Hinge, racking up body count with “open minded” men, nonbinaries, couples, and other people that are similarly alone.

They sound like big kids. The journalist loses her apartment suddenly and has to throw her stuff in a storage unit and her dad’s car (that she’s presumably using). She’s 39!!! And random hookup sex was her answer to this!

She talks about a friend who was “house sitting” for her parents. I’m guessing this friend is about her age, has a shitty apartment in Brooklyn, and is crashing at her parents house while her parents are at their vacation home. This is the kind of shit I did when I was 24.

I tend to enjoy the schadenfreude of hearing these types of stories and wondering what the future holds for this cohort. I think this is the answer. As much as people look down on tinder and hookup culture - this is worse. The young people on tinder at least have have hope. I met my wife on hinge. These women will be racking up enormous body counts. It won’t be normal sex. It will be strange kink. People using sex to fill the hole in their lives. Like an old alcoholic alone at a bar getting shitfaced each night.

Everyone should read this article. What a world.

I agree that quite of lot of such people are probably unhappy, but I don't see that it's as gendered a problem as you're making it out to be. It takes two (or more in this case, apparently) to tango, and I see no reason why the men in this situation should be presumed to be any happier than the women. Yet, as you have, whenever anyone discusses these things it's always the women who are accused of wasting away their life; not necessarily an unfair accusation, but one that applies to these men equally, surely. Your gleeful tone is also a bit unbecoming.

This is one of the more ridiculous articles I’ve ever read. Thank you. This journalist and her friend are the future. Post-wall women with no families, aged out of Twitter and Hinge, racking up body count with “open minded” men, nonbinaries, couples, and other people that are similarly alone.

The future? More like the present, it appears. This article is one long coffee emoji, better than any weak- or straw-woman the manosphere, dirtbag left, or dissident right could ever conjure.

They sound like big kids. The journalist loses her apartment suddenly and has to throw her stuff in a storage unit and her dad’s car (that she’s presumably using). She’s 39!!! And random hookup sex was her answer to this!

Can we call-in a wellness check for her father to make sure he’s okay?

Your childless, middle-aged daughter suddenly needs your car because her relationship “abruptly collapsed” (surely due to no fault of her own), then next thing you know she authors a longform article on how she continues riding the carousel to cope. feelsbadman.jpg

She talks about a friend who was “house sitting” for her parents.

Her friend couldn’t even house-sit at her parents’ for a night without inviting a random guy over to raid their liquor and rail their daughter. I’m sure her parents are proud.

Seems like a hook up app that's aiming at the demographic of non-MLM queers, bdsm types, and threesomes. I'm sure they view themselves as emotionally mature and "better" at sexual encounters, but don't most demographics? Ultimately that app just looks like FetLife for the modern age

80% of drivers think they are above average. For sex, that's probably 98%.

First, an obligatory comment that dropping bare links as top-level comments in the Culture War topic is a faux-pas, boo you, mods will probably scold you a bit for this.

Second, and rather low-effort, I can't get over how utterly obnoxious most writing for the New Yorker is. I assume everyone here appreciates detailed, long-form commentary, and the New Yorker superficially provides that, but the thing is that making an article long and wordy doesn't make it good. Scott Alexander's posts are long but what makes them good is that he uses this length to cover a lot of ground. New Yorker articles, including this one, often feel like someone took a mildly interesting anecdote and prompted an AI with “pad this short draft out to 10x the length it needs to be, while making the author sound like a pretentious twat that has no greater joy in life than smelling their own farts”.

Case in point, what the fuck is up with paragraphs like this:

I spoke with a trans person in their early thirties who told me that the number of available labels at first made them pause. “Those are the labels that exist, but they exist almost like a step ahead of where I exist,” they said. “I’ve gotten closer to those labels based on the connections that I’ve made, but I wasn’t in a place to know them ahead of time.” The language of identity does not always precede experience, they continued. Over time, “you figure out what language you need to speak in order to be seen.”

What the fuck is this supposed to convey? What's the information content of this entire paragraph? This is just fucking garbage writing that was included because the author is a pathetic handmaiden that had to include some trans POV to get her article published.

And not to mention the final paragraph:

The people who craft anti-trans legislation and laws to control sexuality see lives that are different than theirs as a threat to their own integrity. Imagine what that must be like, to not be able to think about change, and the possibilities it might offer.

What the fucking hell has any of this to do with a dating app for pretentious fartknockers?

Okay, let me try to balance out the pot shots with some commentary on the meat of the article. What I gathered from the article, Feeld is a hookup app for pretentious assholes who disguise their base horniness with pompous terms like “ethical nonmonogamist”, and you pledge allegiance to the woke by hating on straight white males, as is tradition.

With that in mind, look at the author (who, by the name, I assume is female, though given the wokeness of it all and the fact that their name is ”Emily” might well be a female-presenting transgender), and their experience on the app:

Feeld, unlike most other dating apps, quantifies the interest its users receive with a number that Kirova assured me is real. In the two years I’ve been on the app, more than eleven thousand people have liked my profile, whose only proscriptive has been “no liars.” I’ve never felt as much license to dismiss male entitlement as I have on Feeld. If a man casually insults my appearance; if he pressures me to meet after I’ve said that I’m busy; if he treats me like a food-delivery service, ready to serve him when he’s in the mood; if he imposes rote pornographic fantasies on me without any curiosity or charm; if he indicates that he’ll try to negotiate his way out of using condoms; if he is coy or unforthcoming in a way that makes me suspicious; if he has no sense of humor or isn’t kind—I disconnect without hesitation or regret. There is no reason to tolerate any dehumanizing or insulting behavior.

Summary: woman puts minimal effort in her dating profile, receives thousands of likes anyway (mostly from horny straight white males, who are to be despised), and quickly dismisses the majority of messages from men. This somehow makes Feeld special, but isn't this the absolute standard norm on every dating/hookup app ever?

I’ve gone back to the standard dating apps a couple times, but none offered the same ease of connection. I kept experiencing a suffocating gender dynamic: regardless of the kind of person I am, I was somehow forced into the role of a desperate pursuer trying to win the affection of the elusive and “emotionally unavailable” male, a dynamic that was confusing to see revived in a moment when I was experiencing as much sexual agency as I’d ever had in my life.

Again, assuming that this person is a cis-female that is not absolutely horrendous-looking, what dating app were they on that they can't get 100 messages from desperate males within an hour of signing up with a single bad photo of themselves? It all seems like total bullshit to me.

I wonder how much people get paid to write this kind of garbage, and who's paying them. I doubt they're doing it for free.

I can't get over how utterly obnoxious most writing for the New Yorker is

I used to subscribe to it. This is the reason I cancelled.

What the fuck is this supposed to convey?

I think the general idea is that being just trans is so passé, you need to acquire more identity labels to be trendy, and the app is leading the way, while the person in question follows.

What the fucking hell has any of this to do with a dating app for pretentious fartknockers?

Ritual abuse of the outgroup is an important part of communication for the target group of New Yorker, I think.

I may be wrong, but I think people here are missing the subtext. This is a hookup app for old people. She likely is overweight and old. She can not compete with the average 20 something or even the the women a year or two older than 30. These is ease of connection on this app is because the people with dicks are likely not looking for fit young women or relationships with potential wives that can reproduce.

She likely is overweight and old.

It's easy to Google her name - she is rather thin and not ugly either.

Yeah she's quite pretty, looks well for her age

A quick google search reveals that she's actually decently attractive and not overweight (albeit most of the pics are 7+ years old). Old yes, but she could have certainly done better than whatever the hell she is doing now on this app.

It seems like alot of effort for such meh outcomes. I wonder what she did to blow up her relationship.

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