AI 'dream girls' are coming for porn stars' jobs(washingtonpost.com) |
AI 'dream girls' are coming for porn stars' jobs(washingtonpost.com) |
So maybe its a good thing
Seems a much better approach is to advocate for men exercising their agency and building relationships. I don’t see how dating is more a competition today than it has been historically?
Especially if you have a high level of education there seem to be a lot more women than men and intelligence equally inhibits many of them to find fitting dates. Sure, if you do online dating, better have a good resumé and some good photos.
The reality of the situation is that the dating marketplace is wildly dysfunctional now [1] [2] [3], and with women empowered and educated, they don't date down like men do [4] (women want high status, high earning men, men want younger, attractive women who can provide kids, very broadly speaking; there are only so many high status, high earning men). So, you have an entire cohort of men, through no fault of their own, who don't want to compete in a Sisyphean effort to attract a potential partner because the odds are very high they will not meet a potentially unrealistic bar [5] [6]. Shouldn't they at least get some enjoyment out of this existence if they weren't lucky to have been born a few decades earlier?
Subthread where I talk about this ~2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32430248 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32429544 (thread "The rise of lonely, single men")
[1] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g... ("Tinder Experiments II: Guys, unless you are really hot you are probably better off not wasting your time on Tinder — a quantitative socio-economic study")
[2] https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/why-women-lose-the-dating-g... ("Why women lose the dating game")
[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/10/05/rising-... ("Rising Share of U.S. Adults Are Living Without a Spouse or Partner")
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/10/dating-... ("The dating gap: why the odds are stacked against female graduates finding a like-minded man")
[5] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/20/americans-s... ("Americans see men as the financial providers, even as women’s contributions grow")
[6] https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/from-swiping-t... ("From Swiping to Sexting: The Enduring Gender Divide in American Dating and Relationships")
(TLDR: Macroeconomics and unrealistic expectations are causing a relationship market collapse, let people enjoy what they want vs screaming into the void about that which cannot be changed)
AI is dangerous here IMHO because it's going to disconnect people even more from the possibility of having a meaningful connection/relationship with another human.
People no longer like any kind of friction when it comes to interacting with other people.
> It was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men.
This fails one of my heuristics for valid statistics: things that don’t deserve to be exactly equal are exactly equal.
We're supposed to believe that the women can be partitioned into groups A (bottom 22%) and B (top 78%). (I'll assume that this is well defined for the sake of argument.) And this study showed that the bottom 80% of men are competing for group A and that group B is competing for the top 20% of men? That is, group B is competing for exactly the set of men that, themselves, arent' competing for group A? That's a remarkable claim!
although it might currently masquerade as a cultural thing or a factor of the gender identity, men dated down out of necessity, by population alone.
find the study to corroborate that, this is the first generation where the middle on the higher rungs and the upper middle class actually has enough women in it to date and thats whats happening
entire dynasties of women that thought they could offer their presence alone, and finding out they only have choices with socioeconomic equals instead of higher
lower socioeconomic status groups of women are so vocal about their sex work or balking at questions of “what do they bring to the table” because they thought being available sexually and pleasant would open up a different path, but are just entertainment options. they basically have to be louder because they don’t know what’s going on, notably, this groups considers themselves empowered too, at least self identify as such.
Similarly, there are services that chat with people who contact your OnlyFans. The customer is again the women.
I expect, at least initially, that same pattern will repeat.
Pornography absolutely reframes expectations and impacts behaviors. To what extent, that is a fair debate.
So, they experimented by trying new things, correct? Which, by definition, is a change (i.e., a distortion) in their sexual behavior.
If you try to read the "distortion" as being a non-judgmental "change", which was my intent, it may feel less triggering.
This, in turn, MAY have distorted behavior.
> “I think porn is a disgrace. I used to watch a lot of porn, to be honest. I started watching porn when I was, like, 11,” the “Bad Guy” singer said, saying it helped her feel as if she were cool and “one of the guys.”
> “I think it really destroyed my brain and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn,” she added, saying she suffered nightmares because some of the content she watched was so violent and abusive...
> “The first few times I, you know, had sex, I was not saying no to things that were not good. It was because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be attracted to,” she said.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/15/entertainment/billie-eilish-p...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/02/key-findi... ("Pew Research: Key findings about online dating in the U.S.")
https://www.marketplace.org/2023/09/07/singles-speed-dating-... ("APM Marketplace: Some singles are done with dating apps")
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2022.0367?j... ("Finding Intimacy Online: A Machine Learning Analysis of Predictors of Success")
> While an extensive scientific literature now exists on the use of online dating services, there are very few studies on user satisfaction with dating apps and with the resulting offline dates. This study aimed to assess the level of satisfaction with Tinder use (STU) and the level of satisfaction with Tinder offline dates (STOD) in a sample of adult users of the app. The study also aimed to examine, among 28 variables, those that are the most important in predicting STU and STOD. Overall, 1,387 Tinder users completed an online questionnaire. A machine learning model was used to rank order predictors from most to least important. On a 4-point scale, participants' mean STU score was 2.39, and, on a 5-point scale, mean STOD score was 3.05. The results indicate that satisfaction with dating apps and with resulting offline dates is strongly predicted by participants' age and by their motives for using Tinder (enhancement, emotional coping, socialization, finding “true love,” or casual sexual partners), whereas the variables negatively associated with satisfaction were those related to psychopathology. Interestingly, 65.3 percent of app users were married or “in a relationship,” and only 50.3 percent of app users were using it to meet someone offline. Generally, participants who engage with the app to cope with personal difficulties seem more likely to report higher levels of dissatisfaction, suggesting that dating apps are a poor coping mechanism and highlighting the need to address underlying problems or pathologies that may be driving their use.
https://www.wired.com/story/data-marriage-behavior-love-psyc... | https://archive.today/4nHbU ("Wired: People Are Dating All Wrong, According to Data Science")
> Well, the first truth about what people look for in romantic partners, like so many important truths about life, was expressed by a rock star before the scientists figured it out. As Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows told us in his 1993 masterpiece “Mr. Jones”: We are all looking for “something beautiful.” The conventional attractiveness of a mate is the number one predictor of how many messages someone gets, for both men and women. We are also looking for:
> someone tall (if a man), someone of a desired race (even though most never admit it), someone rich, someone in an enforcement profession (like lawyer or firefighter) if a man, someone with a sexy name (such as Jacob or Emma), and someone just like ourselves (people are 11.3 percent more likely to match with someone who shares their initials)
Additional citations wrt dating market place dynamics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29581620 (Dec 16, 2021) | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12710536 (Oct 14, 2016)
(I should probably just write a blog post putting all of this together and post that here, my apologies for the wall of text to build up context for this; there are no simple explanations for complex topics)
That's not the case? If you are young and attractive woman, you'll have no problem dating up for the most part.
And I’m considering everything else to be an entertainment option.
But the dating patterns corroborate the same view. Wealthy men picking younger and attractive women who offer nothing else have a population constriction too. There are far more poorer people than wealthy, its too small of a population for it to buck a trend further compounded by the newfound existence of women who are the first generation in their higher socioeconomic class.
For me porn does not reframe expectations. You still end up fucking and you still end up having to treat the other person as a human being. As long as everyone is having a good time and everything is between consensual adult I'm good.
Whenever you are trying to measure change you need to control for all the things that are happening.
I think framing it as "may change" is closer to what you maybe intended but I'm just guessing.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/02/13/asia-pacific/so...
I guess that women just aren’t so interested in porn as they are in companionship. That somehow men and women will tend to use AI differently?
Depends how you define porn. For example smut books are very popular among women, I think they are even the primary market for them. It is not that they are not interested in porn, they are just looking for a different type.
Note as well in reports women report using the AI boyfriend for sex as well ("Both Valenciano and Ramos say sex with their AIs is the best they’ve ever had." from https://www.thecut.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-ch...). They seem to also use the AI for sexual gratification, but they might not look for the same visual aspect and more as you say the emotional aspect.
amen to that. everyone has some sort of drive to reproduce that is hardwired into us.
This is the key. We're aiming to make our lives as convenient and frictionless as possible -- and this is monotonically increasing. Technology enables us to essentially be shut-ins, like the hikikomori.
This is a fragmentation/rending of the social fabric on a massive scale, and we're seeing it happen in real time.
People have to want to care and do better, you cannot make them (in this domain). Pick those you invest your time and emotional energy in wisely, that's all you can do.
EDIT: @x86x87 We aren't disagreeing. The marketplace trajectory is already locked in due to the crystallization of ideas in this domain by market participants.
Anal sex is not enjoyable? It is. And has been a thing for eons. In fact anal sex was a way to workaround getting pregnant before birth control was a thing/was mainstream.
I feel like we have the puritan point of view of what sex should be and anything that is not that is bad/not pleasurable.
So here's where I land: what whatever you want. Do whatever you want in the bedroom as long as it's 2 consenting adults. I don't believe that porn itself is to blame or be demonized for anything.
I also firmly believe that porn may provide an outlet for people to see and experience things that they don't want or cannot experience in real life.
I’m exhausted writing something so obvious.
Nevertheless, that cannot be true for most people, who are able to distinguish fact from fantasy.
In my opinion a much more important role in distorting the sexual expectations of young and inexperienced people has been played for some centuries by the conventional representation in literature and starting with the 20th century also in movies of a conventional feeling of "romantic love", which has been a completely fictional creation that does not correspond to any feeling that exists between real humans.
Instead of the fictional "love", between real humans there exist 3 or 4 distinct sentiments, which are independent, so they can exist or not exist separately, even if when they exist simultaneously there exists a positive feedback that reinforces them (e.g. physical attraction, love in the sense of opposite of hate, i.e. as also possible towards friends and family, and trust; even physical attraction is a different sentiment from considering that someone is beautiful or handsome).
When I was very young I was confused by the depiction of "love" in novels and movies, where frequently one discovered the appropriate partner for the rest of their lives by falling in "love" at the first sight, after which they never had any interest for different people. In reality, the only sentiment that is possible at the first sight is physical attraction, while "love" in a stricter sense is possible only after months of shared experiences and trust is possible only after several years, outside of completely exceptional circumstances.
Moreover, none of such sentiments is exclusive towards a single human. There are many valid reasons to choose monogamy, but that is a choice enforced by rational will, not a characteristic of human feelings.
So when I was very young, my expectations about human relations were distorted by these conventional incorrect descriptions of "love" from fiction, so I could not be certain of the nature of my feelings towards others, i.e. whether they were "love" or not. I have also seen many others who have been confused for the same reason, so they were not able to analyze their own feelings and distinguish e.g. between physical attraction and trust, with bad consequences.
On the other hand, viewing porn has never distorted my sexual expectations, because there was no doubt about that being fantasy and not reality.
Therefore I believe that many classic novels or RomCom movies may be more prone to distort sexual expectations than viewing porn movies.
In this case, the argument reduced down to “well, not for me” which is likely a form of denial
If you're a woman and it's either prince charming or bust you're going to most likely end up alone. You decide what you want to do.
If you're a man and expect women to jump all over you when you're not taking care of yourself and cannot hold a conversation + don't want to improve to become more sexually attractive you're going to end up alone.
Honestly it is quite staggering how easy many fellow men find it to blame women for all supposed dating unfairness, but most do not even a basic own effort (or do so once and then give up when it doesn't work). Take care of yourself, have some hobbies and dare to talk to new people. And stop blaming others or the system or an amorphous and diverse group like women which make up more than 50% of the population for your own unhappiness.
I believe I have provided robust citations throughout this thread, and am happy to consider any data you might have refuting those citations; your advice blatantly ignores the data. Certainly, from a dating perspective, hygiene, emotional health, and maximizing social opportunities is important. But you will still arrive at poor outcomes if counterparties are not interested in what you offer (which I address verbosely with links in thread). Expectations are cheap to have, and the cost is borne by the party who must jump through hoops to attempt to meet them.
If aggregate female expectations are beyond what a male population cohort can obtain, what do you expect of those men? They can either grind to meet a standard they will never meet, or opt out and seek their own happiness. Is it wrong to believe someone's expectations are unrealistic? I don't believe so, that is an opinion that can be held. I am happily partnered for over two decades, the advice I give to young men is simple: rapidly ascertain if a potential partner is worth your time and energy, and move on the moment you discover they're not. If you don't want a partner, or the effort is not worth the outcome, opt out and live your best life solo. That is all you can do. ~50% of first marriages fail, and the numbers get worse for second (67%) and third (73%) marriages. Most of this is luck anyway.
(I recommend "Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are" by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-Really/...)
Seeing it in porn is what makes some men think it’s mainstream and something that their partner should enjoy, and there are many reports that it’s no longer uncommon for someone to try it unsolicited and then express surprise when his partner complains.
> Anal sex is not enjoyable? It is.
For men, yes, but women don’t have a prostate and report far less enjoyment. That doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been used for birth control (people have been joking about technical virginity for ages) but again there are many reports of women being pressured into it or having men try it without asking because those guys are used to porn stars pretending to find it incredibly pleasurable and, in many cases, not at all discussing how to be safe.
Again, the claim is not that porn is evil for showing uncommon things but the problems around misrepresentation and consent. If sites promote videos showing women pretending to find it highly pleasurable to be slapped or choked, having forceful anal sex, etc. some fraction of the men watching it are going to think that’s representative of real life. Hopefully they will talk with actual partners about what they enjoy, but that’s certainly not a given and there’s a long, ugly history of men resorting to threats or violence when they think they’re owed something.
This is another area where companies’ promotion algorithms raises questions about how much they’re contributing to a trend, too. If their design encourages studios to push boundaries harder to get more interactions, the feedback loop is no longer organic - they’re shaping the market, not just responding to customer demand.
It's the perpetual protestant bullshit that has plagued the society in US for hundreds of years now. God forbid we see a breast or are exposed to a dick or mention the possibility of inserting something into an asshole - everything will break down.