Four in ten Hong Kong people have used internet dating, according to YouGov research, while among millennials the percentage undertaking this risky form of socialising rises to nearly half, 46 per cent. New books warn about the hazards of online dating. More than half of young women have reported some sort of harassment. Many men seem to believe the anonymity of online life means they can behave poorly and women who do online dating deserve little respect. The brave new world of online dating is a culture of dysfunction.
Despite the popularity of online socialising seven out of ten Hong Kong people would not want to admit they had met their partner online. They’d be too embarrassed, according to YouGov. Among dating sites, Tinder gets the highest ranking for fame and respectability. It allows couples to connect if they both swipe right to each others’ profiles. Next for popularity and respectability are Match.com and Lovestruck, which try to link long-term relationship seekers. Lowest ranked are CLINK, Happn and Her.
Meeting total strangers for blind dates is now normal and two new books lay out their female authors’ experiences, good and bad — Nancy Jo Sales: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno and Laura Friedman Williams, Available: A Memoir of Sex and Dating After a Marriage Ends. The more salacious a book is the better it sells. It might be called the Portnoy’s Complaint syndrome. The two new books are reviewed in the FT Weekend.
Nancy Jo Sales writes about how, after a breakup, she plunged into a world of sexual photos, ghosting and creepy messages. Although she found one satisfactory relationship, the overall experience was dehumanising and a sham. “The tech industry’s colonisation of dating has changed human behaviour so quickly it seems we are losing the ability to connect on our own, to court and spark.” The result of tech’s conquest of dating is loneliness. According to Pew, over half of young adults in the US say they do not have a steady romantic relationship.
Nancy Jo is frank about her own unwise sexual behaviour. She appears to believe inviting strangers to her house for unprotected sex is part of the 2020s hookup culture. The idea is the internet is a foreign land allowing people to act in ways that they would never otherwise countenance now feels outdated. “The division between the internet and the real world collapsed a long time ago.”
In Available, Laura Friedman Williams is equally open about her flings with strangers. After her marriage broke up she found that dating and being unshackled from wifely duties was far more fun than being married. Laura writes that tech companies are not in the dating business because they want to hook people up and make them happy. They’re there to extract all the sensitive data they can about you and exploit it to make money. Dating apps mean that it has never been easier to meet new people but they have also led to a culture of disrespect and harassment. The apps have changed the search for relationships and sex, but not for the better.
Laura Friedman Williams, Available: A Memoir of Sex and Dating After a Marriage Ends: The Borough Press, ISBN-10: 0008395934, ISBN-13: 978-0008395933
Nancy Jo Sales: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno: Legacy Lit, ISBN-10: 0316492744, ISBN-13: 978-0316492744
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