There are so many things you can do with a partner that don’t cost money and will make permanent memories.
Running though the streets at 3:47 with a big knife and 5 dollar mask from pop up Halloween store
She said she wanted a guy that would chase her so…
“Don’t run, I just want to admire your skull”
AM or PM?
24 hour clock is the standard so AM
What time zone are we thinking?
Cucking. Gloryhole. Orgy. Swinging.
Or you know, going grocery shopping and making dinner at home.
It’s still gonna cost $200 but you’ll be set for a few days at least.
Or you know, potluck orgy where the cost of the meal is spread out over multiple people? You’ll still have leftover and you can reduce the amount of dishes if the rule is “no sex ‘til the sink is empty”.
Yeah but on the first dates you gotta try to impress a little right, don’t want to come off as too poor or cheap (depending on circumstances, 2 students in exact same situation is different than older working adults, for example)
If the girl is impressed by how much you can spend on food is it really worth impressing her at all?
Wait till you hear about engagement rings!
This feels like a capitalistic idea to convince people thay they need to spend money to find a partner or people to be with. Dating can have many forms and you can get to know people in many different places. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to talk to people in hobby groups or go take a walk/drink a coffee with someone
Plus a shared interest is a great start to a potential relationship. If you have nothing in common, how can you expect to get along well with each other.
Nah, coffee date. No pressure, easy to hear each other, easy to split bill and easy to leave if it’s not going well.
Yep coffee date first, dinner date second if the coffee date goes well.
There are other fun things you can do on a first date that don’t cost money too.
This
Impress your date with your creativity and passions.
- Lay on a rock and find constellations
- Walking tour of city
- Explore college campus
- Attend an inexpensive Community players’ theatre
- Free concert in the park
Why is anyone spending that much on a date? FFS, you can find plenty of great, cheap eats in NYC. You just gotta look. Husband and I routinely go into Boston to dine and have never broken 65 bucks for food.
Husband
Well yeah, you’re not it
Why do peacocks have such ridiculously inefficient feathers? Bird tail feathers can be as little as 1 inch long.
If someone expects me to pay a massive amount of money on a first date, that woild be a dealbreaker for me. Why should I reinforce any traditional gender roles in a crumbling capitalistic society
Different people exist
I know, but it seems short sighted to me to accept only a single possibility for dating which involves spending a lot of money
Straight up I went on a drinks to check how we vibe date last week, super simple, 5 beers total, two orders of wings as apps(so 12 wings), $80 before tipping $20. Not to mention the haircut I could’ve put off had I not had a date which was $60, and the gas I used getting there $5. Even if I tipped my personal minimum for a server at 20% that’s over $100. I don’t mind paying for a first date because it’s every woman is potentially putting their life on the line by meeting a man they don’t know alone for however long it lasts, but I used to could plan 2-3 first dates over a week, spend less, and get more food and drink.
Cite your sources
doesn’t mean they exist in abundance or in your area.
i’m sure some humble ice cream date lady exists for me, but she probably lives in another state. where I live women think you’re a jerk if you want to take them out on a cheap date, and if’s not a ‘nice’ date unless it’s $500 or less. and yes, they look at the tab and judge you by how much ‘spend’ you are putting out.
I’m gonna say this… and I’m a married hen, but if that’s the mentality of women today, christ, no wonder so many end up desperate cougars.
You habve no idea the number of women I see in their late 30’s still trying to catch a guy.
Not all, by any means, but a shockingly high enough number that I do notice…
marriage rates are plummeting.
Which is financial suicide. Those tax breaks for being married really add up and you can save $$ waay faster.
Bingo. It’s the ones stuck in the gender and conformity roles getting plucked the hardest.
Nuts to that.
because it’s do that or date nobody.
I date. 80% of single women expect traditional gender role dating. the other 20% of women don’t date.
#1 deal breaker women hvae with me is I don’t spend enough money on dates to impress them, even when it’s $100-300 dinners. They expect $500-1000 dinners, weekend get aways , and international vacations. all as part of the ‘dating’ process. because that is what social media has told them is what they ‘deserve’.
But are you interested in someone that wants this? Is that someone you want to have as a partner?
If no, then there is no point in spending so much.
If yes, there is truly not really another way except spend a bunch.
Putting so much emphasis on money and wealth is a thing very popular in the manosphere and around social media. It isn’t that widespread in reality. It also depends on where you meet people. If you meet them at an expensive hobby meeting like golf or something, it’s pretty likely that they want someone who is willing to spend money.
Do you know women platonically? Maybe ask them what they want on dates(doesn’t mean you have to ask them out, just to get a different perspective), see if that matches what you perceive.
No, that’s why I’m single. I cannot find a lady who doesn’t have these very expensive expectations for dating her. I haven’t met anyone like that since 2015, over a decade ago. The world has changed and so have people’s expectations.
in 2015 rent in my city was about 1600 for a one bedroom apartment. Now it’s 3200. in 2015 women I met were happy to go get ice cream and you could go out for a beer with them for $10. a dinner date cost maybe $50. nobody i met ten years ago demanded that ou take them on international vacations as part of dating, that was for a long term anniversary or something… now it’s an expectation for 3-4 months of dating.
it’s not 2015 anymore. it’s 2026. prices have doubled or tripled for everything since then. people’s expectations for life and dating have changed. social media barely existed in 2015, now it’s everywhere and inescapable.
It is widespread in reality. I’m meeting these women in the real world and this is what they demand of me. It’s what women I meet, even friends of friends, demand of men. and they all complain we are broke losers, because we can’t meet their expectations.
The women I meet who don’t demand this from men are already married, and their husbands are paying most of the bills…
also my 17 year old newphew, has the same issues. his girlfriends who are his own age, dump him for not taking them out to expensive dates and dinners, w/ his 15/hr part time job… he had two girlfriends and both of them demanded expensive dinner dates, and he said ‘i can’t afford that’ and now he has decided to give up on dating entirely because he doesn’t see the point in wasting his money on it and he knows he can’t date without spending lots of money he doesn’t have.
when I was his age I was taking my gfs out to movies and chili’s for $10-15. I used to take my girlfriends to a ‘fancy’ dinner and it was like $30-40. now teenage girls demand think they deserve $200-500 dates. he was talking them on 50-100 dollar dates and they thought he was cheap and ‘low effort’ I was making 10 bucks an hour, he is making 15… for me two hours of work paid for a date, for him it would be 20 hours.
the issue is the math more than anything else. in the 2000s life was cheap and dating was easy. now life is expensive and dating is super hard
Interesting, maybe it’s also a country difference. In germany the reality is very different. Most people I know don’t spend that much money and it’s a common thing to split the bill on the first date, so I assumed it wouldn’t be extremely different. Maybe the people in your area just have weird expectations idk.
No, I’m not it but I am a representative of what the successful gambit can result in.
You represent men looking to find a steadfast friend that can become a partner for your life, yes?
The “game” as it is being played is screwing you. (if I am correct about what I’m reading that others in this thread have written) What you don’t see, is that you have time on your side in a way that women do not.
(Truthfully, most men get so much tastier as they head towards 40… you’ll find out in time…)
Some golddigger insists on you dropping hundreds of dollars for a date? No. Refuse that. Any relationship with a woman like that won’t last anyhow.
Don’t waste your time or mental energy.
These are the EXACT women that will end up desperate cougars panicking as their biological clocks and looks tick down. You don’t want the women that peaked in high school. Hig maintenance, high bullshit, high drama. Nuts to that. It’s not a game, it’s a lifelong partnership you are looking for. You will end up a plucked (henpecked) bird if you don’t refuse to play it…
I thank my own rank stubbornness that the whole web2.0 social media horseshit had passed me by. No insta, fb, tiktok, threads, twatter… so I’ve missed most of that poison (not that I’d do much more than make fun of it…) and have missed the toxicity that it spews.
Save your money and energy for someone that will step up to being your partner in life (and a bit of fun crime).
No plucked birds, thankyouverymuch.
I’m married to a woman I fell for when we were 13 in the 90s. Every expensive date I’ve ever been on has been for my benefit too.
Other people have different priorities and are made happy or secure by different things. As long as it’s all consensual and not harmful, horses for courses. It’s not that deep
Fr, 200$?? like WTF?? For 200$ you can just find yourself a good expensive hooker and you save yourself the time and effor LOL But to be real, just maybe, dont go out with random golddiggers and basic girls. Personally, if its not a 50/50 or each one pays their stuff; its a red flag. And you can easily spot if its gonna be that or not from the tinder profile pic lol
Damn bro stop telling on yourself
For 200$ that would be my thought process lol. I’m not spending 30$+ on a random meeting with someone im not even sure i’ll click with.
How about spending $30 to eat something good while meeting a new person? You talk as if dates were simple transactions where you pay for the possibility of having sex with someone. If that’s dating for you than you’re right, just go get a hooker.
Dudebro is having a redditor moment. Glad to see it getting called out here.
escorts in my city are closer to 400-500/hr to start, plus you have to tip them too. so 2 hour date is going to run you $1000, plus the cost of food and beverage.
I can’t imagine how this is true. Must be no drink, no apps, no dessert, and mindful choices on entrees. Because just an entree at a regular ( not fancy) place in my town is 24-32 bucks and that’s not for the nicest dish. A drink is 8 to 25 bucks depending on whether it’s a cocktail. Yeah, your spouse is fine with a quick meal with no add ons, but for a date, where the point is to kill time together, relax and get to know each other, lingering over a dessert and having a drink or two to loosen up is kind of the point.
Obviously you can agree that your first date should be going out to get coffee to see if you click, but that’s still going to be 50 bucks after two to four drinks and a couple of scones.
Yes… and no.
I’m going on my 41st year with the husband, and thinking back to when we first met, and started hanging out together and dating… It was never about the money. We packed lunches and went on picnics, took road trips and went hiking and only occasionally went out to eat. The first time we met, we were in a bar, and struck up a conversation. We’d hang out with mutual friends and chill playing frisbee or catch at the local park. (We both still have the gloves we got as kids in high school!)
In the long run, it’s not about how much money you can spend trying to impress each other, or having a good time be defind by an experience created by or bought from other people… It’s about how much time you want to spend together, it’s about having conversations, and when those moments you have suddenly not go the way you planned, you roll with it and find a way together, to make it work and have fun regardless.
Best time we had was on a trip into Boston to go to the museum… Got stuck in traffic behind a road accident and sat for an hour, joking with each other and laughing at everyone else also stuck in traffic having freakouts over it. Him mangling the lyrics to songs on the radio and throwing out terrible bad dad jokes and puns. That was the moment I realized this guy sitting next to me was a keeper.
If you like each other and are easy in that company, it’s not going to matter if you’re in a fancy restaurant or not… and at that point why waste the money?
What I’ve found that makes a relationship into a lifelong adventure aren’t the things that can be bought, they’re the moments that are unexpected and personally yours.
You’re looking at this through the wrong lens. People aren’t spending money trying to impress someone, they’re spending money because that’s what the world has become. Every single one of those that you mentioned still costs money and everything has gotten more expensive.
Edit: Plus, I believe when articles and stuff talk about this, they’re specifically talking about going out to a restaurant or something similar like the movies, etc.
Third spaces have been increasingly monetized and monopolized in the past 2 or 3 decades, and CoL has added pressure on top of that. Boston is lucky because it’s an old city with some great parks and avoids some of the issues that modern cities have (and that’s not to mention the problems outside of cities). If you want to see what a modern US city is like, go down to the seaport - you know, the part of Boston that everybody hates that basically has nothing going on unless you’re spending money. According to this article, 100 million people in the US - including 28 million children - do not have access to close-to-home parks. That’s almost a third of the US who have to spend money just to touch some grass. And gas is closing in on $5 a gallon, so forget those road trips. Even the MFA is $60 for tickets for two. Burgers are about $20 each now, and drinks are even more. Just a cheap meal can run you up to $100 very quickly.
Regardless of what you’re doing, if you’re meeting somebody in a third space it’s getting hard not to spend a fair chunk of change, and even “cheaper” options are still just that - cheaper by comparison. For every date night someone is having at home, someone else is buying $300 concert tickets.
…that’s what the world has become…
No, that is what you’re letting the world become. Don’t passively accept any social conformity - esp. when it demands larger and larger amounts of capital.
You let it get this way when you accept it as such. I’ve never made much money, (nor has the spouse) never saw spending money as an option to coincide with dating, (and no, I was not coming from the obnoxious angle that the man has to pay…) so when I started hanging out with the person I eventually would marry, there was no notion that a date involved anything other than hanging out.
Window shopping, coffee and conversation… hell bring a thermos with your own coffee and pack a meal.
(at this point, neither of us drinks alcohol - I was putting out the recycling back in 2009, and saw the beer bottles and cans and had the epiphany that it was an awful lot of money spent on something that did me no good whatsoever. Naah, fuck that shit. Done. A moment of revelation that my husband latched on to after yet another one of his friends drank themselves to death a handful of years ago… when you hit your 50’s and start to lose friends to booze… it’s an eye opener - red warning flags - for sure…)
I guess what I’m seeing in what you’re saying is that there is some informally formal rules for dating that involve spending ever larger amounts of cash… and that what I have found, in finding that perfect person, was that there are no rules to the dance.
If how everyone “dates” has become a cash grab based on expectations of what you’re “supposed” to like to do… Naah. Push back on that. Honestly you do not have to follow any path laid down before you. It’s up to you to change the dance steps.
Step outside the box. You have way more agency than you realize.
That’s all very lovely but I think you’re missing the point of what I’m trying to say.
I’m not saying anyone is dropping loads of money to impress anyone, I’m saying going out in most any context costs loads of money without even being “impressive”.
Obviously a hike and a picnic is a great date! But it’s reckless and irresponsible as a first date. You could end up murdered. For a first date you’re likely meeting in a public place. Heck, even in your own example your first date was in a bar, which now a days is a dozens of dollars experience for just a few drinks, much more if you’re buying for two or it’s a nice bar, or if there’s any food involved.
I’m saying even for frugal people (hell, my husband and I first got to talking in a thrift store through a mutual friend!) dating is expensive, and it’s not about preferences, it’s just that eating out at all or even just drinks or coffee not at home is very pricey.
…Heck, even in your own example your first date was in a bar, which now a days is a dozens of dollars experience for just a few drinks…
Pro tip for anyone still reading this far down into the thread: If you’ve a hotel - like a Sheraton, Hilton or any higher-end lodging… Check out their lounge. The cheapest drinks in the city I live in are at the hotels - they generally will price cocktails 35 to 50% lower than the bars and clubs in the area, simply to catch a little bit of the cocktails action… (also the hotels all have beautiful lounges)
Last time I went to New Orleans I stayed in a hotel on the edge of the French Quarter and drank for one fifth of the price that the drinks outside cost. Got good and oiled THEN headed out to hear live music.
In my town the cheapest drinks are at the casino. They want you drunk, and they want your money in the slots
LOL! Yup.
I went gambling ONCE, with my grandparents who loved to go to Foxwoods. Played the slots, lost 20 bucks in a few minutes and got ZERO frisson from it.
Am like “People get a charge from this…?” as I was sitting there watching the others in the aisle poke the spin button on the machines they were playing, like they were robots…
I had more fun the rest of the afternoon playing video games in the arcade. It took me a LOT longer to go through 20 bucks there.
Lifestyle inflation.
where do you eat, fast food places? mcdonalds?
i live in boston and for me to eat alone it’s $65 minimum at any average place. a nice place it will be twice that.
hell dinner for two at tasty burger will run you $50 now for two drinks two burgers and a large bascet of fries.
Off the top of my head - we will go to Chinatown and hit the dim sum joints, Hai La Moon - meal for two - less than 60 bucks - with tip.
MFA has days where the price is discounted and you can pay what you want… https://www.mfa.org/visit/free-and-discounted-admission
Cheap shit is everywhere. All you gotta do is do a bit of digging to find it.
Chinatown is gross. MFA discounted day is mobbed and miserable.
I can also get free library passes to museums… but guess what, i’m not a cheap skate. I can afford to pay and I do.
But acknowledging the prices of things isn’t complaining about them, It’s acknowledging them.
LOL! I guess it’s all realtive to what you’ve experienced of a place…
Chinatown is fricking spic and span compared to what it used to be when it was the Combat Zone in the 70’s and 80’s and you could watch the whores strutting up and down the sidewalk in front of the Naked Eye Lounge - with it’s neon eyeball sign blinking open between a pair of women’s legs. Used to be an insanely great Pho restaurant across the street from that.
ok, so you are like 60+? right, so your experiences are totally out of touch by about 20-30 years…
65 bucks I realize this is NYC but goddammit. This is like 3 peoples worth if food and drink here…
Hear Me Out: This capitalist/traditional attitude towards dating radicalized men into the manosphere. For the last three years this anti-“modern women”/anti-feminism movement has been rising across the internet; and about 75% of their resentment is just about distaste toward dating apps and paying to take a girl out for dinner.
For years I was laughing at ( and then after they helped Trump’s re-election, ripping my hair out over ) their complete refusal/inability to see any other alternatives to connect with people besides the most shallow idea of a date. Perhaps these folks just completely unimaginative, or have no personality to offer, and nothing to provide besides the traditional chivalry of this generic “provider” fallback that is unfeasible for most in this economy.
I wish I could just sit down with one of these men, and just ask them “Why not find women elsewhere?”. Delete the dating apps and go find a hobby, join a volunteer organization. If you’re such a “traditional conservative masculine man”, go to a Catholic church or alt-right fascist rally. It’s a whole lot cheaper than flying abroad to sugar-daddy at a favorable exchange rate. (Passport bros)
Though… the article does say: “More than half of Gen Z adults reported spending $0 a month on dating in a 2025 Bank of America Better Money Habits survey.” and mentions folks rejecting dating apps because they prefer real interactions…so maybe folks are waking up.
Why not find women elsewhere?
This is the same vibe as “go hand out your resume in person”. I’m old enough to remember when most people didn’t have dial up. Things have changed.
I’m an elder millennial that has and continues to do all of this shit they are saying in other comments, I still meet more new people regularly that I actually want to talk to again through dating apps. Third spaces are dead and people have over the past 10ish years stopped being interested in expanding their circle by happenstance. I’ll even admit to this myself.
In general we don’t trust each other, and there’s a very real chance that any person you meet could be a fascist even in left leaning cities. This has understandably made women especially more leery of the men they meet even when men are explicitly feminist because the men that hate women lie about their beliefs exacerbating the underlying problems even more.
People don’t understand that we’re not just experiencing political and economic collapse, the culture we all grew up learning how to live in no longer exists. This is a symptom of that
most ‘liberal’ women I have dated the past 5 years were closeted conservatives. don’t assume men are the only secret MAGAs
anyone of them with half a brain knows they have to lie about it to get other people to like them. every closeted conservative woman I have met never told me until like date 3-5, usually after we had slept together and she could let her guard down.
entirely seconding the rest of this. I am actively social in hobbies and volunteering. I have never ever met anyone to date that way. Everything is apps, and the occasional random approach at an event or bar or etc. Dating and socializing are two very different things these days. The last time i dated a ‘friend’ i met through other friends I was in college, 20 years ago. as am adult it’s been nothing but dating apps for most people I know, and the other people met someone at their job.
Wasn’t trying to say it’s just men, it’s happened to me with maga women, although I would imagine the rate is much lower from that subset. Lots of white women liberals that don’t give a shit about intersectionality or capitalisms role in their own oppression .
But we’re on the same page overall, dating is broken, some will still get lucky but it’s bleak out here. Unless it’s explicitly for single people to meet each other.
it won’t get better until the economy gets better, which, as we know, nobody seems to want to fix. they just want to make it worse so the rich get richer and the rest of society gets worse.
historically marriage and child rates are follow economy. when the economy improves people get married and have kids, when it’s bad, coupling and children rates plummet.
He gave a couple good ideas, join a service group, take Salsa lessons, go to local events. There’s a tree planting event in my community this week. You won’t meet people if you go once, but if you keep going people will recognize you. This is called “making friends” and sometimes that leads to romance. Things in your community still happen like the olden days.
i actively volunteer for the past ten years. single people dont’ go to these things. it’s all married people. making friends doesn’t lead to romance, it leads to making friends with people who have no interest in dating you because they are already coupled.
it’s also time your spending not pursuing romance, which means less time for that. dating takes a lot of time and effort. it’s not magic, it’s more like exercise. yo uahve to be constantly exercising to stay in shape, and you have to be constantly dating and pursuing romance if you want romantic life.
Wow… please don’t take this as an attack, it is not intended as one. Your post made me seriously sad. I couldn’t imagine living a life where I had to treat dating and romance as “exercise” and something I have to plan into my calendar.
I hope you find what you are looking for.
it’s not any different with jobs. you have to constantly be on the hunt for a new job and working constantly beyond and above to get new skills if you want to remain employable. the day of getting a job and sitting back for 30-40 years and taking it easy are long gone. we live in a hyper competitive society, esp in the major cities. dating is the same, everyone is endlessly trying to ‘upgrade’ their dating prospects and if you aren’t ‘improving yourself’ constantly you are seen as a loser who deserves to be alone, just like if you don’t have multiple degrees or training certs at your job you are considered under performing.
10-15 years ago things were different. now, if i don’t get 2-5 new certs each year at my job, I’m considered under performing and if you want a raise, you better be getting that 5, 2 is the bare minimum effort. did i mention that the certs now expire every 2-3 years now? they used to be considered ‘lifetime’ but they ended that in the late 2010s, so they can keep the gravy train going. in 2010 when i was hired, having 2 basic certs was considered really great, now if you have 2 for a starting job, you are considered a failure and unemployable, you need to have like 6-10 to even be considered. oh ad the starting pay is like 15% more than it was when I started 15 years ago, even though the COL is now 2.5x what it was.
We are all working 3x as hard, for half as much as we used to get. Dating is the same. dating is a job market for romance. in my city, women expect you to typically making 200-300K a year to be even considered ‘worth’ their consideration. even though statistically, men in my city have an median income of 80K. so you nee to be making triple median to be considered a ‘date worthy’ guy.
i make about 150K a year, own a place, volunteer, have run my own small business, have two advanced degrees, active hobbies, very fit endurance athlete, etc. and when I go on dates i basically get asked why i am not more successful in life and that I lack ambition and drive and that my life is too ‘lazy’ because I’m not working 80 hours a week. also get told I’m ‘cheap’ because I don’t like going on dates that cost more than $200. It’s insanely brutal dating market. but i really want a family so I keep trying, but every woman who is interested in me basically expects me to be a multi-millionaire who has no life outside of work and dating her.
Don’t get me wrong but I think we might live very different lives. I’m also dating people and also having romantic relationships but I never… considered that path you are taking. It sounds exhausting.
Sounds like you have some experience here. Would you like to share more about it? How long have you been doing this? How many dates has this resulted in? How many relationships?
Well, I’m married so it worked at some point. I’m involved with my community and the community is your dating pool. The other guy is right in a sense, it’s mainly coupled people you meet at events but the more people you meet the more people meet you. You have to make friends before you make lovers. My wife and I have absolutely tried setting up people we’ve met with people we know. My personal opinion is that people who “never meet anyone” are probably assholes and people steer clear of them.
Okay well you didn’t answer any of my questions.
Well, I’m married so it worked at some point.
How long ago was that?
Things have changed especially because we all are becoming less social. Getting to know someone in person is still much more effective. Talking to strangers without pretense is however less accepted.
amen to that. even irl the level of presumption and pretense is insane. i quit a lot of social activities because i was becoming depressed dealing with the arrogant and delusion most people are living with about other people. I had so many occurrences of being going on rants about ‘people like you’ or bashing people who aren’t exactly like them. it was so miserable.
people were not like this 10 years ago. social media has warped their brains. people are so hateful and angry now.
Less tolerant, I also notice it with myself.
I love to read. I used to have cool dates talking about books. I haven’t had one of those since 2018!
Now when I talk about books, I get lectured what a racist male supremacist I am for not reading Toni Morrison or similar. (I had this happen to be like 10x times in the last few years) It’s insane. I can’t even enjoy my hobbies anymore without them being weaponized against me for not being ‘woke’ enough or something. Or I get told reading anything other than business self-help books is ‘a waste of time because it is not productive’.
God forbid I just… enjoy books because I like stories and it’s fun. No, now if you read it has to be for some political virtue signalling thing or for ‘self improvement’.
But it doesn’t though. Dating is something you do to find people to be with IRL. Dating apps are made to keep you engaged and noy to lose customers. If you want to find someone to be with IRL, you gotta look IRL and it helps going somewhere, where people have similar interests
datings apps are how you use them. if you ask people out irl, and they say no or ignore you, the app has nothing to do with that. it’s the person on on the other end not being interested.
They are statistically not made for actually finding someone. If they were they wouldn’t be profitable. The goal is always to keep people using the app and spending money. If you are straight, the ratio of men to women on the average dating app is skewed against you if you are male and in your favor if you are female.
Dating apps are just the way for capitalists to make money off dating
Cool, then why is that more the half of new couples meet on dating apps?
You don’t use apps. You don’t know what you are talking about. It’s not a conspiracy. They are free. I don’t pay for any apps and I regularly get dates from them. Do most women who message me, not meet up with me? yeah, because they aren’t interested in me. That’s their choice.
If i only did in person dating, I might go on one bad date a year. at least with apps I get way more dates, and half of them are decent, even if they don’t go anywhere. i went on like 20 dates last year, a few were bad, but 18 were from apps, and one of them became a short term thing for a month, but we were not politically or financially compatible so I stopped seeing her, plus she hated my cat.
How are dating apps still a business if they are made to lose their customers?
I don’t think they would still exist or be profitable for the companies owning them if they were actually good at getting people together.
I think more than half of the new couples meet on dating apps because the opportunities to meet people IRL have been heavily reduced since the pandemic.
they sell your data. they sell ads. they have optional features you can extra for that are expensive and some people use them. i have been using dating apps for 15 years now. they haven’t changed that much. it’s just that they are all swipe apps on your phone now. but the business model has been the same since the 2000s, it’s basically freemium service like free to play online games are. and it’s profitable because while the vast majority never pay, the small number who do, spend a lot, and are called ‘whales’. the business model is all about getting the whales. people like me, who have never paid once in a 15 years, aren’t really making them any money.
again, you clearly dont’ use apps and you’re just making stuff up.
I’m not an expert on manosphere but I think it’s just a radical manifestation of a broader anti-feminism movement that spans beyond the internet, beyond young people and beyond dating. It’s not attitudes towards dating that radicalized men but a more general feeling of losing power and privileges. Listen to conservative men of all ages and they will complain that you can’t molest women anymore, you can’t date rape and you have to very careful because people now tend to believe women when they accuse of you of abuse. The manospere is just how the push back against those changes manifests on the internet. In real life it’s one of the issues fueling the surge of far-right parties.
Dating has been a big gateway for the manosphere though. Women can actually support themselves now, on a large scale, even to the point where women are surpassing men in education and getting better paying jobs out of school than many men are getting.
So, in a real sense, for possibly the first time in history, men are actually having to be more than just a stable provider to attract women. And many are choosing to become bitter and resentful instead of doing things that might actually improve their chances. The manosphere offers a “lose 15 lbs in 3 days fraud diet” but for dating. And people look for shortcuts constantly.
I generally agree but you think dating means asking women out and trying to prove to her you would be a good life partner while for a lot of man dating meant getting some girl drunk and fucking her in the dorm bedroom or spiking her drink at a club and fucking her in a bathroom stall. This is the dating they have lost because of feminism and progress and now want to get back to.
Remember Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing and Micheal Wolff’s accusations? Kavanaugh tried to rape her and absolutely nothing happened to him. This is the power man used to have and now are trying to get back. The manosphere sect leaders can’t say it out loud but it’s the core of it and all the anti-feminist movements.
Reading these last three comments — I was taking “dating” to mean forming a stable relationship because they’ve been throwing out words like “stability” and whine about divorce; but you’re probably right. The “GamerGate” rage that funneled into the manosphere has very rapey vibes, and that’s about fictional video game women. Seeing the rise in misogyny-inspired attacks; increased joking about rape and abuse; and that online rape guide CNN did a report on… I’m very scared for our future, especially for the future of feminine Gen Z and Gen Alpha folks.
This has been going on for much longer than just three years.
anti woman sentiment online has been around far longer than three years
I’ve been online for a loooong time. From my recollection: it hit its peak with the “anti-SJW” / “anti-feminist” rage during GamerGate in the mid 2010s. It was well on the decline until Andrew Tate and the TikTok manosphere accounts which copied him brought that rhetoric back; now targeting real world women instead of “woke” gamedevs and script writers.
can confirm
Capitalism did ruin dating. I’m pretty sure the CIA does everything in it’s power to prevent you from seeing the problem is the fact that you depend on the market for everything.
what? with my current girlfriend we had an ice cream and a walk. these americans are crazy.
Haha same. We went for a walk and had a coffee.
American dating is is stuck in the 1950s.
It’s really not stuck in the 50s, it’s controlled by tech. Some tech lord could step on your ability to get a date on any online dating, which is most of dating now, outside of friends hooking up friends.
We could have a long conversation about how online dating sucks, and has gotten worse as companies maximize revenue and the oligarchy has tightened control of everything.
No, it’s not.
Nobody is controlling online dating. Stop with the conspiracy nonsense.
The issue with online dating is everyone wants the best they can get, but they can’t get it, so they ignore realistic options and chase unrealistic ones. And they double down on this after every bad relationship, thinking they need to ‘raise the bar’, but all they do is price themselves out of the market by having expectations that like only 1% of the dating pool can ever measure up to.
People do this to themselves. Like the article says, their expectations for first dates are too high so they just give up, but what they won’t do is ‘lower their standards’. They won’t accept dates that are less than $200 because they ‘know what they are worth’, even though very few partners can realistically afford such dates. Not to mention, the bar/cost only gets higher with time. If you expect a $200 first date, you expect a $1000 date a month or two later. So basically the only guys who can afford to date are finance bros or tech bros with massive incomes and wealth.
I had a short term girlfriend a few years ago, who broke up with me because our first ‘nice’ date was only $300. She expected me to spend $500 and really said if I wanted to impress her I should have spent $1000. This was just a dinner. I made about 90K a year at the time, and she made 70K… she basically expected me to spend 1/4 of my monthly pay on a single dinner…
fast forward 5 years and shit has only gotten worse.
Match . com bought almost all of the dating sites. And the rest have consolidated.
If you think that the tech lords didn’t set up ways to hurt people they don’t like from their perch, or that the government and their connected pals don’t have them do that for them too, you are quite mistaken. They did it because they can, it’s as simple as that.
You are shown people they decide, you are shown as they decide, by their black box calculations, and their laughably bad matching of people based on their flawed personality tests.
That said, while the tech lords can step on some schmuck surreptitiously, what you describe is far more common. Dinner and a movie and drinks is just so expensive now, it’s not even an option for many people. Your costs in your example I consider astronomical, good riddance to her, that personality would leave you for someone richer first chance she found.
Also people just have an idea of what they want and exclude people based on their criteria in a way they wouldn’t be so quick to do with people they meet in person, which leads to everyone lying even more, which makes it worse.
These sites aren’t geared towards finding mates for life, but for keeping people paying monthly subscriptions indefinitely.
Listen, friend, you’re sounding a bit unhinged in these comments. You’re going on about how all women want masculine men driving pickups and going on $1,000 dates and all… Just because you had a shitty ex a few years back doesn’t mean all women are like that.
None of the women in my life are like that. I’m betting you’re considerably younger than I am but none of the women I’ve ever chosen to surround myself with have ever been like that.
No, I’m reporting my experience of dating for 15 years. You can tell me I’m unhinged, but my experience 100% matches the articles. I’m in the trenches.
I’m not armchair dater who scoffs at the reality of the thing because they have no experienced it.
I’m glad you’ve had that choice. I’m not you. I know people who got married at 22/24, and people who had never had a boyfriend/girlfriend in their 50s. It’s almost liek the world is full of different people, with different experiences. And maybe you should listen instead of thinking your life is the only one that is true and everyone else is is doing it wrong if they aren’t you.
For a moment I thought you were talking about your previous girlfriend.
It’s not everyone. My first date with my husband, we went to a modestly priced restaurant. Looking at their menu now, it’s $20 a plate for a lot of food (plus tip). We had them cater our wedding. But that was back in 2015. Also, we’re a gay couple, not sure how that has influenced dating habits.
Then stop going out for dates. Who convinced you that capitalism has to be a third wheel on your dates? Y’all too dependent on market capitalism to provide for you.
Where are they gonna go? We destroyed most of our third places, or made them so expensive to extract maximum profits.
Dinner is expensive, movies are expensive, small friendly local shops have been disappearing in favor of sterile corporate ones.
For a lot of people the only option would then be a home, which doesn’t work great for a lot of reasons.
I legitimately forgot how bad it is in America. I’m like why don’t you take the train to somewhere for a nice walk? I forgot you guys can’t really do those things with your infrastructure.
deleted by creator
Non-matinee theater prices aren’t that bad. Just don’t load up on giant ass overpriced popcorn and sodas.
Coffee dates are a thing. They’re expensive for coffee, but if you break a hundred at a coffee shop, you’re probably going to the hospital.
Public parks exists. Ice skating rinks aren’t that expensive. Book stores.
Ice cream!
Pizza places have somehow stayed inexpensive.
Hell, the gold standard first date: getting a beer at a bar is not that expensive, still.
If your only idea for a date is a high end fancy ass multi course dinner, with cocktails, then yeah, you’re gonna have issues…
Those aren’t dates. those are friends/family activities.
How many women think it’s romantic to take her to a movie at 12pm for the cheap matinee show and then take her out for a $3 coffee afterwards? dating is about romance. romance is going to a evening film, and think a nice dinner afterwards. she wants you to take her away fro a weekend to a nice bnb in the coutnryside or a beachhouse, she wants to go traveling with you to another country.
You know how enjoys 12pm movie and ice cream dates? my nephews when they were children. women don’t want to be treated like 6-12 year old children. they want to go on adult romantic dates. and those are expensive.
yeah, after we are married and pop out a kid or two, i’m sure she’d like a 12pm movie and going for ice cream, but that’s not courtship.
Reading through a load of your comments in this thread and I think you really just need to lower your own standards. I promise you that not all women are so very money-centric as you are making them out to be.
You’re describing very established couples style dates, not just started dating dates.
You continue chasing those materialistic people who refuse a low key ice cream/coffee date, I guess. It’s your wallet.
If your only way to keep a woman interested is throwing money at it, then that says a lot about you.
Most women want to be treated like a person, not a trophy to be won by hitting an arbitrary budget threshold. Romance is an interaction between two people. The activity doesn’t much matter if you’re actually connecting.
My first date with my husband, we went for a walk at a park…
Yeah, my partner of 10+ years went on multiple dates to museums, parks, and botanic gardens in the first month. We ate delicious Mexican food after, all super cheap.
This was great because now it’s a tradition for us to go to museums on every vacation.
museum entry where i live is $50 now. yeah 15 year ago it as $15-20. i used to get a yearly membership for $60, now that membership is $200.
mexican dinner used to be $10, sure, but now it’s $15-20 for a burrito at a cheap place, and a nice sit down mexican place is going to be $25-30 for a burrito.
so many people here are out of touch with how dating and going out costs are in 2026. you are living 10-20 years in the past.
My museum dates were taking advantage of free museum Tuesdays for residents.
You have stated you live in Boston, I was there last year. Beautiful city with so many inexpensive museum options, plus the massive park that had events going on every day that I was there and the historical walks were great. Try some of these:
- Harvard Museum of Natural History: $15 per person, $75 individual membership
- Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: $22 per person, $75 individual membership
- The Institute of Contemporary Art: $20 per person, $65 individual membership
- Museum of African American History: $15 per person, $35 for basic individual membership with one guest, $75 for the same with 2 guests
- The Sports Museum: $18.47 per person
- USS Constitution Museum: $15 per person
- Harvard Art Museum: free
- Boston Public Library: free. This one was my absolute favorite, we spent 4 hours wandering the halls looking at paintings and sculptures, I could have been there all day
Many of these have discounted admission for residents and members. There is also the Boston Aquarium, which is $39.95 per person, but that can easily be turned into a multiple hour event and membership is only $79 per individual. They aren’t all $50, you just have to look at their websites and check for discounts.
Women don’t want to go on museum dates. they are considered cheap and low effort.
Wow, let’s go to the BPL and watch homeless people masturbate to porn on the public PCs, SO ROMANTIC, so charming! Let’s go to the constitution and hang out with a sweaty crowd of poorly dressed tourists! wow, so romantic! lets go to the aquarium and enoy the stink of penguin shit and hordes of unsupervised kids running around! wow! so romantic!
How do I know? I ask them out to them and they tell me I’m cheap and they deserve better and they reject the idea and then reject me for suggesting it. What do they always say yes to? going out for dinners and cocktails…
Most of those aren’t even museums, btw. They are like single rooms, and some of them are just straight up gross on the inside. The MFA is $30 for a basic ticket, and more for special exhibits. That’s more a of a legit museum date that I would take someone on. Two tickets for a special exhibit is $80, because they include lots of fees and you have to book them online because they are time and sell out.
Please tell me more how you don’t date and know nothing about my city. You were a tourist. You don’t live here. You got the mile high tourist experience. You think I should pretend to be a tourist who thinks Boston is amazing by going to our crappy cheap museums… but in my world everyone has been to these places dozens of times already and they have no interest in going to a Harvard Natural history museum they went to when they were a teenage on a school trip… so they can see the exact same rocks and stuffed animals they saw 20 years ago. A lot of the places you are suggesting are crappy and unchanging and boring to a local resident and I don’t even want to go to them myself.
Yeah, when I travel I go to lots of museums, it’s fun. But the vast majority are one and done, as a local doesn’t repeatedly visit them because, nothing changes. Aside from the MFA, which is the only museum we have that really rotates things regularly, due to their massive collection.
I know you are trying got ‘be helpful’, but what you are suggesting dates for teenagers or out of town tourists. Not working urban professionals in their 30s/40s. That’s what I am and that’s who I date. The last time I went took a woman on a cheap museum date I was like 25 and broke and so was she, but I’m not going to take a 35 year old woman to a museum for children and she is going to think I am a man-child weirdo for suggesting we do that. They are grown ups and they want to do grown up things, like going out a nice restaurant.
Hi! I have a vagina and I identify as a woman, I am also a working professional in my 40s and I live in an urban area. I love museums and I think they make perfect dates and I often go to the same museums multiple times. The Boston Public Library was beautiful, there is an entire section that is dedicated to art and history. I didn’t see a single thing that you described during my walk through. There was a live taping for the local NPR station at the cafe though, that was pretty cool to watch.
I’ve noticed your complaints up and down this thread, I’ve also noticed them around the threadiverse for a while and I am beginning to see a pattern. You tend to be aggressively argumentative, denigrate women as a whole/complain about “woke”, refuse to see things from other people’s perspectives, and don’t listen to anyone’s advice. Have you ever heard the phrase “if everyone around you is an asshole, then maybe you’re the asshole”? Perhaps part of the issue is your behavior and attitude.
Anyway, you can look for ways to change or stay angry, doesn’t make a difference to me. Either way I hope you have a wonderful day ✌️
cool. every first date i have had in the past decade ended with the suggestion we go to a very expensive restaurant afterwards suggested by her, and when I decline or suggest a more modest place she gets very angry about how I have ruined our nice date.
nice walks isn’t a thing most single women are interested in anymore. it’s regarded as ‘not making an effort’, and effort is regarded in the expense of the dates. even bowling, axe throwing, are now the ‘casual cheap date’, but those are all expensive now. renting a bowling lane in my city is $50 per lane per hour. add some cheap beers and food and boom it’s over $100.
Be good company and time spent anywhere becomes worthwhile. It has to start somewhere or capitalism will continue to price us out of even the simplest of human experiences.
this is what people don’t get.
20 years ago you could go to a movie and dinner for $20 and walk around the city and do free stuff.
Today it’s $150 bucks and you can walk around and look at homeless bums in the park, because all the free arts programs are mostly gone, because the artists all need to make money to pay rent.
LIFE HAS CHANGED. nothing is cheap anymore and free stuff is far more limited, but people’s expectations for life have not changed. they still expect traditional 1950s lifestyles. including the aspiration for a single family home and two kids… but you have to be a millionaire to afford that lifestyle now.
“Hey baby, why don’t you come upstairs so we can avoid the capitalist machine of going out?”
most women aren’t socialist/archaist. they exist, but they are a tiny minority.
every punk show is like 300 dudes and 10 women.
I was ridfing on the idea of “dating” being capitalist because it’s expensive sometimes by implying that sex is cheap.
shitty sex is cheap. good sex is expensive
I don’t figure that’s so, and thank goodness. Some things are still affordable.
depends on the date, some are super materialistic, expects one person to pay for everything.
Pro tip: Don’t date them
So date nobody? You are assuming there are other kinds of people to date.
There are…
What a stupid thing to think everyone is the same.
last year they had a poll on NPR in my city. 80% of women said men should pay for the first date and it should be an nice dinner. only 60% of men said they should pay for the first date.
the vast majority of people are the same. if only 20% of women single women agree with me that means I have very few choices to date. and frankly, it’s only getting worse year after year. this same poll 10 years ago was much power.
it’s a general truth that in economically difficult times people revert to conservative mindsets, overwhelmingly.
statistically there is a growing gap in the dating world between people’s expectations and the reality. largely fueled by social media. and the vast majority of people use it.
I don’t use social media, it makes me a pariah among most people I meet. They dont’ think ti’s admirable or good in the real world, they think it’s weird and snobby.
So fyi, not every woman who lives in your city took that NPR survey.
lots of women don’t date. by definition they aren’t in the dating pool. plenty of men don’t either.
the ones in the dating pool, are the ones i can date.
just like i don’t date married women. who also didn’t take the survey.
you can only date who is available to date and who is interested in dating you. for most people, that’s not a lot of people. it’s a small percentage of people and if that small percentage of available people are very similar… they are going to have very similar attitudes and expectations.
I’d love to date some low key easy count low expectation lady, but they don’t exist in my city among the single dating pool, because in order to live here you have to be a highly driven professional, because easy going people can’t afford $3000/mo rents.
You keep running into the stereotypical “date”, which is a dinner and sometimes includes a movie. You actually can do better with just like “hey I’ve been wanting to try bouldering at this rock climbing gym, want to check it out together?” Or similar. Don’t think in terms of dinner dates. Think in terms of activities you would like to do with your significant other long term. My wife and I currently take adult gymnastics classes and almost never go out to dinner.
1 - you dont know what the word “vast” means, do you?
2 - “its only getting worse every year” Source???
3 - you are using social media right now, largely fueling this misconception you are actively complaining about.
Some has become most thanks to social media influencers telling people they need to go on expensive dates.
Holy shit. And here I thought that the price of a cup of coffee was less than $10.
Because that’s what you do on a first date - coffee and chat, either at the coffee house or on a walk near it.
Spending $$$ on a first date is a great way for any guy to get hosed, and just sets up unrealistic expectations. You don’t do anything expensive until several dates in, once compatibility and mutual interest have been confirmed.
coffee house dates are awful. they are not romantic or and they are in the middle of the day so you have to go on a weekend.
coffee places are not open at night during the week anymore.
Coffee house dates are realistic. Many places are open well into the evening, especially chains. And while privacy isn’t high, neither is the cost.
And the point of a first date is not to spend money, but to gauge compatibility and interest.
Any guy that spends big bucks on the first date is setting himself up for failure by putting up a high bar that the woman is loathe to go beneath in the future. He will be caught in the “dancing monkey” trap, forced to implement ever more expensive displays just to stay above that bar.
By keeping the bar low in the beginning, a man filters for quality and substance and against being treated like an ATM. Those women who are just foodies or who have unrealistic expectations self-select themselves out of contention, leaving only the serious, well-adjusted, pragmatic, and realistic women still at the table.
Wait, you guys are getting dates?
i get a few dates a month, yeah. it’s easy. just be tall and look rich.
just be tall and look rich.
Well… shit.
fake it until you make it.
Picnics are free. Especially if you Yogi Bear yourself the food.
I like this idea except it’s probably unwise to accept food from a stranger on a first date
What if she see’s me steal the picnic basket, to prove I didn’t roofie it?
Unnecessary, Women allready trust the bear.
Just do chocolate, strawberries and champagne or smth
Women tend to want to meet at least initially where there are lots of other people around
You can have a picnic in a park on a weekend. They don’t have to be somewhere secluded.
Fair
So do men, so do men. So I guess PEOPLE like to meet for the first time in public.
Sure, but it’s more often a prominent factor for women in where to go when starting to date someone.
Food bank?
“Before we eat, I just need to make a quick bank withdrawal…”
“wHy ArEn’T tHe YoUnGeR gEnErAtIoNs GeTtInG mArRiEd AnD hAvInG cHiLdReN??”
marriage and children is more expensive than dating, by far. full time childcare costs are 2-5K per kid, for about 4-5 years before they can get into kindergarten. if one partner makes less than 50-75K, it makes no sense for them to work.
nordic nations with lots of subsidies also have kow birthrates
if you give women choice, (education, careers etc) they mostly choose 0, 1 or 2 kids at most, all of those choices are below replacement. For every woman choosing 0, you need another choosing 5 just to stand still.
If you take away choice, keep women mostly at home, use religious indoctrination (quiver full) and insist upon a patriarchal society sans birth control you’ll raise the birthrate. It’s why many conservatives are starting to talk about banning birth control, where once they frowned on teen moms, they’re now advocating for it.
True, but unless you or your partner are against the very idea, most prospective relationships start with dating, then are moving toward marriage, children, or both.
some well-off professionals in nyc, have basically started ‘plantonic co-parenting’ arrangements.
as in, two well-off couples produce a child, but are not romantically involved, the child is basically a small business they co-own and invest in… and the child is not a product of love, but a product of financial investment of each partner…
basically child production without dating, marriage, or any personal relationship between the parents.
that’s where we are today. the concept of a loving family is now being replaced by purely transactional relationships that are treated as business arrangements. can’t wait to see how those children turn out… but hey at least they will have trust funds for their lifelong therapy about why mommy and daddy didn’t love them or each other, or anyone but themselves. and mommy and daddy will probably also want them to be good little business executives who have no soul anyway, because having human attachments would get in the way of their work-life and their corporate ladder climbing!
That’s why you can communicate early into dating that you don’t want to have kids.
yes, and mostly 1 or 2 kids at most which is a falling birthrate, for every woman that chooses 0, you need another to choose 5 basically just to stand still.
Relatively new to dating via apps as an elder millennial freed from a life time of monogamy. (Only been at it 6 months)
Who are these people who want to go on a first date that involves being in a situation like a restaurant?
Seems like with apps people skip the whole courting thing and jump straight in to something that should only be for once you get to know each other a bit better.
For me, first meeting is a coffee or a drink at a well populated cafe or bar. Maybe a walk after somewhere busy in the city.
Maybe I’m just old and out of touch.
deleted by creator
going for a coffee or a walk was never a popular thing to do on a dating app. it only ever was during the pandemic when everyone had to be outside
going for a drink or dinner or an activity, was. all my first dates are drinks, movies, food.
it’s just that going out 5-10 years ago was cheap, now it’s expensive. but that’s true of everything.
A movie seems like a terrible idea for a first date, you spend all that time watching the movie instead of actually focusing on each other. Coffee is one of the best things to do.
it’s actually good, because you have a shared expereince to talk about after.
you don’t watch the movie and go home. you TALK about the movie.
So the first date is like a 3 to 4 hour affair minimum? Coffee can be as short as an hour, and I can dip after 15 if it’s not going well. Much more time efficient
No? It’s like an 2-3 hours. Most movies that aren’t marvel movies are like 90m long, then you chat for an hour over a drink or food. then you go home.
i dunno where you live, but most restaurants/bars here are very fast because they are tryign to turn over customers as much as possible. most coffee shops have a 15-20m seating limit now too. you can’t just order 1 coffee and sit there 2 hours and if you spend 2 hours for a single drink the wait staff will ask you to leave.
Average feature film length has been 120 minutes since the 2000’s, and it’s been trending upwards since then. Even if the movie is only 90 minutes though, you’re still gonna be in the theater for at least two hours anyways, between standing in line for popcorn/snacks/drinks and sitting through previews. And if you’re gonna follow up with a drink or food anyways, you could just… skip the movie lol
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to police people’s first dates, and if both parties want to go see a movie and get a drink after, great. In today’s dating ecosystem though, for the majority of people, the prospect of sitting in a dark room with a near stranger for 90-120 minutes is uncomfortable, and usually not a very good first date idea.
Cool, I love movies. I enjoy doing going to them and going on dates to them.
I’m not most people. I enjoy a lot of thing most people don’t. And I hate a lot of thing most people do enjoy. Like going out to expensive dinners and on expensive vacations…
No, you’re right. People don’t date for relationships, maybe some think they are, but really it’s just having a dinner experience and potentially getting laid and moving on.
The mainstream apps owned by match group as well as bumble appear to have a lot of people like you describe. I am sure there are decent people on there also, it’s just the signal to noise ratio sucks, as well as the whole gamified bullshit of the apps themselves. I uninstalled Tinder/hinge/bumble not long after trying them and I have no plans to return. I suspect people who would put up with the way tinder functions are the same people who would put up with forced ads on their phone and smart tv etc. I would not be a good fit for people like that.
I’ve had a lot of success on less mainstream apps by simply being honest about what I’m looking for (ENM / casual ongoing) and have found many with the same views.
They’re decent people, they’re just falling into the trap of seeing an ad and thinking it can help them. Of course, the ads are just designed to extract as much cash as possible from you but that’s our culture i guess.
You shouldn’t spend any money on her until you’ve had sex, so she doesn’t feel pressure to put out after an expensive dinner. Ideally, she should put out before the date even begins, just to make her feel more secure.
This feels like the PUA equivalent of giving a dog a pill in peanut butter, you’re killing me XD
That’s like 30 minutes with a mid-tier escort.
How do you know?
Wow, I don’t know, like, some sort of, like, interconnected electronic information repository I can query?
I can even find out the atomic weight of gold! Let me prepare my stack of punch cards and I’ll being them to the data center tonight. I hope I don’t drop them!
How do you not know? ;) j/k, but I think occasionally the prices do pop up in some posts or articles
Where the fuck are people going out? Dinner and drinks with my wife and kids rarely breaks 100.
Sure… but how many drinks can your kids really put away?
Where do you live? Because in LA it’s extremely easy to break the $100 threshold for a single person to eat. That’s literally an appetizer, a main course, and a drink or two.
I live in DTLA now. I just spent less than $15 on a burger and a blueberry cider at Glory Burgers.
I swear people have terrible financial skills.
because that’s not a restaurant, it’s fast food.
Pretty sure it’s a restaurant. But I guess it depends on your definition. And also, most fast food won’t take 10+ minutes between when you order and when you receive your freshly cooked food, while letting you sit at their al fresco tables drinking a cider enjoying the nighttime weather.
People are bad with their money.
or they have money to spend.
Soooo you’re comparing a burger and beer place to somewhere you’d get appetizers at.
I’m not talking about influencer type places to hang out at like Sur, I’m talking like fucking Wood Ranch, dude.
Chain restaurant, a steak, an appetizer, and 2 beers is like 75 bucks, man. For a fucking chain restaurant.
I went to the Yard House at LA Live. Spent like $55 on a burger entree, beer and tip. Yes, people aren’t good with their money. Choose better.
Not in one of the most expensive places to live in the country, assuming it’s the same everywhere, that’s for sure!
A family of 4 getting a meal, am appetizer, and two drinks each for the adults will break $100 at a decent place. I’m sure there’s much cheaper places near you as well. Not every meal needs to be 5 star.
where? at applebys? or some causual chain restaunt?
where I live, two beers, and a hamburger and frees is 60-70 bucks. each beer is 10-12, the hamburger is 25-30 and tax and tip add another $15
you want something nicer, like a chicken or salmon dinner? that will be 35-40 bucks, beef will run you 45-50. wine or cocktails will run you 15 each minimum. a slice of cake is $12.
and those are cheap/average places. a fancy restaurant will charge you $55-70 bucks for a hamburger, and most entrees will be near/over $100. cocktails will be $25-30.
This family chain restaurants like applebys are some of the most overpriced joints out there. So, no.
only places i can think of where a family of four could dine for less than $100 would be rural diners 2-3 hours a way in the middle of no where. and you’d all be eating pancakes and eggs or sandwiches. becaue each meal would be like 10 bucks. even out there something like steak and eggs is more than $20 now.
even if i drive an hour way to a small suburb town prices only really drop about 10%
diner in the city will run your 15 bucks for a stack of plain pancakes, $20 if you add fruit and toppings. want a full stack, eggs, and bacon? that will cost you $25.
What a dystopia you must live in. The rest of the country isn’t like that
it’s not a dystopia, it has one of the highest qualities of life in the country.
best education, best healthcare, great job market, etc. people want to live here super badly. they just can’t afford it unless they are well-off or lucky.
but with high standards of life, come high expectations and high costs.
I have traveled around the USA. ‘average’ usa is full of processed junk food, sedentary lifestyles, and stripmalls. everything is driving everywhere, even to get a carton of milk. the ‘culture’ is mostly shitty music and sports and people are very provincial and anti-education, anti-culture, and anti-art. I grew up in such a community. Never would I ever want to live in such a place ever again.
God I go on yearly trips to Florida for work, and you want to talk about a dystopia hellscape?
You have no idea what you’re talking about, lol.
Go look at the menu for a restaurant in LA called Wood Ranch. It’s a chain restaurant. If you’re not picking the most expensive thing each category, you’re looking at 75 dollars plus pre tip pre tax if you get what I mentioned.
That’s nowhere near 5 star dining in LA. Lmao.
It’s all over the place right now.
I can get a meal for wife and girls for $150 at BJs, including a couple of drinks, but when we start straying up it gets above $200 real quick.
Fuck Doordash, I hadn’t used it in a while and we briefly considered it this weekend. Priced a meal for 5, from a local Mexican place, no booze, and it was $230.
depends on the girl/guy, if they are vain, or expect the other to pay for an expensive meal.
The last time I spent that much on a night out was my first anniversary, and we got way too drunk at the bar we got married at (not cheap but not expensive) and ordered two pizzas because we were hammered and their pizzas are amazing.
Thank fuck I married a cheapass
GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLL!!
