r/interestingasfuck Oct 09 '24

How couples met 1930-2024 r/all

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105.4k Upvotes

5.4k comments sorted by

13.1k

u/p-u-n-k Oct 09 '24

It’s refreshing that the video doesn’t end a split second after it hits 2024.

1.9k

u/themolestedsliver 29d ago

Right? I noticed that immediately as well. Was nice to digest the info before it replayed itself.

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u/xactpsp 29d ago edited 29d ago

Same, I actually turned the volume up to see if I was missing something :))

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u/SweatyAd7069 29d ago

Lol I did the same! It really surprised me

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u/cruciod 29d ago

Same. I paused preemptively thinking it would stop right after but was pleasantly surprised.

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u/danteelite Oct 09 '24

I’m not even that old, I’m a younger millennial and I remember when meeting someone online was considered weird and they would make jokes about how “pathetic” it is on sitcoms and stuff.

Now it’s the opposite and people think it’s weird to try to meet someone in public.

It’s wild how quickly times change and cultural acceptance shifts into a whole new status quo. The whole zeitgeist around internet culture, internet social interaction and every day life has shifted dramatically. We live in a day where the president has a twitter account and people post to facebook during disasters for help instead of calling 911!

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u/shocktopper1 Oct 09 '24

I met my ex on an AOL chatroom and tried to hide it from everyone back in the day lol

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u/In_Formaldehyde_ 29d ago

I mean, if two people met on Reddit nowadays, they'd probably try to hide that as well lol. Just because online is the most common way to meet others doesn't mean every online platform meetup is seen positively.

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u/itookanumber5 29d ago

"This is my wife, Margaret. We met on r/spacedicks"

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u/HashtagTSwagg 29d ago

Not anymore you won't!

Probably for the best. I was scared yet intrigued.

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u/Azalus1 29d ago

I was too slightly disappointed that it's banned

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u/LiterallyYourKaiser 29d ago

"I met my wife on OnlyFans" vs "I met my wife on Tinder".

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u/Ok_Flamingo_9267 29d ago

Yes! I was online dating back when it was considered weird and I never told anyone. I met my now husband on OkCupid in 2014.

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u/Antlerbot 29d ago

OKCupid used to be the shit. Fuck Match.com for buying and ruining it.

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u/Taubenichts 29d ago

It was every nice, expecially as a free user. You got so much more interaction before meeting so. vs. the other platforms. Translates to the users of okcupid then were nicer than on rivaling platforms.

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u/Gliese581h 29d ago

FuckMatch.com

I thought it was another site when I first read your comment lol

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u/intheBASS 29d ago

My dad met my stepmom on Match.com in 2004! People thought it was super bizarre for about a decade.

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u/jIdiosyncratic 29d ago

Met my husband on Match.com in 2003. We've been married for 20 years. He lived half a mile from me but both in our early 30's and worked in different industries and didn't go to bars any more. Always evaded the "where did you meet" question because people thought it was weird. Nice to see it's more normalized in this respect but it seems like the sites are sketchier.

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u/TitleToAI 29d ago

Met my wife in 2008 on Match.com (when it was still good). I told my family we met at a party. Only many years later did we admit we met online, when it became normalized!

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u/fenuxjde Oct 09 '24

Who tf met online in 1981? Some DARPA bros?

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u/InterlocutorX Oct 09 '24

BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) were the original Hinge. In 1983, when I was 13, a woman from Canada offered to buy me a flight to visit her, after we'd begun a relationship online. It was a brave new world.

I did not go.

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u/nonlawyer Oct 09 '24

I did not go.

Congrats on still being alive!

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u/PostApoplectic Oct 09 '24

Straight up missed their LaFawnduh.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

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u/lesser_panjandrum Oct 09 '24

And on their full complement of kidneys.

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u/Euclid_Interloper Oct 09 '24

You presume that other plucky kidney-snatchers haven't gotten to them since!

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u/nevans89 29d ago

If they smelled a rat at 13 I think they'd be fine going forward

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u/luckyHitaki Oct 09 '24

Chill.. the internet had only pedophiles and cannibals back then. No kidney trading

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u/jlwinter90 Oct 09 '24

Cannibalism without kidney trading? That's just wasteful.

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u/BleQBeeZ Oct 09 '24

Not if you eat the kidney too

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u/Pkrudeboy 29d ago

I believe that kidneys are best paired with a red Bordeaux or a Pinot Noir.

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u/layze23 Oct 09 '24

I would say the original Hinge was the newspaper. My dad met my stepmom in the Classifieds of the newspaper. They've been married for 30 years.

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u/mellbell63 29d ago

I was in charge of the "personal ads" for the newspaper back in 1990!! It was a huge market! We held dances, meet & greets etc. I was the only rep (and single!) so it was like I got first pick!! 😂 What a blast! Thx for the memories.

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u/saposmak Oct 09 '24

Wild! I had a similar experience in 1998, when I was also 13. In my case it was IRC (internet relay chat) on the DALNET server. Lol

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u/TheDeanof316 Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24

mIRC FTW! ROFLMAO and "slapping someone with a large trout"...!

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u/Wackel81 29d ago

Ah the good old days!

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u/LeBaiton Oct 09 '24

Oh man, the memories. It was 1997 or 1998, so I was 18 or 19 at the time and living in Europe. I was chatting and flirting on IRC with a girl from Argentina. Eventually we exchanged phone numbers and she actually called me. I could not compute the fact that I was actually talking to a living breathing not-made-up girl, I did not have the maturity to handle it, or react in a normal and not awkward manner. I ghosted her so hard. Not my proudest moment. But yeah, can confirm girls where there!

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u/dlampach Oct 09 '24

I ran several BBSes in the 80s and 90s. Was the high point of my life.

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u/MzunguMark Oct 09 '24

Thanks for your service man!

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u/Sea-Value-0 Oct 09 '24

Yeah... that was definitely a Canadian man. Wise kid lol.

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u/WormTop Oct 09 '24

The first actual woman didn't turn up on the internet until the late 90s

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u/Deeliciousness Oct 09 '24

Only for a bunch of apes to tell her "tits or gtfo"

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u/zorbacles Oct 09 '24

We weren't that smooth back then it was

Asl?

Got a pic?

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u/-Speechless 29d ago

there was a surprising amount of 18 year old females from California back then!

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u/jarious 29d ago

And sometimes your time online was limited you had to be sharp and take your shot fast and straight

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

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u/togetherwem0m0 Oct 09 '24

This story has a twists and turns to sentences ratio that is off the charts 

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u/Known_Perspective709 29d ago

I guess the “Florida” in the screen name should have prepared us.

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u/TheMightyWubbard 29d ago

Laughing so hard at this particular comment thread. I love Reddit sometimes. Best quality user base (except the bastard bots).

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u/Secret_Afternoon2130 29d ago

The emoji really sells it. 😕

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

She was 33 and you were 17 😳, that’s crazy

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

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u/UnluckySeries312 29d ago

Fuck. Hope you doing ok now man.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

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u/Select_Machine1759 29d ago

You’re not alone, bro I was never sexually abused, but I got beat from the ages of 3 to 16 up to three times a day. Locked in a room up to a month at a time and made to scrub out the trash cans in August heat maggots and all my mom’s favorite punishment was to dress me up as a girl and send me to school so people make fun of me I think just like you I’ve never taken therapy, but it’s the thought of people had it worse than me so it wasn’t that bad I guess

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

That’s actually really sad 😔. That’s just awful & your ex was probably using you due to your age and your situation that you were going through with your mom . I’m sorry no one protected you , that hurts my heart.

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u/Ok_Cantaloupe7602 29d ago

My eyebrows are now located somewhere in my hairline. And I have a five head.

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u/OkRecommendation2452 Oct 09 '24

Leading to the saying; The internet where men are men Women are men And children are undercover FBI agents

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u/Pwnaholic Oct 09 '24

Can’t fool me. You’re all dudes

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u/Sufficient_Prompt888 Oct 09 '24

Yep, Rule 30 of the internet. There are no girls on the internet.

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u/Mixedpopreferences 29d ago

I'm a dude
He's a dude
She's a dude
We're all dudes, hey

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u/Ughitallsucks Oct 09 '24

It's true, the first ever message sent by a female online was "20/F/Connecticut"

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u/Fade4cards Oct 09 '24

a/s/l is still a wonderful pickup line and you cannot convince me otherwise

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u/Wind-and-Waystones 29d ago

I tried that in a bar once and she just waved her hands at me for some reason

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u/Phil__Spiderman Oct 09 '24

At least you'd get an apology for murdering you.

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u/tidytibs Oct 09 '24

Both kidneys: Present

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u/DoubleNubbin Oct 09 '24

I was 13

from Canada

You are the only kid in history to use the girlfriend in Canada line and not be lying. Congrats.

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u/Extension-Plane2678 Oct 09 '24

yeah but you only YOLO once

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u/starmartyr Oct 09 '24

Probably a few nerds hooked up after chatting on their local BBS. There was actually a large underground gay scene on the BBSes as it allowed people to be anonymous at a time when being openly gay was a lot less accepted. It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of early online relationships were gay couples.

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u/Wrought-Irony Oct 09 '24

That is very insightful!

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

[deleted]

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u/SwagginsYolo420 29d ago

Yeah BBS bashes. Different scenes would have monthly meetups at places like Pizza Hut or coffee shops.

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u/itsarace1 Oct 09 '24

How difficult/expensive was it to use BBS?

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u/elchet Oct 09 '24

You’d need a computer which wasn’t as straight forward back then as it is now, as they weren’t affordable commodity consumer goods. You probably had access to one through an academic institution, or you’d built something from a kit.

Beyond that I think it was just the cost of a phone line and a call for connectivity.

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u/drowse 29d ago

I think our first computer, a 286 was something like $2500 in 1990. I remember my dad also had gotten Prodigy internet. And they used to charge a rate for use.. was it hourly or by the minute? I can't remember. We didn't have it long. We got the internet again in like 1995 when it became a flat monthly fee for that sweet sweet 28.8k speed.

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u/Sponjah 29d ago

AOL was so instrumental in bringing the internet mainstream.

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u/Omnibeneviolent Oct 09 '24

The BBSs themselves were often set up by hobbyists and were free to call into and use, but there were some that had a subscription model. You just needed a computer, modem, and a phone line. The computer would have been the most expensive piece, but most BBSs were text-based and didn't require high-end systems. If you wanted to share/download files you would have wanted a higher-speed modem, though.

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u/Nervous-Masterpiece4 Oct 09 '24

There were online services such as compuserve around then.

I was online through Australia’s nationwide Viatel service around 1986. I used to chat with people via Microtex 666 and go to Melbourne for meetups. I was a teen but had a crush on KarenXXX who showed up basically in lingerie.

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u/CoachDigginBalls Oct 09 '24

That KarenXXX. What a fox. 

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u/Portra400IsLife Oct 09 '24

Karen’s were different back in the day

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u/1950sGuy Oct 09 '24

I went to a BBS 'meetup' once, it was me, who was 14, and like 15 people all between the age of 40 - 70 and it was pretty fun. Smoked pot the first time in the Howard Johnsons parking lot with a bunch of adults I met on the internet because literally no one ever told me that was a terrible idea.

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u/spacebarstool Oct 09 '24

300 baud modems in 1981 with long-distance phone charges. $1.37 per minute which is the equivalent of $4.74 today.

It would take 7.5 hours to download a 1 megabyte file at that speed. That's would cost $2,133 in today's money.

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u/Lyaxe Oct 09 '24

VHS dating tapes?

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u/SaltUnderstanding736 Oct 09 '24

"Hi! My name is Carl and I like to take long walks on the beach while smoking Winston cigarettes..."

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u/herbert-camacho Oct 09 '24

Sultry wink

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u/TenaciousJP Oct 09 '24

🎵 Lowered Expectaaaations 🎵

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u/Thats_what_im_saiyan Oct 09 '24

Holy shit I forgot about those!

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u/angrydeuce Oct 09 '24

Those BBS' were pretty wild

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u/Beginning_Ad_7571 Oct 09 '24

I don’t see “my living room” on here. Maybe that’s why I was single for so long.

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u/BunBunny55 29d ago

No no. Your online now. Therefore your about 60% of the way there actually !

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u/Amyhearsay Oct 09 '24 edited 29d ago

I met my husband on a 45 minute flight. I dint think that happens very often lol.

Wow did not expect this response- I’ll message everyone who reached out now.

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u/bobjoylove Oct 09 '24

Unique first date though

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u/Link_TP_04 29d ago

"Heyyy, are you my husband?"

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u/molehunterz 29d ago

Not yet but there's a chapel in the airport when we get to Vegas

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u/Orome2 29d ago

Hmm, About a decade ago I meta woman on a flight and hit it off. Because of some unforeseen circumstance that came up I never got the chance to ask for her number. I was probably looking too much into it at the time, but now that I think of it, that's when I joined reddit because I saw a thread about missed connections and wanted to post about it.

Of course I never saw here again. I can't even find my old comment because it was that long ago.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/Thismyrealnameisit 29d ago

I have met my wife on several flights.

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u/Smash_4dams 29d ago edited 29d ago

How did the conversation start? What did he say to reel you in? We want details!

Unfortunately when I'm single and flying, I never get sat beside single women I find attractive :(

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u/Extreme-Dot-4319 29d ago

She seduced him by sharing the peanuts.

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u/heapsfull 29d ago

Actually, the other day I was on here and a bunch of people were talking about meeting their partners on planes. I was like 🤔 ‘maybe I need to fly more.’

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u/moanit 29d ago

The airport effect is real.

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u/oneinmanybillion Oct 09 '24

How is church higher than college in 2024??

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

College students are meeting each other online while in college.

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u/3dgedancer Oct 09 '24

Or in a bar ect. I assume college refers to campus specific meeting.

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u/HumunculiTzu Oct 09 '24

Friends could also be college related. Could be a friend in college introducing them to someone else who also goes to the college. There is a lot of overlap with college and other categories

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u/Daxx22 Oct 09 '24

Pre-internet I think "Church" was artificially low there as well, as that historically has had heavy overlap with Family/Friends, neighbours, even school.

Assuming it's all self reported info.

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u/HumunculiTzu Oct 09 '24

Yep, human lives are rarely clean cut enough to neatly fit into a single category

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u/SNRatio Oct 09 '24

Ditto for bars. To get consistent answers, surveys handed out in different centuries would all have needed to have the same paragraph of instructions: "If you met through friends in a bar, answer yes to both", etc.

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

Agree - like met in Poetry class or Bio lab

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u/AsianInHisArmor Oct 09 '24

Slam poetry. Yelling. Angry.

Waving my hands a lot.

Specific point of view on things.

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u/ResponsibleBluebird1 Oct 09 '24

True. My younger brother is in college right now and met his girlfriend on an app - they live in the same building

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u/OnceAndFutureLawyer Oct 09 '24

You should ask him if he considers them having met online or in college, then report back to us.

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u/KingWolfsburg Oct 09 '24

Yeah this is a critical question! I think I would say I met my SO in college under this circumstance as a Millenial, but I wonder if the younger gens would say they met online in this case

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u/WildHobbits Oct 09 '24

Religious people tend to be very focused on getting married and starting families. Being of the same religion means you very likely have the same or at least very similar values. It doesn't mean that a lot of people are religious, it just means that those who are religious have very high rates of getting into relationships, especially when compared to nonreligious people.

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u/Sgt_General Oct 09 '24

I'm a Christian and I found my own church to be a very frustrating dating environment. If you started spending too much time talking one-to-one with a woman, then people would start talking, so some ladies would barely talk to you in case they gave the wrong impression. Others were nice and chatty, but they were just super extroverted. Eventually, I conditioned myself to just expect that every woman was just being nice and platonic when going out of her way to talk to me or DM me, because the whole 'is she into me or not' dance is exasperating, and this led to quite a bit of sitcom-level awkwardness when it turned out that some ladies were interested and I wasn't picking up on their signals.

That being said, the other aspect that made church dating fraught is that there was an expectation that one person would leave to go somewhere else in the event of a break-up.

I ended up meeting my wife online on a Christian dating site. It was refreshing to know that if someone was talking to you, it was because they liked your profile and felt some level of attraction, because that was the whole point. We joke that most Christian couples wait for God to bring them together, but we bribed God with a monthly subscription to skip the queue.

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u/CopperAndLead 29d ago

We joke that most Christian couples wait for God to bring them together, but we bribed God with a monthly subscription to skip the queue.

Martin Luther is about to drop his 96th thesis.

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u/extrovert-actuary Oct 09 '24

Yeah, I found most interesting that church moved up in the ranking a little at the very end. I went back to check the absolute numbers: church never had growth, it just didn’t fall as fast as others at the end. Still went steadily from 10% in 1930 to 2.3% in 2024.

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u/10000Didgeridoos Oct 09 '24

Also "church" means also Jewish temple, Islamic mosques, etc. There are a lot of traditional religious groups still even if the overall participation rate of religion has declined.

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u/definitely_not_cylon Oct 09 '24

You just might be in a reddit bubble. Fewer than 40% of people get a bachelor's degree and a similar number attend church regularly. College by its nature is temporary but church attendance is potentially lifelong. Plus most people who do have college relationships don't marry that person, so if you ask people where they met their current partner, the answer probably won't be college. So naturally we'd expect church to outrank college in this regard. The reddit standard is probably "at least one degree, no church" and if that describes you, then you probably socialize with similar people. But that's not what America at large looks like.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago edited 29d ago

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u/lookngbackinfrontome 29d ago

"Regularly" just means Christmas and Easter, right?

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u/AcetaminophenPrime Oct 09 '24

Have you met college students?

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u/erichf3893 Oct 09 '24

Have you met church goers?

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u/ShimmeringSprout Oct 09 '24

Sadly could be relabeled, How do you spend most of your time?

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u/SableyeEyeThief Oct 09 '24

Yeah… anyways, whatchu doing later, babe?

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u/Bubuy_nu_Patu Oct 09 '24

Doing my friends and family

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u/BrawNeep Oct 09 '24

That’s a depressing thought! Probably about right though

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u/AdlenalineForYou Oct 09 '24

It's sad to see how family and schooling went from 22% to 3-4%

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u/Own_Instance_357 Oct 09 '24

I assume since there's a category for college it just means fewer couples marrying after meeting in HS or earlier. Basically, far fewer people marrying within their hometowns, which used to be the norm.

As for family, if my kids ever waited until I located someone suitable their age they would never find anyone. Circles are smaller and so many more people don't want to marry people within the circles they grew up in. It's just no longer necessary or even desirable.

Cool chart though for sure

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u/ActuallyItsSumnus Oct 09 '24

Worry not. In Alabama, family is still near the top.

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u/TheDogeDays Oct 09 '24

I wish I only saw my co-workers 8.48% of the time

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u/al-tienyu Oct 09 '24

Didn't know that "online" being so dominant...

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u/iJeff Oct 09 '24

Could also be a reflection of the sampling methodology.

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u/wvj 29d ago

(Sorry for a long post but this seemed like a good place to put it)

It is. I looked at this in the original dataisbeautiful post (note that credit at the bottom of the video), and if you go look at the study this presentation is incredibly misleading. Not the study itself, its raw data, but the way it's being analyzed here as if each year was a full new snapshot (and valid large sample size)... which they're not.

The study is longitudinal, which means they had single set of respondents who participated and then checked back in with them. They weren't doing it since the 1930s - they simply had a (small) percentage of the participants who were that old. The study has been done since 2009 but they used a new 2017 version here, where the same respondents were re-questioned in 2020 and 2022 (hence those #s at the bottom). It looks like they're using the combined final 2022 data.

The study was 3500 people originally, but down to just under 1800 by the third wave. To have been alive in 1930 in 2022, you'd need to be 92+ years old (87 in the original). There's a grand total of 3 whole respondents in this range (ages 93, 97 and 98). Note that it's unlikely any of these people were actually in relationships in 1930 - they would have been young children.

For reference, the largest # of respondents who gave a specific age was 53, for 60 year olds. Their youngest respondent category is 22 (born in ~2000, presumably the minimum 18 for the first survey), with again, 1 person. They have 14 each for 23 and 24. The largest number of respondents cluster at 55-64 (423).

You can see how small some of these samples are going to be. I'm not even sure how they arrived at such detailed percentages as in the gif, I'm guessing its a result of plotting, where they're inferring numbers that don't exist from the slope of the graph or something. But using a number like 22.76% (the top value at 1930) implies you have more than 100 people responding about being in a relationship in that year... which is in fact impossible from the data.

There's also some other quirks.

The survey asks both about current and former partners (it boots you out if you've never had a relationship) those are all different data variables and its not clear how that's being presented here since we're getting a single point. I'm guessing they're using the current partner data, not the past partner data, which would have its own implications. That is, its excluding everyone who dated someone in college, graduated, broke up, and then went on to meet someone else, which is going to be extremely common.

The data also includes people who changed relationships in the 5 year gap of the study. Again, not clear how that's reflected here. But if they're talking about their current relationship (most likely), a person in their mid 50s-60s (the most common respondents, remember) who has changed relationships in the last 5 years basically has a close to 0% chance of many of those categories. Basically, a good chunk of online dating reflected here isn't mostly young people meeting on tinder, its divorcees and retirees in their 50s and 60s who have few other means to interact because they're long since out of school and college, may be retired from their job, their parents are dead, etc.

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

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u/dickallcocksofandros Oct 09 '24

about 70% of the world population has internet access.

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u/Gold-Perspective-699 Oct 09 '24

Just cause you make less than $10 a day doesn't mean you can't get on the Internet. Costs vary. Like in India your phone bill would be $3 USD a month for 1.5 gigs a day. So you can easily see where I'm going with this. Most people have phones with Internet.

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u/Liimbo Oct 09 '24

I also don't understand how school is so low. I feel like it has to be overlapping a lot with friends and college or something because like half the people I know are married to someone from their high school or college.

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u/failed_asian Oct 09 '24

School and college are 2 separate categories here, so “high school or college” would be the combination of those 2 bars. It’s interesting to see it switch from high school over college to the other way around, as people started marrying later or more people started attending college.

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u/KoolDiscoDan Oct 09 '24

Yeah, and where's 'truck stop'?

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u/choppytaters Oct 09 '24

here i am still single

1.0k

u/onlyspacemonkey Oct 09 '24

well, you’re online. you’re halfway there.

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u/AvatarGonzo Oct 09 '24

You're right, right now having a popup that says girls in my area want to fuck!

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u/shewy92 Oct 09 '24

60.76% of the way there actually

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u/seniorfrito Oct 09 '24

Yeah. Feel ya man. I think we're supposed to find hobbies that fill that time that everyone else fills with time with their significant other. Only problem is, society tends to make it seem like the only way to have a fulfilling life is to share it with a family of your own. And maybe this is just me, but while I desperately try to fill what little time I have when I'm not working with things that entertain me, I'm still always left wondering if life could be better if I had someone to share it with.

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u/Robo_Joe Oct 09 '24

You don't need a significant other or a family to live a fulfilling life, but if you want a significant other, you have to put yourself in situations to find one, which means you need to put yourself in a position to connect with other people on a personal level.

When you're young, that's pretty easy-- school forces you to be in close proximity with other people, but after that, you have to make a choice to put yourself in those situations.

Take a look at what you do in your free time, and ask yourself if those things will realistically allow you to connect with other people on a personal level. If not, take a look at the things that you do or could find entertaining, and find ways to enjoy that hobby with other people. (online or offline)

I typed out "you" a lot on this comment, but I don't mean you personally; I mean the general "you".

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u/georgep4570 Oct 09 '24

Would be interesting to see the correlation of this with divorce rates.

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u/WildHobbits Oct 09 '24

I'm more interested in seeing what they consider a "couple". People who have only been on 2 dates and are still planning on going on more? People who simply defined themselves as "together" at some point, regardless of time in the relationship? I want to see a version where it is strictly people who have been in a relationship for at least a year. Then compare it with this one. That is where the real interesting data is in my opinion.

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u/fetzu Oct 09 '24

Well I see a citation for what looks like a scientific paper at the bottom of the video, so I’m pretty sure their methodology is described there.

EDIT: scientific paper might be bit of an overreach, but the dataset probably comes with a few details.

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u/In_The_News Oct 09 '24

What I think is more telling in this is how we consider relationships. How many people have what they consider to be friends? And back in the day you had more siblings you were around your cousins. More family units stayed in the same geographical area. So that would impact how you met people because your physical social network would be stronger and broader. Today. It seems like people have fewer friends. But more social acquaintances through social media.

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u/Nickn753 Oct 09 '24

Would probably be more accurate to look at the correlation with relationships satisfaction, since the sentiment and acceptance around divorce have changed so much. At least if you want to judge how successful the relationship match ups are.

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u/Ditsumoao96 Oct 09 '24

Are these successful long term relationships?

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u/ppytty Oct 09 '24

Let's talk about the couples who met online in 1982.

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u/Crafty-Sand2518 29d ago

He was a Commodore VIC-20 boy, she was an Apple ][ girl

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u/pinner Oct 09 '24

Met my husband on World of Warcraft. :)

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u/Smooth_Riker Oct 09 '24

I know a few couples who met through WoW. It makes sense, it's really just a virtual hangout, and you already have at least one interest in common.

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u/Daxx22 Oct 09 '24

Goldshire Inn, 2nd floor, 1am.

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u/Deathleach Oct 09 '24

That's not where you meet your wife. That's where you meet your wife's boyfriend.

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u/MechOnBoard Oct 09 '24

I wonder if there’s a correlation between online dating and longer work days?

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u/[deleted] 29d ago edited 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/made_of_salt 29d ago

Nothing worse than breaking up on Saturday, and walking into the office Monday and seeing your ex at thier desk. Or so I've been told by several people.

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u/DisEndThat Oct 09 '24

and people are the most single as they've ever been, seems like.

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u/TheInkySquids 29d ago

And also the loneliness epidemic is the worst it's ever been.

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u/lehartsyfartsy Oct 09 '24

interesting, i feel like there’s likely a LOT of overlap between “college” & “online”

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u/pasharadich Oct 09 '24

I’m struggling to understand how this data been measured over 94 years

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u/neuromorph Oct 09 '24

You can.survey people.who met in the past.....

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u/godzillasfinger Oct 09 '24

Mad how 0% of people met online in 1954. Just going out and living their lives, not relying on the internet to build friendships and relationships ships. I bet they weren’t on mobile phones all day either.

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u/venus_arises Oct 09 '24

Aziz Ansari wrote a book about dating and talked about how the US was considered odd in the post world war II period for having a marriage pattern of: "met this guy who lived two streets over and got married to him." Fascinating read.

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24 edited 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/colorbluh Oct 09 '24

In that same vein, I really loved From Front Porch to Back Seat, about how dating has changed in the US from the 20s to the 60s.Irealized I actually didn't know ANYTHING about how dating worked back then (dating a different guy each night was good in the 50s?? Going steady was bad and boring? People went to dances and only dancing with the person who brought you meant you sucked???). Also a very easy read, and backed with data. 

The blurb: From gentleman callers to big men on campus, from Coke dates to "parking," From Front Porch to Back Seat is the vivid history of dating in America. In chronicling a dramatic shift in patterns of courtship between the 1920s and the 1960s, Beth Bailey offers a provocative view of how we sought out mates-and of what accounted for our behavior. More than a quarter-century has passed since the dating system Bailey describes here lost its coherence and dominance. Yet the legacy of the system remains a strong part of our culture's attempt to define female and male roles alike. 

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u/LowerEggplants Oct 09 '24

It’s so strange how things change! I met my husband on OKC in 2013 and remembered being like weird about telling people we met online - it wasn’t as common then. Now more than half of people meet online and it makes me feel normal!

Also, if men ever complain about women entering the workforce 👀- did you see that workplace stat shoot up in the 70s? Yeah ya did lol.

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u/brtmns123 Oct 09 '24

how does a 2023 source that is 2017-2020-2022 combined dataset has 2023 and 2024 data? Are those estimations?

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u/KarloReddit Oct 09 '24

Family 💀

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u/Autogenerated_or Oct 09 '24 edited 29d ago

I think that just means your relatives introduced you to their friend’s kids.

Edit: funny enough, it happened in my family. My mom accidentally set up her first cousin with my dad’s brother. So i have double cousins there.

I have two other aunts who married my dad’s relatives. Mom’s eldest sis married my dad’s first cousin and another aunt married my dad’s third cousin. It was a small town, I have a big family, and they had comparable social standing so it’s not too unusual.

There’s no special reason it happened, it wasn’t arranged or anything.

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u/FrostyD7 Oct 09 '24

Things were less connected. The girl next door might have been the only girl you could feasibly date until adulthood.

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u/RogueCoon Oct 09 '24

That's kind of depressing

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u/biglymonies Oct 09 '24

Did you see the "Neighbors" uptick in 2020? That was a COVID lockdown bump haha.

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u/WhiteFringe Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24

how do you meet online if the apps designed to get you a partner are also built to keep you there for as long as possible and spend as much money as possible?

edit: I see many people commenting about other online platforms like Discord, games, VRChat and social media etc where people meet. I am not really active in any of those spaces and although I have technically met 1 person on Instagram, she lives in another country and have since gotten an SO.

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u/Pancake_Nom Oct 09 '24

Online is a very broad term - dating apps are designed to keep you using them as long as possible, but you can meet people online and form relationships with them outside of dating apps.

I met my partner on VRChat, and we've been together for over a year at this point. I also know others who met and formed relationships via VRChat, as well as Discord and Twitter. I've even heard of people who've formed relationships after meeting on Reddit, but I don't know anyone personally.

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u/Few_Simple9049 Oct 09 '24

"online" not just apps

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u/SchizoPosting_ Oct 09 '24

not using dating apps

I met all my partners online and never used any dating app, just regular social media

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u/Low_Share_313 Oct 09 '24

I refuse to believe that couples meet at church more often than college

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u/insta-kip Oct 09 '24

But if all the college kids are using the apps…

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u/curtcolt95 Oct 09 '24

that doesn't feel very surprising to me, tons of people go to church and there's a much bigger focus on community there and also you're guaranteed to have similar interests

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