1. Gen Zs polled on DatingAdvice.com surveyed 1,000 people, compared to your 136 responses. I appreciate the effort, but your personal experience in studying cheating attitudes across Gen Z on Substack doesn't hold a candle to established large-scale sample sizes. In fact, many other studies conclude the same, with even higher sample sizes. Regardless of such studies, the majority of Gen Z's incapability of being in monogamous relationships can be deduced from social phenomena like the alarming decline in birth rates, hyper-sexuality, the growth of platforms like OF, etc. To add to this, your Substack readers are likely to be the minority of Gen Z-ers that haven't fried their brain cells to read an article in its entirety in the era of 3-second tiktoks.
2. "i just hope they read long enough to see that data was pulled from ashley madison." I'm unsure about the point you are making here. Of all the platform users who have signed up to cheat on their respective partners, 59% were Gen Z, compared to millennials, for example. It looks to me that we are seeing a trend here consistent with Gen Z having a higher inclination to cheat.
3. "if you think indulging in sexual content is cheating, then sure, our generation is doing it at olympic-level standards" - this is a key issue in Gen Z's attitude towards dating, which has quickly evolved to absurd standards like physical and emotional cheating, with the latter considered 'actual' cheating among men. Every few decades, particularly in conjunction with technology and social attitudes, the goal posts keep shifting. What is considered cheating is now considered wildly subjective, which was largely objectively understood in the mid-1900s. For example, today, would it be considered cheating if your partner is sexting with ChatGPT? The convergence of extreme liberalism with bespoke technology, in my opinion, will only make matters worse.
Regarding points 1 and 2, the big difficulty with all of this is sampling bias. I spent a few minutes digging around on google and I couldn't find any info on who the gen Zs that datingadvice.com polled. If they were subscribers to datingadvice.com, then already you've got a problem. A certain type of person is likely to subscribe to a site like that, same as a certain type of person is likely to read long form content on substack.
The other wrinkle here that makes things difficult is that older generations are just not online in the same spaces that zoomers are. Ashley madison might be populated by zoomers, but that doesn't necessarily tell you anything about attitudes/actions towards cheating. All it tells you is how cheaters of a certain generation like to cheat. I bet all the boomers and gen xers are using craigslist lol.
Regarding point 3, yeah, thats a tough subject. It deserves its own essay.
The same arguments you made regarding sampling bias also applies towards this poll made for the purpose of this article so I’m unsure how it makes it “pretty clear… that the increase in online rhetoric doesn't really correlate to an actual increase in cheating”
As I mentioned, you don’t even have to investigate such polls to conclude that Gen Z is much more inclined to cheat mainly because there are more than one ways to cheat which wasn’t the case until a few decades ago.
Secondly, there is more context required for boomers, Gen X. For example, while they are more likely to not be online, they are also the more religious compared to Gen Z which naturally leads to a decline towards these proclivities.
Right, we cant really draw any quantitative conclusions here. But when I talk about that correlation between IRL cheating and pro-cheating content online, I'm speaking categorically. You say gen Z is "much more inclined to cheat"; I'm saying that categorically, that increase does not linearly correlate to the amount of content that's being put out about cheating. The most meaningful piece of data in stephs piece imo is the question about how often you *hear* about cheating, because that significantly cuts through the sampling bias (people tend to have diverse social circles whether they want to or not). The fact that those numbers arent wildly high, while the uptick in content is wildly high, is what led me to make that statement about the correlation.
Categorically speaking, the phenomenon is more prevalent online than irl.
Regarding comparisons to other generations, i agree that the waters are too muddy to meaningfully draw many conclusions. I would imagine that regardless of cultural factors, young people are more inclined towards infidelity in general, just due to their libido and lifestyle.
There is absolutely a gender way. It's just incredibly one-sided, with one side beating, raping, assaulting, murdering and oppressing the other for thousands of years.
"No real gender war" lol, turns out normal people don't hate each other! Woo!
Interesting, nicely done on this piece. Regardless of whatever concerns people might bring up about sample size/bias, seems pretty clear from this that the increase in online rhetoric doesn't really correlate to an actual increase in cheating irl. A marginal increase in cheating is manifesting as a massive spike in cheating related content/discourse (or vice versa). Maybe the mismatch will close over time, as the social media brainwash takes effect and infidelity spikes... but I doubt it. The trend will probably die off as the people consuming all this content get older/wiser and realize that they don't want to hate the opposite sex their whole lives.
There are so many factors that contribute to someone's proclivity to cheat, it's always tough to try and correlate it to a single variable. I wonder what other fidelity-correlated factors gen Zers might be more/less exposed to, and how that fits in to gender relations for them as a whole. But that topic probably deserves its own piece...
the reality goes something along the lines of: content creators and platforms have a decent understanding of the psychology driving engagement, and the flavours of sentiment on the menu are anxiety, spite, schadenfreude and desperate need for in-group validation.
people often simultaneously exist within several demarcated social spaces, each with a different (often mutually exclusive) hierarchy of values. they have to at least acknowledge, if not genuinely hold, multiple contradictory understandings of the world.
end result often looks a bit dissociative, compartamentalised, sometimes nihilistic or disengaged, focused on utilitarian-sociopathic ‘self-optimisation’ as whatever is left to exercise control over (wellness girlie, rules and lists, guinness book of records, doctors without borders, etc..)
none of this helps in fostering and maintaining quality interpersonal relationships, romantic or otherwise. the crisis of trust towards institutions is mirrored on this, more personal level as the inability to trust in good faith of another person.
Everybody spend so much time using big words to make themselves sound smart when really we’re just talking about: “I’m rubber, you’re glue.” Adult online playground style.
Having never encountered these memes before, they seem pretty in line with the type of stuff that comes up on men's Reels/TikTok feeds (and used to come up on popular message boards before then). That is, edgy jokes that people play up but don't actually reflect how they act in real life. Still unfortunate for people to LARP as racists/mysoginists/cheaters online (and I'm sure a non-zero number of them end up changing their attitudes for the worse after being exposed to this content) but this has been happening for forever.
'It's only cheating unless I do it' is not an indicator of nihilistic humour borne out from too much irony. It is the single most agreeable maxim for a generation that was forced to love themselves.
I'm not sure the "gender war" is an excuse for bad behavior.
If she'll announce her intent to cheat on you in order to retaliate against the "i hate my girlfriend" guy, why won't she *actually* cheat on you to retaliate against him as well?
Vulnerability is GAY. REAL men bottle up their feelings and drink until they piss the bed.
Guy gets it
Fark yeah bruz
The online hyper “masculine” and hyper “feminine” that suggest gender wars are just closeted angry bisexuals
Interesting read but:
1. Gen Zs polled on DatingAdvice.com surveyed 1,000 people, compared to your 136 responses. I appreciate the effort, but your personal experience in studying cheating attitudes across Gen Z on Substack doesn't hold a candle to established large-scale sample sizes. In fact, many other studies conclude the same, with even higher sample sizes. Regardless of such studies, the majority of Gen Z's incapability of being in monogamous relationships can be deduced from social phenomena like the alarming decline in birth rates, hyper-sexuality, the growth of platforms like OF, etc. To add to this, your Substack readers are likely to be the minority of Gen Z-ers that haven't fried their brain cells to read an article in its entirety in the era of 3-second tiktoks.
2. "i just hope they read long enough to see that data was pulled from ashley madison." I'm unsure about the point you are making here. Of all the platform users who have signed up to cheat on their respective partners, 59% were Gen Z, compared to millennials, for example. It looks to me that we are seeing a trend here consistent with Gen Z having a higher inclination to cheat.
3. "if you think indulging in sexual content is cheating, then sure, our generation is doing it at olympic-level standards" - this is a key issue in Gen Z's attitude towards dating, which has quickly evolved to absurd standards like physical and emotional cheating, with the latter considered 'actual' cheating among men. Every few decades, particularly in conjunction with technology and social attitudes, the goal posts keep shifting. What is considered cheating is now considered wildly subjective, which was largely objectively understood in the mid-1900s. For example, today, would it be considered cheating if your partner is sexting with ChatGPT? The convergence of extreme liberalism with bespoke technology, in my opinion, will only make matters worse.
Regarding points 1 and 2, the big difficulty with all of this is sampling bias. I spent a few minutes digging around on google and I couldn't find any info on who the gen Zs that datingadvice.com polled. If they were subscribers to datingadvice.com, then already you've got a problem. A certain type of person is likely to subscribe to a site like that, same as a certain type of person is likely to read long form content on substack.
The other wrinkle here that makes things difficult is that older generations are just not online in the same spaces that zoomers are. Ashley madison might be populated by zoomers, but that doesn't necessarily tell you anything about attitudes/actions towards cheating. All it tells you is how cheaters of a certain generation like to cheat. I bet all the boomers and gen xers are using craigslist lol.
Regarding point 3, yeah, thats a tough subject. It deserves its own essay.
The same arguments you made regarding sampling bias also applies towards this poll made for the purpose of this article so I’m unsure how it makes it “pretty clear… that the increase in online rhetoric doesn't really correlate to an actual increase in cheating”
As I mentioned, you don’t even have to investigate such polls to conclude that Gen Z is much more inclined to cheat mainly because there are more than one ways to cheat which wasn’t the case until a few decades ago.
Secondly, there is more context required for boomers, Gen X. For example, while they are more likely to not be online, they are also the more religious compared to Gen Z which naturally leads to a decline towards these proclivities.
Right, we cant really draw any quantitative conclusions here. But when I talk about that correlation between IRL cheating and pro-cheating content online, I'm speaking categorically. You say gen Z is "much more inclined to cheat"; I'm saying that categorically, that increase does not linearly correlate to the amount of content that's being put out about cheating. The most meaningful piece of data in stephs piece imo is the question about how often you *hear* about cheating, because that significantly cuts through the sampling bias (people tend to have diverse social circles whether they want to or not). The fact that those numbers arent wildly high, while the uptick in content is wildly high, is what led me to make that statement about the correlation.
Categorically speaking, the phenomenon is more prevalent online than irl.
Regarding comparisons to other generations, i agree that the waters are too muddy to meaningfully draw many conclusions. I would imagine that regardless of cultural factors, young people are more inclined towards infidelity in general, just due to their libido and lifestyle.
Would you want to date a gal who literally posted about how empowering cheating is?
Like at some point it eclipses hope and just becomes about self respect man
zoomers are having less sex, it only makes sense then that zoomers are cheating less, or at least not in the same ways as generations past
hi
There is absolutely a gender way. It's just incredibly one-sided, with one side beating, raping, assaulting, murdering and oppressing the other for thousands of years.
"No real gender war" lol, turns out normal people don't hate each other! Woo!
Interesting, nicely done on this piece. Regardless of whatever concerns people might bring up about sample size/bias, seems pretty clear from this that the increase in online rhetoric doesn't really correlate to an actual increase in cheating irl. A marginal increase in cheating is manifesting as a massive spike in cheating related content/discourse (or vice versa). Maybe the mismatch will close over time, as the social media brainwash takes effect and infidelity spikes... but I doubt it. The trend will probably die off as the people consuming all this content get older/wiser and realize that they don't want to hate the opposite sex their whole lives.
There are so many factors that contribute to someone's proclivity to cheat, it's always tough to try and correlate it to a single variable. I wonder what other fidelity-correlated factors gen Zers might be more/less exposed to, and how that fits in to gender relations for them as a whole. But that topic probably deserves its own piece...
enjoyed reading this as a gen z guy
the reality goes something along the lines of: content creators and platforms have a decent understanding of the psychology driving engagement, and the flavours of sentiment on the menu are anxiety, spite, schadenfreude and desperate need for in-group validation.
people often simultaneously exist within several demarcated social spaces, each with a different (often mutually exclusive) hierarchy of values. they have to at least acknowledge, if not genuinely hold, multiple contradictory understandings of the world.
end result often looks a bit dissociative, compartamentalised, sometimes nihilistic or disengaged, focused on utilitarian-sociopathic ‘self-optimisation’ as whatever is left to exercise control over (wellness girlie, rules and lists, guinness book of records, doctors without borders, etc..)
none of this helps in fostering and maintaining quality interpersonal relationships, romantic or otherwise. the crisis of trust towards institutions is mirrored on this, more personal level as the inability to trust in good faith of another person.
Everybody spend so much time using big words to make themselves sound smart when really we’re just talking about: “I’m rubber, you’re glue.” Adult online playground style.
Ok, that's it, I'm never dating anyone.
Having never encountered these memes before, they seem pretty in line with the type of stuff that comes up on men's Reels/TikTok feeds (and used to come up on popular message boards before then). That is, edgy jokes that people play up but don't actually reflect how they act in real life. Still unfortunate for people to LARP as racists/mysoginists/cheaters online (and I'm sure a non-zero number of them end up changing their attitudes for the worse after being exposed to this content) but this has been happening for forever.
'It's only cheating unless I do it' is not an indicator of nihilistic humour borne out from too much irony. It is the single most agreeable maxim for a generation that was forced to love themselves.
I'm not sure the "gender war" is an excuse for bad behavior.
If she'll announce her intent to cheat on you in order to retaliate against the "i hate my girlfriend" guy, why won't she *actually* cheat on you to retaliate against him as well?
The I hate my gf trend on twitter is what caused the bf trend