this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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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.
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.
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
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
Bingo. It's the ones stuck in the gender and conformity roles getting plucked the hardest.
Nuts to that.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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 $50 now for two drinks two burgers and a large bascet of fries.
Off the top of my head - we will go to Chinatown and hit the dim sum joints, Hai La Moon - meal for two - less than 60 bucks - with tip.
MFA has days where the price is discounted and you can pay what you want.. https://www.mfa.org/visit/free-and-discounted-admission
Cheap shit is everywhere. All you gotta do is do a bit of digging to find it.
Fr, 200$?? 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
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 $1000, plus the cost of food and beverage.
Damn bro stop telling on yourself
For 200$ 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.
Everyone that liked your comment including you agree