Hook Up Culture

In her essay, “Digital Dating: Desperation or Necessity?,” Christine Hassler defends online dating from the negative stigma associated with the trend. Despite negative opinion of those who meet their significant other online, Hassler discourages her readers from allowing potential shame result in missed opportunities. Due to the internet’s increased importance in forming connections, digital dating should be utilized as a tool for finding relationships and becoming acquainted with like-minded strangers. Critics can no longer interpret online dating as a last resort for desperate elderlies because of the ingenuity of recent websites (Hassler). Overall, Hassler’s definition of online dating as a tool accurately portrays its practicality; however, her essay does not fully describe the escalated use of the internet among singles or successfully depict its disadvantages, such as the bias she addresses.

Aziz Ansari published his first book Modern Romance, on June 16, 2015, where he teamed up with notable sociologists to uncover the mysteries of the changing dating scene around the world. Ansari states that relationships have been evolving for the past century for reasons ranging from people having different wants and desires to more advanced technology. These developments have revitalized the dating culture, but simultaneously have also made it very complex. Ansari’s reason for writing this book was that he was “fascinated by the questions of how and why so many people have become so perplexed by the challenge of doing something that people have always done quite efficiently: finding romance” (Ansari 6). In the book, he dives into the

Dating back to the early 1900’s and all the way through to the present, romantic relationships have been viewed differently. From strict unwritten dating regulations to not having regulations at all, recent generations have become more liberated in making their own decisions. The progressing times have made us become a more accepting society and have caused a decrease in the strong practice of religion and class. Even though differences such as religion and class in relationships were more than an issue they were not always a complete deterrence.

Ansari refers to a study called “Geographic Proximity of Partners in 5,000 Marriages, Philadelphia, 1932,” which reveals that 51.94% of people who were married in this study lived within 20 blocks of one another before they began dating, (15). These numbers are just one example Ansari gives to prove his point on just how different dating was in past generations, as roughly half of all people were simply marrying someone within close proximity to them. And it goes deeper than basic proximity. According to C.L Harrington, “Those who monitor trends in marriage, divorce, and intimacy note that the ideal of love in America appears to be undergoing gradual but significant change, and the reasons for it are hard to grasp.” Nowadays, dating is not so easy. With cities becoming so large and the people becoming more specific to their dating preferences, Ansari argues that online dating is becoming more than just a last-ditch option.

Allison, Rachel, and Barbara J. Risman. "A Double Standard For “Hooking Up”: How Far Have We Come Toward Gender Equality?." Social Science Research 42.(2013): 1191-1206. ScienceDirect. Web. 20 Nov. 2016.

The article written by Belinda Robnett and Cynthia Feliciano “Patterns of Racial-Ethnic Exclusion by Internet Daters” is an analysis article that was published in March 2011, and it is property of the University of North Carolina Press. Robnett and Feliciano’s article is intended to inform and explore the ways people who decide to online date react to other online daters based on their race and gender. It clearly states that these two concepts significantly influence the choices that online daters are given, because based on the authors’ research an example given was that “Few studies have comparatively assessed the Latino, Asian and black acceptance rates of minority groups. While Latinos and Asians out-marry with whites, or inter-ethnically,

The reading that interested me most was “The Decline of the Date and the Rise of the College Hook Up” by Paula England and Rueben J. Thomas. The initial motive for this research was that an undergraduate student of England’s “wanted to do a research paper on why students on campus didn’t date much anymore” (pg 69). The two researchers, England and Thomas, then began questioning students on Stanford University’s campus about what they thought about the increasing occurrence of hook ups as compared to going out on dates.

Bogle, K. A. (2007b). The shift from dating to hooking up in college: What scholars have missed. Sociology Compass, 1, 775–788.

In the 1920’s, mainstream American culture quickly shifted the ideal American women from the strict Victorian motherhood to a new sexy, flirtatious, and feminine way of life. It began with the new form of dating known as “The Treat.” Centered around a date where the man paid for everything in exchange for sexual favors from the woman, “The Treat” did not have a terrible reputation as prostitution as there was no cash going directly to the woman. This allowed single women to enter spaces they never would have gone before since they were now accompanied by their gentlemen callers. It also paved the way for new ideals of women in society.

Progressing on by the growth of an urban, industrial economy that required a larger female labor force, and by the emergence of public amusements that defied the old nineteenth-century courting system, many young women now had the wherewithal and drive to lead autonomous lives. And who was their sole source of inspiration? The iconic, Rosie the Riveter, a cultural model of a perfect loyal american women. By the dawn of the decade, anywhere between one-fourth and one-third of urban women workers lived alone in private flats or boarding houses, free from the watchful eyes of their parents, and as early as 1896, newspaper columnist George Ade used the term “date” to describe a new convention by which boys and girls paired off to frolic at dance halls, amusement parks, and other public spaces, free from adult supervision in order to express their love for each other in ameture way because one thing was for sure that getting intimate in the twenties was not consider that much of a sin but more like a virtue after all it does involve pleasing the children of God.

I do not agree that millennials are part of the "hook culture". I feel as though hooking up has been around back then and not just now. Although it is known as the college thing to do, I believe that most people want a relationship and not just some hook up all the time. Even in the article it said "both men and women reported that they would rather have a traditional dating relationship than simply a hook-up". I am not saying that everyone thinks like this, some people are into hook ups which is fine. I mean if you are both single with no kids go for it. I feel that the younger generations coming up view hooking up as the cool thing to do, they don't really understand the seriousness of a relationship (once again this is not towards every adolescent). I think a lot of this hooking up scenerio comes from social media like facebook, instagram and snapchat. A lot of individuals care more about how many followers they have than their education or just living life.

In the article “What ‘Hookup Culture’? Millennials Having Less Sex Than their Parents,” NBC’s Gina Vivinetto claims that Millennials have are having less sex than the generations before them. This claim is based off a study from Florida Atlantic University in which they analyzed 26,000 respondents of the General Social Survey. This makes it very easy to see that the type of research done was descriptive research. Within descriptive research, the survey is a powerful tool to get quick answers from many people. Multiple criteria exist that a help support a survey’s integrity, and in turn, may help support this author’s claims.

“Sweetening the deal: dating for compensation in the digital age” (2016) by Kavita Ilona Nayar is another article that discuss the intricacies surrounding the commonly asked question of whether or not sugar dating is prostitution. Nayar argues that it is not so much from a legal standpoint point that people liken sugar dating to prostitution but rather that it is the social norms that underpin society that frame it as prostitution. The article examines the view point of those involved in the relationships, ‘sugar daters’, rather than from a legal stand point. Nayar uses Zleizer’s (2005) theory of ‘connected lives’ to approach an explanation of how sugar dating is not perhaps a form of prostitution. As Zelizer’s identifies money has cohabitated with intimacy regularly within the framework of society from its conception. Further more it can even sustain intimacy to a degree to ensure financial security. As Nayar points out however the strength of society’s conviction over the scared nature of sex over rides the idea of entering into intimate acts as a form of financial transaction. The article itself examines how “sugar daters’ make sense of the relationships they seek. I am particularly interested in whether they articulate shared understandings about how ‘sugar dating’ compares to the late modern construction of romantic love and sexual commerce, and if their negotiation of intimate relations and economic exchanges reveals anything about transformations in social and

In our society today a person can often look around a room of people and see nothing but the top of their heads, along with their eyes staring down at lit up screen filled with tremendous possibilities. One thing you doubtfully will view is everyone surrounding talking to each other making kinship with in their proximity. Instead, making connections through their phones. In the article written by Nancy Jo Sales “Tinder and the Dawn of the“Dating Apocalypse””, Sales speaks of the dating culture of the current twenty-first century and her views on how online dating has affected thus creating a sort of “Dating Apocalypse”. In the culture of intimacy may it be consciously or subconsciously people are seeking love and security in their lives through hookups and technological dating cites such as Tinder.

Of course, dating hasn't always been so convenient. In the early 19th Century, marriages were arranged with little emphasis on romance or love. Marriage itself was considered to be an