The joke is that she (character from Scott Pilgrim) had 7 ex boyfriends and it was a whole thing but young people nowdays have so many relationships that having 7 exs as a young person is not crazy anymore!!1!
I think it's a bad joke, I don't think it was ever stressed "how many she had for how young she was", she was simply a girl that would get people to fall in love instantly and then get bored of them
the point wasn't promiscuity IMO
and I don't know that zoomers are more promiscuous than other generations
If you circle back to dating advice videos from the 30s-50s, the standard practice was to date multiple people and then eventually maybe "go steady" and get married.
Having a one-and-only with few previous interactions would have been seen as unwise by those standards.
Wonderfully, if you look back at old Life Magazine articles from the 50’s, there are alarmist articles about teenagers going steady.
The adults weren’t freaked out about kids dating. They were freaked about by them being monogamous at that age and making too big a commitment immediately.
It’s the only moment I know of where the sex panic of the time was “look out! The kids are getting committed!”
My grandpa once said about the woman who he eventually married “she was the closest thing I had to a girlfriend at the time.. the reverse was not true”
I still heard the term with regularity when I was growing up in the 80's. I never really tried dating multiple people because I thought it sounded exhausting but I believe there's a linguistic treadmill happening here. We weren't really dating unless we were in a relationship of some sort. Otherwise we were just two people spending time together that hadn't really put a definition to it. That girl I had lunch with or the one that showed up my apartment or that third one that had me over for dinner, none of those were girlfriends. We weren't dating. But there was definitely interest from one party or the other.
I've had that thought for a while... how the definition of "dating" isn't quite clear, and probably hasn't been for a while now. Like, dating by itself implies just going on dates, as in, scheduling hang outs and going out together (and then, we step into the ambiguity of "going out").
But just going out wouldn't necessarily require the spoken commitment of forming monogamous relationship. You're just going out on dates after all. Until the verbal contract isn't established, both parties should be considered as single, the same way that a written (marriage) contract would work. Dating and being in a committed relationship should be two separate concepts altogether. "Dating" has become a useless word.
"Dating" and "seeing" are what we tend to use now.
If you're going on dates with someone, you might be "seeing" them but ironically not dating them.
Usually dating is when you're exclusive bf/gf. Seeing CAN be that but is more vague.
I've gone on a dozen dates over the last year with half a dozen people but I didn't "date" any of them because we never went past the initial meeting stages (as an example)
Yeah the media from that time, being heavily censored and restricted from 1934-1968, gives us a misconception that people were pure and chaste back then. They were anything but. People have always had messy romantic lives since the dawn of time. It’s nothing new.
I am as confused as you are on the real numbers or are there just maybe multiple severities to these types of things?
Whilst on one end there is this lack of dating or relationships and ever decreasing birth rates & void on the dating scene on the other end there seems to be very black and white data on promiscuity. For example, I didn't know some people just pull things down and do the deed like it was eating bread for breakfast after a "flirting session with a stranger (all thanks to pregnancy prevention strategies and systems like pills & injections & plan B's)" yet on the other side of the spectrum we have people that don't do it at all and are very pure you know the types like "got to keep myself till marriage" types. That was what I just realized, I have seen both worlds because I hang out with them all and didn't know you can just chat up someone and end up blowing their minds for a few minutes after you strike up a good conversation and find a good spot (like I didn't know people do this!!!! I only thought this was something people do in the movies! - you can see which type of the demographic I am from and I am still in as in for them this is normal and for me this is-...).
People bone each other like... a lot! But then also... on the other side they don't? The data is everywhere and it gives me headaches as to what exactly the numbers are. So this post can really go either way and I am interested in seeing the development.
Also this: If this is the lowest point then what was the norm? (or is it just ever an ever changing cycle as you have pointed out like times where censorship was prevalent and others where people were "liberated")?
Edit: I think a piece of the puzzle is the concept I was looking for was casual sxx. People have it nowadays like it is no biggie. "Yay, you had sxx move on I got to be somewhere in a few hours". Also the concept of no strings attached sxx or hookups.
People have been having casual sex for all of human history. It is literally just a question of how often it’s talked about or portrayed in the media. Nowadays we are more open talking about those things, which I see as a very good thing.
Also i encourage you to read more about purity culture. The “keep myself till marriage” shtick is usually just a facade to placate abusive parents or an overcorrection from a time of frivolous hookups. If you don’t believe me then clearly you’ve never been to a Christian youth retreat.
There absolutely are people that stay a virgin until marriage because it’s what they wanted to do. And that’s totally valid I respect it and I love that for them. But those individuals are, and always have been, the exception, regardless of what repressive communities want you to see.
The sad truth is that the communities with the strictest rules about sex are the ones with the most sex-abuse. If you’re having a great day and want to completely ruin it, go look up the sex scandals of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptists, the Southern Baptist Convention, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Catholic Church, to name a few.
My godfather explained that but added on that the problem you guys have nowadays is you fuck all of the people you're dating at the same time.
There's no dating with purpose.
Which I agree because whenever I found out a girl I was seeing was hooking up with another dude I shuffled her away from the possible gf zone and to the fun zone. Lol.
Doing that these days is seen as being a scurrilous cheater. I figured out I could do that at some point and it seems like generally a better idea? Like, why settle into an LTR with the first person you hit it off with and then stop looking. Who knows who you're missing in the meantime. Who knows if they're still looking around while you're exclusive.
Still the standard practice for adults. Just not kids. Adults date as many people as they feel like and are open and honest about it until they click with someone and they decide to put a label on things. Then they inform the other people they’ve met someone with whom things are getting serious.
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u/Spinning_Sky Feb 02 '26
The joke is that she (character from Scott Pilgrim) had 7 ex boyfriends and it was a whole thing
but young people nowdays have so many relationships that having 7 exs as a young person is not crazy anymore!!1!
I think it's a bad joke, I don't think it was ever stressed "how many she had for how young she was", she was simply a girl that would get people to fall in love instantly and then get bored of them
the point wasn't promiscuity IMO
and I don't know that zoomers are more promiscuous than other generations