Found my partner via dating apps. So did most of my friends. I don't think "hey I just met you" dating will ever be trending after COVID, #metoo and how everything is eaten up by digitalisation. Articles like these are just pissing against the wind.
The author is their own worst enemy, and their article makes it abundantly clear. Hopefully, someday, they will reread what they wrote and see it as the postmortem that it is.
On a broader note, maybe dating was never sustainable in the first place. The concept of dating is, for the most part, a 20th century invention. In any earlier time, it would have been considered low-key prostitution. As a man, the expectation that I pay for anything regardless of how well I know the other person or how the date goes always felt kinda dirty. Which is why I stopped doing that a long time ago, even before I quit dating all together. Dating can't be untangled from the inertia of technology, and it was inevitable that dating just wouldn't scale well.
We're never going back to some hypothetical time where dating actually worked, but I do think there are pathways that can at least lead to better tradeoffs:
1. Far more people should be open to making acquaintances offline and be willing to introduce friends they think would be compatible.
2. We need to drop the pretense that the only places left for men and women to meet each other after college is at bars, and any context outside of that would be harassment.
3. Everyone is unique, but people need to consider whether their idiosyncrasies are ultimately working against them. As far as the United States is concerned, we've gone way too far in the direction of everybody thinking they can get everything their way, yet few actually do. For instance, if you're perpetually single but you're turning down people for liking Starbucks, maybe you should rethink whether you're the fool for not just accepting the coffee others like.
4. Call a spade a spade and just start calling all dating apps "hookup" apps, because that's what they're best suited for. We should reject the idea that there isn't something inherently salacious about apps like Tinder, and that attitude needs to be a part of the culture.
it's not going to fly. I think the problem of this kind of ideas is that dating is actually a by product of social interactions, not suitable for engineering.
Well that's the issue. It's not their fault. The idea of dating today has been reduced to hitting on people and jumping right into high commitment situations instead of slowly building a lasting relationship built in solid fundamentals, the kinds of advances which are rarely rejected in practice compared to just hitting on someone as if they are a checkbox to be ticked.
There are currently a ton of dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge that cater to all the different wants and needs of singles. However it seems like there are still problems to remain (ghosting, catfishing or simply horrible first dates)
So my question is: What is wrong with dating in 2022 and how much of the problems could be solved with tech? Or is it simply about socio-economic positions of individuals and their personalities?
Fortunately, I’m married and no longer need to date, but everything I read about dating today suggest that online/app-mediated dating has become so dominant that old style “meet in a bar” scenarios are essentially no longer much of a thing. If true, this would be an example of technology removing previous non-technology options, even though nobody is mandating it.
I wonder, if VR ever gets good enough, is there a future like the dystopian sci-fi stories where everyone stays strapped to their Facebook-mediated realities and nobody goes outside to walk in the park anymore? How good does VR have to get?
Even before the pandemic our local playgrounds were empty (kids are all staying home playing Roblox and Minecraft).
Yesterday, I spent a couple of hours talking to a friend of mine who's been in the dating world for several years now. He consistently tells me that he's out there looking for something serious, but in the interim it's become a science experiment and a way to get laid. My takeaway from this conversation is that dating is slowly turning in the least natural interaction between two people. It is constrained by a myriad of childish expectations and focuses almost entirely on personal attraction and not character or any other qualities. It's like a minefield and the more you walk on it the better you get at figuring out the expectations and getting laid, not by any means finding a partner. The saddest thing is that he's one of my many male friends who are perpetually single. Now, I'm a happily married male in my mid-30s and after having that discussion I really have no hope for millennials. We're up for some interesting times in several decades when the lonely, aging millennials will be needing care and there ain't anybody around to provide it.
Modern dating apps are terrible because they have taken all the mechanics used in the gambling industry and use that to fleece users. I hope this generation makes a conscious decision to go backwards in the search for love. Love isn't convenient and its not supposed to be.
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