4 ms·
Apps promised a sexual revolution but they have just made dating weird
- ggm 5y agoMy takeaway from the article was a disconnect with past dating modes (past as in before online dating) when partnering up with friends was much more common. You just had to live with the gossip, and oftentimes it's friends who help you see what's going on. The tendency to want strangers to avoid in-group gossip seems to me have come out of the blue: perhaps it was a suppressed desire latent before and this generation realised it as a lived experience? Claude Levi-Stauss would have a field day on the emergence of normalised out-group mating. In some tribes it's mandatory. I think he hypothesised pre-dna-awareness it maximised genetic diversity and avoids inbreeding. Maybe this is a modern memetic cultural version? I also think as many positives as negatives may exist online: for every racist refusing to meet other coloured people, somebody will be exploring the more diverse choices of culture and heritage. We also have womens-choice drives in online dating. Yes, it's causing huge emotional stress for some men, but perhaps formalised priorities for women's choices here is a very good thing? I have also now interacted with more people from cultures of arranged marriages. There's a heavy burden on some eldest responsible males to do something for their sisters kids they never signed up for and don't believe in. And many migrants pair up in adversity to escape a worse homeland experience but then find themselves in a new land with weak ties. Actually a story of the postwar migration to Australia with people marrying by proxy, bride boats. Friends married Chilean refugees in the 1970s to help them escape. Some stayed married, many didnt. I wonder if online dating will fulfil the same role in future conflict?