What's wrong with meeting people IRL? Does that just not happen anymore? It used to be that friends would hook their friends up. Or you'd meet someone at school

What's wrong with meeting people IRL? Does that just not happen anymore? It used to be that friends would hook their friends up. Or you'd meet someone at school or through work. Is that no longer the case? The impression I've gotten about modern dating (other than the terribly misguided sexual libertinism) is how lonely it all sounds. Plus, the whole shitting on marriage (and the families those marriages produce) that permeates the background assumptions of people like on this pod is like a superhighway to future unhappy bitterness for women (and men) who while away their reproductive years. Apps like Tinder are obviously dystopian but even the "deeper" dating apps are kind of fucked up and vampiric. They assume the centrality of the self and prioritize self-fulfillment through finding optimally compatible mates. Good lord. There have been many happy marriages, but very few compatible ones. algorithmically optimizing for compatibility rather than complementarity and, frankly, productive discord (tending to future growth and harmony) is existentially suicidal for the individual and the species. That's not to even go into the problems they create by aggressively imbalancing the distribution of sexual partners by tilting the playing field towards the high status male "players" and disenfranchising average males, thereby widening the sexual inequality gap. These are societally evil platforms. And where are all the happy lifelong commitments? The good outcomes? Divorce rates for couples who met through dating apps are supposedly 5x those who met through friends. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of their algorithms. Marriage is so much more of a contribution to the social fabric than is pursuing personal sexual experience. No wonder these threads trace back to the Free Love movement. Slouching towards Bethlehem indeed.