> Fortunately, at least in my part of the US, "what do you do for a living" is a question that is rarely casually asked. This is so interesting. I wonder if th

> Fortunately, at least in my part of the US, "what do you do for a living" is a question that is rarely casually asked. This is so interesting. I wonder if there really is a strong geographical component to this? That mirrors my own experiences primarily living in smaller towns, with stints elsewhere. Anecdotally, a female relative of mine was getting really frustrated with the straight dating scene in the SF metro area, which according to her was full of men whose primary dating persona is their wealth and status. She kept going on date after date with people she found utterly boring, who were primarily concerned about showing off how successful they were and not really interested in her or forming a connection over mutual interests. It's like they were looking for a trophy wife. Having primarily lived in small towns where "what do you do" just isn't as big a deal, I found that rather off-putting and asked why she was going out with those men to begin with. We looked at her own dating profile, but it also kinda mirrored theirs: started out by mentioning that she worked at some household name tech company (not a FAANG but close to it), her educational background, etc. I made the comment that it looked like a resume rather than a dating profile. Suggested that maybe toning down the status signaling would let her find more "normal" people. She was probably intimidating. She ended up revamping it and trying to meet people based on identified shared interests rather than levels of accomplishment. Went on a few better dates, soon met a climber she really liked, and they got married not long after. Turns out he's also of a similar status (I guess you have to be to live in SF proper) but that wasn't what they bonded over initially. As a straight dude, I saw less of that on the dating apps, but there was still some. When I was single, I traveled across the country and checked out the online dating scenes in many places... in D.C. it was ALL status signaling, and I never felt so inadequate in my whole life, lol: women who have multiple post-grad degrees working for some important bleeding-heart nonprofit (but without an accompanying ego, thank god), civil servants, etc. In Chicagoland it was a mix of finance people and regular people who loved music, food, and summers especially. Not a lot of techies. In the SF area it was a lot of tech, yes, but also a few working-class outdoorsy types. In the smaller towns it was totally different, and profession almost never came up. It was usually offhandedly mentioned (or just alluded to) in like the third or fourth paragraph. People seemed a lot happier in those communities too. Shrug. I don't know where the OP is located, but maybe that alone can shape their outlook... (edit: they live in NYC, as they mentioned in the OP. Makes more sense.)