This has indeed been a strange inversion.

I met a girl on a plane a few months back, and after some light texting we finally met up. She was with her co-workers, who treated our meeting on a plane as some sort of foreign concept. Jokes about “hope you’re not a serial killer” went around the table. Only 15 years ago we (wrongfully) treated swiping around online as the thing only “socially awkward” people tend to do and worried about how much you actually knew the person. Now people have completely flipped sides and act like, “So you just talked to a guy for a couple hours on a plane and now you’re hanging out together? Bold move!”

I remember when it was considered completely normal to meet people in everyday life and near-suicidal to meet anyone in person that you’d met on the internet.

I don’t think what we’re doing now is any improvement at all. In most ways, it’s worse.