My girlfriend has never used social media and her mindset is so different because of it.
I truly do believe most Facebook-style social media is a Level 1 cognitohazard for nearly all people who encounter it. I am not in the least exaggerating. We are not evolved to be handle constant exposure to other’s (terrible) algorithmically-curated thoughts and opinions and it is a huge societal net loss that we allowed it to develop as it did.
One sad thing to realize about the dating market: nearly everyone is a self-deluded hypocrite and liar, with extremely strong social pressure to remain that way.
This makes it roundly suck.
Those older than 9/11/2001, where were you and what were you doing during the WTC attacks?
I’ve already told that story.
But something I didn’t add is that when I got home that day I told my girlfriend that we were going to be at war very soon. She didn’t understand why (she was very much not into politics or history). She started crying when I told her there was a fair chance I’d be called back to active duty as I was still in IRR status at that time.
That didn’t end up happening but it was a very real possibility.
This is a good essay. Part of it got me thinking that I bet this is how a lot of PMC liberals see the world and their place in it.
I used to think I thought the right way, like, who cares if everyone does bad things, because bad things are just what important people have to do. Who cares if Barack Obama bombs people and doesn’t even try to prosecute bankers, because that’s all just his job, and he loves gay people and yells at bigots and his wife is smart and has great arms. Who cares if Hillary Clinton is best friends with Henry Kissinger, because she is a woman and so am I, and she stands up to men, and isn’t that what feminism is all about, finally getting into the rooms, finally getting to be the one to kill the people who don’t matter? Since my life was a fantasy, I had no trouble inhabiting a larger one.
It often strikes me that it is considered immature to be unable to believe bullshit. Think about the word globalization. It doesn’t mean cultures mixing, fusion cuisine, or a fun wedding of a rich Sri Lankan to a poor Swede. It doesn’t even mean free markets. It means access to new markets and especially access to cheap labor so rich people can make more money. That is all it means. If you happen to gain from side effects (see fusion cuisine, above) you might want to notice what everyone else, including you, is losing. But try saying that at a dinner party. Everyone would just feel sorry for you.
Good passage because it made me think about some phenomena in ways I had not really considered before. “Immature to be unable to believe bullshit” is a great observation. Becoming an adult means that you have to tacitly accept many things which are absolute bunkum. I often have gotten in a lot of trouble because I have less tolerance than most for just accepting such BS.
Dating Roundup #1: This Is Why You’re Still Single.
This is interesting throughout. I never really used OkCupid but its model seemed far superior. Of course it had to be killed because it did not keep people on the site since it actually worked.
Women’s main dating problem is that 80%+ of women are (for most, hopelessly) chasing the top 10% or so of men and won’t really consider anyone else. That works about as well as you’d expect. Men’s main dating problem is desperation, which is inherently repulsive and even worse it leads a lot of women to have standards that can never be met by a real human being they have any sort of long-term chance with. Another male problem is that they have terrible profiles in general often.
A dating app that mitigates against these bad tendencies would help both genders immensely (assuming hetero here, I don’t know what would help the non-straight).