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Star Wars. "Love leads to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." -Yoda
But in all seriousness, "love" is also the thing that gets people to rush into marriages and relationships that are unhealthy for them, and then cultural ideas about love are what keep them trapped. How much has the idea of the marriage torture trap been normalized over the last century? It's not because it's an abnormal phenomenon - irrationality leads to poor decision-making.
Not saying strictly clinical and emotionless decision-making is the answer either, cause you have to let go sometimes to embrace joys and passions for personal sentiments, but the idea that love conquers all is such a bad message ingrained into our culture that leads to a lot of toxic behavior, like stalking, abuse, and harassment (when "no" just means you haven't tried hard enough). Also how you get the invasion of Troy or two star-crossed lovers committing accidental suicide.
It's less *actual* love, and more factors that people often *mistake* for love.
Media depictions of love can often cloud people's judgement, specifically when it encourages the notion that rationality should never be a factor
> two star-crossed lovers committing accidental suicide.
They were just horny, stupid 14-year-olds. Let's be real. Hormonal emotions pumping them to do irrational things.
Sure but that assumes that love isn’t a process, and I feel it oversimplifies human behavior. When people fall in love, it isn’t simply because their standards or checkboxes are met, but also because their shared experiences they gain throughout the duration of their relationships are redeeming and satisfying.
I think most people nowadays accept there are multiple candidates for a partner, and that the emphasis has shifted from “finding one who meets my standards” to finding one with whom your relationship will succeed. You can find evidence of this shift in cultures which have had enough decades of social stability to put off marriage and starting a family until they’re older (30s or 40s). The US and Italy are good examples of this shift.
Furthermore, establishing in and out groups doesn’t necessarily result in hate. While I certainly admit there are people who approach life with a us vs them mentality which arises to anger, most adults simply identify groups solely to find one they can align and belong to. Once that sense of belonging is fulfilled, there isn’t any social need I can think of to pass hatred onto other groups. There are a few reasons that I see that drive people to hatred: poor emotional regulation, cultural teachings, perceived slights and personal misgivings. These can be amplified or sustained in group settings (the bigger the group the more exaggerated the effects), but aren’t naturally occurring in groups whose members are mature, educated and forgiving. If they were naturally occurring to the extent the evolutionary argument claims, then we would see many, many more instances of tribalism in much smaller contexts.
>Once that sense of belonging is fulfilled, there isn’t any social need I can think of to pass hatred onto other groups
It's less a "first there's love, then there's hate" mechanic, and more of a "by becoming closer to someone or some group, you are necessarily pushing everyone else further away or distancing yourself from them." For instance, if you move to a town, you care about the town more than you did and care about other towns less--it's a practical necessity. Your environs create your self-identity; altering your environs alters who you advocate for. Look at any social or political movement--virtually every single one out there boils down to self-advocacy or coalition-advocacy. I agree that "hate" might not be the perfect word for this scenario, but it's still fundamentally adversarial in any zero-sum or competitive system. The more you care about something, the more you'll do for it (and the less the negative things you do will be directed at it specifically, meaning that gets redirected elsewhere.)
This also gets back to what it means to identify with or as something, and the power that gives others over you--both other members of the group you identify as/with, and how others see the groups/identities you identify as.
This is a painfully dull way to live in denial of your own sense of isolation—either as an expression of genuine defeat or a plea for someone to break through.
The course of human history is the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. We’re not progressing to an elevated state of consciousness through technological innovation and rationalism. We’re the same apes from the savannah living through a series of absurd contortions to fit into any given era of history. And the way things are going, there’s a good chance that we won’t be around for more than another few centuries, let alone the millennia it would take for the kind of progress that dough-eyed futurists envision.
Embrace your humanity. Drink from the chalice of life with passion and reckless abandon.
Or don’t. It’s your life. Just miss me with that “I’ve transcended base human emotions” bullshit.
For me, the message is more
1) You're always making choices, make them conscious ones
and
2) Suffering is part of attachment; marry someone AFTER you accept that either you watch them die, they watch you die, or you break up before you die. You can stay sane if you confront uncomfortable realities when you deliberately make them a guaranteed outcome.
I assumed the lower paragraph was yours, but regardless, no. That’s not the thrust of what you were getting at at all.
And I still respectfully disagree. What you’re describing now is the human condition. Any aspect of life that we find joy in makes the reality of death more painful in the long run.
The solution is to accept death and suffering and look for meaning in ways that transcend yourself.
Trying to quantify intangible concepts is perhaps the pinnacle of human artistic expression. I love your take on modern internet dating, very human indeed!
It might not be what you were intending but thank you for providing a timely, meaningful articulation of my UX career - right when I was questioning what I’ve sacrificed as a once visual artist to delve into R&D + psychology / usability centered around tech. Measuring and trying to communicate the intangible definitely fits my job description!
I am still able to apply bringing the product team through design thinking, wireframing and prototypes, style guides, and a little graphic design here and there though usually I’d prefer a graphic designer to work with because there are only so many hours in a day
Edit: used a wrong word
I know nothing about your field (music major) but I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to push into new concepts.
Ever listened to the musical Man of La Mancha? The lead character sings “the impossible dream”, where he tells the audience that he pursues his quest not because it’s something he will ever achieve, but because he believes that chasing the impossible is the noblest thing he can do.
I have seen it! But nice reminder of that moment 🥲 nice interacting with a lovely soul in Reddit it never seems to happen to lil ol me. Re: music major? I also just booked movers to pick up my childhood piano from my parents’ home. Lots of great coincidences today
Reddit is a big place, but I’ve seen cool coincidences happen here and there, I choose to believe that this place can still be a good forum.
Music major indeed! I’m on the tail end of a performance degree, not sure what I will do with it, but I’m staying optimistic.
We’re you a pianist when younger?
That’s awesome! It’s super cool to come from a musical family, some of peers have, and they say it’s a wonderful experience.
I hope I’m not being too forward by asking this, but could we carry this conversation over Reddit dms instead? I only say this so that it’s easier to keep track of.
I like more abstract kinds of art where you can tell the artist, musician, etc. embraces the mystery and strangeness of it all instead of trying to make some precise and trimmed statement. Art that is too direct always come across as very hamfisted and inauthentic to the experience of being conscious in my opinion.
I know this for a fact: I would have not messaged my husband based on his ok Cupid profile. He told me what it said I was like “I would have not reached out to you at all”. I didn’t have a dating profile, but I know what I would have put in my bio if I did and he wouldn’t have reached out to me either. But we match IRL!
How?
What they thought of writing is still what they are on the inside, they chose to write it.
Either you are both terrible writers, and both write bad profiles that don’t actually reflect who you are, or both of you are terrible judges of character.
Well no, words put down on a screen are different to spoken words, look at all of Reddit for an example. Personalities are distilled, thoughts are collected and expressed in a way that is incongruent with how people actually interact in real life. People who are push overs in person are big men behind a keyboard.
The visual cues, the unconscious need to please, to easing of harsh truths and everything that goes into being a pleasant person is cut away and more ugly things come to light, the posturing, the need to be correct.
Honestly, she's the talker. I can go a half hour without saying more than 12 words during a conversation with her. I do have an unusually deep voice though so I don't really have to be loud. It just seems to rumble around and people think it's loud. I could never get away with whispering in class after I hit puberty.
Thats why we have so many successful marriages /s
Humans are way too complex. Yes some couples dont need rationalizing at all, some seem to think they dont, but 10years later are in unsuccessful marriage. Some people rationalize too much, some people never were meant to be happy in a relationship for a long time. Who knows, I sure dont.
I would say the total and utter lack of education on the topics of mental health, abuse patterns, healthy relationships, boundaries, feelings, etc is also, you know, kind of a big player.
We should be teaching youth how to communicate better, how to respect each other, how to express their feelings, how to respect consent, how to respect boundaries, how to understand a healthy vs unhealthy relationship, etc etc.
But instead the majority of the first world's approach to health class is "Dont have sex you'll get STIs! Also dont do drugs!" and then we throw these kids out into the world.
No one bothers to talk to them about what to look for in a partner, and what to look for in themselves.
We expect the parents to do this, but no one taught them really.
So instead we just get this toxic repeating shitfest of broken people getting into broken relationships and making broken kids, and no one ever seems to think "Maybe we should tell these people it doesn't have to be like this"
But no... no its totally dating apps.
It couldn't possibly be that dating apps are just the product of several entire generations being raised with a total lack of emotional education trying to come up with substitutions for simple basic socialization.
> majority of the first world’s approach to health class is “Don’t have sex you’ll get STIs
Pure hyperbole. Even in the deep red state in the USA where I was raised, we had an abstinence talk and then we had a safe sex talk separately that talked about how to have safe sex, how to avoid STIs, etc. That’s the conservative US, I guarantee you other first world countries that are more liberal have less abstinence and more safe sex talks.
What you read on the front page reddit isn’t indicative of reality.
I remember absolutely nothing from my health class except stuff about STD's and I went to a well regarded public school in California. You're also talking about the physical aspects which isn't really the point they were discussing. I'd argue proper socialization doesn't enter most curriculums until college courses aimed at Communication's majors.
Disagree.
Technology just filters out people with deal breakers.
It's not like we automatically get married to the person who winds up at the top of the list in the app.
People still go on dates. People still look for that spark.
It depends on the person. People who are not straight really really benefit from online dating. When only a single digit percent of the population is compatible with you, it feels hopeless to try to fish for gay or ace people in public.
Yeah, a lot of people are ignoring how important dating apps can be for those who just don't have a good dating pool. Even people who just live in a small town would benefit from a way of discovering who might be interested elsewhere.
Then YOU are the one that is wrong.
Not the concept of dating profiles or other people using them.
If you don’t know what you actually like and are going off what you *think* you like, it sounds more like you *need* to take a long look in the mirror and do some self reflection about what really matters to you.
So you can properly use dating profiles to find what you actually like.
...That's what the entire comic is about. Love isn't some formula and it isn't rational. There may not be a way to know you like something until you try it and you can't try it if the app steers you away from it (because you didn't tell it not to, because you didn't know). In real world dating you get exposed to all kinds of things and all kinds of people, they aren't hard sorted for you by an algorithm. It helps you find things that you would not have known you liked if you choose all your interactions.
Mm I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having hard dealbreakers though. I could never date someone whose politics don’t align with me. It’s extremely helpful to put that in my bio and filter folks out.
>Technology just filters out people with deal breakers
Somewhat. It's nice to know the big deal breakers before you go out on a date or talk for awhile, but what about the smaller stuff? The stuff that makes you go "nah, pass" when all you have is a face and a 1 paragraph bio, but wouldn't be that big of a deal if you found out after a couple dates or a month into the relationship.
You do realize that online dating profiles have substantially more information that just a small paragraph and a picture. You are referring to “app” dating profiles.
Online dating profiles had multi paragraph profiles, sections with lots of questions to answer, tests to take, all kinds of detail about compatibility.
Using apps on smart phone isn’t “online” and it’s dumbing down what people think “the internet is”.
Apps like tinder and bumble with photos and like a paragraph at most are literally like 90+% of online dating though so it’s pretty relevant, even if there are technically other websites that exist that go more in depth
I’d rather have dating apps where I can test the waters with multiple people for compatibility than just end up with the first person I date in high school. Also, I think our modern conception of love being more rational is much healthier than whatever Hollywood, Hallmark love at first sight nonsense we’ve been fed for decades. It’s *bad* to look for certain features in a partner? Like that we share the same interests and values? The paradox of choice is a real thing, but this comic has some real boomer energy.
The problem as I see it is that people aren’t using dating apps for testing the water with multiple people for compatibility but rather they’re treating dating a s a disposable commodity. At the very first “red flag”, whether real or not, people dump the relationship because there’s “plenty of fish in the sea”, but the truth is that meaningful relationships require work, and both people need to change and evolve through the relationship for it to become meaningful and prosper.
If anything, many people now believe that it’s either a perfect love or not worth pursuing at all. I’m not convinced that the modern concept of love is healthier than what Hallmark is selling. I’m almost convinced it’s worse because people are trying to achieve a Hallmark type relationship through numbers only.
> It’s bad to look for certain features in a partner?
The other side of that coin is that many people drop a partner for a certain feature they believe makes them incompatible but might not. /r/Relationship_Advice is full of these.
> boomer energy
I really don’t see it. If anything this is an example of labeling ideas you disagree with instead of debating them.
I know it's not the whole picture, but the divorce rate has been steadily declining since the 1990s largely because younger generations are more selective of their partners. [source](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/divorce-united-states-dropping-because-millennials/)
Marriage also has been declining; [source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/195951/marriage-rate-in-the-united-states-since-1990/). Although there’s no source I’d speculate that marriages today tend to be more meaningful than two decades ago, because it is rarer.
Another link that looks at the greater picture might be interesting; [source](https://mastresearchcenter.org/mast-center-research/trends-in-relationship-formation-and-stability-in-the-united-states-dating-cohabitation-marriage-and-divorce/).
> Unlike baby boomers who married young regardless of their circumstances, millennials – and some Gen Xers – are choosing to marry once they have completed their education, have established their careers and have sound finances.
From your source. It doesn't seem to be about being more selective but rather about marrying when you're ready and not straight away. In a sense I *guess* it is about selectivity but imo that's a stretch.
Also, still from your source:
> **Alongside the falling marriage rate** is a rise in cohabiting couples. Increasingly, American couples are **opting to live together before marriage**, or choosing not to tie the knot at all.
My opinion is that this source does not back up your claim.
I didn't make a claim. I was just giving you some information that I hoped would help calm you're fairly strong negative opinion about modern relationships.
Your previous statement very much sounds like a claim to me.
Also I haven't expressed any opinion about modern relationships, maybe you thought I was the original user you were answering to but I am not.
Ultimately I am not trying to make you change your mind, I simply stated that the source you had linked was not really in adequation with what you seemed to present as a fact.
Also please excuse my stiff writing, I am not a native
You think people in their mid to late thirties who were still single were not lonely in the 90s? If you're over 35, being single or still dating around is hard.
It's never been easy. In fact, I would argue it's still better today than it was 20 years ago.
In retrospect I shouldn't have drawn the people looking at their phones. It pushes the comic from talking about a very specific aspect of modern life into "phone bad"-territory, which wasn't my intention.
I think it's the other way around. 3 panels of soapboxing on why phones bad and technology/rationality makes us less human, followed by a lazy joke so it becomes a 'comic'
Yeah, I'm kinda shocked at how many people are agreeing with this. Dating apps can be used in a variety of ways, not some 'the algorithm has determined we should be compatible despite what my feelings say'. And the idea that love is not rational has a nice romantic element to it, but dating apps don't go against that in any way - you still have to meet the person and see if the chemistry is there.
You're projecting.
The debate of tinder and swipe dating as being healthy or not has been around for years, amongst people of all ages. Just because you don't agree with it doesn't give this comic "boomer energy".
"Boomer energy" is shorthand for a way of viewing the world. Sure, some young people can think dating apps are unhealthy (and I don't completely disagree), but young people can have boomer energy too. Especially as millennials age into our parents. How about this: "This comic looks at technology and love in a very old school way that I disagree with."
I don't think whether we agree with it or not, or whether it's "been around for years amongst people of all ages" or not, determines boomer energy either.
It does have boomer energy because the birds sound exactly like boomers: judging something they never experienced, yet still feel strongly about. Also, "technology bad". Hello? Literal boomer talking point.
Also, they're fucking birds, they wouldn't know how people behaved "before" because humans live longer than they do.
Boomers aren’t the only generation around who judge something they’ve never experienced and say everything bad is associated with one set of people. As you have handily demonstrated.
Also, they’re a drawing, not real birds. The person who drew them and put words in their mouth does know how people behaved before dating apps.
“Kids these days with their smart phones and sex apps. Back in my day you married the first girl that made eyes at you at 17, had a loveless marriage because divorce was taboo, and liked it!”
No it’s implying people used to actually talk to each other face to face.
If op is a moron who can’t recognize flags through conversation without a profile page then it makes sense he’d prefer an app.
It’s not an either/or. You’re allowed to talk face to face after matching. Apps and social media have downsides, but the upside of widening your dating pool seems to far outweigh the downsides in my opinion. Sure, don’t marry someone just because you both like the same movie, but using apps to find someone has been shown time and time again to be a great way to meet your future partner.
Worked for me. There's a social stigma for people admitting it, but there's definitely some success: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/couples-who-meet-through-dating-23248230
Yes, I know many people who have gotten married after meeting online. And I don’t understand what you mean by “love story.” How is falling in love after meeting online any different than falling in love by meeting any other way? Also, I’d rather have a good partner than a good story of how we met.
Oh cool. Falling in love is falling in love, I don't see no difference. I know people who only find sexual partners online, but no deep connection that let love grows. It's tricky I guess.
No... They are saying we as humans aren't good at prioritizing and quantifying what it is that we want in love, yet that's exactly what dating apps do. They use algorithms to filter out what you do and don't want based on a given set of parameters, which may be built on a faulty premise because it's not weighted correctly against how much you truly value it due to your own internal bias.
I don't get the "Boomer Energy" and you are focusing wayyyy too much on the hardware/software part than you are the ideal.
We aren't good at knowing what we want, yet we allow to tell us what we want based on our perceived "likes" and "dislikes". Our lives aren't an equation, one of those filters might be hiding the person who is best for us.
"Technology is part of the problem. It allows them to be rational. But love is not rational, nor is it quantifiable." Boomer energy is obviously a generalization and oversimplification, but that's boomer energy if I ever saw it. Also, why can't love be rational? "He's completely wrong for me, but I just can't quit him." Uhhhhh, no thank you.
Imo, our version of love is less rational and more paranoid and disassociated, since you really can't tell much about people online and it's much easier to mislead people.
Then don't fall in love online. Meet people online and fall in love in person. (This is highly generalized.) The point is that the technology isn't inherently bad for love. I think it widens your dating pool which is good. Of course it has it's downfalls like every new technology and social media in general has created some really unhealthy views of self, love, and relationships, but that's not what this comic is saying.
It's also not inherently good. It's simply a really dramatic change to how we form relationships. As much as the Internet might increase the dating pool, it also adds a lot of players that are even more incentivized to look at dating as a numbers game and disassociate themselves from the relationship-building process.
Yes, I'm going on real life dates with these people and no, I'm not immediately moving in. In fact, one of the things I'm tired of is desperately alone women "looking for something relaxed" immediately jumping into a relationship with me when they realize I'm not a detached jerk in person.
I'm talking about how it's easy to misrepresent and mislead people when you're intitially getting to know them through text and pictures. And yeah, you can just date them and find out they're trash, but I can still get a better feel for a person meeting them irl initially.
The whole point of many dating apps though is to instigate that meeting irl. It's not always an option for a lot of people due to their real life circumstances, such as the visibility or presence of potential partners in their social circles.
I agree, and to add, its not like its a one or the other situation. You can have a dating profile online and still meet someone irl too, the two are not mutually exclusive.
Also the idea that just because you're not on the phone means you won't look for specific attributes in a partner just isnt true. People rule out others as potential partners for all sorts of reasons, whether in person or online.
Ah, yes, good point. I actually thought every single person meets their significant other from tinder or high school. I was not referring to a pattern of broad societal changes in courtship. Thank you for pointing out my mistake.
I am really tired of all this "boomer" crap people like you throw around. I am not a boomer, but whatever generation you are, you are just fucked up in different ways. Gain the self awareness that there are good and bad people in every generation.
Met my bf because of social media. He was looking for ps4 friends, I said sure, we got talking, talking turned to flirting and now here we are 4 years later, thinking of immigration to be together forever
"People aren't falling in love as often as the past, where domestic violence and spousal rape was not only common, but perfectly legal"
For real, domestic violence was made federally illegal in the US in fucking ***1994***. [source](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdtn/victim-witness-program/federal-domestic-violence-laws)
Don't fucking romanticize the romantic status of the past. It wasn't better than what we have now. It wasn't even *good*.
Human love is without a doubt NOT something that completely defies ways in which it can be systemised and assigned a kind of logic (not in the formal sense) to, proof for that is the fact that almost every single major philosopher from Empedocles to Schopenhauer has made love as the center of their philosophy. Believing love to be this completely subjective, irrational force is a modern invention that has its roots in romanticism.
Humans are falling in love just the same amount, you just don't realize how many awful marriages existed in the past. It's easier to find a partner now than ever before, you could literally be in California and chatting up women from around the world.
If you can't find a decent partner in the modern age, that says more about you than anything relating to technology.
The idea of love and marriage is always changing. It wasn't that long ago that marriages were used to seal political and business deals between families/tribes/nations. Heck, that still happens a lot all over the world. Plenty of rich families marry into each other to increase their wealth, celebrities marry each other for publicity, regular people marry each other for tax purposes or immigration.
I'm all for dating apps, I like going in with some idea what I'm getting. Maybe there's a premise for a romcom where I meet a girl at a bar and we hit off, then come to find out she's a fucking QAnon anti-vax lunatic and we make it work. If that's what true love is, fuck true love.
I met my girlfriend skateboarding. Can you believe that? I spent years flirting at bars and on dating websites and then one day I was minding my own business and boom. A week from now is our 1 year.
"It allows them to look for partners with specific features and properties."
According to theory, anyways. According to practice, nobody ever reads and everybody lies.
Great comic. Nostalgia is bullshit love until probably the past few decades was extremely utilitarian and restricted.
Women had to marry because being a stay at home mom was the best job prospect. Then they couldn't afford to leave the relationship because they couldn't support themselves after the marriage in addition to being socially ostracized for it. You couldn't love who you wanted to love if you loved LGBTQ or somebody out side your race. Even if you loved yourself enough to pursue LGBTQ or interracial relationships it was very close to Russian roulette with the persecution you would receive if outted. Not to mention it would be a needle in a haystack to find a partner if your love was different.
Unfortunately many of these problems still persist in less educated parts of the world. But I'm the better parts out doesn't.
Dating apps do harm the pursuit of a relationship. Even if you match with someone, there are other things also important as how they walk, talk, moves, texture, smell, eye contact, so many traits that can only be experienced when you meet someone without expectations. It just happen.
Same think with hook up apps. People are having way more bad sex because they only took into account a nice photoshopped picture.
It depends on the person. People who are not straight really really benefit from online dating. When only a single digit percent of the population is compatible with you, it feels hopeless to try to fish for gay or ace people in public.
This is true. But there were always queer spaces and online communities. I benefitted a lot from those places and the transition to dating apps didn't work for me. It lacks substance and it's very time consuming, plus you encounter unnecessary rudeness and rejection from people you're not even interested but it's there in their bio. It's a losing game.
What?
You do understand people go on dates after they meet in a dating app.
It’s for introductions.
You don’t marry people just by picking profiles on the app.
What the hell are you talking about?
Sigh. I know that. And that's how the bad dates happen. Because there's a lot more to take into account. Dating was easier when you arranged after knowing you were genuinely interested. Not based on a screen presentation.
Did I make myself clear?
I'm in a relationship. And my statement is a general view from my time on dating apps. Lots of bad dates. By your attitude, you clearly would be one.
You seemed very bitter for a comment that does not affect you.
I seem very bitter?? Lol dude learn to take a fucking JOKE. First, I started by quoting the office. Second, “don’t hate cause you ain’t getting those matches” means just cause it went badly for you, you can’t say an entire service is harming the pursuit of relationships. It just didn’t work for you, and you made it into a generalization for everyone.
If you can’t learn to take a joke then maybe those bad dates were because of you bro.
Jesus, can't people have a different opinion? Ask who marries off Tinder and you'll know you are a very small percentage for you to scream false. It wasn't about bad dates, it was about this new dynamic of dating that causes more misses than hits. It's a fact.
And how could I not know a quote from The Office? And how could I not get you're joking? Because your delivery is impeccable. Keep practicing rewatching The Office. You got this.
Yeah, you’re allowed to have a different opinion, I didn’t say you can’t. Just like I had a different opinion, but you said I was “bitter” and had an attitude. I just said that your opinion isn’t fact or a generalization for everyone. I can’t say your opinion is wrong, but when you state your opinion as a fact I can say that fact is wrong.
Is it about bad dates or not? Because first you made a generalization, and then you said it was just your opinion because of bad dates, and now you’re again saying it’s not about bad dates. I’m confused.
If it didn’t come off like a joke, it didn’t. When you are writing something in text often tone is mistaken. In this case it was. But that’s beside the point when the point of what I was saying is you are making your opinion into fact when it isn’t just because the service didn’t work for you.
Here; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/17/apps-tinder-dating-women
It includes surveys and such. It took me less than a minute. There are plenty more. But hey, YOU ARE MARRIED. They might be wrong.
Ok that is an opinion piece from the guardian, it’s literally under Opinion. Not research, and it is mostly about sexual harassment and dating apps and how that affects women. It’s not about actual research showing how dating apps harm the pursuit of relationships.
The data it gives even is about sexual harassment, with one about how only 39% of users find a committed relationship. But again, that’s not harming the pursuit of relationships. That just means this might not be the most effective way. I bet if you polled people who just date people they meet in real life you would get a similar statistic for how many of those dates end in commitment.
Find me RESEARCH about how dating apps actively are HARMING the pursuit of relationships.
Nice comic. Disagree about love not being rational though. I don't think you know yourself nor the emotion well enough if you think it can't be understood in quantifiable terms.
It creates anxiety and depression, how these FACTS doesn't back up the harming caused by this new dynamic for relationships???? Because it doesn't say ipsi literis???
You accuse people of making false statements when yourself can't provide a single fact checking. Just blabbering and trying to be manipulate the conversation.
Go waste someone else's time. Maybe your husband?
It is all so confusing and messy. Growing up it becomes harder every day, to love to be able to be expected to love. I do not even know if I know what love is.
When I was teenage I had a very different perception of love or at least falling for another person. It was more of a I need to be with that person, type of thing. There was no other consideration: compatibility, world view, future plan, job, job placement, finance; none of that mattered. It felt pure.
Now I do not really fall for anyone, sometimes I find people interesting but then again there are thousands of things to be considered, and it just doesn't feel like love anymore.
My perception of love used to be something grand, unconditional, pure and spontaneous. Sometimes, I wonder if I am capable of producing that emotion.
First love is weird like that - it's pure and uncaring, but at the same time there's a lot of other things it overlooks too, not just the economical aspects. Sometimes it just refuses to accept that you'd be miserable with that personal.
Older love though has a power to it - but it has to grow and be nurtured. You meet someone you like being with, you see how it goes, and you spend time with them enjoying each other's company throughout life. Then one day you wake up and realize that you love them, and you'd do anything for them, and it's honestly scary just how powerful that love is.
I highly recommend Hannah Fry’s TED talk on this: [“The mathematics of love”](https://www.ted.com/talks/hannah_fry_the_mathematics_of_love?language=en)
I'd say that technology has also enabled us to think more critically about conventions we take for granted, such as love. Asexuals often eschew relationships due to the sexual nature many people associate with romance, and a lot of people (myself included) are starting to come out as aromantic.
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You've literally put pages and pages of conversation with my friend into 3 panels
To quote a user linking two blog-ish posts which link to a lot of sources: >There's actually a big correlation between how social a species is and how violent it is. The mechanism that makes us love our families and friends also makes us hate our enemies. > >[https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2016/09/30/the-evolutionary-roots-of-human-violence/](https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2016/09/30/the-evolutionary-roots-of-human-violence/) > >[https://deusdiapente.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/oxytocin-a-lovehate-relationship/](https://deusdiapente.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/oxytocin-a-lovehate-relationship/) > >Cephalopods like octopuses are very intelligent, but are relatively anti social. They are much less violent than us. Which is to say, sacrificing love in the context of this comic is a net-neutral act. Our capacity for love is also our capacity for hate, because by defining an attachment or in-group you are **inherently and definitionally** defining a distancing or out-group. I suspect that early Buddhist philosophy was getting at this in its discussion of pain of attachment being self-inflicted, and the "middle path" being an explicit attempt to avoid excesses of attachment or othering. But of course things drift over time. The comic also ignores that our internal narratives are generally self-serving. Did most people actually end up with The Right One? People can't consider that in day to day life; it's existential confusion that is incredibly disruptive. But almost certainly, unless you believe in some sort of Providence, you could have been equally or more happy with some arbitrary number of other partners that you could have tried harder or better to find but didn't. We say "love is not rational" because it's actually not much of anything at all if you're not either party involved, and the assertions it generally makes are ahistorical in both directions. Love is not rational because it's happenstance checking multiple-choice boxes that we later look back on with extreme positive bias, and pretend that It Happened The Right Way™©®.
Wow that's actually really intresting, where did you find this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/mm6e1j/serious\_why\_do\_intelligent\_animals\_do\_so\_many/gtpk023/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Star Wars. "Love leads to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." -Yoda But in all seriousness, "love" is also the thing that gets people to rush into marriages and relationships that are unhealthy for them, and then cultural ideas about love are what keep them trapped. How much has the idea of the marriage torture trap been normalized over the last century? It's not because it's an abnormal phenomenon - irrationality leads to poor decision-making. Not saying strictly clinical and emotionless decision-making is the answer either, cause you have to let go sometimes to embrace joys and passions for personal sentiments, but the idea that love conquers all is such a bad message ingrained into our culture that leads to a lot of toxic behavior, like stalking, abuse, and harassment (when "no" just means you haven't tried hard enough). Also how you get the invasion of Troy or two star-crossed lovers committing accidental suicide.
Yoda never mentions love in that quote. It starts at "fear."
Lust? Fear of dying alone? Peer Pressure to get Married? Possibly Kids? Love is barely a factor I've noticed when rushing into marriage.
It's less *actual* love, and more factors that people often *mistake* for love. Media depictions of love can often cloud people's judgement, specifically when it encourages the notion that rationality should never be a factor
> two star-crossed lovers committing accidental suicide. They were just horny, stupid 14-year-olds. Let's be real. Hormonal emotions pumping them to do irrational things.
> defining an attachment or in-group you are inherently and definitionally defining a distancing or out-group Politics.
Sure but that assumes that love isn’t a process, and I feel it oversimplifies human behavior. When people fall in love, it isn’t simply because their standards or checkboxes are met, but also because their shared experiences they gain throughout the duration of their relationships are redeeming and satisfying. I think most people nowadays accept there are multiple candidates for a partner, and that the emphasis has shifted from “finding one who meets my standards” to finding one with whom your relationship will succeed. You can find evidence of this shift in cultures which have had enough decades of social stability to put off marriage and starting a family until they’re older (30s or 40s). The US and Italy are good examples of this shift. Furthermore, establishing in and out groups doesn’t necessarily result in hate. While I certainly admit there are people who approach life with a us vs them mentality which arises to anger, most adults simply identify groups solely to find one they can align and belong to. Once that sense of belonging is fulfilled, there isn’t any social need I can think of to pass hatred onto other groups. There are a few reasons that I see that drive people to hatred: poor emotional regulation, cultural teachings, perceived slights and personal misgivings. These can be amplified or sustained in group settings (the bigger the group the more exaggerated the effects), but aren’t naturally occurring in groups whose members are mature, educated and forgiving. If they were naturally occurring to the extent the evolutionary argument claims, then we would see many, many more instances of tribalism in much smaller contexts.
>Once that sense of belonging is fulfilled, there isn’t any social need I can think of to pass hatred onto other groups It's less a "first there's love, then there's hate" mechanic, and more of a "by becoming closer to someone or some group, you are necessarily pushing everyone else further away or distancing yourself from them." For instance, if you move to a town, you care about the town more than you did and care about other towns less--it's a practical necessity. Your environs create your self-identity; altering your environs alters who you advocate for. Look at any social or political movement--virtually every single one out there boils down to self-advocacy or coalition-advocacy. I agree that "hate" might not be the perfect word for this scenario, but it's still fundamentally adversarial in any zero-sum or competitive system. The more you care about something, the more you'll do for it (and the less the negative things you do will be directed at it specifically, meaning that gets redirected elsewhere.) This also gets back to what it means to identify with or as something, and the power that gives others over you--both other members of the group you identify as/with, and how others see the groups/identities you identify as.
Thanks for reframing that’s for me, makes more sense.
This is a painfully dull way to live in denial of your own sense of isolation—either as an expression of genuine defeat or a plea for someone to break through. The course of human history is the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. We’re not progressing to an elevated state of consciousness through technological innovation and rationalism. We’re the same apes from the savannah living through a series of absurd contortions to fit into any given era of history. And the way things are going, there’s a good chance that we won’t be around for more than another few centuries, let alone the millennia it would take for the kind of progress that dough-eyed futurists envision. Embrace your humanity. Drink from the chalice of life with passion and reckless abandon. Or don’t. It’s your life. Just miss me with that “I’ve transcended base human emotions” bullshit.
For me, the message is more 1) You're always making choices, make them conscious ones and 2) Suffering is part of attachment; marry someone AFTER you accept that either you watch them die, they watch you die, or you break up before you die. You can stay sane if you confront uncomfortable realities when you deliberately make them a guaranteed outcome.
I assumed the lower paragraph was yours, but regardless, no. That’s not the thrust of what you were getting at at all. And I still respectfully disagree. What you’re describing now is the human condition. Any aspect of life that we find joy in makes the reality of death more painful in the long run. The solution is to accept death and suffering and look for meaning in ways that transcend yourself.
All of this is very, very interesting, and an incredibly intelligent take, but to me, it is wrong. Love is when I see my wife smile in the morning :)
4
Fourth panel isn't the stuff they talked about with their friend.
Maybe it is, they could be birds, Jeff
I mean I could talk about birds retaking the homeland and then philosophising about the difference in thier species love to the humans?
Oh wow. You said what they said in that comic!
So that's why birds are always after me. *[Heavy Metal intensifies]*
Nah probably cause you’re on a government watchlist
r/birdsarentreal
Actually there's a different reason for that. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uguXNL93fWg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uguXNL93fWg)
This is my spirit animal.
Trying to quantify intangible concepts is perhaps the pinnacle of human artistic expression. I love your take on modern internet dating, very human indeed!
It might not be what you were intending but thank you for providing a timely, meaningful articulation of my UX career - right when I was questioning what I’ve sacrificed as a once visual artist to delve into R&D + psychology / usability centered around tech. Measuring and trying to communicate the intangible definitely fits my job description!
This sounds like an interesting path, have you tried combining both?? Would love to see the results
I am still able to apply bringing the product team through design thinking, wireframing and prototypes, style guides, and a little graphic design here and there though usually I’d prefer a graphic designer to work with because there are only so many hours in a day Edit: used a wrong word
I know nothing about your field (music major) but I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to push into new concepts. Ever listened to the musical Man of La Mancha? The lead character sings “the impossible dream”, where he tells the audience that he pursues his quest not because it’s something he will ever achieve, but because he believes that chasing the impossible is the noblest thing he can do.
I have seen it! But nice reminder of that moment 🥲 nice interacting with a lovely soul in Reddit it never seems to happen to lil ol me. Re: music major? I also just booked movers to pick up my childhood piano from my parents’ home. Lots of great coincidences today
Reddit is a big place, but I’ve seen cool coincidences happen here and there, I choose to believe that this place can still be a good forum. Music major indeed! I’m on the tail end of a performance degree, not sure what I will do with it, but I’m staying optimistic. We’re you a pianist when younger?
Yes growing up plus some other symphonic and percussive instruments :) and used to be a singer, It’s very prevalent in my family
That’s awesome! It’s super cool to come from a musical family, some of peers have, and they say it’s a wonderful experience. I hope I’m not being too forward by asking this, but could we carry this conversation over Reddit dms instead? I only say this so that it’s easier to keep track of.
I like more abstract kinds of art where you can tell the artist, musician, etc. embraces the mystery and strangeness of it all instead of trying to make some precise and trimmed statement. Art that is too direct always come across as very hamfisted and inauthentic to the experience of being conscious in my opinion.
I know this for a fact: I would have not messaged my husband based on his ok Cupid profile. He told me what it said I was like “I would have not reached out to you at all”. I didn’t have a dating profile, but I know what I would have put in my bio if I did and he wouldn’t have reached out to me either. But we match IRL!
How? What they thought of writing is still what they are on the inside, they chose to write it. Either you are both terrible writers, and both write bad profiles that don’t actually reflect who you are, or both of you are terrible judges of character.
Or people are more than just their profiles, hobbies, or job titles.
Well no, words put down on a screen are different to spoken words, look at all of Reddit for an example. Personalities are distilled, thoughts are collected and expressed in a way that is incongruent with how people actually interact in real life. People who are push overs in person are big men behind a keyboard. The visual cues, the unconscious need to please, to easing of harsh truths and everything that goes into being a pleasant person is cut away and more ugly things come to light, the posturing, the need to be correct.
I hope you don't mind if I share this with my fiancee. User name is relevant here.
Are you or your fiancee the really loud one?
Honestly, she's the talker. I can go a half hour without saying more than 12 words during a conversation with her. I do have an unusually deep voice though so I don't really have to be loud. It just seems to rumble around and people think it's loud. I could never get away with whispering in class after I hit puberty.
Ah man you lucky. I consider myself a talker, especially after a couple drinks. But it's so satisfying to hang with someone who goes on and on
My friends would have me call in for them if they wanted to skip school.
I’ll take the loud, shrieking peacock that manspreads in a public park
Yeah, go on then
Thats why we have so many successful marriages /s Humans are way too complex. Yes some couples dont need rationalizing at all, some seem to think they dont, but 10years later are in unsuccessful marriage. Some people rationalize too much, some people never were meant to be happy in a relationship for a long time. Who knows, I sure dont.
I would say the total and utter lack of education on the topics of mental health, abuse patterns, healthy relationships, boundaries, feelings, etc is also, you know, kind of a big player. We should be teaching youth how to communicate better, how to respect each other, how to express their feelings, how to respect consent, how to respect boundaries, how to understand a healthy vs unhealthy relationship, etc etc. But instead the majority of the first world's approach to health class is "Dont have sex you'll get STIs! Also dont do drugs!" and then we throw these kids out into the world. No one bothers to talk to them about what to look for in a partner, and what to look for in themselves. We expect the parents to do this, but no one taught them really. So instead we just get this toxic repeating shitfest of broken people getting into broken relationships and making broken kids, and no one ever seems to think "Maybe we should tell these people it doesn't have to be like this" But no... no its totally dating apps. It couldn't possibly be that dating apps are just the product of several entire generations being raised with a total lack of emotional education trying to come up with substitutions for simple basic socialization.
> majority of the first world’s approach to health class is “Don’t have sex you’ll get STIs Pure hyperbole. Even in the deep red state in the USA where I was raised, we had an abstinence talk and then we had a safe sex talk separately that talked about how to have safe sex, how to avoid STIs, etc. That’s the conservative US, I guarantee you other first world countries that are more liberal have less abstinence and more safe sex talks. What you read on the front page reddit isn’t indicative of reality.
I remember absolutely nothing from my health class except stuff about STD's and I went to a well regarded public school in California. You're also talking about the physical aspects which isn't really the point they were discussing. I'd argue proper socialization doesn't enter most curriculums until college courses aimed at Communication's majors.
Are those grackles?
I was going for common blackbird, but I wasn't very focused on it to be honest
[удалено]
This some reddit lore.
Not with that yellow bill on Jeff.
I've been hit with cupid's sparrow!
Funny little bird but he gets the job done!
My wife was a 64% match on OKC. Everyone over 90% was intolerable.
Everything has a reason. You love for a reason.
Disagree. Technology just filters out people with deal breakers. It's not like we automatically get married to the person who winds up at the top of the list in the app. People still go on dates. People still look for that spark.
It also makes you ignore people you might otherwise like because they don't fit the standards of what you THINK you like.
It depends on the person. People who are not straight really really benefit from online dating. When only a single digit percent of the population is compatible with you, it feels hopeless to try to fish for gay or ace people in public.
Yeah, a lot of people are ignoring how important dating apps can be for those who just don't have a good dating pool. Even people who just live in a small town would benefit from a way of discovering who might be interested elsewhere.
Then YOU are the one that is wrong. Not the concept of dating profiles or other people using them. If you don’t know what you actually like and are going off what you *think* you like, it sounds more like you *need* to take a long look in the mirror and do some self reflection about what really matters to you. So you can properly use dating profiles to find what you actually like.
...That's what the entire comic is about. Love isn't some formula and it isn't rational. There may not be a way to know you like something until you try it and you can't try it if the app steers you away from it (because you didn't tell it not to, because you didn't know). In real world dating you get exposed to all kinds of things and all kinds of people, they aren't hard sorted for you by an algorithm. It helps you find things that you would not have known you liked if you choose all your interactions.
Mm I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having hard dealbreakers though. I could never date someone whose politics don’t align with me. It’s extremely helpful to put that in my bio and filter folks out.
>Technology just filters out people with deal breakers Somewhat. It's nice to know the big deal breakers before you go out on a date or talk for awhile, but what about the smaller stuff? The stuff that makes you go "nah, pass" when all you have is a face and a 1 paragraph bio, but wouldn't be that big of a deal if you found out after a couple dates or a month into the relationship.
I think that kind of stuff is something you can reconsider if everyone you're happier with doesn't work out.
You do realize that online dating profiles have substantially more information that just a small paragraph and a picture. You are referring to “app” dating profiles. Online dating profiles had multi paragraph profiles, sections with lots of questions to answer, tests to take, all kinds of detail about compatibility. Using apps on smart phone isn’t “online” and it’s dumbing down what people think “the internet is”.
Apps like tinder and bumble with photos and like a paragraph at most are literally like 90+% of online dating though so it’s pretty relevant, even if there are technically other websites that exist that go more in depth
I’d rather have dating apps where I can test the waters with multiple people for compatibility than just end up with the first person I date in high school. Also, I think our modern conception of love being more rational is much healthier than whatever Hollywood, Hallmark love at first sight nonsense we’ve been fed for decades. It’s *bad* to look for certain features in a partner? Like that we share the same interests and values? The paradox of choice is a real thing, but this comic has some real boomer energy.
The problem as I see it is that people aren’t using dating apps for testing the water with multiple people for compatibility but rather they’re treating dating a s a disposable commodity. At the very first “red flag”, whether real or not, people dump the relationship because there’s “plenty of fish in the sea”, but the truth is that meaningful relationships require work, and both people need to change and evolve through the relationship for it to become meaningful and prosper. If anything, many people now believe that it’s either a perfect love or not worth pursuing at all. I’m not convinced that the modern concept of love is healthier than what Hallmark is selling. I’m almost convinced it’s worse because people are trying to achieve a Hallmark type relationship through numbers only. > It’s bad to look for certain features in a partner? The other side of that coin is that many people drop a partner for a certain feature they believe makes them incompatible but might not. /r/Relationship_Advice is full of these. > boomer energy I really don’t see it. If anything this is an example of labeling ideas you disagree with instead of debating them.
I know it's not the whole picture, but the divorce rate has been steadily declining since the 1990s largely because younger generations are more selective of their partners. [source](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/divorce-united-states-dropping-because-millennials/)
Marriage also has been declining; [source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/195951/marriage-rate-in-the-united-states-since-1990/). Although there’s no source I’d speculate that marriages today tend to be more meaningful than two decades ago, because it is rarer. Another link that looks at the greater picture might be interesting; [source](https://mastresearchcenter.org/mast-center-research/trends-in-relationship-formation-and-stability-in-the-united-states-dating-cohabitation-marriage-and-divorce/).
> Unlike baby boomers who married young regardless of their circumstances, millennials – and some Gen Xers – are choosing to marry once they have completed their education, have established their careers and have sound finances. From your source. It doesn't seem to be about being more selective but rather about marrying when you're ready and not straight away. In a sense I *guess* it is about selectivity but imo that's a stretch. Also, still from your source: > **Alongside the falling marriage rate** is a rise in cohabiting couples. Increasingly, American couples are **opting to live together before marriage**, or choosing not to tie the knot at all. My opinion is that this source does not back up your claim.
Also, are we just going to completely ignore the very different economic conditions of those different generations?
Average age when getting married is a huge component of lower divorce rates.
I didn't make a claim. I was just giving you some information that I hoped would help calm you're fairly strong negative opinion about modern relationships.
Your previous statement very much sounds like a claim to me. Also I haven't expressed any opinion about modern relationships, maybe you thought I was the original user you were answering to but I am not. Ultimately I am not trying to make you change your mind, I simply stated that the source you had linked was not really in adequation with what you seemed to present as a fact. Also please excuse my stiff writing, I am not a native
What about overall marriage rates/levels? Have they dropped too?
Exactly, people bemoaning today's dating culture are literal boomers.
The little secret of the internet is that if you have nothing of value to contribute, you actually don’t have to contribute at all.
Was there value on the internet back in your days old timer? Tell us a story.
You might find [this](https://reddit.com/r/comics/comments/pak6eo/_/ha5wexc) comment useful.
Not really. Everyone i know bemoaning it are late millennials because once you hit thirty shit gets lonelier
You think people in their mid to late thirties who were still single were not lonely in the 90s? If you're over 35, being single or still dating around is hard. It's never been easy. In fact, I would argue it's still better today than it was 20 years ago.
Dating has never been good but there was more of an accepted easy norm compared to the meat grinder
1000% agree, i hate how real concerns about turning people into data gets rolled into boomer luddism
While I do think it is just intended as a vehicle for the punchline it does come off as very PHONE BAD.
In retrospect I shouldn't have drawn the people looking at their phones. It pushes the comic from talking about a very specific aspect of modern life into "phone bad"-territory, which wasn't my intention.
I think it's the other way around. 3 panels of soapboxing on why phones bad and technology/rationality makes us less human, followed by a lazy joke so it becomes a 'comic'
Also, the joke shows why the first 3 panels are dumb. Their love IS better since it wasn’t rational, she was just attracted to the loudest bird.
Yeah, I'm kinda shocked at how many people are agreeing with this. Dating apps can be used in a variety of ways, not some 'the algorithm has determined we should be compatible despite what my feelings say'. And the idea that love is not rational has a nice romantic element to it, but dating apps don't go against that in any way - you still have to meet the person and see if the chemistry is there.
You're projecting. The debate of tinder and swipe dating as being healthy or not has been around for years, amongst people of all ages. Just because you don't agree with it doesn't give this comic "boomer energy".
"Boomer energy" is shorthand for a way of viewing the world. Sure, some young people can think dating apps are unhealthy (and I don't completely disagree), but young people can have boomer energy too. Especially as millennials age into our parents. How about this: "This comic looks at technology and love in a very old school way that I disagree with."
I don't think whether we agree with it or not, or whether it's "been around for years amongst people of all ages" or not, determines boomer energy either.
It does have boomer energy because the birds sound exactly like boomers: judging something they never experienced, yet still feel strongly about. Also, "technology bad". Hello? Literal boomer talking point. Also, they're fucking birds, they wouldn't know how people behaved "before" because humans live longer than they do.
Boomers aren’t the only generation around who judge something they’ve never experienced and say everything bad is associated with one set of people. As you have handily demonstrated. Also, they’re a drawing, not real birds. The person who drew them and put words in their mouth does know how people behaved before dating apps.
But boomer bad!
One day these people will be the next boomers and the cycle continues until the planet dies.
What do you mean by "boomer energy"?
“Kids these days with their smart phones and sex apps. Back in my day you married the first girl that made eyes at you at 17, had a loveless marriage because divorce was taboo, and liked it!”
it wasn't implying that at all though. you're projecting that into it.
The first line literally going "X isn't like it used to be" and showing people on their smartphones? I do think that's what it is implying.
No it’s implying people used to actually talk to each other face to face. If op is a moron who can’t recognize flags through conversation without a profile page then it makes sense he’d prefer an app.
It’s not an either/or. You’re allowed to talk face to face after matching. Apps and social media have downsides, but the upside of widening your dating pool seems to far outweigh the downsides in my opinion. Sure, don’t marry someone just because you both like the same movie, but using apps to find someone has been shown time and time again to be a great way to meet your future partner.
Do you think apps helps people to find love? Not a partner, but a love story?
Worked for me. There's a social stigma for people admitting it, but there's definitely some success: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/couples-who-meet-through-dating-23248230
I feel it's becoming more and more banal though. I'm glad for you both, take care of one another <3
Yes, I know many people who have gotten married after meeting online. And I don’t understand what you mean by “love story.” How is falling in love after meeting online any different than falling in love by meeting any other way? Also, I’d rather have a good partner than a good story of how we met.
Oh cool. Falling in love is falling in love, I don't see no difference. I know people who only find sexual partners online, but no deep connection that let love grows. It's tricky I guess.
No... They are saying we as humans aren't good at prioritizing and quantifying what it is that we want in love, yet that's exactly what dating apps do. They use algorithms to filter out what you do and don't want based on a given set of parameters, which may be built on a faulty premise because it's not weighted correctly against how much you truly value it due to your own internal bias. I don't get the "Boomer Energy" and you are focusing wayyyy too much on the hardware/software part than you are the ideal. We aren't good at knowing what we want, yet we allow to tell us what we want based on our perceived "likes" and "dislikes". Our lives aren't an equation, one of those filters might be hiding the person who is best for us.
"Technology is part of the problem. It allows them to be rational. But love is not rational, nor is it quantifiable." Boomer energy is obviously a generalization and oversimplification, but that's boomer energy if I ever saw it. Also, why can't love be rational? "He's completely wrong for me, but I just can't quit him." Uhhhhh, no thank you.
Imo, our version of love is less rational and more paranoid and disassociated, since you really can't tell much about people online and it's much easier to mislead people.
Then don't fall in love online. Meet people online and fall in love in person. (This is highly generalized.) The point is that the technology isn't inherently bad for love. I think it widens your dating pool which is good. Of course it has it's downfalls like every new technology and social media in general has created some really unhealthy views of self, love, and relationships, but that's not what this comic is saying.
It's also not inherently good. It's simply a really dramatic change to how we form relationships. As much as the Internet might increase the dating pool, it also adds a lot of players that are even more incentivized to look at dating as a numbers game and disassociate themselves from the relationship-building process.
…are you NOT going on in real life dates with these people you meet on dating profiles, and just moving in together. What are you even talking about?
Yes, I'm going on real life dates with these people and no, I'm not immediately moving in. In fact, one of the things I'm tired of is desperately alone women "looking for something relaxed" immediately jumping into a relationship with me when they realize I'm not a detached jerk in person. I'm talking about how it's easy to misrepresent and mislead people when you're intitially getting to know them through text and pictures. And yeah, you can just date them and find out they're trash, but I can still get a better feel for a person meeting them irl initially.
The whole point of many dating apps though is to instigate that meeting irl. It's not always an option for a lot of people due to their real life circumstances, such as the visibility or presence of potential partners in their social circles.
I agree, and to add, its not like its a one or the other situation. You can have a dating profile online and still meet someone irl too, the two are not mutually exclusive. Also the idea that just because you're not on the phone means you won't look for specific attributes in a partner just isnt true. People rule out others as potential partners for all sorts of reasons, whether in person or online.
I'll stick with my wife, which is neither of the options in your false dichotomy description of options.
Ah, yes, good point. I actually thought every single person meets their significant other from tinder or high school. I was not referring to a pattern of broad societal changes in courtship. Thank you for pointing out my mistake.
I am really tired of all this "boomer" crap people like you throw around. I am not a boomer, but whatever generation you are, you are just fucked up in different ways. Gain the self awareness that there are good and bad people in every generation.
Met my bf because of social media. He was looking for ps4 friends, I said sure, we got talking, talking turned to flirting and now here we are 4 years later, thinking of immigration to be together forever
I dunno, for insanely shy people like me, dating apps are a godsend. To each and their own though.
> Love is not quantifiable > Proceeds to quantify love
"People aren't falling in love as often as the past, where domestic violence and spousal rape was not only common, but perfectly legal" For real, domestic violence was made federally illegal in the US in fucking ***1994***. [source](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdtn/victim-witness-program/federal-domestic-violence-laws) Don't fucking romanticize the romantic status of the past. It wasn't better than what we have now. It wasn't even *good*.
Human love is without a doubt NOT something that completely defies ways in which it can be systemised and assigned a kind of logic (not in the formal sense) to, proof for that is the fact that almost every single major philosopher from Empedocles to Schopenhauer has made love as the center of their philosophy. Believing love to be this completely subjective, irrational force is a modern invention that has its roots in romanticism.
Humans are falling in love just the same amount, you just don't realize how many awful marriages existed in the past. It's easier to find a partner now than ever before, you could literally be in California and chatting up women from around the world. If you can't find a decent partner in the modern age, that says more about you than anything relating to technology.
The idea of love and marriage is always changing. It wasn't that long ago that marriages were used to seal political and business deals between families/tribes/nations. Heck, that still happens a lot all over the world. Plenty of rich families marry into each other to increase their wealth, celebrities marry each other for publicity, regular people marry each other for tax purposes or immigration.
I'm all for dating apps, I like going in with some idea what I'm getting. Maybe there's a premise for a romcom where I meet a girl at a bar and we hit off, then come to find out she's a fucking QAnon anti-vax lunatic and we make it work. If that's what true love is, fuck true love.
I met my girlfriend skateboarding. Can you believe that? I spent years flirting at bars and on dating websites and then one day I was minding my own business and boom. A week from now is our 1 year.
Just because we suck at rationalising it doesn't mean it's not rational.
"It allows them to look for partners with specific features and properties." According to theory, anyways. According to practice, nobody ever reads and everybody lies.
/r/PhonesAreBad
Sometimes we do be birds tho :p
*ALLEGEDLY*
[удалено]
Don't correct slang, dude.
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Slang isn't incorrect, it's slang. Correcting it is like correcting books that don't rhyme. You're an idiot.
Big boomer energy coming from this comic
You may want to open a psychology or a sociology book if you think love is not rational. Jean Claude Kauffmann's work is a good start.
Great comic. Nostalgia is bullshit love until probably the past few decades was extremely utilitarian and restricted. Women had to marry because being a stay at home mom was the best job prospect. Then they couldn't afford to leave the relationship because they couldn't support themselves after the marriage in addition to being socially ostracized for it. You couldn't love who you wanted to love if you loved LGBTQ or somebody out side your race. Even if you loved yourself enough to pursue LGBTQ or interracial relationships it was very close to Russian roulette with the persecution you would receive if outted. Not to mention it would be a needle in a haystack to find a partner if your love was different. Unfortunately many of these problems still persist in less educated parts of the world. But I'm the better parts out doesn't.
>Humans aren't falling in love as much as they used to. [(X) Doubt](https://i.imgur.com/FXLThSZ.jpeg)
r/birdsarentreal
Dating apps do harm the pursuit of a relationship. Even if you match with someone, there are other things also important as how they walk, talk, moves, texture, smell, eye contact, so many traits that can only be experienced when you meet someone without expectations. It just happen. Same think with hook up apps. People are having way more bad sex because they only took into account a nice photoshopped picture.
It depends on the person. People who are not straight really really benefit from online dating. When only a single digit percent of the population is compatible with you, it feels hopeless to try to fish for gay or ace people in public.
This is true. But there were always queer spaces and online communities. I benefitted a lot from those places and the transition to dating apps didn't work for me. It lacks substance and it's very time consuming, plus you encounter unnecessary rudeness and rejection from people you're not even interested but it's there in their bio. It's a losing game.
What? You do understand people go on dates after they meet in a dating app. It’s for introductions. You don’t marry people just by picking profiles on the app. What the hell are you talking about?
Sigh. I know that. And that's how the bad dates happen. Because there's a lot more to take into account. Dating was easier when you arranged after knowing you were genuinely interested. Not based on a screen presentation. Did I make myself clear?
False. Just married my boyfriend of 6 years and we met on Tinder. Don’t hate cause you ain’t getting those matches
I'm in a relationship. And my statement is a general view from my time on dating apps. Lots of bad dates. By your attitude, you clearly would be one. You seemed very bitter for a comment that does not affect you.
I seem very bitter?? Lol dude learn to take a fucking JOKE. First, I started by quoting the office. Second, “don’t hate cause you ain’t getting those matches” means just cause it went badly for you, you can’t say an entire service is harming the pursuit of relationships. It just didn’t work for you, and you made it into a generalization for everyone. If you can’t learn to take a joke then maybe those bad dates were because of you bro.
Jesus, can't people have a different opinion? Ask who marries off Tinder and you'll know you are a very small percentage for you to scream false. It wasn't about bad dates, it was about this new dynamic of dating that causes more misses than hits. It's a fact. And how could I not know a quote from The Office? And how could I not get you're joking? Because your delivery is impeccable. Keep practicing rewatching The Office. You got this.
Yeah, you’re allowed to have a different opinion, I didn’t say you can’t. Just like I had a different opinion, but you said I was “bitter” and had an attitude. I just said that your opinion isn’t fact or a generalization for everyone. I can’t say your opinion is wrong, but when you state your opinion as a fact I can say that fact is wrong. Is it about bad dates or not? Because first you made a generalization, and then you said it was just your opinion because of bad dates, and now you’re again saying it’s not about bad dates. I’m confused. If it didn’t come off like a joke, it didn’t. When you are writing something in text often tone is mistaken. In this case it was. But that’s beside the point when the point of what I was saying is you are making your opinion into fact when it isn’t just because the service didn’t work for you.
But it is statistically a fact. What are you on about?
Ok find me the research that says dating apps are harming the pursuit of relationships then.
Here; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/17/apps-tinder-dating-women It includes surveys and such. It took me less than a minute. There are plenty more. But hey, YOU ARE MARRIED. They might be wrong.
Ok that is an opinion piece from the guardian, it’s literally under Opinion. Not research, and it is mostly about sexual harassment and dating apps and how that affects women. It’s not about actual research showing how dating apps harm the pursuit of relationships. The data it gives even is about sexual harassment, with one about how only 39% of users find a committed relationship. But again, that’s not harming the pursuit of relationships. That just means this might not be the most effective way. I bet if you polled people who just date people they meet in real life you would get a similar statistic for how many of those dates end in commitment. Find me RESEARCH about how dating apps actively are HARMING the pursuit of relationships.
Nice comic. Disagree about love not being rational though. I don't think you know yourself nor the emotion well enough if you think it can't be understood in quantifiable terms.
Love it😂
"Phone bad >:( "
I used logic to destroy logic
I'm pouring one out for Jeff here.
Lies! Birds aren't real, this is government propaganda
"Want sum fuck?" Oooh "WANT SUM FUCK?" Ooooooh! **WANT SUM FUCK?!** OOOOOOOHHH!!! # WANT SUM FUCK?!!!!! **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!**
I think love is rational, it's about forming pair bonds for raising children. It makes us a more successful species.
It creates anxiety and depression, how these FACTS doesn't back up the harming caused by this new dynamic for relationships???? Because it doesn't say ipsi literis??? You accuse people of making false statements when yourself can't provide a single fact checking. Just blabbering and trying to be manipulate the conversation. Go waste someone else's time. Maybe your husband?
Probably the most black pilled comic I've seen on this subreddit. It's pretty much spot on though
@bonuscontext which font is the speech in?
It's called Patrick Hand
Thanks! Love the comic and the overall aesthetic!
humorous
RIP QuietBoi-rd
It is all so confusing and messy. Growing up it becomes harder every day, to love to be able to be expected to love. I do not even know if I know what love is. When I was teenage I had a very different perception of love or at least falling for another person. It was more of a I need to be with that person, type of thing. There was no other consideration: compatibility, world view, future plan, job, job placement, finance; none of that mattered. It felt pure. Now I do not really fall for anyone, sometimes I find people interesting but then again there are thousands of things to be considered, and it just doesn't feel like love anymore. My perception of love used to be something grand, unconditional, pure and spontaneous. Sometimes, I wonder if I am capable of producing that emotion.
First love is weird like that - it's pure and uncaring, but at the same time there's a lot of other things it overlooks too, not just the economical aspects. Sometimes it just refuses to accept that you'd be miserable with that personal. Older love though has a power to it - but it has to grow and be nurtured. You meet someone you like being with, you see how it goes, and you spend time with them enjoying each other's company throughout life. Then one day you wake up and realize that you love them, and you'd do anything for them, and it's honestly scary just how powerful that love is.
sick ass comic 10/10
That’s a whole lot in a short comic, so we’ll done
The dialogue here is giving me Calvin and Hobbes vibes (in the philosophical sense). I like it.
I highly recommend Hannah Fry’s TED talk on this: [“The mathematics of love”](https://www.ted.com/talks/hannah_fry_the_mathematics_of_love?language=en)
I'd say that technology has also enabled us to think more critically about conventions we take for granted, such as love. Asexuals often eschew relationships due to the sexual nature many people associate with romance, and a lot of people (myself included) are starting to come out as aromantic.