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I took that turn of phrase to mean something akin to the detachment she felt/feels to life. The whole article read to me like an ode to post post modern drifting in and out of superficial encounters. I ended up reading the whole thing while waiting to see if there was going to be a prod issue tonight. I'm definitely not the New Yorker's target audience.

> Let me first say: impeccable article from The New Yorker. It's the only mainstream bastion of proper editing and spelling left (maybe The Economist, too). I don't think I've ever found a typo in their articles; as opposed to CNN/WaPo/NYT/FOX where I find typos and grammar errors routinely (even on their front pages).

The Guardian has the nickname Grauniad (coined by Private Eye, a far better publication) because of its frequent spelling errors. I had a girlfriend who became a sub-editor, and she was told not to use a spellchecker because it would lead to negligence and hence, mistakes. I understand their logic but I think it's wrong, just use all the tools at your disposal and be diligent.

Root cause unknown but we know where people are meeting more and more. It's 1) online dating and 2) bars/clubs. Everything else individually is <10% of couples and keeps only getting smaller. Physical attractiveness is about all that matters in those venues. Your average man is not considered physically attractive to almost any women these days. So, is it a surprise that sex is going down when the only ways of meeting are relying on physical attraction are going up?

It's more like it requires an emotional apathy or detachment. At least that's what I've heard from my friends who engage in such casual encounters.

A Hookup App for the Emotionally Jaded

I respect nonheteronormativity but do get annoyed by how people get on a high horse about it and talk like they’re a higher evolved life form as a result of not being straight. I can’t be the only one who’s irritated by it.

> The root cause is unknown.

Anecdata: My grandpa had 9 kids. When asked for the reason, he would say that in his times there was no TV.

Now we have computers, tablets, phones and thousands of ways of consuming content.

Almost everyone is addicted to their phones.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we are just having a lot less human interaction, because we are preferring our devices.

In fact right now I’m writing this comment while I have family around me to interact with. And they are all on their screens as well. We are not interacting, even though some of us are in the same room.

Edit: removed my uninformed comment about the Uvalde police officer

In many ways, relationships are 'paid for' with attention and time.

We're spending most of that attention and time elsewhere now, and so relationships... just don't happen more often.

> One of the Uvalde officers was checking his phone with an ongoing shooting right next to him.

If you’re talking about the one with the Punisher lock screen, I’m pretty sure his wife was contacting him telling him she’d been shot and was dying. AFAIK he wasn’t just “checking his phone” out of boredom.

> One of the Uvalde officers was checking his phone

The one whose wife, a teacher, was injured and dying? That doesn’t seem like a case of phone addiction.

> Anecdata: My grandpa had 9 kids. When asked for the reason, he would say that in his times there was no TV.

You realize this is of course a joke? Every country in the world decreases birthrate as their socio-economic stability increases, because in part they no longer have to rely on having lots of kids to take care of them when they are old.

The rest of your comment goes almost exactly against the story that is linked? That is about how technology is making it a lot easier for people to connect in person?

It frustrates me that this thoughtless conservatism goes unchallenged on HN.

> It frustrates me that this thoughtless conservatism goes unchallenged on HN.

I don't think this is some thoughtless conservative belief, but rather one that's bringing up how everything primarily being online nowadays is causing less in-person communication than ever. I mean with fewer people having sex each year, it makes sense to suspect the things that have changed between the generations that didn't have this issue and the ones that now do.

I really don't think the summation of human interaction is the number of kids you end up having with a mate/partner/spouse, but maybe I'm wrong.

From the article:

> This was one way to make my unwanted future tolerable, to at least make it interesting for myself: to pretend that there was such a possibility as a new kind of person in a new kind of world.

I gotta say, the self awareness is refreshing.

> Sounds like the writer is trying to ascribe some kind of moral superiority to enjoying non-vanilla casual sex.

Sounds more like contrast to other hookup apps.