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Comment by InitialLastName | Hacker News Reader

> dating as I define it is horribly broken

Socializing as a whole is broken, triggered by the disappearance of third places, the dissolution of communities at the altar of the nuclear dual-income family, live-at-work jobs and "hustle culture" (Veblen entrepreneurship), and the unlimited streaming doom-scroll.

With nowhere to go but work and home, good luck finding anyone to date or befriend via a nonexistent organic social network.

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A sizeable group of us don’t have a meaningful second place either anymore. I work remote and there is really no social aspect to it in any meaningful sense, just pointless meetings and an endless Jira backlog. My home and my work are one and the same.

In the last three years the closest I came to a viable third place was VRChat, it was the best social experience I’ve ever had. I don’t think I need to say much more about that, it speaks for itself.

Very true!

While what you are saying is very true, dating so many people at once, plus having dated so many in the past that you need an app to keep track of them all is a whole other level of broken

The issue is that whereas in the past you could use "knowing somebody as an acquaintance and/or by association with an acquaintance" as the first stage of your "should I date somebody" funnel, you now get "here's a list of all the people in your who have signed up for a dating service, the marketing blurb they wrote about themselves, and some broad demographic filters; Have at it" as your initial filter.

Recently an article described an extreme case, a woman in her thirties wasting 10 years "swiping" and dating "at scale". She'd check over a 100 profiles every single day for 10 years straight without even an attempt at forming a relationship.

Pure addiction, like a slot machine. The original purpose all but forgotten.

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