TheRazorX

TheRazorX, 9 months ago

y'all are missing the context.

The first one was written by ChatGPT, the rest is just actual users trolling ModCodeofConduct

TheRazorX, 9 months ago

Side point (& I'm not the person you were responding to), but I have to ask: Do you not see online dating in the same vein as most other online corporate sites that commodify their users and devalue them for profits?

I personally think online dating is a "meat market" or "horse show" for everyone of every gender & orientation. There's little to no real effort on behalf of these sites to actually increase the number of connections (e.g. via coming up with features that actually encourage making connections), instead their entire ecosystem is designed to encourage the same type of "doom scrolling" that sites like FB encourage so that you stay on their sites/apps for longer viewing ads for longer, or shell out more & more money for their "premium" offerings.

It's hard to deny that online dating does not provide avenues for diversity in presenting people's strengths. Some people are more appealing in person than they are in text for example. Some people aren't photogenic (even if they are actually physically attractive), some people are livelier or funnier in person than they will ever appear in an online dating ad, some people just don't know how to create "eye catching" dating ads....etc.

It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with those people at all, it just means those sites don't provide avenues for their strengths, which is a problem because people are extremely diverse, but instead these sites create the "meat market" dynamic because it's the only thing they apparently know how to do & it increases their profits to do so.

This piece from the Atlantic back in 2016 touched on what I mean:

Moira Weigel is a historian & author of the recent book Labor of Love, in which she chronicles how dating has always been difficult, & always been in flux. But there is something “historically new” about our current era, she says. “Dating has always been work,” she says. “But what’s ironic is that more of the work now is not actually around the interaction that you have with a person, it’s around the selection process, & the process of self-presentation. That does feel different than before.”

&

“The thing with design is, at risk of belaboring the obvious, how all of these apps make money is by keeping people on the app,” Weigel says. “Yes, there’s better & worse design, but there is ultimately this conflict of interest between the user of the app & the designer of the app.”

&

But getting as many people in front of your eyeballs as fast as possible doesn’t end up saving time at all. “I have women saying that they spend 10 to 15 hours a week online dating, because that’s how much work goes into producing one date,” Wood says.

So if there’s a fundamental problem with dating apps, one baked into their very nature, it is this: They facilitate our culture’s worst impulses for efficiency in the arena where we most need to resist those impulses. Research has shown that people who you aren’t necessarily attracted to at first sight, can become attractive to you over time, as you get to know them better. Evaluating someone’s fitness as a partner within the span of a single date—or a single swipe—eliminates this possibility.

I don't really give a shit how Incels perceive dating (seriously, no one is "owed" sex), but it's hard to deny that online dating sites, like several other online "experiences", have not negatively impacted their "space" for profits, similar to how sites like Reddit & Facebook were supposedly supposed to "help people communicate & make & keep connections" & only became more & more enshittified to improve corporate bottom lines, resulting in the opposite outcome (E.G. Shit like FB heavily encourages divisiveness instead cause that's what gets the ad views, news sites resort to click bait instead of actually reporting news cause again, profits..etc.).

Of course paywalled dating sites might be better on this, but considering the financial status of a lot of people (especially the younger demographics that are having a harder & harder time even finding the time & money to pursue relationships as one of your sources pointed out, which is also a HUGE part of the problem IMO), it makes sense why many would assume the freemium sites are representative of online dating as a whole (since they do have a larger market share as well)

& of course there are some efforts to address the issues I've listed (like Swan)

I don't know for sure since I'm not a sociologist nor have I personally dug deep enough into this topic, but I imagine that while not the sole reason, these for profit dating sites definitely have a sizable impact on the rise of incel "culture".

But I digress.

darq, 9 months ago

But a third party will likely never be viable in within the lifetimes of people alive today, unless the Democrats suddenly decide to overturn FPTP voting.

So understand what you are asking of people. People are more than "frustrated with the lack of progress", they are enraged because they recognise that the current system will NEVER deliver them real justice and dignity. That they will be faced with this exact same situation every single election. And you are asking them to be content living with their rights and well-being on a knife-edge, likely for the rest of their lives. Because while the Democrats won't give them justice, the alternative is fascism.

So you are correct, the Republicans are objectively worse, and people should vote for the most progressive viable candidates possible. But the neoliberal tendency to demand that leftists stop complaining while they give up everything in the name of "compromise", and then tendency to blame leftists for neoliberal losses anyway, is galling.

Roundcat, 9 months ago

About a decade ago, me and my family were part of the very movement that changed the Republican party into the beast it is today. We made it very clear to party members that moderates would not be tolerated. We demonized the RINOs as much as we demonized the Democrats, the Liberals and the Obamas. By primary season of 2016, the last influences of the old Republican party were stamped out. Trump was the achievement of the Tea Party, and how it flipped the neo liberal conservative party into a fascist one.

Blame the Democrats all you want for being milquetoast, weak, or ineffective in the face of the Republican party. As someone who has played for both teams, I have never seen the same fire from Democratic voters to change their party as I have from the Republicans. There is no party wide effort to weed out Democrats who work in the interests of companies only, or are essentially Republicans with the Democrat label. There has been no unified direction for the future Democrats want to see for the US other than the current status quo.

What we did in the Tea Party, is we got involved at every stage of government. We found out who our state and federal legislators were, and if they did not stand with our views, we primaried them out. We took trips to Washington as a church, or as a young Republican's association, and we rallied in front of every monument that they would allow us in front of. In our eyes, our goal was righteous, and we were in a battle for the soul of the country.

I abhor everything I was back then, and feel guilty for the present we have created today. But if there is one take away from my time in the Tea Party that I think could apply to Democrats is you don't have to settle for less. By all means vote for Biden again, but you should make it clear to every Democrat defending their seat next year that you won't be settling for spineless enablers. Now's the time to start campaigning progressive candidates to run against them. Any progressive you get elected should be seen as a victory, and every neo liberal who loses should take it as a message that they are no longer electable. You should practice that democracy as much as you can while you still have it.