There is a whole universe of possibilities between “hey” and a conversation so good it is otherworldly.

Most of these apps, the user has a profile. If they’re not fucking it up, the profile has topics to talk about.

“Hey! Your profile says you love the mets. Do you go to a lot of games? I used to go with my pop, but he just watches the game on TV now” isn’t stellar but it’s significantly better.

If the other person responds with “Nah [end of communication]” then they’re doing a bad job. I’d see that all the time and it drove me crazy.

A couple times I asked people directly if that opener worked for them.

One of them said, “I used to write more thoughtful first messages, but I didn’t get good results so I don’t bother anymore.” I told her that writing a bad opener is likely turning away whole classes of people, likely the more thoughtful and interesting ones, but she didn’t care. I said we weren’t a good match and moved on.

Another one said, “But you responded so it worked!”. Her profile was also largely blank. I said yeah, but it didn’t make me want to date you. It was a bad first impression that made me think you’re a half-asser. Rude, I know. The conversation ended shortly after.

I think communication is a skill that requires practice and feedback. Writing messages on dating apps is a more specialized form of that skill. I have years of practice now (sad, but here we are). A 30 year old woman downloading bumble for the first time, asked to write first messages? That’s kind of like putting someone on the baseball field who’s never played before. They probably know most of the rules intellectually, and in other parts of life they’ve done all the little pieces like throwing, running, and catching, but doing it all together at the right time? Not likely to go well at first.

then as soon as they get in a committed relationship they want them to quit because they get insanely jealous of other people watching them dance.

I think a lot of people are really bad at managing their emotions, especially jealousy.

A friend was telling me about her friend and that friend’s boyfriend. They’d go to concerts together, and the guy would get like super raging jealous that she was dancing in the crowd. Like, grow fucking up. She’s super into you, why are you destroying this relationship? Let her fucking dance.

Are there such apps? Hinge at least lets you set that as your goal without paying money, but after a while I ran out of users. It literally said like “There’s no one left”. I live in NYC.

I set it back to “poly or mono” and got dates again, but mostly mono people. (I’m a very average ~40 y/o guy who doesn’t date men)

So many places seem to be run by idiots, if your metrics are other than “personal enrichment”.

Like, one of my old jobs, the CEO laid off almost everyone and is now banging hard on the “return to office” drum. Like, my guy, how is making people do a 2 hour commute going to help? It’s a small company, he knows most of the people live that far away. And then they go into the office, and they end up doing these like hour+ long lunches. Or they leave early for drinks.

It’s fucking stupid. It’s the CEO driving with his emotions. He wants to feel like a big business man with an office, and he wants to have fun socializing. Idiot. Fun guy to hang out with, but he’s making pants on head stupid business decisions. And there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

True, I’m definitely doing arm chair analysis. If I was in charge, I probably wouldn’t have entered the console market at all. I’d probably have tried to build steam. That had to be easier if you own the OS, too. On the other hand, they utterly fucked up “Games For Windows! Live” or whatever it was called.

I said in another thread but I’ve been unemployed for a while now. Even jobs I’m referred to my old coworkers aren’t giving me interviews. If capital wants me to spend money, they have to pay me money first. Until then, fuck them.

It’s funny because like 20 years ago or whenever Xbox launched I was like “why don’t they capitalize on the fact that they own windows? The platform everyone plays games on. Why are they competing with themselves?”

Hypothesis: businesses are run by idiots and people whose contradictory incentives create behavior indistinguishable from idiots.

You have to remember it’s not about facts, it’s about feelings. As I always say, we’re all susceptible to that to some extent, but the republicans have it bad.

I think they’re making a joke (what with the /s), but some people will say that since “Nazi” is derived from “national socialist” it’s a form of socialism. Usually people making that claim are arguing in bad faith and/or are grossly misinformed.

Even republicans don’t want fascism.

They don’t? How can you tell?

None of the men I know that are using the apps are looking for hookups. There are many such men, but there are lots of people looking for other stuff as well.

Thirded. People like to think that their match will be deep enough to look past something superficial like a bad photo, but that’s not how most of us work. People see a decent photo and then check the rest.

You don’t have to be a model or movie star. Good lighting. Clothes that fit. A background that’s not, like, a dingy bathroom or your car.

100%. Match group should be broken up.

A confounding issue is the apps themselves have gotten worse over time. Like, old okcupid you could search. You could type in like “final fantasy” or “the Mets” and find people who liked those things enough to put them on their profile.

Now you’re limited to whatever the app decides to give you. Well, the app doesn’t want you to leave so that incentive doesn’t line up.

AC typically provides real value. (Not counting when people air condition empty rooms, but that’s also a thing corporations typically do more).

AI is often worthless or counter productive.

Talking about direct action or even a mildly disruptive protest will probably get you moderated here, and in trouble in real life. It feels like the only options “allowed” are stern words. At least a progressive like Zohran won the primary in NYC, but we’ll need a lot more of that to make a difference.

On the other hand, Luigi is considered by many a hero.

Is this an age thing? I’m about 40 and I never had instagram, barely used facebook, and didn’t use any others really. I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem where someone backed out because I didn’t have instagram. But I also don’t have a big group of casual friends, and maybe that would be harder.

Discord sucks, but I’ve noticed a lot of social groups use it. A couple meetups I go to all use it for communication. Maybe that’s more bearable than instagram?

I don’t accept the premise that working a job to make someone else rich is axiomatically good.

Many jobs make the world worse. I’d rather someone sit at home and play Tetris than build murder-drones, or work on some sort of AI powered stalking-ad company.

Many of the jobs are just bullshit. Another “AI” company? Another product manager with no real decision making power? A few billion dollars poured into “the metaverse”? Waste of time and resources.

That aside, most jobs make the owners rich while labor gets a few crumbs. You work all day making widgets. The boss pays you $10. They sell your widgets for $1000. That’s a bum deal. But there’s a thousand desperate people waiting to take your spot, plus union busters eager to betray labor and beat you up. Pay people the real value of their labor, and treat them with respect, and you’d likely get more people working.

Johnson is a heretical, hypocritical, piece of shit. No one should take him seriously. His church should – wait, he’s southern baptist? The “we’re going to split off because we want slavery” sect? Not surprising. Those assholes suck.

Plenty of stuff, turns out. But I’m sticking to my guns. I have a big backlog anyway.