A totally understandable take. On the other hand, I personally find them quite useful, and don’t think they should be dismissed out of hand. And I think that if someone wants advice on using them effectively (going back to my original post in this thread), that they should be given advice on using them effectively - not platitudes.
Have you experienced this yourself? Because I have not experienced this.
I mean, they were never, like, a fun way to meet a partner. But they certainly are a way.
Yep, there’s a cheat code.
For “be attractive” a lot of people think the requisite level of attractiveness is unattainable for them. Its not. Be decently in shape, groom yourself, have some style in the way you dress. The other half is taking good photos. Take photos that look good, that you look good in, and which create a vision for what the best version of your life looks like.
And then pay them. Tinder, bumble, and hinge basically have a monopoly on the market. Its pay to play. You can get matches without paying, but it is a lot fewer and a lot less.
This is not useful advice for dating apps.
I mean, that sucks.
But also, just buy a bicycle and a barbell.
Because the USA has so much military and economic power that it is the axis about which the English-speaking world turns. And it is making wildly stupid choices in its foreign and domestic policies, which gets peoples attention from both potential impacts to their own countries and out of sheer horror and exasperation. Finally, it has a huge population relative to any other english speaking nation, and its citizens will tend to vote as a bloc about things they find interesting. And the things they find interesting will typically involve their own nation. Germans, for example, will do this too - but there are far fewer germans than americans, so in an open market, American news gets the most votes from its citizens and ends up on top of the stack.
I mean, this phenomenon makes total sense to me.
The problem with most parents in the modern world is that they aren’t happy. They and their kids have everything that is nominally necessary to be satisfied in life - food, shelter, etc. - but the parents arent happy, and often the kids arent happy either. This has two results.
Parents are stressed out and time crunched. The combined obligations of work and family leave them with little time for normal adult social interactions. They feel out of control of their lives. This makes them want more control at home, which drives an authoritarian attitude. While any given instruction they give to their child may be for the child’s benefit, the meta command (either implicit or overt) is to obey their authority unquestioningly. This drives resentment in their children, who will then rebel and disobey instructions out of spite, rather than out of disagreement.
Meanwhile, the children can see their parents are unhappy. So why would the children listen to their parents? After all, simply being happy tends to be the goal of pretty much everyone - so why would you listen to people who arent happy, if your goal is to be happy? Like, if a homeless guy tells you to invest in Bitcoin, thats not very sound investment advice. And even if their parents are happy, they often do not empathize with their childrens’ problems, values, or goals. When a 13 year old dreams of being a pop star, she will only resent her parents advice to get a college degree in accounting.
So flash forward 10 years. The kid has ignored everything their parents taught them and fallen flat on their face. And then they run into some content from Marcus Aurelius or Jordan Peterson or whatever. It is the same shit their parents told them. The difference is the messenger. It is someone who at least appears to be confident and happy and successful, who is apparently giving out their advice out of a desire to help people. They acknowledge people’s struggles, ambitions, and values, and explain how whatever advice they have will help overcome these struggles, achieve these ambitions, and live these values. They are functioning as the parents people wish they had had.
Reminder: 80% of jobs never reach job boards. Most businesses hire people via their social networks.