Do on-line dating services really work?

by logansrun 53 Replies latest social relationships

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  SixofNine

  alright, here's my problem with it: it seems like more and more, people are completely tied down by technology. and it seems like the more they are tied to technology, the less the actually *connect* with one another. and this disconnectedness is more and more pervasive, and it's keeping people from experiencing something essentially human and i can't stand it. i guess it's sort of difficult for me to articulate....i don't know if that makes sense to anyone else or not.

  you're right, I'm gonna rebel against them newfangled "phones" too!
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  logansrun

  LOL six

  Tink....um, so....would you like to meet me for coffee?? I can get the last-minute flight on United and could be there for breakfast.

  I'm only kidding of course. But if you lived in Milwaukee or Indianapolis that "kidding" would approach the level of seriousness.

  B.
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  tink

  haha six; well, you know i advocate that! death to phones!! any and all!!!

  winston,

  And tink, you know I'm just fooling wich'ya, right?

  yup. we cool. ;)

  anyway, sorry for randomly popping in and spreading my 'death to internet love' gloom. it's just a mood i've been in lately. i was talking with a friend of mine over the weekend and he was telling me about this new lexus advertisement that's a hologram, and it's some sort of shark that looks like it's going to pop out and bite you...like what that has to do with lexus i have utterly no clue...anyway...we were talking about how technology is just snowballing, and how the next generation of kids will have grown up without playing the old-school nintendo system (duck hunt and bubble bobble...awwww yeaaaaaaaah...good times) and there is all of this stuff that they'll grow up without...for christ's sake, kids these days don't even know what fraggle rock is...that is just a frickin crying shame!! and we were talking about how they're growing up playing video games that almost look cooler than real life, and pretty soon kids aren't even going to want to ride their bike to the park or make forts or treehouses anymore, because why would they venture outside where there are no ninjas kicking the crap out of eachother in vivid detail or hologram lexus sharks? and it just made me really sad. genuine interpersonal connection is so rare these days anyway...you have to wade through so much boring nonsensical crap to find it...and things like internet dating, etc, in my opinion, just get in the way. i guess i just want to revert back to simpler times, and i know that's impossible and it's sad as hell to me.
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  Phantom Stranger

  (Just so I don't get accused of being off-topic:) My fiancee and I met via internet dating (Brad, use the site tied to onion.com...). We met very quickly, and I concur with the remarks about not communicating much before meeting. Our brains try to fill in the gaps, erroneously, as it turns out, and then we are disappointed by someone who is just not what we are looking for. And yes, Brad, before I decided to settle down, I met many women that way.

  I chose to do it because I work at home, and I suspect my skills at chatting up women in bars are similar or inferior to Brad's ("So, read any Camus lately?")

  Now, tink, speaking to what you're speaking to...I really think that we encounter more data in today's culture than we know how to process through experience - so we filter out a lot. As it happens, our brains are very fast at taking in data... but many of us don't get training in evaluating it critically, and especially not at changing over and over. So, the biggest risk of technological progress in my opinion is that our reach is exceeding our grasp by so much. We talk about how "young people 'get' technological change faster than older folks"... but they don't get any more skills at dealing, they are just exposed to the current situation while young and see it as "normal". They still reach a point (as we all do) where the change is far-reaching enough where it's not what you are used to, either, and that's when we have to get good at changing over and over. And where do you learn to change over and over?

  Buddhists believe that unhappiness results from our grasping after constancy of self and of the universe in a universe that is inconstant. They might be right.