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- Alabamamania
25-30 years ago, could we have seriously known that we'd spend such a terrific amount of time online, whether consciously or not?Still, I don’t get why online dating is so popular [...]
In the days of computers confined to desktops, maybe it was a small percentage. But it was fantasy to think we'd have a computer in our pocket; people would not just look up anything they cared to know about online, read news, make websites, share photos/artwork, make/play/share music and videos, perform their work/jobs, look for work, play games, shopping (for nearly any food, clothing, furniture, tools, artwork online), pay bills, perform monetary transactions, buy/sell stock, or could even buy a car/home online. Forums of discussion on nearly anything topic, large and small, vast to specialized for people to meet, stay, or just pop in for some answers. Then you have the vast amount of social media, virtual spaces, and the bizarre underbelly of fetish and porn sites which cemented the trust of electronic commerce in the first place. All of this has grown almost logarithmically in scope every few years, to the point where up to half of people's time exists online in some way, especially since business and personal life retreated back to our homes in this decade. And it's all seen as socially acceptable, whereas it would have been the stuff of science fiction and pipe dreams so far back*.
But online dating is too hard to understand? Ok, I guess we all have our individual arbitrary limits. But you have to understand that physical third spaces/places are disappearing and for many people, so are their second spaces/places. Not hard to grasp.
(sure, I met my wife while helping move furniture, but that was back in the 14.4k days)
* it is getting scary, but then I look at cute animal photos to forget how much of digital life is a bunch of data points to be harvested
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