20 Comments

I began blogging back in the early days of 2002. I found that sharing the personal views of people enabled me and them, over say a year or so, to gain a deep insight into whom this person was. When we met in the flesh later, the good feelings were confirmed. High trust in most situations and affection in most. This is for both men and women. Your twitter feed is very much like how we used to blog then and I hope for you the same result. Wishing you luck, Rob

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I love this writing! So clear-eyed and free of self-pity. There’s much that suboptimal about tinder and modern love, but also a lot that’s curious and bears investigation. I’m sure I’ll be a fan of your substack!

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Sep 21, 2022Liked by Iona Italia

The historical reference is interesting to me too. I have wondered about our online – centered social world as analogous to the days before the telephone, when correspondence by letter was the norm. You can learn a fair amount by interacting with people online. What you learn can be edited, but that is true of in person relationships as well. “When we first met, he was so kind and generous…“ But the sense of living in a market place. That feels very 21st-century. Not just a market place, but the open ended, at once entrepreneur and corporate behemoth dominated economy of our times.

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What a battlefield, Iona. I love this topic. My wife dated as you have, pre-Tinder, just furiously sampling men through dates, I think 50 of them, she’s claimed, and when we met, I was a rookie at it, and we clicked. All the things they say about prospects are true: middle-age dating is rough, especially rough on women. And I can vouch for how dorky many men looked when I attended the meetup where we met -- like Snuffy Smith, complete with suspenders and Gandalf beards. The sameness of the ads, like soup cans on a shelf, as you say, must be awful to flip through. All I can say is, that sameness or homogenization, is ruinous. I had my opinions of my future wife’s characteristics, and had I not heard her volcanic laugh across the room of 100 suckers, I NEVER would have dated her. She had a chronic disease and a young son. I had just moved back from Europe. I didn’t want to be tied down. And she had a mortgage. All of this I learned AFTER we shmoozed on the phone, and at her kitchen table, which completely reeled me in. I wish Tinder were not required. Best wishes, my friend! Theo

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Good luck!!

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Feb 7, 2023Liked by Iona Italia

When I was a single man in the early 90s, I used the precursor technology to these dating apps: a printed community weekly with pages of tiny personal ads linked to anonymous, unique voicemail boxes for interested potential matches to use to contact you.

At first, I wrote ads that were short, pithy and humorous while stating who I was and what I wanted. However, I noticed a trend in the women who responded: they thought I might be tall, have a full head of hair, and be wealthy. Since I was none of those things, the dates usually ended almost immediately. I decided to rewrite my ad to read, "short, bald, broke entrepreneur seeks..." and immediately saw fewer, but better matches. Dates became more enjoyable and some of the women would end the date with their own frank but helpful feedback, "I think that we are not a match, but I have two or three friends who you might like to meet. Can I make the introduction?" The end result was that a technological process that started out as "sorting" led me to one where aunties (dates) introduced me to new people who were better matches.

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Your identification of the move order problem is really spot on. Modern dating feels laborious and clinical, like going to one job interview after another. But what to do when this is now the way of the world? Waiting and hoping to meet someone IRL feels like a gamble.

And yes, we are our own our own matchmakers and we are terrible at it. No amount of refining a dating profile or search filters can match what you beautifully referred to as our "evolved intuitions."

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Dec 17, 2022Liked by Iona Italia

My life would be so much simpler if I could fall for women I find plain.

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For someone like me -reclusive, in my early thirties, not quite keen on any commitments - dating apps can feel like the ideal escape. But what I have come to discover is that even escapes can become entrapments if you’re not paying close attention. I joined tinder about three years ago or four and for the most part, it helped with the “hook up” culture as us kids say but underneath it, I realized even in seeking the thrills of no-strings attached romance, merely swiping and reading bio doesn’t quite cut that. Yes, the pictures were good to stare at but often even via chats, people become less ideal version than their perfect photos and while this isn’t necessarily an issue, with dating apps, we have the option to not want to dig deeper to know them more. I find that the minute someone I matched wasn’t blending with my idea of them coined from their very short bio and filter heavy pictures, I could simply avoid any sort of deeper digging and just unmatched. And that might be one of the biggest issues: the fact that we lose that sense of interest that goes past the surface. Something that we ideally tend to have more when we just meet people and maybe exchange contacts or something.

Anyways, long story short, this was a very good read. Forgive me starting my own piece in the comments. Always a pleasure to read from you and I hope the dating scene favors you well.

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