The French philosopher Alain Badiou provided the most direct challenge to social networking in his 2012 book “In Praise of Love.” He suggested online dating was a form of “safety first” love, in which love becomes a commodity or a consumer product. He went so far as to suggest that the premise of the user experience is an affront to the spirit of love. According to Badiou, to enter a relationship is not to compliment your “likes,” but to undergo a confrontation to identity, to enter a process: “Personally, I have always been interested in issues of duration and process, and not only starting points.”

You go, Badiou.

Literature has traditionally been more interested in the ways love goes wrong than the process and the issues it raises which don't cause it to go wrong. Tolstoy said unhappy couples are all unhappy in their own way, but that's not really true, and that happy couples all interact in the same way, and that's not really true either.

Why is an unspoken agreement between lovers not to talk about an issue different from a secret that one keeps from the other? I'm not sure, but I believe there is a vital difference.

We know several younger couples who met over the internet. And fine, we accept that, even though not all the couples have stayed together. But it seems some kind of sign of the times that people are happier "selecting" according to things that can be conveyed over an impersonal internet dating site than according to things that one learns about a person by interacting for other purposes.

If I were single, I would not date a woman I knew to be a Republican, as long as I could screen for that from the outset. But if I worked together with a woman on the church Sunday School or the board of the local Community College and realized she was a pretty good human being, and then found out she was a Republican, I can imagine myself overcoming my resistance to at least find out why and what it meant to her. The duration starts before the selection, in the second case.

Our younger daughter met her now-husband through a dating site. All looks OK to us so far. I can't imagine using that method myself, though. As we know, there is a loneliness epidemic. Are dating sites a symptom or a remedy?

I have a childhood friend (lost most everything in common now) who found himself single after a decade of marriage ans has been using online dating sights.
His experience has been troubling, to say the least. Many of the women he's met for dinner dates look nothing like their profile pictures. It seems a common thing for women to use pics of themselves taken several years ago (age group dependent, of course).

He had some particularly bad experiences with Christian Singles website. A couple of his meet-ups turned sour really quick. When he tried to talk about Christianity, they became very uncomfortable with the conversation.

I for one would never use an online dating service. User profiles are most often an ideal self image construction by the author that is likely false.

ant wrote: His experience has been troubling, to say the least. Many of the women he's met for dinner dates look nothing like their profile pictures. It seems a common thing for women to use pics of themselves taken several years ago (age group dependent, of course).

Maybe they are testing for shallowness?

Seriously, though, doesn't the use of on-line dating serve as an index of our shallowness? Prioritizing selection, with all its self-image issues, over relationship? I mean, is it any wonder people misrepresent themselves?

ant wrote:He had some particularly bad experiences with Christian Singles website. A couple of his meet-ups turned sour really quick. When he tried to talk about Christianity, they became very uncomfortable with the conversation.

A bit strange on a Christian Singles website, but my experience is that talking about religion is an exercise in walking on eggshells at first, even if you already know the person pretty well. Even at church, talking about religion tends to stay on the surface and revolve around practical issues.

The guy who wants to tell you about what his prayer life has been like lately comes across pretty flaky. That's what Bible Study and Men's Group and other small sharing groups are about.

DWill wrote: Is on-line dating a symptom or a solution?

(Sorry if I misquoted. I should learn to copy these things into a word processing document and then re-copy, but I forget.)
Well, putting my social sciences hat on, it's probably both, no? It solves some practical problems, potentially including getting past loneliness, but it also puts on display our loss of community, and the practical solutions that people used to rely on.

ant wrote:http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/a ... ource=SFFB

Life itself is algorithmic, as our DNA seems to prove, so why can't human compatibility be algorithmic?

Lucian Hodoboc wrote:

ant wrote:http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/a ... ource=SFFB

Life itself is algorithmic, as our DNA seems to prove, so why can't human compatibility be algorithmic?

Culture is evolving faster than biological selection can keep up with. That's why we have paleolithic personalities unable to handle modern weaponry and opportunities.