The Perfect Date

Recently, a relative of mine decided to remarry at the age of 40 after burning bridges with his first wife, which amounted to one child and seven years of marriage (seven-year itch). He remarried a modest, wealthy, and well-adjusted woman 5 years younger. She decided to throw caution into the wind and became pregnant within just a few months after meeting off a dating app. Picking her brain on how they met and their dating experiences, she sullenly said, “I just didn’t know where else to meet someone.” I do pray it works out (as of this writing, he was sent to rehab). Still, for two total strangers from different backgrounds and with roughly 40 years of sexual “maturity” between the both of them, it doesn’t take too much stretch of the imagination that the odds are not in their favor.

It is hard to believe that we use social media as a reference if someone is suitable for dating, yet here we are. If you do not have Instagram, it’s the equivalent of you not existing. Parental diktat, for over millennia, was the go-to source to get acquainted with someone, followed by church, school, and just those who happen to be around you. This is all no secret. What if dating apps are meant not to make you meet a significant other? After all, if you found someone on your first match, would Match Group stay in business? Since the dawn of social media, AI has shaped more of human life and society than we realize. Trusting the algorithms influences people’s preferences, what they consume, their sense of humor, likes and dislikes, and so on. Is your personality yours, or did a computer curate it for you?

Let me be blunt by stating that both sexes prefer to meet a significant other through any means besides dating apps. There is a stigma when meeting via dating apps; nobody wants to say we met off eHarmony despite the fact online dating has been normalized. Techno Dating. Or “The Perfect Date” attempts to override biological urges for materialism and status or, to put it another way, opulence overtakes priority. That all other forms of meeting a significant other are outdated, subjective, and often flawed, and our gauges to vouch for others must be outmoded. Not only are the meta-physics of sexual polarity regarded as prescientific superstition, but even the belief that anatomical complementariness expresses psychological complementariness is no longer taken for granted. In a sense, Techno Dating makes dating down “unreal” (outside the socio-sexual hierarchy). Today, it’s getting harder to believe that these social media conglomerates and their networks will last forever and eventually go the way of Myspace and Tagged. Yet, middle classes worldwide are failing to escape quantified dating during an era where all other means of meeting have been rendered obsolete or considered “pre-newton.” Hired gun social scientists are hell-bent on quantifying sex in an obsessive-compulsive manner and are soley focused on a targeted demographic. Anyone who dates outside of what the data and analysis proves is considered unreal. A woman with a PhD will date a man based on his choice of shoes and not for his somatic powers or wealth. Thus, those who date outside of their analysis are considered “the other” because today, we try to use science and technology as a means to determine mating habits.

Facts:

1. Tinder app has around 75 million monthly users.

2. Since 2012, there have been over 20bn matches on Tinder

3. A total of 1.6bn swipes occur every day on the app

4. The average user spends 35 minutes PER DAY on the app

5. An estimated 1.5m dates occur PER WEEK due to the app

6. Dating sites and apps account for about a sixth of the first meetings that lead to marriage.

7. The number of monthly active dating app users worldwide dropped from 287 million in 2020 to 237 million in 2023.

8. Almost 30% of Americans have paid for dating apps.

9. 41% of online dating users over 30 have paid for the app – but only 22% of under 30s have paid.

One in three divorces starts as online affairs. 25% of couples fight about Facebook at least once a week, with the average Facebook user spending almost an hour on the site every day, according to data provided by Facebook in 2021. In 2007, 3% of users’ posts on Facebook were selfies. In 2019, it was 63%. One in seven married people have contemplated divorce because of their partner’s social media activity. One in five feel uneasy about their relationship after discovering something on their partner’s Facebook account. Facebook is the #1 source for online divorce evidence. 81% of AAML divorce attorneys have used or encountered evidence obtained from social media, and 14% of adults say they look through their partner’s social media accounts for evidence of infidelity.

The use of social media detracts from face-to-face relationships, reduces investment in meaningful activities, and increases sedentary behaviors by encouraging more screen time, leading to social media addiction and erosion of one’s self-esteem through unfavorable social comparison, which gives way to mental energy being wasted in envy. Point and case is in the before times stay-at-home moms enjoyed daytime soap operas while taking care of chores around the house, with the television providing background noise and entertainment. No longer do woman watch such shows but now inject their own fantasies via social media. Instagram and its cohorts provide a half-open window into people’s lives, where women project their own radical assumptions about what that person is doing without getting the full picture. Who paid for the trip? Do they actually work? How much does she make a month off OnlyFans? She must have inherited all that money from her grandfather. Her husband seems so successful. Why can’t I find a man like that? Little does she know the trip was funded by American Express, and the “influencer” is nothing more than a masquerader. All of this reinforces the idea of the “Perfect Date” having no need for any broader moral framework than that provided by their immediate desires.

It’s now emotional survival and ego preservation with both sexes in heightened retroactive emotional moves, which both underachieve in mate selection. This is why we see courting as creepy and indifferent behavior. It is ego preservation to stagnation pipeline. Charisma-based popularity contest is something humans grow out of, yet Americans never have, and it is broad brushed across all classes. This is a byproduct of a society that is risk-averse; the fear of rejection is so intense that it’s best not to try at all. Terrified to show they care/ who cares first is the loser. Alas, a “zero-sum mindset” coupled with the approach avoids repetition. So, both sexes underachieve and pretend they don’t care.

Today, in the realm of sexual relations, there is a snowball effect rhyming with the Calhoun behavioral sink “Mouse Utopia” experiment, where an obscene amount of downward pressure is put on young, fertile women because of the general breakdown of monogamy. Men with a divorce or two under their belts or have procreated already jump back into the dating scene chasing young women. With such a glut of men “trying to get some,” women will either check out altogether from socialization (you are competing against our peace of mind) or seek a long-term relationship, however dysfunctional and painful the interaction may be with anti-social males, to ward off the unwanted (incels) and for protection. This leads to social dissolution and no one nurturing offspring. In the human behavioral sink, women who are “post-wall” single moms and divorced are put out to pasture (or dragging their children to Dragtime Story Hour) not to reenter the dating scene and are often vulnerable. Spergalacious men are already “shutting down” and preoccupying their time with other endeavors, as noted in Calhoun’s experiment, which he named the “beautiful ones.” Women might avoid marriage in part because of economic inequality, which is no secret. Still, they have fewer children each generation because the progressive conditions of hyper-modern society— the disconnection from traditional rhythms and obsolescence of conventional roles—tend toward sterility. A stunted historical sense in which the future is hopeless or unforeseeable and all fond memories of the past are dismissed as nostalgia.

Dating apps post scamdemic are seeing losses in profit due to its users suffering from over-socialization/ user fatigue. Many users cited they felt detached from reality. As of early 2025, Match Group strong-armed its CEO to step down and replaced him with Spencer Rascoff, the co-founder of Zillow. Match Group yaws to the affinity of AI as some kind of “breakthrough” or “trick” in order to “correct” its user’s feeling of fatigue. Again, we are faced with the paradox of “the other,” where a managerial conceptualization of its users to act according to the logic of profit maxing. After all, mating habits are no different than finding market-rate apartments. (It is worth noting the origins of Match group, its founders, and past CEOs). The decline of dating apps isn’t just Match Group; when Bumble went public in early 2021, its share price was around $70, and as of 2025, it’s hovering at $8. eHarmony is dominated by fake profiles, and the glut of online dating scams has made its way to India, where over 70% of Indians are targeted, and 61% develop feelings for AI bots.

The question comes down to what will replace dating apps in a hyper-modern world and where the alternatives are. It’s hard to say what will replace apps, but given the fact that the younger generation doesn’t seem eager to have sex, it is safe to say we will continue on the trajectory for the foreseeable future. I personally have seen social butterfly types arrange speed dating alternatives without the use of promoting the events through social media but by word of mouth, though this is somewhat of an anomaly. Twenty years ago, I worked on late-night charter boats, where bridal showers came aboard with coolers full of beers and food to entice regular guys to strike up a conversation while fishing. Today, women anticipate “Perfect Date” to be airdropped into their living rooms while they flick their beans to Netflix’s Millionaire Match Maker. Alternatives, or the lack thereof, are more interesting to dissect. With the rise of #metoo, the steady media bombardment of toxic masculinity, and online gurus pumping fear porn on dating for both sexes, it should not be a surprise to see such polarity. Dating someone from work is now subverted by the concern of being fired for sexual harassment. A new department stalks the workplace known as Human Resources, with a management market size valued at 24.25 billion in 2023. Modern religious life is subsumed by an ethic of expressive individualism. I often question why the Catholic church, with its 73 billion dollars, never created an app for people to meet. Night clubs were once a popular place to meet but are now dominated by the LGBT island of misfit toys and the music is often jarring and disorienting. You can’t dance when the beats per minute change every thirty seconds. The bar scene has changed immensely in the past ten years. No longer are the days of Cheers, with the bar being an extension of one’s living room. You now have bars resembling a factory or elementary school cafeteria. Music is often played loud to keep patrons focused on drinking and not talking. Wall-to-wall television reduces people’s engagement with one another as eyes jump to look at the screen. When you leave the bar, you are paranoid about being pulled over. Then, of course, there is just the general meeting with someone out and about. Has anyone else noticed that people don’t make eye contact anymore? The lack of decorum and off-putting body language keep people from engaging one another. You could meet someone this way, but it would need to be of circumstance.

Techno Date ends when society begins to operate outside of sabermetrics, and we are faced with the obvious: a compromise between the sexes is needed to fulfill a greater good outside of one’s own fantasy.

–Lamprey Milt