That’s good but there’s a lot of room between creepy and effective

I never paid for it out of stubbornness.

Are you writing good messages to potential matches?

What part of the world are you in?

In my experience, tinder is pretty bad. I don’t use facebook so I can’t vouch for that one, but I assume it’s also bad. I never got a single match on Bumble.

Hinge, I got pretty good results on. Even though they’re all owned by the same Match Group, hinge seemed to work better. I could get about a date a week on hinge, as an average guy.

I think it worked better for me because you can send a note when you see someone you like, so if you can write complete sentences you’re already a cut above the average guy.

I’ve been buying mostly mostly from Bandcamp. It’s worked out well. I have a big library, and the people making music got paid.

Tell us more about your current usage. What are you doing and where is it failing?

Some of the other posts already hit the highlights. Have a variety of well lit photos. Your profile should be short, but with some unique-ish hooks for people to talk about (eg: “reading ‘such and such’ for my book club!” - several things for someone to ask about there).

When you do match with people, don’t send generic messages. Don’t just send “hey”. Go read https://nohello.net/en/ for a post about that in other contexts.

After you’ve had one or two successful exchanges, clear any deal breakers you might have (eg: “really enjoying this conversation but wanted to make sure you saw on my profile I have a toddler. Are you okay with that?”). If that succeeds, ask them out.

Don’t provide too many choices. People get overwhelmed easily. “I’d love to talk more about (whatever we we were talking about). Do you want to go on a date? I like (local bar), but (other bar) in your neighborhood looks fun, too!”. Two choices. They’ll probably pick one.

More specific advice may be available if you tell us more about your specific experience

Conservatives are wrong about pretty much everything. I don’t know of a single problem where they have a sensible policy. They’re worse than toddlers.

Out of curiosity, do you live here?

I’ve never taken a cab across town, but I don’t live in Manhattan itself. Bus, train, or just walking has always been enough. (Or biking, for the brave)

Did you independently reinvent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_System or did you know about the history?

I don’t think adult content should be stigmatized and quarantined. Why is a game about cutting terrified victims open with a handsaw cool, but a game about licking a clit needs to be isolated?

I don’t want to share my location nor have anyone else’s shared with me.

Friends and partners can text “I’ll be there in 5”

My friend shares her location with her mother. Her mother then nags her with like “Are you seeing someone new? You’re spending a lot of time in north brooklyn now.” Like, who needs that, or even the temptation of that?

A tech solution is not going to fix a social/mental problem like fear of cheating.

If I was going to make something like this, it would have to incorporate trust chains. I don’t care if some maga-hat says this lady is horrible. I care if my good friend Alex says she’s horrible. One person’s “this person won’t shut up about communism” is a big red flag (no pun intended) but for someone else that’s the dream.

When you sign up, you’d need to be referred to someone or be a root node. Anyone connected to you can be weighted differently. If some section of the tree is misbehaving, prune it.

But that’s a lot of work

Google probably wants to keep you on google.com, where they have ads. By doing the AI stuff, you never click through to someone else’s page. They get 100% of the interactions and can sell all the clicks.

It’s monopoly stuff. They should be stopped, with whatever box of liberty is needed.

Last book: “Last Call” by Tim Powers. It’s great. Poker and archetypes. Big inspiration for Unknown Armies, which I loved.

Current: Medusa’s web, also by Powers. Not sure if I’m into it yet but it’s got some of his signature weirdness

If they know, and it’s not vital, and they don’t care, then I think less of them.

Some people have less self control than a toddler

When I worked an old job in the office, the game of telephone from the CEO down was so bad. People would get in their head that some things were MUST HAVE, but if I sneakily just asked the CEO directly he’d be like “no that’s not important”. But the designer thought he wanted it so she told the product lead it was important so our team product guy was told this was “straight from the top”.

And issues with communication are made worse when everything is pushed to text where nuance is lost and everything is archived which can be used against you.

There’s some truth to this, but also video chat is commonplace now. That can be recorded too, but so can anything. Some of my coworkers started using Signal for out of band communication even though zoom/slack said they didn’t retain any recordings.

If they can’t work remotely, they should be leveled up. Stop dragging everyone else down.

And again, if you can only communicate in person you’re probably bad at communicating in person, too, without realizing it. I think a lot of CEO types think they’re amazing because they walk into a room and everyone’s like “yeah boss got it that’s great feedback”, and they don’t realize they just said a bunch of garbage and people just agreed because he’s the boss.

It’s not in your job description.

I’ve noticed a lot of job offers say like “Other duties as required”

You are not going to outsmart the corporate lawyers.

The rich have class solidarity.

He would talk about how many people told him they were longing for the day when we could all be on-site again. I have no idea who those people were, because everyone I spoke to thought WFH was fantastic.

My old CEO would pull this bullshit, too. He’d say like “I’ve heard from people that [wild claim]”. The team was like 5 people it’s not like I couldn’t go ask people if they actually said that. I think it’s some sort of asshole-lying mechanism.

I really dislike that a handful of people who can’t get their shit together to communicate over zoom are dragging everyone else (and the environment) down.

I’d also wager that some of those people also communicate badly in person, but at least do communication shaped activities so it gets a pass.

Like at my old job, there’d be long meetings both in person and over zoom where nothing would be accomplished. The problem is not if we’re in the same room or not. It’s that people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing at any level of this task. They don’t understand the system, and they don’t know how to run a meeting. The few times I just seized control and ran it like a D&D session went better. eg: "It’s not your turn. Please wait to speak. That’s an interesting idea but the game we set out to play meeting is about [topic], so we’re going to stay on topic. No, the rules say you can’t do that that’s not an option in a web browser.

That worked fine in person and on zoom. The problem isn’t the medium. The problem is people.

In the US we have like no laws protecting labor. They’ll just tell you to go into the office, or fire you.