Grindr plans to boost revenue by monetizing the app more aggressively, putting previously free features behind a paywall, and rolling out new in-app purchases, employees say. The company is currently working on an AI chatbot that can engage in sexually explicit conversations with users, Platformer has learned. According to employees with knowledge of the project, the bot may train in part on private chats with other human users, pending their consent.
I remember the very early days of Grindr. I had one of the only smartphones in my part of the state, and the nearest fellow user was nearly 250 miles away. Chatting with other gay men was fun and refreshing.
Much has changed in the intervening 15 years. Dating (or hookup) apps have become vast wastelands of algorithmic sameness. People on these apps look, act, talk, and behave in eerily similar ways, not unlike how every young person now dresses like an "influencer." (I refuse to use that word without quotation marks.)
These apps gave us corrosion sold as connection. I'm reminded of David Foster Wallace's thoughts on entertainment, about always wondering what's on the other channel, wondering if there's something better to be watching. Shopping around (because that's precisely what these apps are: shopping) is so damn easy.
Contentment is hard when you think there's always something better just around the corner.
What kind of memories could I have shared with my loved ones if I had known the difference between what I thought I wanted and what I didn’t want anymore?
I largely don’t feel lonely around my family anymore. In my twenties? Absolutely. In my early thirties? Yes. But now, I’ve come to appreciate my time spent with them, even if I know myself enough to want it in fits and starts.
Reading this piece, I’m struck by the plight of any writer in a relationship. Writing is an attempt to get at some truth, whether I arrive there or not. But how does one maintain relationships with people when doing so?
There are so many things I want to write, but don’t for fear of disrupting my relationships.
I once thought that all truths must be laid bare, the cards left to fall where they may. But now I’m not as sure. ‘Telling it like it is’ can feel both indulgent and crass. It can feel a little too good.
I still feel an insatiable need to write or say what’s real, but it’s tempered with, well, call it what you want: age, experience, cynicism, common sense, defeatism.
But a deep loneliness can reside at the heart of forced civility. What good is it if only our joys are worthy of sharing and not our struggles? Underlying that courteousness is the fear that acceptance remains conditional. We worry that if we reveal who we really are, what we really think and the difficulties we endure, then we might be rejected. No more pumpkin pie from Grandma. But what if something essential is lost when we stop telling the truth?
Treat it like a checkpoint, rather than a continuation of the discussion. Before you continue the discussion by introducing a new idea, or presenting an opinion, stop, repeat, and confirm. Then you can be sure you’re moving forward on the same page.
Effective and useful, but I’m learning that people who don’t communicate like this do not often appreciate this communication style. Usually, they hate it. They find it pedantic (which it is — by design) and infantilizing. In our culture, we’re taught from a young age to believe that if we don’t know or understand something, we are dumb. People don’t react well when they feel dumb.
Finding people that are open to new communication styles is rare. Finding people willing to critically analyze their communication styles are even rarer.
Cherish the people willing to learn new things about themselves.
The ambiguity of this situation is precisely why moral clarity and consistency is so valuable.
Do I think Hamas would launch a rocket to intentionally bomb a Palestinian hospital so they could blame the Israelis? I do.
Do I think if Hamas unintentionally blew up a hospital with a misfired rocket, they’d blame Israel? I do.
Do I think Israel would intentionally bomb a hospital? I do not.
Do I think Israel might blame Hamas if one of their airstrikes — which have been so aggressive and killed hundreds of civilians just this week, to say nothing of the last decade — had unintentionally hit a hospital? I do.
When you don’t know who to believe, who to trust, the world becomes a very scary place…and fast.
Many of us at Tablet believed strongly, and still believe, in the possibility of creating a better world. But something bothered us from the very beginning about these ideas, and the people pushing them. Every time we pressed on one of the newly mass-embraced policy proposals or narratives—intersectionality, decolonization studies, the Iran nuclear deal, Russiagate, Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, critical race theory, COVID lockdowns—a weird thing would happen: The idea itself fell apart at the seams within seconds of contact with reality, and yet its defenders got more sure of themselves, more performatively boastful, more passionate and gleeful about smearing anyone who dared to question them.
The more we listened to freshly minted universal experts, the more we were struck by the increasing lunacy of their pronouncements on every topic under the sun, always backed by “studies” and “science”—where COVID–19 came from, how many genders there are, which skin tones and personal experiences qualify a person for protection status and which do not, whether it was OK for a Syrian dictator to bomb and gas 500,000 of his people, whether the U.S. should ally itself with a Holocaust-denying medieval theocracy, whether the president of the United States was secretly a Russian agent, whether large American cities should let drug addicts and violent schizophrenics get high on the streets and steal stuff—and more. Indeed, over time, we were struck by how little the ideas themselves seemed to matter; what so many people seemed most attached to was power.
Adults in the U.S. who regularly say hello to multiple people in their neighborhood have higher wellbeing than those who greet fewer or no neighbors. Americans’ wellbeing score increases steadily by the number of neighbors greeted, from 51.5 among those saying hello to zero neighbors to 64.1 for those greeting six neighbors.
I can attest to this. I was in a dark place the winter of 2022 when I decided to make a conscious effort to say hello to my neighbors. Changed my mindset completely.
I’ve been a fairly active Redditor for more than 11 years. Until now, it’s been the website with the best mix of community, popularity, developer ecosystem, and web-search-ability. The non-monetary value Reddit as a knowledge store is literally priceless; it’s a modern-day Library of Alexandria.
By now, you probably know my thoughts on social media. (Fuck social media.) But Reddit was always the exception. When I hear “social media,” I think “toxic stew of projection and posturing designed to make you feel bad about yourself in the service of serving you advertisements,” and by that definition, Reddit isn’t social media.
Reddit was the promise of the internet in one place. A group of people, each passionate about something, talking and supporting and, yes, sometimes fighting with each other. It’s been a good place. The best of human nature.
Everything changes and nothing is free. Not in this culture, anyway. I know this. But it’s still painful when the pursuit of profit comes for a community you love so dearly. We’ll see how these API changes play out, but I’m not hopeful.
I just finished, laying here in my bed, the dogs and cat asleep beside me. Crickets chirp out my window. In the distance a train’s whistle breaks and rolls over the valley.
More than anything, I prize seeing things clearly. Nothing fills me with that particular and precious joie de vivre — that electric sizzle — quite like close proximity to the truth. But most people don’t like the truth. We’ll do anything to avoid it, if we know it at all. So it’s a rare thrill to read something so transgressive in its honesty, so clear-eyed.
Credit to Brian T. Watson for his courage to accept the inevitable, and then to write it. May his acceptance be an inspiration.
Some people are just too nice, and they wreck the relationships. They think, “Oh, it’s not a big deal, it’s just one little thing, not worth having a big argument about it. I’ll just give in.” Well, that seems generous, but it’s a really bad idea. You have to ask yourself, “Are you really, completely, 100% over this? You’re giving in? No animosity? You’re not secretly hoping that maybe they’ll do something for you in return or a little behavior change here or there?”
No one would ever accuse me of being “too nice,” but I am guilty of this, mainly out of fear of being considered petty.