Porn
Scott Galloway:
I graduated (barely) from UCLA with a 2.27 GPA. I did, however, go on campus almost every day. Specifically, I left my fraternity to venture on campus as UCLA in the eighties was like a Cinemax film set in Brentwood. I would hang at North Campus with friends and, to be blunt, hope to meet someone I might (note: “might” is doing a lot of work) have sex and establish a relationship with. If I’d had on-demand porn on my phone and computer, I’m not sure I would have graduated, as I would have lost some of the incentive to venture on campus. I just read the previous sentence, and it sounds crass and shallow — but it’s also accurate. And that’s the rub, so to speak. Porn can reduce your ambition to take risks, become a better person, and build a better life. The best thing in my life is raising two men with a competent, loving partner. The catalyst for me risking humiliation, approaching her at the Raleigh Hotel pool, and introducing myself wasn’t a desire to someday qualify for lower car insurance rates, but the desire / hope to have sex.
Scott can be obnoxious at times, but I admire his candidness.
Your phone is why you don't feel sexy
...it’s safe to say, now that we’re more than thirty years into the great internet experiment, that our devices didn’t bring us closer together. They drove us further apart, deeper and deeper into our algorithmic hell holes. The proliferation of devices surrounding us at all times may help us “get in touch” with other people, sure, but they impede our ability to get in touch with ourselves. A “touch” screen would indeed seem to promise something tactile and real, but they leave us cold, tepid, and listless. Something is deeply wrong when we sext the same way we order a sandwich.
The purpose of the iPhone, as it was originally conceived, was to make our lives easier. And it undoubtedly has. What we didn't—and couldn’t—know at the time was the cost. In the beginning, being able to call a cab from your phone, having access to every song ever made, and ordering any product known to man while walking down the street felt amazing. Until it didn’t.
Today, everyone and everything is always available, and there’s nothing less sexy than that. There’s no chase. Our phones don’t allow us time to dwell, and they don’t allow us time to yearn. Why force yourself to daydream about the guy you’re seeing when you can easily look at dozens of photographs of him online? Why walk into a store in Soho and see what’s on offer when you can stay home and scroll the entire inventory from the comfort of your couch? Why go to the library to find books about a topic that interests you when you can look it up on Wikipedia in two minutes and move on with your day?
Instantaneous access to everything obviously comes at a cost. The cost being that we all behave like demented Roman emperors, at once bored and deranged, summoning whatever we want at any time.
Demented Roman emperors. That's exactly how I would describe Grindr.
To feel sexy, we need risk and spontaneity. Our phones kill both.
Preach.
Grindr’s Plan to Squeeze Its Users
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.