I'm the opposite. I look down on online dating because it feels like selling yourself as a product, you're basically objectifying every part of yourself down to your physical appearance, what job you have, if you studied, etc. It feels... robotic to me.

I get why you don't like the in person stuff, because you can't plan or strategize every word that comes out of you, but I LOVE it when people start to fumble their words when you ask them out. It's a very real human emotion to me, and no homo or anything but I think it's cute. I love seeing someone blush, do some awkward flirting, or get really shy and have this inside panic where they're doing mental calculus while freezing in place all because they don't really put themselves in these situations often. Or trying to get out 15 different responses all at the same time. I understand why you would look at yourself in those moments as an act of shame, but to me that is the real stuff, and if someone would look down on you for those real human reactions then they can go fuck themselves.

Whereas (look at me, using your same language) with online dating you don't get that visceral reaction. You don't see their body language, the way they say certain things. It's all detached from their actual person. It's like talking to an image. You don't think about changing your shifts so you can see this person more at work, picking a class schedule that lines up with theirs, or going on more specific days of the week to keep seeing this person.

And the problem that comes with having an audience being trained to objectify every single person they've come across is that they start to do that in real life. So they become anxious, reserved, introverted. Because if you're objectifying people then why wouldn't you think others would to?

So now there is less people going out, asking other people out, and the loneliness epidemic continues to increase generation after generation.