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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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To be fair, "online" in this graph does not differentiate between dating apps and non-dating-app online locations (such as forums and chatrooms). It would be funny if someone were to take a closer look and discover that everybody has switched from Tinder to Discord for romance.

That's not a bad point. I'm old enough that "find a spouse before OKCupid gets bought out" was actually an actionable strategy for me, so I'm hearing the awful reports of modern dating apps second-hand, and I don't actually hear anything about modern non-app-based online dating.

Does it really exist, though? Naively, I'd have expected random Discord channels to be subject to the same social dynamics that work/school/etc were, wherein now that there's a "Find Your Dates Here" Schelling Point of the apps, more and more of the younger generations are starting to consider any but the most slow/careful flirting in ostensibly non-romantic contexts to be intrusive and creepy.

Does it really exist, though?

4chan's /soc/ board is chock-full of invitations for messaging (both group and one-on-one) on Discord, Telegram, and Kik.