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I think one of the big changes since I was in the dating market (it's been a while) is that the size of local social system for both sexes is drastically larger than it used to be. Twenty years ago, I think the median dating pool was maybe in the low 3 figures: college undergraduates that cross paths, coworkers (even across departments), church members, bar and social group regulars. Somewhere around Dunbar's number, unless you went looking for speed-dating or something specifically. Dating apps, if nothing else, have made the "ocean" (seem) bigger, and I think some of the consequences we're seeing are reactions to that: "the highest status" is much higher than it used to be, and although rankings will vary person-to-person, everyone is now looking for something like the best 1-in-10000 where before they might have thought 1-in-100 was a great match.
Also the proximity of people meant that there was way less of a 'one misstep in the courtship means ghosting on social media and you'll never organically see them ever again' kind of a circumstance. You could afford to have a misfire or two along the way to a successful courtship if it was somebody you'd keep seeing at University or in an extended social circle
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Yeah.
It used to be comprehensible. You more or less knew the sum total of your realistic options. And presumably knew your approximate position in the rankings.
I did undergrad on a small campus, and thus it was generally known who was dating whom, who was available, and you crossed paths with potential partners a lot. For better or worse.
Did law school on a MUCH LARGER campus, which felt like jumping from a fish tank to a large lake. Couldn't track everybody, but could at least know where to look for potential partners.
And while I was in law school, Tinder became a thing. And over the next couple years it was like swimming out of the lake into the Pacific Ocean.
But now there was literally no way my tiny little guppy brain could appreciate the entire biodiversity I was being exposed to, and eventually you have to collapse everyone down to their shallowest representation. "Oh that's a rainbowfish, a clownfish, a barracuda, a tuna... and oh so many whales."
At which point I could genuinely FEEL myself unable to care about the people flashed in front of me. Rather than a comprehensible set of people I sort of knew and cared about... it was an endless stack of nobodies and whatever infinite 'opportunity' these represented was overwhelmed by pure ennui/apathy of any individual connection becoming meaningless.
Only exception was early OKcupid, which let you go "spearfishing" for the exact types you wanted to see. But that didn't last.
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