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Grindr: the same guys staring at each other day after day, hoping that today will be different - yet ignoring each other because not all boxes are checked, and it’s not like they’ll commit anyway. Sisyphean - except Sisyphus was being punished. The gays choose this hell daily.
OTOH: tech companies (Facebook etc) employ data and brain scientists to leverage human weakness. Addiction is a retention strategy. Grindr (as the archetypal example) taps into two lanes: sex and social validation. Neither are ever sated, so we never leave the hedonic treadmill.
Think about it: how does any media company make money? Attention. Cable networks use commercials; Facebook uses targeted ads and sells your data; grindr forces you to watch some shitty iOS game ad every time you tap on someone’s profile. Addiction = constant use = attention = $$$
This would be fine except for three things: 1, a withered husk of in-person or alternative meeting opportunities; 2, the commodification of romance; and 3, the mass habituation of shallowness, shame, endemic loneliness and nihilism w/r/t self and others (ie together alone)
1a. Once upon a time, we could meet in physical spaces. Pride, gay bars, etc presented an opportunity for us to mix and mingle and learn about each other through physical presence not mediated by an app.
1b. Even after Pride turned into a drunken festival of lechery (we’d make the Bacchae proud), and the bars became another opportunity for singles to stare in loneliness at Grindr there was still a *chance* to meet someone real, without the filter of the grid.
1c. Covid, of course, has collapsed this set of alternative meeting spaces. No Pride, few Bars, and few opportunities in public to meet anyone you don’t already know.
2a. Romance has been commoditized by the apps. See above - Grindr makes money through ads. So does Tinder. You think Tinder gets a commission anytime a user finds someone to get off tinder for?
2b. In practice, the swipification of courtship has encultured two things: 1, there’s always someone better out there so even if you’re going to date someone it’s with an eye on the door (just in case someone with 3D abs swipes right for you); and 2, all enslaved to all.
*SIDEBAR* Affinity and shared interests are not typically how gay men meet. What are the chances that you’ll meet someone (with mutual attraction) at your weekly board game hangout? (see also: covid.) We start with sex and hope for more. I suspect it’s different for straights.
2c. We all have our relationship checkboxes. The “buffet” of the apps has given us power to weed out everyone that doesn’t check those boxes. Every human in the grid becomes a product to be inspected and discarded if it doesn’t suit us.
2c.1. Of course, even when someone *does* check out boxes, there might always be someone who checks those boxes better at the buffet.
2d. There was a meme a while ago about how gay culture is spending 72 hot and passionate hours with the man of your dreams, then never seeing him again. We’ve perfected the dating churn, which emotionally and spiritually exhausts us. Hookup culture and ghosting are endemic.
2e. Of course, the power afforded to us by the apps - filtering out all who do not suit our needs perfectly - is an example of the ascendant narcissism of our age. The devil’s trick in all this? We think ourselves empowered, when in fact we are enslaved, all to all.
2f. Aside from always looking for the “better guy”, and having accepted that even if we find a good guy it’s likely that there’ll be a flare of passion and then one of us will disappear - we’ve become addicted to validation from other people. That little red dot on Grindr...
2f.1. ... or that mutual swipe right makes the bells in our brain ring. Someone liked me! It’s short lived and will amount to nothing - our cynicism makes sure we don’t forget that - but at least someone gave us a like. And so we do what we can - we perform - so others validate.
3. And where does this all lead? To the collective degeneracy of our culture - we are, all of us, cynical narcissists always seeking the fool’s gold version of love - love as self-enslaving hedonic cycles. We drank from the golden chalice expecting life, but found death instead.
3b. What is it that humans should aim for? We talk of empowerment and self-actualization but most often that’s fluff. To what do we aim - who could we become if we set our sights high and cultivated our spark in every way, sacrificing fleshly now for the spiritual future?
3c. Aristotle called this highest pursuit and idealized point to which we aspire our Telos - the ultimate objective or aim. Human flourishing - a good life - ought to be our telos. Virtues are those behaviors and actions that can lead to that aim. But virtues are built in habits.
3d. For Aristotle, you are what you do - because your daily actions turn into habits, and habits into character - and character is destiny. His advice to anyone is determine your telos and aspire in all things to that purpose.
3e. Christians might recognize this in the words of Jesus on summation of the Law: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” To be a Telos is to be your everything in all things. God is a good telos.
3f. But what if one doesn’t have a specific articulated telos - what if, as in modern culture, God is dead and we have no meta narrative except entitlements and rights and the glorification of the self? In short, what fills the void of a sense of purposelessness?
3g. James KA Smith goes further than Aristotle and says that we become what our actions *do to us*. As basically loving and worshiping creatures, our behaviors shape not just our character but our telos itself. In short, we are what we love - our actions create their own telos!
3h. So in our culture in which there is no god or meta narrative that gives meaning and purpose to our lives - in which we are told that we are entitled to everything sex is just sex and why not pursue pleasures each day since YOLO...
3i. ... what does one expect habituated narcissism and cynicism to do to one’s telos? The swiping and “hey”ing and hoping and ghosting and dating without intention to love and commit - how does that shape a heart? A soul? What idol does our culture refuse to admit it worships?
In short, we sought freedom and rights and put on our own chains instead. Gay culture is a chosen hell, a series of naively chosen enslavements that immiserate us day after day, generation after generation. It’s time to break the wheel.
How do we become better?
How do we become better?
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