u/Call_It_

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Point of the post is: men…don’t waste your money on spotlights on this app.

Edit: oh wait, I received a like at the end of the spotlight! From a trans woman! 😒 (nothing against trans women, I’m just looking for a biological woman). Not renewing bumble. This app might be the worst of the bunch.

Meanwhile, I get plenty of likes from women who live more than an hour away (sometimes 2+ hours away). It’s a little hard to meet a woman for coffee when she lives 2 hours away.

I live in the suburbs of a major metropolitan area, and you’re telling me there isn’t a single compatible woman within a 30-minute drive?

Either these apps’ algorithms are seriously flawed, or they’re deliberately designed this way. My guess is the latter: if they consistently showed you the most compatible people nearby, you might actually meet someone and stop using the app. Keeping you swiping is the business model.

Meanwhile, I get plenty of likes from women who live more than an hour away (sometimes 2+ hours away). It’s a little hard to meet a woman for coffee when she lives 2 hours away.

I live in the suburbs of a major metropolitan area, and you’re telling me there isn’t a single compatible woman within a 30-minute drive?

Either these apps’ algorithms are seriously flawed, or they’re deliberately designed this way. My guess is the latter: if they consistently showed you the most compatible people nearby, you might actually meet someone and stop using the app. Keeping you swiping is the business model.

Or are we mostly being dragged along by two incredible forces: the fear of death and the desire to have sex?

We romanticize survival as some profound will to live, but maybe that gives us way too much credit. Perhaps we keep going largely because our brains are hardwired to fear death, while simultaneously dangling one of their strongest rewards in front of us: sex.

Strip away all the philosophy and meaning we pile on top of existence, and maybe the machinery underneath is embarrassingly simple: avoid death and seek sex.

And somewhere along the way, we started calling that a “will to live.”

One of the best principles a parent can adopt is recognizing the antinatalist perspective: your child did not ask to be born. Bringing someone into the world is your decision, not theirs. That means raising them is a responsibility…not a debt they’re expected to repay.

The more I observe parents, the more I notice how many seem to believe their children owe them gratitude, obedience, or even lifelong loyalty simply for existing. In my experience, that mindset often goes hand in hand with poor parenting.

These are also the kinds of people who automatically assume life is a gift. Life isn’t a gift…at best, it’s simply just ‘life’. It’s difficult, often uncomfortable, and filled with struggle. Can it also be beautiful and unique? Sure. But calling it a “gift” can create the expectation that children owe something in return for having received it. I think it’s more honest to recognize that bringing someone into existence means accepting the responsibility of preparing them for a lifetime of hardship and survival.

Ironically, this is one of the reasons I think people who genuinely understand the antinatalist perspective might actually make better parents than most. They begin from the premise that their child owes them nothing. Any love, gratitude, or relationship that develops is something to be earned through good parenting…not something they’re entitled to simply because they brought a child into the world.

I’ve been dating quite a bit over the past year. Lots of first dates. A few second dates. No third dates…and, more often than not, that’s been my decision. Somewhere along the way, I started asking myself a question I didn’t expect: Do I actually want another relationship?

I’ve discovered that I genuinely enjoy living alone. The peace, the freedom, the ability to make my own decisions without having to negotiate every little thing…I’ve grown to value it more than I expected.

Sure, the honeymoon phase of a relationship is exciting. The flirting, the chemistry, the sex. But then what? Eventually that fades, and in my marriage it often felt like I was being told I wasn’t doing enough, no matter how hard I tried.

Do I really want to sign up for a long term relationship again?

When I look around at a lot of long-term relationships and marriages, I don’t see people who seem happy. I see couples who often seem resentful of each other, yet stay together because the alternative feels even more frightening.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just seeing the unhappy ones.

And yeah, regular sex sounds great in theory. But judging by the marriages I’m talking about, it doesn’t look like many of those couples are having sex lives worth sacrificing my peace for.

Which leaves me wondering: what am I even supposed to put on my dating profile? “Short-term dating?” Doesn’t that immediately make women assume I’m just looking for sex and then moving on?

The truth is…yes I am kind of just looking for sex. But not JUST sex. I genuinely enjoy the dates, the conversation, the flirting, the connection, and yes, the sex too. I just don’t know if I want to build another life around someone.

Is there really anything inherently wrong with that, as long as you’re honest about it from the start?

After going through a divorce and spending nearly a year in the world of online dating, I’ve come to a somewhat depressing conclusion: I don’t think the vast majority of single people actually have time to date.

Between work, hobbies, traveling, maintaining a home, keeping up with friends, TV shows, sports, family obligations, pets, and the endless list of things competing for our attention, it feels like there’s increasingly little room left for dating.

And dating DOES require room. It takes time, effort, consistency, and commitment. Whether you’re meeting different people or trying to build something meaningful with one person, you have to actually make space in your life for another human being. Increasingly, it seems like people either can’t make room or just won’t.

And when you really think about that, it’s kind of a sad state of affairs. We’ve built a society in which people are constantly busy, constantly stimulated, constantly consuming, constantly working, and constantly finding new ways to occupy every available hour of the day…yet somehow we’re surprised that people are having less sex, forming fewer romantic relationships, and having fewer children. I don’t particularly care about declining birth rates, but I don’t think any of these trends are occurring independently of one another.

You can go even deeper and ask why we live this way in the first place. I’ll give you a hint: capitalism on steroids probably has something to do with it.

In a hyper-consumerist society like the United States, we’re encouraged to treat virtually every part of life as something to optimize, consume, achieve, or experience. Work more. Travel more. Find more hobbies. Watch more. Buy more. Do more. Even our free time becomes something that needs to be filled.

And somewhere along the way, we’ve built a hyper-busy society that leaves remarkably little room for two of the most basic human experiences: connection and intimacy.

Maybe people haven’t stopped wanting those things. Maybe we’ve simply constructed a way of life that makes finding the time, and making the commitment required to sustain them, more difficult than it needs to be.

They all allow me to filter for kids, but for some reason it’s assumed everyone wants a pet, which is so bizarre. No, I don’t want a pet. No I don’t want to date your pet. No I don’t want to sleep with your pet. No I don’t want to be intimate with you in front of your pet. No I don’t want to clean your pets vomit or pick up its poop. Let the ‘pet people’ date each other. But also let the ‘pet free’ people more easily find each other.

Which is fine, I guess. But what are we all doing if we don’t have time to date? And if we don’t have time to date, is it safe to say like no one is having sex anymore?

It’s a lot of work and emotional energy. Tbh, I think I’d rather just die alone.

In other words, do any non-human animals understand that death is an inevitable part of their future, rather than simply reacting to present danger? Is there evidence that they recognize their own mortality in the abstract…that one day their existence will come to an end?

Or is this degree of self-awareness, whether a gift or a burden, unique only to human animals? A level of consciousness that allows us not only to survive, but to contemplate our own inevitable nonexistence long before it arrives. And if so, could this uniquely human awareness of mortality explain the emergence of religion itself: our enduring attempt to find meaning, comfort, and continuity in the face of knowing that one day we will cease to be?