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Quote of the Day
From Ezra Klein, explaining modern romance:
Old modes of courtship are giving way to a faster, freer, fairer market, where transaction costs have fallen and participants have better information and competition is fiercer. In this market, supposedly rational actors make supposedly rational decisions and then reap the rewards or bear the consequences. New technologies such as cellphones and online dating are helping the market overwhelm older, less "efficient" norms.
Sounds exciting!
I met my wife in a bar.
I met my wife in a bar, not a fu**ing computer lab.
And I met my wife via the
And I met my wife via the internet.
What's your point? That I should have hung out with a bunch of drunks rather than finding someone I love? That you love your wife more than I love mine?
What the hell is it with the conservative mindset? It's not enough for you to live in the middle ages; you insist that everyone else do the same?
Lighten up. Klein's post
Lighten up.
Klein's post made the electronic route to finding romance sound so awful that any alternative seemed better. But when I was looking, the Internet didn't exist. Besides barrooms, there weren't really that many alternatives.
I'm happy when people find love any way that they can.
I don't think the attempt to
I don't think the attempt to explain modern dating in terms of "rational" decisions really makes sense...after all, we're talking about matters of the heart
The Klein column also falls short in that it frames relationships entirely in terms of satisying the couple, without reference to the implications for family life, children, etc
it's actually excruciating
it's actually excruciating
Fell in love with my fiance
Fell in love with my fiance over MSN!
Did no one see his column as
Did no one see his column as poking fun at David Brooks?
This guy needs to stop
This guy needs to stop making his rolling papers from old copies of Wired magazine.
excitement
well kevin, forgive me for dispensing free advice, but I feel pretty safe here: Marian wouldn't like it if you went looking for some of that excitement, nor would inkblot.
Don't make fun of it Kevin!
Ah, the delights of typing a sweet-Tweet to that special someone!
Putting "I Wuv You" on the FaceBook Wall.
Why not drop over at MySpace and take a look at my etchings?
You're cool, not someone from AOL's Hometown which is, you know, so déclassé. (That place is a truly a ghost town btw.)
If I show you my iPhone app, will you show me yours?
You look like a nice person, but I don't date people with a dial-up. Hope you don't take that personally.
These are really pretty sad
These are really pretty sad insights.
Doesn't anyone have anything interesting to say about what is truly interesting that is happening here?
For example, I would guess that one thing we are seeing is men being rather more explicit about what is on their minds: "I want sex, and I'm willing to offer this much for it."
There is a certain feminist sort that claims liberated women are reacting the same way; I'm not at all convinced. What I see from my limited reading of the cultural sphere is rather more women angry at the world and the state of men. This may be couched in more or less sophisticated discourse (for example the female apologists for the way women are treated under Islam or other traditional societies),
but it seems to me to boil down to frustration that the deal Mom was willing to offer ("you provide me with a house and security, and I'll give you occasional, sometimes begrudged, sex") no longer holds much appeal for many men.
(I am sure this last sentence is going to draw flack from various feminists along the lines of "I don't want that, women don't want that, women want sex as much as men", blah blah. Well, yeah, you can go down that tired road, completely missing my point, or you can consider what I have said, the real point I am trying to make, and say something relevant about it. Remember, the issue here is not what the top 5% of female achievers in America think and want, it is about the thoughts and behavior of the majority.
Note also, I am making no comments about who I think is "right" in this battle, though I have my opinions. I'm simply stating what I see to be an important consequence of what is happening.)
...giving way to a faster,
I thought it was pretty fast and free in that greatest period of mankind after the pill, when the mini-skirt was in fashion, and before genital herpes and AIDS?
I imagine he was trying to
I imagine he was trying to be funny. He should stick to economics.