Online dating apps took online dating to a new level of shallow. In the early days of online dating you had to put effort into matching with people. You would establish a detailed profile on a dating site, make filtered searches to see who might fit your criteria, then message and wait for a reply. Tinder streamlined this to a swipe left/right and get loaded with matches. The result wasn’t streamlined dating, but rather streamlining transactional dating.
You weren’t met with quality but with quantity. The filtering mechanisms were still there, but at a much more reduced capacity. Transactional, shallow dating became so normalized that now people can hardly tell that there used to be something different.
Nowadays it’s expected that the person you date is dating other people, and that there is no expectation of exclusivity. It should seem obvious that you cannot build a trust and respect based relationship when both of you are dating multiple people. Yet, this is the norm.
This isn’t about dating, everything is transactional
If you’ve ever sold or purchased something on Craigslist/Facebook Marketplace then you will understand everything I’m about to tell you. Scammers aside, it can take weeks to sell an item simply because people express interest, set a date and time to purchase, then never show up. Likewise, you will call someone wanting to buy, arrange a time to pickup and pay, only to have them not answer the door because they’ve already sold.
Employer/Employee Relations
The Tinder Effect has reached every corner of society. Employee/employer relationships have never been worse (in modern times). Ghosting a potential employer for a job interview is common place and even considered acceptable now. Not canceling an interview, just not showing up at all. So common that employers are starting the same trend, just disappearing on the people who do show up for an interview.
Employers are convinced that workers will only do the bare minimum. Why offer higher pay and incentives when the employees will only take and give nothing in return? So instead, just extract as much useful labor as you can before they quit. Give nothing extra, and don’t treat your workers with basic respect.
Employees are convinced that their employers will give them nothing but stress. Since your employer won’t reward you for putting in extra effort, why bother? Do the bare minimum, quite quit, and show no loyalty to the company. There is no point in doing extra work since you will not be rewarded for it.
The issue, of course, is that they are both right. In a low trust society you extract as much as you can from others while giving as little of yourself as possible. Since employees and employers have no trust in each other, it’s a doom loop of exploitation.
B2B Ghosting
Business to Business relationships are following the same patterns. In the last few years I’ve had several deals fall apart when the other party just vanishes. Not in the way scam artists grab money and run. I’m talking about getting near closing or being ready to close, then the other party goes no contact. Deadlines get passed, and no word from them ever again. No response to emails, phone calls, etc.
No one cares about branding and reputation anymore. In the past your brand, your reputation, was everything. Being flakey and unreliable has become normal and acceptable. The average person now has the attention span and follow through of a gnat
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Exploiting Kids for Clicks
How many Tiktok and Instagram moms pimp out their kids for validation? It is well known by now that if you put your kids on social media you instantly attract pedophiles to those accounts. Meta studied 5000 child accounts and found a combined 32 million adult men following those kids. Absolutely disgusting.
Yet parents, and mostly mothers, won’t hesitate to put their children onto these platforms. Why? Because they get clicks. And Clicks=social validation. In other words, they treat their kids as another cheap transaction to get attention for themselves.
SaaS (Software as a Service), the enemy of all freedom lovers
SaaS companies almost universally treat their clients like Tinder dates. Cheap transactions, quantity and never quality. Shit customer service, shit product. The goal is to get as much of your money and give as little in return as possible.
SaaS is not the only industry with this model, but by far they are the worst perpetrators. It’s becoming standard practice to see customers and clients as nothing more than a means of extracting money. With the online marketplace giving you access to endless millions of people, why bother building a brand reputation based on quality and trust? So much easier to just churn and burn clients.
This goes for the cold DM/Email model of sales as well. Who cares if you annoy a thousand people. Who cares if you fill their inbox with so much nonsense that they spam you? As long as you get new customers that’s all that matters. 1 new customer for every thousand you piss off is perfectly acceptable in today's atmosphere. There are no end to the gurus openly encouraging this.
Why worry about building a brand or maintaining reputation when there is always another sucker, I mean, customer, on the horizon. Shit on your existing customers, churn them out. There's always someone new.
It is getting harder to build relationships of any sort based on trust and respect
Even marriage has been tainted by the Tinder effect. Instead of working together to build a life, husbands and wives are continuing their transactional dating habits into married life. Every chore, every dollar, everything done within the relationship is marked and tallied, and if it doesn’t come up exactly even? Watch out.
When your marriage is built on an adversarial frame, it is doomed to fail. Treating your spouse solely as a “what can you do for me” framing is guaranteed to make it fail.
Text Reminders
Before your doctor/dentist appointment how many text messages do you get to remind you of your appointment? Scheduled maintenance on your car? Text reminders. Any in home service or repair? Text reminders. Why? Because if they don’t text you regularly up to and including the time of the appointment, people ghost them. Women are especially bad about this (don’t get mad, you know I’m right).
This applies in dating as well. Just because you talked last night and agreed on a place and time doesn’t mean they will show up. If you don’t call/text a few hours before the date and reconfirm, then your date will be a no show.
Low trust society, and what to do
All of these things are the result of being in a low trust society. When trust evaporates, it becomes every man for himself. In the short term it’s the smart play. If everyone around you is untrustworthy, putting yourself out there in any way is only going to get you burned. In the long term it becomes an inescapable doom loop.
I don’t trust you, you don’t trust me, so we both try to “get mine” before the other one can betray. This is not sustainable.
Fixing this starts with you. Build a reputation as being reliable. Build a brand for your business, and work to maintain that brand. Show up for appointments, answer your emails, return your phone calls. These basic things will set you apart from 90% for the competition.
Instead of treating people, business and customers as another cheap transaction that can be exploited, treat them as actual people. When you inevitably find people treating you as a transaction, cut them from your circle.
When you do find trustworthy and responsible people, cling to them tightly. If you maintain a brand and reputation based around respect and reliability, then you will find others like you. If you give in to the temptation to turn everyone into a transaction to help yourself, you’ll be forever doomed to the low trust hellscape.