Panic World - Is dating worse than ever? (With Magdalene Taylor)

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

When it comes to modern relationships, most reporting has three main points: Gen Z is sexless and puritan, Millennials are scared about their inevitable doom, and Boomers are boozers who are going down swinging — literally. In this age of social media and apps, we couldn’t help but wonder: has technology made dating worse? Magdalene Taylor joins us to talk about what led to the “loneliness and isolation epidemic” and what we can do about it, or if we’re screwed (and not in a good way). Our guest Magdalene Taylor is a writer on sex, subcultures, and the internet. You can follow her on social media at @magdajtaylor and her writing on Substack: https://substack.com/@magdalene.  Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Audio Maverick, a new nine-part documentary about one of the most visionary figures in radio, Himan Brown. Out now wherever you listen to podcasts. Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Quick note right before we start, I want to shout out the listener who gave us five stars and also complained about how we pronounce the word Nevada. That is the perfect review. Criticize Ryan over pronunciation or whatever complaint. How did I pronounce it? I don't know. Nevada? Nevada. Is it Nevada?

Sure. I'm from Boston. My favorite kind of reviews, five stars with some criticism toward Ryan. That's how you get it done. Thank you. Nevada. Nevada? Let's start the show.

If the gooner is the defining pervert archetype of the 2020s, what does that say about our society right now? Some not very good things. I would say it says that we are in a society that is extremely overly indulgent in our use of technology, very much about, about stimulation rather than any other type of meaning or even pleasure. Okay, so I make this joke a lot where like a guest will cue us up for where we're going next. But literally, this is true. In our outline, the next line that Grant wanted me to read was, it's pretty bad out there, huh? Well, when it comes to dating, here's what the internet has led me to believe.

Gen Z are sexless little puritines who burst into flames. if anyone tries to talk to them, not on Twitch. Millennials are so preoccupied with complaining about how they're doomed, that they're basically doomed to never be happy with anyone, and boomers in a final act of selfishness are going to destroy the planet while they go to Swingers' parties. Today we're talking about a panic that I think we all kind of feel is right, and I'm curious if by the end of the episode we will continue to think that,

which is that dating is bad. Technology is making it worse while promising us it's making it better. I'm Ryan Broderick. With me also is our lovely producer, Grant Irving. Welcome to Panic World, a show about the moral panics and viral freakouts bubbling up out of the darkest corners of the internet. And joining us today is writer, sexual culture critic, former Garbage Day Live guest, Magdalene Taylor. Hello. Welcome to the show.

Hi. Thanks for having me. So I want to set us up on the same page before we get any deeper into this. Do you think technology has made dating worse? Just very simply. Like, before we get into what? Okay. Yes. Well, you know, particularly if we look at like data on sexlessness, it isn't a uniquely

Gen Z problem. Every generation that's alive right now is having less sex than they would have 20 years ago. And that's also true regardless of your orientation, regardless of income level. Everybody is having less sex. And I think that it's a particularly bad problem for Gen Z at the moment as, you know, we have these expectations of, you know, finding a partner and getting married and having these traditional markers of growing up. And that's why it seems like it's a particularly bad problem for them because they are being limited from doing those things. But, you know, the loneliness in isolation that Gen Z is experiencing is not entirely unique to them. And I think certainly has rippling effects for everybody, even if you are somebody, regardless of your age,

who is partnered up and has friends and, you know, doesn't personally experience this kind of loneliness and isolation. I don't want to live in a culture that is largely sad and lonely, even if that's not the feeling that I'm having myself. That's fascinating, though. I didn't realize that it was across the board the same for everyone. I mean, not me, obviously, but everyone else that's interesting. Because I feel like that that speaks to the argument that it is the phones that is doing this, because like it is not just a Gen Z problem. Everyone, I guess other than like meth addicted boomers down in Florida are like not having sex anymore.

I mean, even like married couples who live together, they are individually spending more time alone than they would have previously. And it's like, what the hell are you doing? You're scrolling on Instagram Reels or something. I'm a morbid lurker on the dead bedroom subreddit. and amid the TikTok ban, the amount of men on the dead bedroom subreddit being like maybe my wife will finally talk to me again once TikTok is banned.

I mean... That's so sad. It's just the grimmest thing in the world. And obviously, like, that's probably not what's happening, but it is fascinating that, like, that has become, like, the way that people are articulating this. Yeah. Yeah, completely.

I think the bedrooms are dead because it's a reditor that's married. But, you know... That's definitely part of it. That's definitely part of me. You're married to a Reddit or something. The rates of loneliness and sexlessness are, they are particularly bad for Gen Z. And, you know, like, young men under 30 are the highest demographic of single people and the highest demographic of people who haven't had sex in the last year. However, we can still mark a decline across all demographics. And for more on how this would affect our society and politics, just check out the fantastic film, Children of Men. That really fills in the blanks of where this is all headed. And what would you say is sort of the worst thing that technology has done to our sex lives, our romantic lives?

I think it has made people incapable of meeting in real life through more organic methods. And do you feel like that is a superior way to meet somebody? I do tend to think it's a superior way culturally for us to me. I don't think that there's anything, I don't think there's anything wrong with meeting somebody online. It's not as though relationships that began on the internet are somehow inferior. But I do think that it has changed what expectations we have for ourselves in dating and has perpetuated a real disconnect amongst each other. So you wrote in the New York Times last year a really sort of, I think, just a great kind of summary about what we'll be digging into today.

So you wrote, also, is this uncomfortable that I'm going to read your own writing back to you? Is that strange? Nah, it's fine. Okay, good. So you wrote, the golden age of dating apps is over. A friend told me at a bar. As you waited for our drinks, she and other friends swiped through Bumble and hinge. Across the bar where two young men phones out, apps open, clearly doing the exact same thing.

Never did the duo's meet. Since 2019, three in 10 U.S. adults have reported using them dating apps. with that figure rising to roughly six and ten Americans under 50 who have never been married. Not only are people not meeting partners in bars or any of the once normal in-person venues, they're barely meeting them on the apps either. So why aren't the apps working anymore? Did they ever work, do you think? As I say in the piece, maybe a little bit of a golden era where the, I think it's that the algorithms that the apps utilized was a little flatter.

a little more. Here is the pool of people in your community who are also on this app. I think, like, especially with early Tinder, for example, there was just a sense that, like, okay, Tinder is exposing me to all of the people in my community who are also on this app. And in recent years, you know, these algorithms have gotten a lot smarter, a lot more expansive, and how you navigate them is a lot more, I think, confusing and abstract to people. I think men deal with this a lot more. There's really not a great way for men to, I don't know, curate any sort of experience on the app

other than swiping right on everybody. Otherwise, they will not receive any matches at all, whereas women are often completely bombarded with matches, and it becomes impossible. to sort through them in any meaningful way. What's really worse about all of it now is that this has become the way that people meet to where we've lost the ability to meet any other way. So I think what you're sort of describing is kind of like this end of like the millennial lifestyle subsidy where, you know, like Uber, Tinder launches, it works fairly well for

what people want to use it for, kind of. And then it just gets precedingly worse. Is that sort of like your... Yeah, absolutely. To bring it to this millennial lifestyle subsidy phenomenon, I think a lot of people feel as though the only way that these apps will work for them is if they pay for them. Whereas previously, you could get pretty far on Tinder for free. So we're going to get to that. Don't worry, people listening. We will address how capitalism has ruined our lives. But before we get there, I want to read a little bit more from your New York Times piece. So you continued writing, perhaps dating apps once seemed too good to be true because they were.

We never should have been exposed to what the apps originally provided. The sense that the dating pool is some unlimited, ever increasing in quality well of people. Do you have like a sense of when that mentality set in? Because I do agree with you that it is a fairly new phenomenon. But I'm always sort of curious on like when do you think it flipped? I am somebody who like traces most of our social, cultural problems back to 23. or so when smartphones became ubiquitous. But I do think that most people mark the decline of dating apps to be, you know, a real 2020 pandemic phenomenon.

Interesting. I don't have a hard date in mind of when it became this bad. But I do have to imagine that, you know, when dating app usage increased during the pandemic, that this is when people became. a lot more accustomed to what they allowed for. So this idea that, like, you can always just find someone new by opening up the app. Right. I mean, especially during the pandemic, if you're, you know, perhaps not even interested in immediately meeting somebody, you know, you're not, you're a lot less likely to just say, hey, okay, let's go on a first date right now. You know, it's lockdown or something.

What else is there to do but swipe and swipe until you find, like, what you imagine to be the perfect person for you to go out with. I think we can all kind of agree that a lot of these apps are set up to incentivize, you know, time on site is the metric that a lot of these companies use. And dating apps are different. They want you to keep using it, even if their marketing is telling you that we're the last dating app you'll ever use. Like, they do want you to use it to go on your last date, so to speak.

What I think is really fascinating about, let's say that moment after 2013, culminating some time around 2020, where dating apps have sort of replaced everything before them. We also start to see the rise of dating as content in a way that I think is fundamentally different. And I have three posts to show you. And I would love for you to kind of describe them one by one for our listening audience here.

I don't know how to make this too dramatic. It's already pretty bleak. Ending a situation ship is all fun in games until you unintentionally listen to a song that they introduced you to. All right. That's sad for you. The second one. Fresh out of a situation ship, who wants to manipulate me next?

Great. And to the third and final. So it says, me and my situation ship the night before we went no contact forever. And it's a clip of a couple being, you know, so head over heels in love. They're kissing on the subway. They're, you know, they're practically like lady in the tramp, like sharing a piece of spaghetti. They're super lovey-dovey in a way that you would not expect for people who ghost each other later that night. Yeah.

What I think is interesting about these three posts is that, so, you know, the millennial coming of age story is very tied to this idea of, like, the mass panic around hookup culture, perhaps a future episode for this show. And weirdly enough, like as dating apps take root, hookup culture starts to evolve into now what we would call like the situation ship. These like very sticky, boundaryless or like overboundary relationships that like agonizingly go on forever that to me feel like very similar to like when a piece of content gets stuck in a feed. But it's like a relationship you're having. And I would love to kind of hear your thoughts on why you think that shift happened. Like, why did we go, when we were finally given the ability to essentially have a digital casino full of potential sexual partners, we like, our understanding of that evolved to be even messier and weirder. Yeah, I think, you know, this might be part of that puritanical swing that is a product of that, you know, millennial hookup culture, panic, where it's been, you know, culturally perceived as shameful to just have a bunch of hookups or one night stands or. whatever. And so people are interested in these, on paper, you know, no strings attached

types of relationships, but ones where they can also have some kind of, you know, quasi-emotional bond with somebody and, you know, enjoy the intimacy of that experience without, you know, without dealing with the cultural baggage of it just being a hookup. However, they are also not, you know, we lack the emotional maturity to just call it a relationship. And we are still in this time of putting up these emotional walls to allegedly protect ourselves. But instead, it's just nastier and messier than that needs to be. Yeah, I'm going to quote yourself to yourself again. You wrote, situationship culture is one of mass self-deception.

Call it anything else, a romance and a fair. I personally think the casual use of the word affair needs to come back. A relationship, a marriage, a fling, a crush, a torturous entanglement, but God, at least say it with your chest. Do you feel like there's a technological angle there? To me, it almost feels like when you're opening one of these apps and you're finding potential partners and then you get entangled in their lives and you can't really like make up your mind and you have several going at once or whatever is like the sexual equivalent of like

when you open up DoorDash and you can't decide what to eat. It's like this weird, like, choice anxiety that seems to be exacerbated or almost even gamified by a lot of these platforms like Tinder or Hinge or Bumble or whatever. Yeah, I think that dating apps especially have become door dashified. As a product of that, we are, like, culturally plagued with an indecisiveness and an inability to commit to something. And, you know, I guess another, like, digital component of all of this is perhaps by calling it a situation. or something like that. We are like, you know, you would be saved from needing to publicly post your partner on social media and all of that. And, you know, you're presenting like a bit of a digital wall from that.

But at the same time, as these three posts that we just read highlight, people are like more than willing to publicly launder the torment of their situation ships in a way that I would find quite embarrassing. I would as well. I don't totally understand the psychology behind it. I sort of classify it as the same thing of like the content economy around screenshoting embarrassing profiles. Now obviously we can agree that like some stuff that people are putting on these apps is like insane and like pretty funny. But I feel like a lot of it has stretched out to like a world where people seem to be more proud of noncommittal kind of feelings about this stuff where they're sort of talking. about how like they have all these vague relationships that make them miserable. And then there's like an entire dunk economy around like, you know, someone very earnestly being like this is what I'm looking for on an app or something and someone screenshots it. Yeah, it really does not add up to me what the end game is here with the posting. I saw one the other day with like this woman shared like a sticky note that her friend received from a guy like a coding boot camp. Have you seen this? Yes, I have. I read it. It seemed like very anodyne. The guy was just like, you're

really cute. And his line, I thought that was very cute, was like, I would love for you to teach me how to code better, which I thought was, like, very, you know, very chivalrous. I mean, I'm not a coder, but I imagine that would go hard for some people. And then she put a skull emoji, which I think a lot of people

interpreted to mean, like, this is bad. And then reading it back, I'm thinking maybe she was sharing it, like, I'm dying because of how cute it is, but it was very vague. And the replies were unhinged. Yes. Yes. And it made me feel like not bad for me because like I'm not in my 20s anymore but it made me feel bad for like any

young person looking at that thinking that like that's what could happen to you if you like stuck your nose out and like tried to like connect with another person in real life as they would just put you on blast on the internet right no it sucks that is what people are so afraid of um and yeah I agree that the note was extremely innocuous and I think even like I think even the polite thing to do considering you know imagine you are a woman at this hackathon thing and you're the only woman. Having a man come up and verbally hit on you might make you uncomfortable. But a note is, you know, take it or leave it.

It's classy. Yeah. He did a little heart on it. Yeah. I mean, I think that, yeah, we should be encouraging people to shoot their shot politely in public. But as you've pointed out, we've somehow learned to immediately find things like that, cringe or creepy. And for more evidence on this,

and listener, uh, ride with us here because this will make sense in a moment. I think we should start with your theory of the pervert, which is a topic that we've discussed on previous episodes of the show. You know, perverts are very important for the internet, very important for understanding where culture is in any given moment. And, and I was hoping that you could break down your, your unified theory of the pervert for us. Yeah. I mean, a pervert is, you know, by definition, somebody who sits outside of the boundary of what we consider normal sexual behavior. Sure. And of course, there are bad perverts.

Of course. But then, of course, there's just perverts who are weird. And so basically, the boundary of what is considered normal sexually is always changing. And so to define what that boundary is, I think that. It's, you know, we can figure it out by identifying who we see is today's pervert. And who would you say is today's, what would you say is the defining sort of pervert archetype of the 2020s? I mean, the defining pervert archetype is like the virgin gooner. Sure, absolutely, of course. Yeah.

Actually, okay, this has been a running debate on this show. What would you say is the definition between edging and gooning? What would you say is the difference? Edging, I think edging is a practice that can take on a variety of forms. And, you know, it's really just a, it's about prolonging the, you know, the final, yes, the final pleasure point. Yes. Gooning, however, is about extending that pleasure for as long as possible, not for like the sake of achieving a final point, but for just like, Hours of indulgence.

The way I sort of think about is edging is about prolonging pleasure. Gooning is about prolonging stimulus. I think that's accurate. So, like, you know, you can edge with one screen, but you goon with many screens surrounding you, like some sort of pornographic penopticon, if you will. Yeah. You can edge with a partner. Sure.

Of course. In person, you know, acts. gooning, however, specifically requires pornography. I would agree with that. So much I could say about the gooner, you know. I think there's a dimension of loneliness and isolation in there as well. Yes, of course, yes. It is something that sort of implies a sense of filling up a void in your life with sort of digital or media stimuli.

And I think that that is very much tied to our current moment where it is very hard to see other people beyond the kind of gulf that we've created with technology. So as we move along through this episode, we'll try to figure out when this shift happened. And if there's any way out, but I love this theory. So what would you say are the main pervert archetypes of like previous eras? Let's do some decadatology right here. So who would be the king pervert of the 2010s? That's a really good question.

Gosh, I feel like it's easier to identify them in the previous decades. Like the 2010s is a is a bit of a harder, a harder one for me, even though it's like the one I've also, you know, lived in and experienced adulthood in. So who would you say was the defining pervert of the 2000s? I would say it was a much more like Girls Gone Wild consumer. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I've been, I have a term for this. I've been using straight camp for this. It's like my friend has become very obsessed with 2000s live footage of Bloodhound gang.

Yeah. He's been like bombarding me with these horrible live videos of Bloodhound gang performing bad touch at like various like Latin American music festivals. I love it. And it is just like aggressive heterosexuality of the point of absurdity. It's just like pure straight camp. It's obviously toxic. I mean, it becomes much more toxic by the end of the decade. But like it is disgusting and like very heterosexual and like completely impossible by

today's standards, even with the right-wing takeover of the country, I think. Yeah, I think that's what's, that particular era is so fascinating to me, like the era of raunch culture and like spike TV masculinity. Yeah, like, especially with something like like Bloodhound gang, it's like, it's a bit nasty. And there are very like bad elements to like, you know, the whole girl's gone wild thing and the, you know, exploitative elements. Sure. But at the same time, that type of sexuality feels.

like innocent in comparison, I think, to what we have going on now with the Gooner. Yes, I would agree. Okay, so before we go to break, would you like to hear my sort of rough approximation of who I think the 2010s pervert is? Absolutely, absolutely. I think it has to have something to do with, like, polyamory and open relationships. Yeah. I think it has to have some sort of like social justice, like the, like the polypreditor. Yes, the sex past.

The sex, yeah. Yeah. He's like, yeah, there's something there of like juggling multiple kind of relationships in a woke way. Like there's some sort of like, it's like a woke pervert. Yes. I think that's, I think that's perfect. Yes. That's what I think it is.

It's, yeah. Okay. So after the break, we're going to figure out how we got to this world. And we're going to see if, you know, we can figure out exactly when things all went wrong. And once again, just like last week. Please do not goon while you're waiting for us to come back. This is a no gooning show. Our sponsors do not appreciate it.

When you were growing up, had online dating really broken through yet. Do you have any sort of early memories of online dating? I joined Tinder when I turned 18 in 2014, and it was still very new, but it was still culturally, had achieved some sense of cultural dominance. Definitely growing up, I think there was still a really strong stranger danger sense to online dating. But by the time that I was 18, even like not even, you know, arranging a meeting at a bar first. I mean, it's just not unheard of it all for people to just connect on Tinder and bring it straight to their apartment or whatever. Right.

Growing up would have been something like that is how you, that is how you die. That's how you get murdered. Yeah. I, the first, like, real, like, a relationship of my life, like, throughout college in my early 20s started because one day we discovered that we were just friends on Facebook, but we didn't know how. And we, like, then bumped into each other on campus. And it was, like, a weird thing where, like, we assume we got blacked out drunk and

added each other on Facebook, like, as we met, but we have no idea ever how it happened. And it was, like, a weird first moment for me where, like, I don't think Facebook, how had an algorithm just yet, but it was like technology was beginning to play matchmaker without me even realizing it. Yeah. So I think a lot of people right now assume that these things were better at some point, that this technology started good. And we wanted to figure out if that was true.

And our fantastic researcher, Adam, put together a timeline that doesn't really quite prove that, actually. It turns out that these apps, these platforms for finding love online were always pretty tied to making money. But let's see how these things evolved. Starting in 1994, where you have the Electric Classifieds Inc, which this is their business plan. Okay, so romance, love, sex, marriage, and relationships. E.C.I has identified a significant opportunity to fulfill these needs more effectively and rapidly using the information super highway.

Oh, that fucking rips. That rips so hard. ECI's approach overcomes limitations of dating services, printed ads, and 900 numbers. Then in 1995, ECI launches a little website called Match.com. Would you like to see some early screenshots of Match.com? Yes, I would. If you scroll all the way down. So there's one.

It's actually this tagline kind of goes hard. Love at first site, spelled S-I-T-E. And the aesthetic is what I would describe as like fourth grade math textbook. Yes. with like lots of like kisses and like not vector art but like very like geometric patterns and stuff and match.com was profiled at the time by Wired who wrote cyber love and chatroom couplings cyber love is also sick i think a lot of this terminology is pretty good and we should bring some of this back uh cyber love and chat room couplings are as much a part of online lore as hacker fiends

and wild viruses so connecting and tracking these millions of plugged in lonely hearts is a prime business opportunity. Enter Electric Classified's Inc. one of the first companies to turn internet matchmaking into a profitable full-time enterprise while reducing the whirlwind of courtship to digital science might not work for everyone. Electric Classified's intense focus on a market tailor-made for cyberspace puts it one step ahead of the game. Did you notice what I noticed here, which is that from the very beginning this is tied to commerce and like capital and like making money? Oh yes. Yeah, of course. It's kind of a bummer, actually. the idea that like there was never even a moment where this stuff wasn't a business plan.

Yeah, I mean, how else are they going to justify it and transform it into, you know, non-perverted behavior to try to like meet somebody digitally if not, if not framing it as like a smart business decision? True. And this was also pre-com bust. So like I think this was just like the AI of its time. which is like we're going to make a website and make a lot of money forever. Yeah. On Valentine's Day, 1997, Match.com has 500 new users registering a day. By Valentine's Day 1998, the LA Times profiles a cyber love couple. Once again, I think that term is so sick, who met online, and it's enough of a novelty that it's like, it's a massive story.

And they write, foregoing the chemical attraction of pheromones, the couples grew closer to each other exchanging anonymous email at an internet personals website. And today we'll marry in Laguna Hills. Call it cyber love at first type. That's good. That's good. I like that they are like, fair moans,

the way that everybody else forms a relationship. Yeah. Not for them. You can't smell the internet, thankfully, yet. Later that year in 1998, we have the one of the, I would argue one of the best movies about the internet ever made,

which is you've got mail. Have you seen it? Mm-hmm. Yeah. According to people who were working match.com at the time. This was the moment when online dating finally stopped being a weird side show curiosity, which I think is fascinating. Yeah, that is a bit. It still strikes me as early. Yeah. And then the other big moment sort of in the changing of thinking about relationships was, of course,

the same year, the first season of Sex in the City. Can you sort of like describe like the shift that's happening here, and particularly in terms of how we think about, like, women and dating, because I feel like in the late 90s, this was, I mean,

sex in the city, the early seasons, which are good. I rewatched them recently. They're great. Are, it was a revolutionary concept to, like,

meet people and that women would be meeting people. It's a very, I think, important shift in this. Yeah, I mean, the early seasons of sex in the city are so good,

especially, I think, like, the pilot is the best episode where it takes on this, like, anthropological lens where you think that you're going to just be like encountering random singles and hearing their their stories the whole time.

But it was very much this era of women-led casual dating, women loving sex and having sex freely and dating lots of men. But I sort of see the culture of dating that's represented in sex in the city, I think that we can also see in like Seinfeld. Yes, very similar. Yeah, very casual. It's very normal to be dating several people at a time. And it's not a crime to have a second date with somebody on Wednesday and have a first date with somebody else on Friday. And everything is very casual and flexible to their benefit and to their detriment.

I think this is also the moment where the Internet starts to sort of map. about subcultural spaces for dating and sort of this is the beginning of not just like women sort of being able to express how they would like to date and how they want you know to be dated but one weird dating site that our researcher adam found was veggie date which launched in the late 90s 1999 which was specifically for vegetarians. I feel like nowadays veggie date would be like a niche fetish site for like veggie tales fan art. So you know simpler time. In 2002 salon had testimony. stories about online dating. And what I want to highlight was in a music chat room where two people found love over the band Pavement, which is just so adorable. I hope they're having a great time together, hopefully married and Greenpoint. You know, they both have matching thigh tattoos. I think that is an important piece of this, which is that social media and online dating

have always had sort of a twin evolution together. Because you don't, you don't really need a dating app specifically if you don't want one. You can kind of just do what thousands of journalists in New York have done for the last 15 years and treat Twitter like a personal dating ground. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, by 2003, Mark Zuckerberg launches Face Smash.

Are you familiar with Face Smash? No. Oh. Okay. So Face Smash was the prelude to Facebook. Okay. And he took Harvard women's photos. That's right.

I saw the social network. Yes. One year later, this is actually kind of crazy because I didn't know this. E-Harmony is set up and they patent the first dating site algorithm. And the algorithm reads they will rank people in 29 categories, including sexual passion, mood engagement, and spirituality. The company will pair two people only when it is 95% confident. Their compatibility rating falls in the index's top 25%. A dominant individual gets paired with a wallflower only if highly compatible in many other areas.

That's very interesting. I would love to like test that out today. You know what I mean? The thing that like makes me sad reading about this is that a lot of these sites, at least in their marketing, seem to be much more deliberate about connecting people permanently. I'm sure there was all kinds of like Craven sort of like messy. snake oil shit happening in like the pre and post.com era. But like, I don't know. I wish Tinder had like that level of an algorithm for pairing people together.

I don't get the sense they do. Tinder gave me like their like platinum full access to the app for a story that I was working on. And you can get ultra specific in like selecting your interests. Like today they they present just an endless list of keywords that you can associate yourself with, you know, like roller blading and like geocaching or whatever. My two favorite things. Yes.

I love blading over to a new geocash. Exactly. I don't know really how well the app does in impairing you according to those interests. But I am also pretty sure that there are still, there are people today, young people on Match and E-Harmony. sometime this year, E-Harmony shared some data with me that, like, half of their users are, like, millennial or younger. Oh, wow. And it's surprising. You know, I'm glad people are doing that.

I hope they don't regret all the weird, but sometimes, you know, very good, casual dating experiences you can get from that stuff. Yeah, that doesn't seem like something, Tinder never had to put up that kind of pretense to what it was offering. And I do think that that is, that match and e-harmony, we're far more, you know, love and relationship-oriented, I think is crucial in their normalization.

I mean, it's nice to hear that people are still using those sites, to be honest, because, like, I do agree with you that they feel a little more innocent, a little more deliberate than something like Tinder. But to sort of complete the timeline here,

because I think this is fascinating sort of how online dating and social media are so connected, even though we, we tend not to sort of think of them as the same thing anymore. In 2005, some college students set up a video-based dating site, and they ended up spitting off the video product into something else entirely. Can you guess what that was?

Zoom. I don't know. YouTube. Oh. Yeah. I didn't know that either. I knew that the first video was an elephant going the bathroom, but I didn't know that it started as a dating site.

So if the social media revolution starts around this time with, like, YouTube and Facebook and all the rest. So posts, let's say 2007, 2008, how would you say dating apps have evolved? Because obviously Tinder is the one that everyone kind of knows and talks about, but there are many now, right? And they all sort of offer a different experience. Right. So you're asking what is what's the gap between that 2007, 2008 and the total cultural ubiquity of now? Yeah.

Like how do you feel like it's spread? Do you think it was just like Tinder successful? So there's a bunch of spinoffs? Or do you think that there's more there? Tinder came along and really shook things up. And, I mean, Bumble is like a direct response to the success of Tinder. The idea of making it a woman-led app is, it's explicitly a product of the culture that Tinder created. It does continuously seem like Tinder is the foundation for all of these apps,

and they differentiate themselves according to, like, some specific, niche or style, though I think now there's functionally not much difference between Tinder, hinge, Bumble, and most of them are owned by the same people. Yeah, so, I mean, because in 2009 is when I didn't, I didn't realize it's either. Grindr launched before Tinder. I did not know that. I'm not surprised that that's where the innovation came from, you know. Honestly, like, Grindr is a very well.

built app. It is a, it is a beast of an app. Tinder is kind of badly designed, I would say. But Tinder launches in 2012. And so, so from essentially 2012 on, we have this explosion of app dating culture that is changing fundamentally the way we meet people. We are sort of always, I think, wrestling with it, even if we're trying to get away from it. Like you said, we're, we're done with Tinder, but we're moving towards identity-based Tinder likes. A quick question reflecting on that history, do you think dating apps could have gone away that would have been more interesting? I'm really surprised how many of the early apps were about data and that they could help find the right partner over shared interest, and that's totally gone wayside.

The dating apps themselves did not expect it to be so bad. I mean, the dating apps are well aware of the decline that they're experiencing either in, you know, the actual number of people who are using the app or spending money on the app, but also in the cultural perception towards them. I don't think that the apps anticipated that there would be such resentment towards the apps. However, I really can't imagine them having pursued much of a different timeline. The ultimate goal is to make money. I would also caution against taking them at their word at the time. Right.

it has been lost to history, but like anyone setting up a business with a dot com in the 90s was effectively doing the exact same thing as the AI companies now. They were saying that like our website will change the world and our, and then 10 years later, they're like, our data will change the world. And then 10 years later, they're like our AI will change. It's the same snake oil every time. And they go for dating first because it's such an intrinsic human value. Like they know that they can get us there.

So as cute as those things are, like they, They're probably bullshit, even at the time. But after going through this whole timeline, do you feel like right now is the worst period for dating, let's say, in the modern era? I'm not going to get into what it was like dating in the Middle Ages or something. But did you feel like things are worse now than when, let's say, eHarmony launched 20, 30 years ago? Honestly, yeah, I do think it is worse for the average person in a lot of. of ways, especially this moment right now where we're seeing so much animosity between genders. But of course, I think there are various other metrics through which we could look at how dating

has been over the last several decades and say, okay, it's not worse. You know, women having more agency is not a worse thing, of course. But I think that we would also be surprised to see how much, like, sexual, freedom and agency and independence and satisfaction, dating satisfaction women had in previous decades compared to today. I would venture to guess that women would have reported being much more satisfied in their casual dating and romantic lives than they do today in the 90s in early 2000s. Well, right after the break, we're going to talk about how AI is going to fix everything and make it all better. And in the meantime, once again,

please do not go into these ads. Do not go into our sponsors. They're going to be so mad. We'll be right back. So you alluded to this in the last section, which is that most of these apps are owned by the same people. In December of 2024, the Match Group, which owns Match.com, Hinge, OKCupid, and Tinder

announced that they had a big plan for fixing the online dating landscape. From CNN, Justin McLeod, CEO of Hinge, outlined how the company intends to fully embrace AI. While AI is not going to be the panacea when it comes to the very deeply impersonal problem of love, I can tell you that it is going to transform the dating app experience, taking it from a do-it-yourself platform to an expertly guided journey that leads to far better outcomes and much better value to our daters, he told investors.

So, yeah, this sounds fine, right? This sounds like totally, yeah, they got it, right? Oh, yeah, I'm sure problem solved. It all serious is, do you think there is any sort of useful role for AI in something like this? Can you imagine one? I can imagine it working for some people in the way that dating apps have worked for plenty of people. However, I'm really of the mind that our current dating woes are a product of technological mediation. that anything that allows for further technological mediation into our romantic lives couldn't be the solution.

Yeah, I'm very uncomfortable by the idea of an AI as an intermediary. I kind of came across this idea a couple years ago when I first started covering the rise of generative AI where people are talking about how they're having an AI write an email. And a lot of people were saying that they're having AI read emails, which sort of creates this world where it's effectively two AIs communicating instead of the human beings, which is what seems to be what a lot of people are using AI for now. So, you know, you can have an AI pick your photo and you can have an AI make suggestions about how to increase your profile. Bumble already has this.

You can have an AI remind you to talk to someone or help you communicate your first message. And I can't imagine there won't be a moment where you can have an AI receive messages for you and answer people. And it just feels like we've, it makes me just want to be like, what the hell are we doing here? Like what is the point of any of this? The only way for an AI matchmaking model to appropriately match people is if we all like know ourselves well enough to tell, you know, an AI model what it is we're looking for or, right? reflect that information to it in some way. But at the same time, these AI models do not allow for us to know anything about ourselves at all. If we're not the ones reading our messages, we're not the ones shaping our profiles and putting the thought into it and thinking about what

it is we want, then what sort of feedback are we even able to give these AI programs to tell it what we want? How, I don't, it's kind of, I'm sure they're going to find a way to keep it going, but it does not seem like it will lend to us knowing ourselves any better. And I think that that is part of today's problem is that a lot of us have no fucking idea what we want. Well, luckily, there is now this. I just dropped in the chat. This is an AI wingman that our producer Grant found.

Can you have a little scroll on this page and talk through it for our listeners? Because this is grim shit. This is real grim shit. Yeah, it appears that this AI dating assistant will help you hit on women better. It says it'll eliminate small talk. That's a red flag. Anybody who says they hate small talk, it's so bad for you that you have to hire. I only want to be talking to women about various wins and fails we've had professionally and had a grind and hustle more.

I want to be grusseling with all of my potential partners. No, small talk is how you flirt. That's the secret. Yeah. It's an extremely long list of FAQs on the front page here. Like, will wing use corny pickup lines? Also, one of the FAQs is, what is Riz? It's that fat little boy from TikTok.

They're doing some kind of like, Google search arbitrage here or whatever where like somehow if you search a Riz app this will come up. I sort of have a feeling that this app is in part created by somebody that I once went on, once went on Tamron Hall, the Tamron Hall show to talk about. Oh, sure. All of this stuff. And he was pitching an AI wingman. So I do wonder if it's the same thing other than that.

If not, Wing has some competition. Right. So, yeah. But while we're sort of talking about, like, the AI effect here, I want to go back to the gooner. The, the archetype of our time, right? The king pervert that we're all kind of becoming. Because I do think AI slots in quite well there to sort of the loneliness. You know, the story the New York Times recently had of the woman who fell in love with her chat, GBT,

model or there's a woman who like recently married like a virtual husband back in 2023 and these are not new stories like for instance there was like a every six months or so during the 2010s there's like a different story about like usually a guy in Japan that would like marry a Nintendo DS character or marry a hologram or whatever actually the hologram one is quite sad because the technology that powered the Hatsunemi Kiko hologram was depreciated and like that dude did lose his hologram, which I think is kind of sad. But it is sad. Like that guy's like a true romantic, gooner or not.

But like I do think these stories have always been around. And going all the way back, like there are people who are marrying cartoon characters in the 70s, like, you know, at the beginning of the furry movement. But I do think that there is a rise of people who are probably not telling other people how intimate they are getting not just with other people via AI, but with AI tools themselves to sort of exactly. exacerbate that digital loneliness. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And if I have to, you know, envision the next step of the gooner, it is going to be a far more. I was taking a sip of water and almost completely destroyed my microphone right there. Imagine, imagine, if you will, the gooner.

The future gooner is going to be one that is far more, you know, AI mediated and really fetishizes the abject loneliness of the whole phenomenon. That I think is a part of like a really critical component of today's guna pervert is that it's kind of like it's fetishizing porn addiction and sort of it sort of feels like a, you know, snake eating itself type of thing where it's gotten to the point where like the only thing that brings these people excitement is like the pathetic degeneracy of it all. And I think that in the future there is going to be, there's going to be more gooners who, you know, are conscious of the false relationship that they have with these like AI pornographic characters. But the patheticness of it all is precisely what they like about it. Yeah, I think that's right.

I've talked about this on a previous episode where the line of sand for me in terms of like millennial and Genese sexuality kind of was first apparent when I saw the word simp used for the first time. And I feel like simping as a concept is so outrageous. There have always been men who get parasocial relationships with, you know, porn stars or celebrities or whatever and then start to hate themselves because of it. That's like that's a thing. You know, the fapening was 15 years ago. Like, we know that there's sort of this rage that can build from lusting after powerful or influential women. But the psychology of simping to me, I was just like, oh, this is different and this is fucked up and weird. And like, and I feel like everything after that has just been going down that same path of, I think you're right, the idea that like the isolation and the degradation and the embarrassment you feel is part of the fetish.

And then it's all aided and abetted by technology that's monetizing it and sort of making you sort of live in it. It's a, it's a really weird like cyborg sexuality that bothers me. Yeah, no, absolutely. That is precisely the theory I'm running. with that yeah, we're living in a time where sexuality is, you know, entirely technologically mediated in a way that makes us far less human and far more cyborg than before. I'm kind of coming to the conclusion that dating is worse than ever and likely to get worse. So, you know, real quick, before you finish the show, how do we fix this?

Just like real quick. Like, what do you got? Real quick. I don't want to do a touch grass recommendation, but there's a little bit of the, that's a little bit of what I have to offer you guys is if the AI problem is really going to get as bad as it seems that it could, where the internet really does just become various AI models talking to each other, and we have to question whether what we're seeing online is from a real person or not, I think it's going to lose a bit of its shine for the average person.

You know, I'm really not interested in having to question all of the time if, like, the image I'm looking at is real or AI generated. Well, you've gone on record as saying that, like, you can't get as horned up from deep fake news as you can, real ones. I can certainly envision, like, a near future where it's harder to tell the difference. But at the same time, the appeal of a woman that you know is a real person, sending you a photo of herself naked that you would assume she just took that picture rather than using an AI model to generate that. Like that has an erotic appeal that is far higher than choosing a random woman online and putting her image through an AI model to get pornographic images of her.

A friend of the show, David Sims, on his podcast, Blank Check, they recently had a conversation about whether or not CGI could be scary. Like, can you think of an example of a CGI monster? that's scarier than a practical one or one you never see it all. And I think about that a lot when I think about AI and comedy and AI and sexual desire, which is that there's something about imprinting like a human sense of humor through a lens or through a camera, a human sense of comedy. The AI doesn't have that.

Like it can't create an image based on its own desire unless we can build. like genitals for it, which like that just seems cruel. Like, I don't want mine. I wouldn't give it to a robot. But like, until it can feel desire and understand how to communicate that, I don't actually think deep fake porn can ever get you as warmed up as the real thing. I don't think it's possible. No, no, I completely agree with you.

Again, there's always going to be perverts who figure that out for themselves. But they are not going to speak to the broader sense of sexuality. Getting back to the solution of it all, I think that, like, people are going to, like, just grow a little bit more tired of being online. I mean, you know, I look out my window in front of me and I'm not questioning whether that's AI or not. The only thing really to do is to be, you know, a bit more conscious of our relationship with technology and whether a phone addiction is benefiting us at all. It's not a straightforward, just put your phone down. But, you know, that's a little bit of a start. On the touch grass of it all, but in a place where, like, everyone feels extremely awkward if somebody's approached in public, do you see, like, a bar scene coming back? Do you envision that we're going to recreate a social space where Drake's version of the club again, where, like, it is appropriate to talk to strangers?

I mean, I think that there is a lot of, like, people are really romanticizing that idea, especially the club. Like, I've been seeing so much of that, like, you know, this is what I thought the club would be like when I got old enough to go to them. But all of that is like part of why another one of my like pet interests in additional like people not having sex is like I kind of think it's a problem for our culture to like really pursue this like mass sober curious thing because I frankly think that like going to the bar and meeting people and like having a couple of drinks is good for you for most people. obviously not everybody it's hard to say that that is going to come back because like the interest in in that kind of culture is coinciding so strongly with this like sober curious movement so i will say because i feel the same way about sober curious stuff which i think is that it's like you're you're fine like don't don't make a don't make a thing about it but i was talking to a real estate agent recently who was saying that like one of the major trends in real estate post-covid is the return of the american dining room which was essentially a extinct by the 2010s. And there is a huge interest now in kind of dinner parties are entertaining that way. Yeah. I do think that that could be the solution to the sort of sober, curious,

I don't want to go to a bar or a club to meet someone, which is that we used to just have more social institutions. Like, people forget that like a lot of couples used to meet in church. Right. I mean, I was raised Catholic and that place is horny as hell, Catholic Church. You know, like that's where you would meet people. And I think that like we're slowly having to back different kinds of social institutions that don't involve alcohol to meet other people. Absolutely. And, you know, even just like meeting through friends has fallen dramatically. Like that should be a pretty like simple thing to like you don't have to there's no there's no weird like sexual politics about like meeting in the workplace or something. Like meeting through friends is is normal and can be done through like these non alcohol focused activities.

or whatever. But yeah, you know, I mean, maybe like, maybe that's what all those pickleball courts are for. I think that is what they're for. Also, like, I mean, I feel like the answer is just like, go, go fuck outside. Like, just like, just like, hang out with anyone outside. Like, just do that.

You'll meet somebody. So not go fuck outside. Your advice was not to start just to honestly, go fuck outside. If you, as long as you're not, like, putting in somebody's face, like, if that's what you're into, but like do anything outside. Just like get outside and you'll feel sexy. I completely agree. That's all it is.

Who do you think AI is for? Do you think all the influencers posting crying videos about how hard it is to date are excited about the idea of AI helping out? It's aimed at helping the companies who stand to make money off of it. It strikes me as just like so fundamentally anti-human that I can't really, I can't imagine it genuinely helping a broad. swath of people in the long term. I can give one positive AI dating experience based on my own life, actually. And I think that this kind of gets, it's like very much baby with the bathwater with this stuff. So I was in a long-term relationship with a woman who her first language was Portuguese.

We were living in Brazil on and off for the last couple of years. Google Translate sucks ass. It has always sucked ass. I learned Portuguese to a point, but my Portuguese is still something you would learn as an adult. ChatGPT launches night and day level able to talk to each other. Because even where she can speak English and I can speak Portuguese, there's still stuff that's going to fall in the middle and you just can't get it. And we even got to a point where we were having the AI sort of like explain on a meta level

sometimes to each other's stuff. And it wasn't all the time. But I have to imagine there are a lot of couples or a lot of people that are using translation services from AI tools that, that is having a profound effect on how they communicate. And I think that's a positive. Yeah, I do think that's a positive. And I think that they're, I can imagine, you know, somebody who, who struggles with social

interactions, like finding, finding some guidance in, in all of this. But I think by and large, AI can be used as a tool for people who do know themselves well enough to, to use it as a tool and not, you know, not a crutch, per se, but that isn't a lot of people. Yes. Just me. Yeah, just you. Maybe you too.

When I was looking at the sites of like, we'll cut down the small talk and like, you know, like screen out the matches and it's going to be AI bots talking to AI bots to set up a date to like make it efficient. It just struck me. Dating should be high stakes. It's like for something important in your life. I don't think it should be high stakes. I think it should be the opposite. Yeah, no, no, no. That's where the small talk comes.

I think dating is. of the small stuff. Nervous approaching a person because you're hoping that they like you and it should be exciting. Like, you should be. Oh, I see what you mean. It's not something to make efficient. It's something to be like, oh, look at this profile. Yes.

Or like, look at this person here. Like, you should feel, it should cause feeling. People back when they would go to bars that would be like, you go out night and again trying to find somebody who's special. You'd go to Skinny Dennis and Williamsburg. You'd wait until two in the morning. you'd order yourself a big bourbon and a sweet tea, and then you'd try to make bleary eyes at the other person

who has the bleary eyes that you have, and then you go home together. Or you make out like on a pile of garbage outside, perhaps. I can't speak to any other person. And that's the only way you get to feel anything that isn't just dread, and that's important. Yeah, no, I think that it is absolutely something that people should be treating with, you know,

complete intentionality. But there is also absolutely a place for levity in all of it. It is a high-stakes matter that you should be treating with intentionality. However, you should pursue it with the most low-stakes levity that you are capable of obtaining in your personality. Would you say that perhaps all we need is love? Is that accurate? That was, delete the episode and just put that in. Would you say that that's, okay. The internetification of all of this has made it like a desperate to-do list and like a list of demands like when you when you look at the people who are like very upset about it it's like taking all the fun out of it and also

taken all of the like serious yeah it's promoted algorithmic thinking about partnership instead of being like i don't know there's just something about this person and now i feel excited a rollercoaster is only fun because it goes up and then it goes down yeah you can't just have a flat rollercoaster It's not fun. That's what dating is. That is, I think, like, the biggest crime that we can charge against the dating apps is that, like, nobody is having fun anymore. Right. And it, as serious of a matter as love is, you should be having fun.

When we're talking about AI and sexuality, I think the most important thing to remember comes from a song by the band of Bloodhound Gang, which is, you and me baby ain't nothing but mammals. So let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel. Madeline, thank you for coming on. This has been a wonderful episode. Where can people follow you if they want to read your work, look at your posts, etc., etc. Well, yeah, sorry to say you should put your phone down, but actually pick it back up. And I am on Twitter slash X, whatever you want to call it, at Magda J. Taylor, Instagram as well. but I also write a

Substack newsletter called Many Such Cases, and you can find that. Thank you. Highly recommend. You can find that at magdalen.substack.com. Panic World is a Garbage Day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at Garbageday. Email.

Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our Durange's logo was created by Gabby Cash. please give us $5 at patreon.com slash panic world. Please give us products to sell by contacting multitude at multitude dot production slash ads. For any other way you would like to give us money or work with us or promote us or become financially entangled with us,

you can reach out to our fixer, our wonderful bag man, Josh Fielstad, and you can reach him at PanicworldPod at gmail.com. And one piece of advice for me to you. Chill out. Touch grass while you still can. Thank you.