I’m Gen X. Online dating didn’t really exist when I started dating my husband in 2000. I mean you could find local people via AOL Chat and maybe there were early versions of things like match.com, but for the most part you met people in meatspace. There wasn’t social media the way we know it now so you couldn’t do much online stalking.

The online component seems like it introduces a bunch of angst into dating. Due to gender imbalances on dating apps, it seems to become a numbers game for some. And from what I understand, a lot of the female profiles are bots. It also seems like it’s common to check out a potential date’s Instagram or other social media accounts, so rather than organically meeting a person, you’re evaluating a profile, which probably doesn’t give an accurate idea of who the person is. And it seems like young people live their lives increasingly online, so chance encounters in meatspace are rarer, plus it seems there’s some reticence to chat up a stranger to see if it goes somewhere.

It looks like a massive headache.