December 18, 2024 • 55 mins
Prior to the emergence of chronically-online civilization, people often met romantic partners through geographical, socioeconomic, or religious proximity. In recent evening, a proliferation of internet-powered websites and applications promise to connect you with someone you will absolutely love... perhaps for life, perhaps for a night. And, while all these venues of romance may seem distinct, Ben reveals the truth to Matt and Noel: there is a real -- and dangerous -- conspiracy afoot.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
We are joined as always with our super producer Andrew
Treforce Howard. Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Folks,
we are at the end of the calendar year of
twenty twenty four. A lot of people are dealing with
(00:50):
love hard won, love heard lost, and it's often said
the course at true love never did run smooth? Make
that up?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
That shakes man.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
He's no slouch. Sorry, maybe he didn't make it up either.
Isn't there a whole thing that maybe he didn't write
any of his own stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I think that's been pretty well debunked though.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Right we have an episode on that as well. But
it's something everybody can agree with, Noel. It's one of
the few consistent patterns across all of humanity's strange experiment.
You know, most of us tuning in tonight have at
one point or another sadly encountered heartbreak. And it's it's
(01:31):
weird to think about how privileged we are here in
the modern age because back in the day, romance, like
the person you would spend your life with, it was
primarily decided by your physical and socioeconomic proximity.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Oh, things have changed.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Not not well in your family, right, They just say, wow,
that's this other family. It's going to be strategic for us,
So you're going to take one for the team.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
It's interesting though, like you know, in terms of things
one might google like how to make a million dollars
and how to fall in love or probably on equal
footings in terms of things that there is no magic
answer for.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Yeah, And to Matt's earlier point, that was still an
improvement based on the previous stuff, which was, Hey, I
know this is technically your cousin, and I know there
are some recessive traits, but the Habsburg Empire must continue.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yes, and there's some land acquisitions that are tied to
the soul nuptial thing.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
So huge tracks of land, yes, huge tracks of land.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
That's what I think is amazing about him or her.
They're huge tracts of lands. So nowadays across the world.
As you know, fellow conspiracy realist, more and more people
are turning to technology in the eternal search for affection
for love. In a very short span of time, dating
(03:01):
apps and services have exploded. Some people hate it, some
people love it. Tonight is not about dating advice, but
if we could, you guys, in case this ends up
being a two parter, could we recommend some dating applications
for people well.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
In terms of hating it or loving it.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
It really just has kind of become an inevitable reality.
It's kind of the way a lot of people, mean,
young people coming up. It just seems like this is
just how it's done. I met some people in the
past through Bumble. In the early days, I used Tender,
but then, like you know, different apps start to get
different reputations. Tenders become like something more of like a
(03:44):
hookup kind of market show, and Bumble is maybe more
for like older folks or middle aged folks.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
And I think the big one is Hinge these days.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I've heard tell of Hinge. I've seen that's the only
one I've seen actually looked at. I've never seen anybody
open Tinder on their phone and like look through it.
Or have downloaded it or any of those. It's weird.
I need to need to get on that. The only
one I know of is Lumberjack Dating dot Com, which
uh sure, I haven't actually used it. I just went
(04:14):
to their website and it says ready to meet a
genuine lumberjack who knows how to treat a woman.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Hey this baby or year, Matt.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
I mean you got to have a certain circumference of
bicap to even qualify though.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
If I'm not, that's the right shout out to Paul
Bunyan xx six x X. Also, I'd like to highly
recommend Night Walk. It does not have any of the vowels.
You'll find it if you need it.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Is that your your app Ben, that your that you've piloted.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
No comments.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
That sounds so safe, guys. Can I just say though,
that Paul Bunyan bit of a babe.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
You're thinking a bit of Babe the Blue walks.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
That's right, That's right. It was. It's an online dating joke.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
So do check out Babe the Blue Ox available now
wherever you find your favorite applications. Listen, what we're telling
you is there is a conspiracy afoot with all this
dating Shenanigan, Rea online.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And we're going to tell you all about it after
a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Here are the facts. First, let's define online dating. It's
an umbrella term for, as you can tell, folks a
wide range of services. They specialize in any number of preferences, demographics, ages, incomes,
personal situations, occupations. One thing that's interesting I would say
(05:52):
about dating apps in the modern era is that it
is can completely okay on a dating app to say
I only prefer a certain demographic of people.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Sort of the whole point, right, It's like a feature,
not a bug. It's kind of the thing that differentiates
some of the apps from one another.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
You're not a lumberjack GTFO. Oh you're not a farmer.
This is farmer's only.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Well, yeah, it is weird too, pulling up the rude
begas get out of town.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And as we're going to discuss in the episode, that
kind of set of circumstances, using an algorithm to match
the user with their preferences ends up getting spun and
turned around and flipped. So now it's just who are you?
Who are you? And what will people like about you?
And then it just it gets tangled up in itself
(06:46):
really quickly.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Guys, it's everything you hate about dating in real life
and everything you hate about auditioning in real life, and
so now you can have them together, and it's everything
you hate about social media. Whatever specializations these services may
focus on, they have one thing in common. They require
(07:09):
the Internet to function. Fifty years ago, this sounded bonkers, right,
this sounded absolutely nuts. Can you imagine you, guys have ancestors.
Can you imagine going back in time to your ancestors
and attempting to explain tender what would you say?
Speaker 5 (07:29):
They'd probably kill you, kill me dead on site, at least,
you know, once I, once I started speaking, I think
it was witchcraft.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
You'd have to start by explaining, like what a classified
ad is, because they might understand a newspaper or you know,
something like that. Maybe not, maybe you'd have to explain
the newspaper then classified ad. Then Now imagine if you
did this on.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
Mass how far back I guess I'm picturing I guess
so I'm saying, I guess I'm picturing ancients. Very difficult conversation,
but you know your results may vary depending on how
far back you go.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
To Ben's point, well, like how far back do you go?
You know, you go far enough back, and you're saying, hey,
did you ever wonder if those Neanderthals over in the
next horizon are cool? Did you ever think about, you know,
cuddling up. We're gonna leave that there.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
But also, I mean the question also then kind of
begins to surround the nature of partnership and the nature
of like what is someone looking for? In the olden days,
it would have been, to your earlier points that both
of you fellas much more about acquisition, about land, about family,
about tying into a dynasty your wife and child, oh well,
(08:50):
of course. And then further back than that it would
have been more about protection, you know, and about this
kind of almost tribalism as opposed to you know, who
was going to be the big spoon?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Mm hmm, yeah. Yeah. As we said in previous evenings,
the escalation of human society is best portrayed as this.
One you have the family, right, everybody's related. Two you
have the tribe, everybody has this common interest. Three you
(09:20):
have the religion. Four you have the state, Five you
have the company right, and maybe six you have the
galaxy or the solar system dream galaxy brand yeah, so
you're absolutely right. No, in terms of the modern day,
right now, people seem to be in the West, I
(09:43):
wouldn't say rejecting, but perhaps interrogating traditional social norms, romantic norms.
The US Census Bureau found in twenty twenty three that
in their estimation, nearly fifty percent of the US population
forty seven percent, they said, considers itself single. The data
(10:09):
doesn't always agree. It makes me think there were a
couple folks maybe putting themselves as single with someone at
home who would have a problem with that. It's complicated, Yeah,
shout out Facebook.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Oh gosh, must we The.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Few research centers says that three and ten Americans are
single either way you slice it historically, that's a lot
of people, right.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Right, Well, I believe that forty seven percent consists of
just over one hundred and seventeen million people in the
United States that consider themselves single. Slash.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
It's complicated, Yeah, single slash. It's complicated. Working it out.
Here's the sad truth that we have to admit a
lot of folks right now who are listening this evening
are single and perhaps maybe not happy with that.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
They may want to.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Be booed up or cuffed. As hip Hop says. This
is where the statistics show us the popularity of dating apps.
In the United States alone, nearly again three and ten
US adults used a dating site or app, and more
(11:28):
than forty percent of people interviewed. They state that online
dating has made dating easier. Now you don't just have
to rock up at an art show, you know what
I mean. Now you don't just have to pretend that
you're at that tree planting or soup kitchen or museum
(11:51):
every day.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, you just say, hey, you're cool, we matched be
at my house at ten.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Flighte whoa super.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Lightt mess I get. Look this, I have no experience
with it. That's what I've been hearing through several of
the sources we were looking at today that it just
becomes at times because there are so many human beings
out there, it's like you gotta just meet who you
can and see if.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
And you know, being a dude as well.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
Like I've navigated through multiple of these and I've met
some people that were great and some people that were awful.
But there is some comfort in knowing that if you're
there for the same reason, you're not gonna accidentally put
your foot in your mouth, or you know, even worse,
get the wrong idea and have someone think you're being
a creep because you know what the stakes are, you
know what the score is.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
You're both there for the same reason.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Not to say that there aren't tons of creeps on
these online dating sites, but that was sort of a
selling point for me, was that it took some of
that that's unknown out of the equation because I am just,
you know, extra concerned about anyone thinking that I have
any intention other than you.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Know, normal wace is that the I guess it. We'll
talk about it varies by the app, like what the
app sells itself as what you will be selling yourself
as when you use the app, right, but I guess
yeah there, and they call those the hookup apps versus
some of the other ones that we'll get into.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Well, I just mean like, if you're matching with somebody,
you know that you're in an early kind of getting
to know you phase, as opposed to having to rock
up to Ben's point, to somebody at an art show
or a bar and feel like you're, you know, peeing
in the wind for lack of a better term.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Well, what we're really talking about there, gentlemen, is the
concept of information asymmetry. To your point, Noel, knowing what
is expected by both parties, what is informed consent? Yes,
that can be a huge win, and there are quite
a few deep economic structures at play. We do know
(13:55):
that it appears the Western world for a while for
super dug they superl liked dating apps. They swiped right
on that stuff because in twenty twenty three in the
United States alone, for people in the dating market in
(14:16):
twenty twenty three in the United States, when asked their
preferential milieu or medium for meeting a partner, thirty two
percent said I'm going to meet them at a concert
or a festival, which I take to mean some sort
of social event. Thirty three percent said I want to
(14:37):
be connected via a friend, a known trusted entity. To
your earlier point, let's grade down on that information asymmetry
if we can. Here's number one with a bullet. Forty
two percent said online dating apps. That's where I get
(14:59):
my kicks.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Oh boy, And with that, we're going to take a
quick break. Hear a word from our sponsors and we'll
be right back with more. And we've returned.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
So where did this all begin.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
I mean, we certainly know, you know, things like the
personals ads and sort of more historical predecessors to online dating. Right,
these actually date pretty far back, but not maybe as
far back as I might have thought. To the late
fifties and early sixties. Stanford students Jim Harvey and Phil
Filer used a questionnaire and an very whole school probably
(15:41):
incredibly large IBM six fifty computer to match up forty
nine men and forty nine women.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Oh yeah, picture the transistors, you know what I mean.
And they they hit a good Vin diagram on forty
nine C and forty nine B or whatever, and then
all of a sudden, the transistors burst like like you're
creating Frankens. We've gone to match.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
It's a love I can never forget guys.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
When we all went to Vegas together and we were
just obsessed with that Frankenstein slot machine.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
That that voice rings in my head constantly. It's alive,
It's alive. Sorry, unrelated, but you triggered me there.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Ben lost a lot of money on that thing, do
you guys remember? Greater great expectations or greater expectations is
the VHS dating SNL spoof? Right, Lle was that Chappelle.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
I don't know exactly where it came from, but I
definitely remember the little theme tune for sure.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
The real thing was called Great Expectations, and it was
like VHS dating very eighties sign up. But because like
how I kept trying to imagine, like how the heck
would you actually get a hold of the VHS tapes
of all the people that are going on aagistics.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Also, it's self selecting at that point for people with
access to certain kinds of technology, which we'll see as
even crooked, which is a word I made up. It's
American emlash. I'm still learning it.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
Tuned into an upcoming episode of Ridiculous History to find
out more on the history of.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
American My gosh, who buddy, So, I would say, our
collective favorite example of early technology or you know, computer
technology beating the Long Road to love is a guy
named Ed Lewis back in nineteen sixty three. This guy
(17:47):
also got a pretty old IBM computer. It was new
at his time, and he made a questionnaire and it
was entirely so that he could quote optimize the meeting
potential at dances for himself.
Speaker 5 (18:05):
That's fun, nothing weird, you know, what's funny about that,
Ben is I was just recently thinking about the old
expression I don't have room on my dance card, to
which I kind of looked that up, and that was
a thing man there was like, you know, women dances,
social gatherings or whatever, would have this thing that has
(18:26):
resembled like the little ticket you'd find at the inside
of a library book, and you would kind of schedule
the boys that you were gonna cut a rug with,
and that you could say if you didn't want to
do something or didn't want to dance, you say, I'm sorry,
I don't have room on my dance card, which is
where that expression comes from, for like not having time
to do something with somebody.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Wow, amazing, And it's weird because we don't have dance cards.
Now we should get them.
Speaker 5 (18:54):
We don't have dances, we should dance, so we should
we should take take Maud's advice.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
From Harold and Maud, it's a really interesting point. I
don't want to jump ahead with it, but it reminds
me of the Atlantic article that I think we all
read for this that was talking about the difficulty of
getting women to use these apps. Again, we're gonna have
to talk about it in a moment, but thinking about
the dance card as a thing where and maybe I'm
(19:24):
wrong here, correct me, guys, But in my mind, the
historically it's often been, often not always been males chasing
after a female is in like, I'm going to pursue
that pretty lady and I will attempt to date.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
That she will be mine, oh yes, or it will
be mine.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Or in this case, I will dance with her. I
want to dance with her. But oh, and then it
is in the woman's position to say no, no, no,
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
But also the stakes were so much higher back then.
If you got on that dance card, you might have
a one out of ten shot of marrying that gal.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (20:00):
I mean, well, sure courtship. What we used to say
back in I guess we call it the eighteen hundreds
is a man pursues a woman until she catches him
fair enough. This is obviously not a thing that has
aged well. But I think what you're proposing here, Matt,
(20:23):
is a sort of Newtonian association right of chaser and chase. Right,
one must be one or the other. And we see
that this is to your point, Noll a function of
the economic and survival realities, the situation, the environment at
(20:44):
the time. Over, if we go back to ED in
nineteen sixty three, spoiler worked out, but not the way
he wanted. Over the next few decades, we see this
continuing trend of computer assisted questionnaires. Now you don't have
to just publish a classified advertisement. Now you don't have
(21:07):
to just say, you know, mail eight hundred and seventy
three years old in tonight walks looking for interesting company.
Now you can just say you tell me, you can
put the onus on the person that you want to meet.
You can say, give give me your answers for this
(21:29):
sort of stuff. And at the same time we see
the rise of things like mail order brides to your
earlier point, we see video dating services. In the nineteen eighties,
we see the rise of dating what are they called BBS's.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
Well message boards right or well yeah, but like physical right,
they would have been actual.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
There was no Internet yet, right, this is not online.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
No, they got out there. There were early.
Speaker 5 (21:58):
Early versions of subscription based kind of almost like newsgroup
kind of situations, very early Internet, that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
And then you get the first modern dating site, by
which we mean a website built entirely to get people together.
It's called kiss dot com. In a burst of creativity,
it hits the net in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Surprised Kiss the Band didn't have that lockdown already.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Where were you.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
G he's a vase, very litigious too. I don't know
if you he's usually on the top of that I
would have thought. I mean, I'm surprised we haven't read
some sort of lawsuit kerfuffle with kiss dot com against
the Kiss or the Kiss organization.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
You guys, let's check it out right now. Kiss dot
com just says kiss dot com see photos of singles
near you. Oh, and there's a button that says match and.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Then it takes you to match.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
Maybe you got the vintage landing page with nothing on
it other than a link out to the modern version.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
So fast forward a little bit.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
We know that yid y id dot com launched in
South Africa just shortly after Kiss dot com, and yid
dot com was a specifically Jewish dating site. Other countries,
other demographics followed.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Suit.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
The world knew there was this crazy horizon ahead. Investors
knew there was a crazy horizon ahead, and dating platforms
only grew more and more and more popular. The real
thing that changed the game.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Aim was a message sorry sorry. That's what changed the
game for me. That's how I've ended up meeting a
bunch of people.
Speaker 5 (23:58):
Online in flirtation machine and random chat rooms.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
What's your asl bro?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Uh oh that People ask me that all the time,
and I pretend like I was a twenty year old.
And then I remember just being like feeling, I like,
I was so cool because I could talk to people.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
So you were like in your teens, but you were pretending, liked,
pretend to be older.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Everybody my age, our age, was in middle school just
acting on the internet like they're everybody and anybody, just
to be weird with it, I think, and we were
trying to figure out stuff.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
It was full school.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
It was so much fun and weird, the humans gregarious.
It's neat to talk to strangers.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
It didn't feel scary at all until we realized it
was terrifying.
Speaker 5 (24:44):
What you're describing is pretty, you know, charming and naive
pretend to being at middle school.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
I pretending to be older.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
But what of course ended up happening was old people
pretending to be middle schoolers.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
And that's where it kids gross exact.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Yeah, and that continues today. So the seeds of the
evil trees were planted long ago. If we go past
aim Messenger to the early two thousand's twenty ten's, the
revolution is the smartphone. We have a thing called Grinder,
(25:20):
which was very forward facing for its time, not just
because it was designed for the LGBTQ plus community, but
also because they took the E out of the word
you know, So now it's they kind of set the
tread on that one.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
One hundred percent, I mean, and again, like you know,
it's not something that I've experienced directly, but that's another
app that part of its selling point is almost like
very quick geolocation of people who just want to hook up.
It is largely looked at, by my understanding, to be
less of a long term meeting my soulmate kind of
(26:03):
app and more of like a casual kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah. And one of the major I would say revolutions
moving away from a laptop or desktop back in the
day largely to the phone, like that is that you're
mobile using this thing, so you're not at home talking
to somebody. You're now at the club or you are
you know, at a restaurant and you can open your
(26:28):
app and see who's nearness.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Yeah to the earlier statement there, you know, dating pre
technology or technological innovation was requisite on socioeconomic or physical proximity.
And to your point, Matt, now with your proximity visible
and approachable, now you can see whomever is near you
(26:54):
wherever you may go.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
And to me, that, to my understanding, that is a
pretty I'm sure there are others you know that have
this feature, but that's a pretty Grinder specific kind of thing.
Whereas you know, if you have an app like Tender
or Bumble or Hinge or whatever you might put in,
I only want matches with people that live within thirty
miles of me, you know, but you're not going to
see them as a blip on a map where you
can walk right.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Up to them.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
That would be considered privileged information and you do not
want to give that kind of information out unless you
are ready to meet somebody in person, and usually then
you meet it like I mutually agreed upon kind of
public place. But Grinder is very specifically I think geo centric.
That's very real time data driven.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Which requires yeah, as you said, Noll, the data and
you know folks, it may be a bummer to say
the love of my life is in me and mar
I will never meet them because I don't have my
settings correct. We have to understand that the appearance of
Tender in twenty twelve reshape the landscape because a gamified
(27:59):
sex and love you swipe right to like you, swipe
left to pass. For a while, this was a free action.
I'm sure it continues now. I have never dated online.
I meet you know, I mean, my lover's the old
school way getting deported suddenly finding finding finding a date
(28:23):
becomes more like playing a game or taking a survey.
Then it becomes like meeting someone and knowing them. It's
a weird, weird audition process to put.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
People in and it really does kind of in many ways,
cheapen the experience. You know, it can sort of like
make you a little bit jaded when everything is just
a picture that you are swiping. It is a pretty
surface level kind of exercise, you know, for the most part.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
And with the advent of Tinder, what you also begin
to see. And again only with hindsight do we realize this,
but we all anyone who is using Tender, who began
that process started to see that there is an endless
stream of individuals out there. So you now get you
(29:14):
start to get into the problem of well, if I
swipe right on that person, I might be missing the next,
you know, person that I really want to date, or
I really would match with her I think would be
super sexy. Yeah, if I'd swipe right on that, maybe
I'm I'm screwing up. I should just swipe left until
I find the perfect one.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
I only got so many swipes. What am I gonna do?
Pay this app?
Speaker 5 (29:39):
The app says, Yeah, that's gamified as well, because like
a lot of like quote unquote free games, you know,
phone apps, there are in app purchases you can you
gotta buy more hearts or in game currency or whatever,
and like in tender, you can get buy the super
swipe again the things that things that obviously changed. I'm
sure I have since I'm that's with it. But all
(30:01):
you do run up against you know, you've run out
of swipes and you have to wait, or you could
pay X number of dollars an upgrade to the premium version.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
The freemium model, yes, which we'll get to. The thing
is there is little to no stigma attached to online
dating today. You know, not too long ago it was
considered somehow inappropriate to meet someone through a classified advertisement
in print, and some of us in the audience tonight
(30:33):
realize how recent that was. Dating online is a normalized
tool nowadays a lot of people have met for casual
flings or they've found themselves in lifelong, committed, happy relationships
having issue I mean by which I mean creating children.
(30:53):
Last year, the boffins at Pew Research found get this,
I think this is an amazing statistic. One inten partnered
adults people are married, living with a partner, or in
a committed romantic relationship. One in ten of those folks
met their current partner through a dating site or through
(31:15):
an app. So those are good results.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
Yeah, I mean I met my current partner through a
dating app, no question about it. And the previous couple
that I've had before that again varying degrees of success.
Obviously I'm not with them anymore, but some of them
were fine relationships I met through those apps as well,
So I'm very much part of that demographic.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
And obviously, folks, when we are saying something is normalized,
we do not mean it is above criticism. This new
genre of romance has garnered tons of controversy, plenty of complaints,
a couple of heinous crimes, and countless broken hearts along
(32:01):
the way. But the deal is, the need is too great.
Some people would pay anything for the promise of true
love and the money, oh, the money, you guys. The
profit potential that is likewise too great for the companies
to ignore. Every dating app is swiping right on profit potential.
(32:23):
Morgan Stanley found dating app users who go to what
you're saying, no, they cross the rubicon of freemium to pay.
They end up spending between eighteen and nineteen US dollars
per month on subscriptions or one off purchases.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah, it is very odd to imagine that every one
of these dating sites, dating apps, whatever they are, start
as free, and especially Tinder if you think about its origins,
fully free for years until company realized, oh, we actually
need to be profitable. At some point, we're moving out
(33:05):
of a venture capital stage and into the we're going
to go public, so now we need to have a revenue.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
Because I know a lot of those things that you
know when they pop like that too, they're just all
about developing a user base. And they're not always thinking
about the profit motive up front. We'll get to that,
but first we have to get to a place where
we have this unimpeachably massive user base.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
And this is what we are investigating this evening, folks,
dating as a business romance, as a digital empire. We
kid the not fellow conspiracy realist, there is a conspiracy afoot.
Speaker 5 (33:42):
Okay, let's take a quick pause in this chat about
online dating. Here a word from our sponsors, and then
come back with more.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
And we've returned.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Here's where it gets crazy. What are we talking about?
All right, let's just name guys. Let's name every dating
app we know, just so we can all hear how
very they appear to be. Maybe take a deep breath together,
because I'm sure we got a lot to go through.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Her hymns.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
No, that's that's that's yeah, Ashley mad O, Tender Tinder.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
We mentioned a lot of these already, Hinge, Okay, the.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
League Yeah, a's are b LK Hakuna pairs, et cetera,
et cetera. Which is a thing I made up, but
I think it's a good idea for a very lazy
dating app. Just et cetera, et cetera. What are you into?
What's your profile now?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
No?
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Coffee meets Bagel is one that I like the name of.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
And then you have like things like Jday, which has
been around for a very long time that is again
specifically for you know, people of the Jewish faith.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Mm. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
And then you have Christian mingle is that one.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Plenty of Fish, which I think is a Christian thing
too because of the fish symbol or is it not? No,
it's not oka. I always assume that it was.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
It's like plenty of fish, yes, but I guess I.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Always assumed that. I don't know why I thought that
the fish thing just just threw me interesting.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Can you can you date citations of plenty of fish?
That's unfair.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
They're mammals, I mean, and it's you know.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
I think the point of this list, including some made
up ones, are to show just how specialized, uh and
varied and seemingly completely different the apps in this massive
world that is online dating can be.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Right specialized across any number of variables, some more specialized
than to others, each with their own unique reputation. You
have a love of your life and mind, you will
find that demographic on insert site here, welcome to et cetera,
et cetera dot org. We're not. Ok yeah, right, well,
(36:12):
that's why we can't get investors because of the profit.
Most dating apps are ultimately owned by a single company.
That's right, fellow conspiracy realist. There is one dating app
to rule them, moll an Illuminati of online romance, a
cable of digital dating. Can we get a drum roll?
(36:37):
Tri force.
Speaker 5 (36:41):
Match dot Com Incorporate LLC.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Incredibly Corporation.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Yes, they're a bill litigious.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
And when we say most, let's let's give that listens
tender hinge. Okay, but plenty of fish. The League metic
asar or As are Chispa b LK, Hakuna Pears. There's uh,
there's more. Well, no, I think that's it. I was
on their website just a moment ago looking at all
of the the different.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
ICI forty five plus. Those are the ones they brag
about there.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, they're they're like topped here, and if you go
on their website you may think, oh, that's all they've got.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
No no, no, no no no.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
No no no no no no. Officially known as Match
Group Incorporated, this company is based in Dallas, Texas. For
anybody not from the United States, Dallas is a pretty
big deal here. President got shot there back in the day.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I think I read something about them, Yeah right, we did.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Au We looked into it as the our buddies, Rob
Reiner and Solidad O'Brien. The idea of match dot com
or what becomes match dot com is pretty fascinating. It's
created way back in nineteen ninety three by a guy
named Gary Craven, Simon Glenski, and pangte Oong in San Francisco.
(38:09):
And at the beginning to the earlier point about classified ads,
that's all they were trying to do. They were taking
the personal classified ads to the Internet and they were
calling it. You love this electric classifieds incorporate breaking to
electric bugaloo.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Oh yeah. And there's a there's one individual dude that
ended up buying up a ton of different domains. They
were like match dot com, super simple URLs that you
could get to and he didn't have anything on him yet,
but he's one of the you know, there's that time
on the Internet where that was a that was a
(38:51):
viable business plan.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Just by sting dot com.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
It still is still is, my friends, I mean, I
think of the show Matt riddle aboutty money.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
That's he does this forget for laughs.
Speaker 5 (39:03):
He bought the URLDJ COVID nineteen just when COVID nineteen
was kicking. Justis in case they're like, you know, when
it's like not too soon anymore that somebody comes out
and wants that artist. There is a story on NPR
not terribly long ago about a dude who truly made
good by just buying up combinations of different political figures
in the hopes or you know, in the case in
(39:25):
the event that they ended up running mates and he
made good and sold some of those to some serious tickets.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, And in this case, this person bought a bunch
of these and then put them together, and all of
them had classified ads essentially for different things. Someone were
for autos, for cars, someone were for this type of thing.
And it is just amazing that somebody had that idea,
created this thing, and then almost immediately it reminded me
a lot of Marshall Brain actually, the founder of houset
(39:54):
works dot com. Where you start this huge thing and
you have an idea for it, and then as soon
as it starts to blossom, it doesn't get taken away.
But there are now investors and board members and they
can make decisions in metastasizes.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Yeah, would be a way to look at it, an
all priest, dude to Marshall brain, Let's go to David
Kusher who puts it this way writing for The Atlantic.
We got we've got a great origin story for our
buddy Gary, and it will introduce the director of marketing
that we were talking about later who really really changes
(40:37):
the game. This is a field of dreams. If you
build it, they will come kind of moment. This will
also ultimately be familiar to anybody who's tried to throw
a house party and get their ratio right.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Okay, and here is that quote about Gary kremin and
again is from the Atlantic, David Kusher quote. There was
a no four letter word for love he knew, and
it was data, the stuff he would use to match people.
He could gather data about each client, attributes, assling interests,
(41:14):
desires for mates, and then compare them with other clients
data to make matches. With a computer and the Internet,
he could eliminate the inefficiencies of thousands of years of
analog dating, the shyness, the mist cues, the posturing. He
would provide customers with a questionnaire, generate a series of answers,
and then pair up daters based on how well their
(41:37):
preferences aligned.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
It's perfect perfect, It's a littleical. I don't know. I
you know there there might be a diminishing return at
sub point, Like we've all been in situations where someone
feels like they're predeciding and interaction, you know what I mean.
(42:00):
Have you guys ever had that moment where you're dating
someone and I'll be a little personal here, and in
the first or second date they described to you the
marriage you're going to have.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Yeah, maybe you know what not yet, Yeah, you got better.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
You got better luck in love than me and.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Mad Hey guys, spoiler didn't work out.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Oh dang, come on man, Well, I want to talk
about a personal thing towards the conclusions of these episodes
or this episode. But uh, it was something an insight
that I've discovered through learning about all this stuff. But
I do not I do not have that experience. I
do think this is one of those beautiful dreams. Right,
(42:49):
you see a problem I can imagine in this person's world,
Gary's world, and then you can see, well, I know
how to do X, Y and Z. Maybe if I
apply that to this big problem, I can save the world.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
Maybe by Excel spreadsheet was the answer all along.
Speaker 5 (43:08):
And the thing is I mean, and you know, again
I mentioned earlier the idea of like you know, there's
no magic bullets to finding love, but the closest thing
that you can sell as that is something like this.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
And the reason that people are buying it is because
it does have a relative success rate to some degree.
Speaker 5 (43:26):
Remember the you remember those E Harmony of course, the
real testimonials, right sure, the guy.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
That would come on, I can hear his voice, I
can't see his face right now in this moment, but
the guy who would say compatibility compatiity, not compatibility. Compatibility
is the number one thing that's gonna find you true love.
And that's why E Harmony.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Only we can sust that out for you with all
of the day.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
Also, also let us let us admire from the from
the higher elevation. Let us admire the absolute aspiration of this,
the idea that you could one could quantify the unquantifiable
things like love for anybody. Right now, if you are
(44:17):
listening to this show and you are head over heels
in love, and that love is reciprocated. You can't really
put numbers on it. Come on, man, that's a different
part of the brain. So there is this idea. It's
again like the like the concept of how science answers
how and spirituality answers why. Love is a ven diagram
(44:40):
between those two things. So is it not a bit
cold to say if you answered X to the following
Z questions, then we are why compatible?
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Sure? Touch, Sure.
Speaker 5 (44:53):
But also it's like if you think about people kind
of romanticizing the idea of like finding your soulmates. If
you think about logistically, which is the absolute you know,
massive amount of possible soulmates that are out there, what
are the chances that you found the one best person
for you? Yes, they might be great, You guys might
be completely compatible. But what systems like this do is
(45:16):
widen that net in a way where maybe I could
actually find that person statistically.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
But I would say also to take it a step
three steps further. First, that reduces people to quantifiable aspects,
which is an unholy thing to attempt. Second, uh, the
idea of a soulmate naturally includes the concept of people
who were born and died before you were here and
(45:45):
are going to be alive and die after you have passed,
such that you know, cloud Atlas becomes an awesome job.
People believe in reading.
Speaker 5 (45:55):
But that's because if you think about it, though, I mean,
I understand what you're saying, Ben, But the idea of
a soulmate is about compatibility, is about a match of
various characteristics. The question is to what percentage, to what
degree are you nailing those matches? And is there a
better version out there you know of the one that
you've already found.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Right, that's the third point, the idea to keep people
eternally chasing the better possibility. When human beings were largely
living and dying within about thirty miles of where they
were born, their choices were limited, right, as were their resources.
(46:36):
Your questionnaire became something like, can you create children? Can
we have child labor on the farm? Do you agree
with my idea about God? Because I certainly cannot disagree
with it, So we cannot have a discourse about this.
(46:57):
This is what our buddy Gary's dealing with. He starts
off the same way we are. He's beginning from his
own lived experiences, his own preferences, and he builds his questionnaire.
He tries to sum the human heart up in a spreadsheet,
right in quantifiable terms, and he realizes all of a sudden, hey,
(47:22):
I'm not the golden goose. And then thank god he
doesn't have an ego, because he says, wait, no dudes,
no straight dudes here are going to be the golden goose.
I can get guys to pay for this service, this
online dating thing, but my real goal is going to
(47:43):
have is going to be to get women there somehow. Otherwise,
why will these straight dudes bother paying for this in
the first place? And we have to remember context. It's
the mid nineteen nineties. People who identify as women are
about ten percent of the folks online. The typical computer
(48:04):
user is one male, two unmarried three at a computer
for hours on end every week.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
Well, yeah, imagine the as we're talking about the history
of I don't know, companionship or whatever this stuff is,
the amount of unwanted male attention man woman experiences and
then asking them to go on and sign up and
put all this information about yourself so that you can
(48:35):
get a crap ton of male attention.
Speaker 4 (48:38):
Right, which still continues to do there.
Speaker 5 (48:41):
But there is a feature built into this that makes
it appealing, which is the idea that you're not going
I mean, I forget again. Some of these apps are different,
but there are certain ones where you're not going to
open up a chat unless the woman consents, which.
Speaker 4 (48:53):
Yeah, but Gary has that.
Speaker 5 (48:55):
I'm just saying, and I understand what I'm just saying,
Like there is a version that we're going to get
to that does benefit women, but even that then kind
of gets bastardized and becomes its own sort of monstrosity.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
So sorry to jump ahead too much, but yeah, where's
Gary going with this?
Speaker 2 (49:10):
But also in the mid nineteen nineties, most of us
were just playing Ultima online and on Aim pretending to
be we're twenty Oh yeah them.
Speaker 5 (49:18):
Yeah, sorry, it's hilarious, dude, I love it.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
I mean, and that's a that's a big part of it,
because people are just like Gary, basing the world on themselves. Right,
this is me, so this must be logically everybody. Gary
is doing a really smart thing. And he says, look,
I gotta go figure out people who are not me.
I gotta if we want women on my weird thing
(49:47):
then and he didn't call this weird thing, then I
have to talk to actual women. I have to figure
out what people's worlds who are not like me, like,
what's going on with them? What do they care about?
And when he had these conversations, the lore of the
story goes that he talked to all of his female
relationships or familial members. He talked to people he just
(50:12):
found on the street, his friends, and they said, your
questionnaire needs a lot of work, because your questionnaire is
about you, and they said in particular, I think it
was a big cold shower for him when unanimously women said, hey, Bud,
(50:32):
your explicit sexual questions are kind of a non starter.
That's a turn off. And then they hit him with
another one and they said, why on earth would I
want random guys to your earlier point, Matt? Why would
I want random guys to see my real name and
my photo online? Because that would mean they could find me.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
I was listening to that podcast it look Deep into
this Land of the Giants. It was like season six
or seven, I think maybe.
Speaker 4 (51:05):
Episode two Dating Games.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yeah, well, the entire series it's all about dating apps
and they go into in depth. There a bunch of
the stuff that was online that people were doing who
were actually developing these things, but hot or not do
you guys remember that that was a big one of
the big pushes there trying to figure out why would
(51:28):
to this specific problem, Why would a woman or a
female put a picture of themselves online for it to
be judged essentially by other people?
Speaker 5 (51:38):
Was it hot or not like the early Facebook model,
or is it that or is it something like.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Things like that. That wasn't the only one, but that
was the big one where it was like, how do
you what is the thing that causes someone to put
their picture on there for it to be judged to
see if people like me? Essentially? Right? That the primary motivation?
Speaker 3 (51:55):
Why would you open yourself up to ridicule?
Speaker 5 (51:57):
Why would you open yourself up to that kind of
judgment and or harassment?
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Ginger Well, yeah, exactly, But what is that thing that spark?
And trying to capture what that is and then somehow
incorporate it into this thing he's building.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
And incorporate a sense of safety, incorporate a sense.
Speaker 5 (52:13):
Of like, yeah, exactly, what's what's the buy in for
someone to be willing to give this kind of information up?
Speaker 2 (52:19):
I I don't mean to say that there's negative motivation
for any of these things that are being created especially
at this time with Gary. It's it is that thing
of how do I get people to use this thing?
Speaker 3 (52:30):
Right?
Speaker 4 (52:30):
It's Field the dreams, Right, it's Field the Dreams. He's
a Kevin Costner, you know, is or whomever Kevin Costner
was acting as in that He's like, how do I
get these people to show up to the ballgame. Eventually
he understands the best way to find out what women
really want the age old quest. He needs get this
(52:56):
you guys, real life women on the team. So he
contacts his former classmate fran Meyer from his time at
Stanford and he hires her as the director of marketing,
and to her credit, she immediately clocks a secondary issue
and she says, Gary, women aren't going to join up
(53:16):
for your internet thing unless they know there are already
other women in the sandbox, unless they're already participating. Hold
the phone, folks, amid all this discourse ed exploration of
monopolization and conspiracy, we hope that you will swipe right
(53:37):
on part two of the Illuminati of Online Dating. We
can't wait to hear your thoughts. Join us later this
week for wait did I say Part two? We'll keep
it in We've got a two part episode. We want
to hang out with you. Please let us know what's
on your mind. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 3 (53:57):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (53:57):
You can find us in the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where
it gets crazy, on x FKA, Twitter, and on YouTube.
You can also find us at the handle conspiracy Stuff
on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
We've got a phone number. It's one eight three three
std WYTK. When you call in and say something like that,
E harmony guy was Neil Clark Warren, Doctor Neil Clark Warren,
the American clinical psychologist and Christian theologian that was coming
on TV and said, E harmony. You could say things
like that, or just give us a little insight into
(54:31):
your world, or is something we missed anything? Give us
a call, give yourself a cool nickname, and you've got
three minutes say whatever you'd like. If you got more
to say than could fit into a three minute voicemail,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (54:44):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive. It's one of the best ways to contact us.
Everything you heard before the end applies to our email
address as well. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the
void writes back, and it could be any of us
that you're hearing this evening. Join us out here in
(55:04):
the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
We are joined as always with our super producer Andrew
Treforce Howard. Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Folks,
we are at the end of the calendar year of
twenty twenty four. A lot of people are dealing with
(00:50):
love hard won, love heard lost, and it's often said
the course at true love never did run smooth? Make
that up?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
That shakes man.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
He's no slouch. Sorry, maybe he didn't make it up either.
Isn't there a whole thing that maybe he didn't write
any of his own stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I think that's been pretty well debunked though.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Right we have an episode on that as well. But
it's something everybody can agree with, Noel. It's one of
the few consistent patterns across all of humanity's strange experiment.
You know, most of us tuning in tonight have at
one point or another sadly encountered heartbreak. And it's it's
(01:31):
weird to think about how privileged we are here in
the modern age because back in the day, romance, like
the person you would spend your life with, it was
primarily decided by your physical and socioeconomic proximity.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Oh, things have changed.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Not not well in your family, right, They just say, wow,
that's this other family. It's going to be strategic for us,
So you're going to take one for the team.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
It's interesting though, like you know, in terms of things
one might google like how to make a million dollars
and how to fall in love or probably on equal
footings in terms of things that there is no magic
answer for.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Yeah, And to Matt's earlier point, that was still an
improvement based on the previous stuff, which was, Hey, I
know this is technically your cousin, and I know there
are some recessive traits, but the Habsburg Empire must continue.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yes, and there's some land acquisitions that are tied to
the soul nuptial thing.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
So huge tracks of land, yes, huge tracks of land.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
That's what I think is amazing about him or her.
They're huge tracts of lands. So nowadays across the world.
As you know, fellow conspiracy realist, more and more people
are turning to technology in the eternal search for affection
for love. In a very short span of time, dating
(03:01):
apps and services have exploded. Some people hate it, some
people love it. Tonight is not about dating advice, but
if we could, you guys, in case this ends up
being a two parter, could we recommend some dating applications
for people well.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
In terms of hating it or loving it.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
It really just has kind of become an inevitable reality.
It's kind of the way a lot of people, mean,
young people coming up. It just seems like this is
just how it's done. I met some people in the
past through Bumble. In the early days, I used Tender,
but then, like you know, different apps start to get
different reputations. Tenders become like something more of like a
(03:44):
hookup kind of market show, and Bumble is maybe more
for like older folks or middle aged folks.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
And I think the big one is Hinge these days.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I've heard tell of Hinge. I've seen that's the only
one I've seen actually looked at. I've never seen anybody
open Tinder on their phone and like look through it.
Or have downloaded it or any of those. It's weird.
I need to need to get on that. The only
one I know of is Lumberjack Dating dot Com, which
uh sure, I haven't actually used it. I just went
(04:14):
to their website and it says ready to meet a
genuine lumberjack who knows how to treat a woman.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Hey this baby or year, Matt.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
I mean you got to have a certain circumference of
bicap to even qualify though.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
If I'm not, that's the right shout out to Paul
Bunyan xx six x X. Also, I'd like to highly
recommend Night Walk. It does not have any of the vowels.
You'll find it if you need it.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Is that your your app Ben, that your that you've piloted.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
No comments.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
That sounds so safe, guys. Can I just say though,
that Paul Bunyan bit of a babe.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
You're thinking a bit of Babe the Blue walks.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
That's right, That's right. It was. It's an online dating joke.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
So do check out Babe the Blue Ox available now
wherever you find your favorite applications. Listen, what we're telling
you is there is a conspiracy afoot with all this
dating Shenanigan, Rea online.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And we're going to tell you all about it after
a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Here are the facts. First, let's define online dating. It's
an umbrella term for, as you can tell, folks a
wide range of services. They specialize in any number of preferences, demographics, ages, incomes,
personal situations, occupations. One thing that's interesting I would say
(05:52):
about dating apps in the modern era is that it
is can completely okay on a dating app to say
I only prefer a certain demographic of people.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Sort of the whole point, right, It's like a feature,
not a bug. It's kind of the thing that differentiates
some of the apps from one another.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
You're not a lumberjack GTFO. Oh you're not a farmer.
This is farmer's only.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Well, yeah, it is weird too, pulling up the rude
begas get out of town.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And as we're going to discuss in the episode, that
kind of set of circumstances, using an algorithm to match
the user with their preferences ends up getting spun and
turned around and flipped. So now it's just who are you?
Who are you? And what will people like about you?
And then it just it gets tangled up in itself
(06:46):
really quickly.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Guys, it's everything you hate about dating in real life
and everything you hate about auditioning in real life, and
so now you can have them together, and it's everything
you hate about social media. Whatever specializations these services may
focus on, they have one thing in common. They require
(07:09):
the Internet to function. Fifty years ago, this sounded bonkers, right,
this sounded absolutely nuts. Can you imagine you, guys have ancestors.
Can you imagine going back in time to your ancestors
and attempting to explain tender what would you say?
Speaker 5 (07:29):
They'd probably kill you, kill me dead on site, at least,
you know, once I, once I started speaking, I think
it was witchcraft.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
You'd have to start by explaining, like what a classified
ad is, because they might understand a newspaper or you know,
something like that. Maybe not, maybe you'd have to explain
the newspaper then classified ad. Then Now imagine if you
did this on.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
Mass how far back I guess I'm picturing I guess
so I'm saying, I guess I'm picturing ancients. Very difficult conversation,
but you know your results may vary depending on how
far back you go.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
To Ben's point, well, like how far back do you go?
You know, you go far enough back, and you're saying, hey,
did you ever wonder if those Neanderthals over in the
next horizon are cool? Did you ever think about, you know,
cuddling up. We're gonna leave that there.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
But also, I mean the question also then kind of
begins to surround the nature of partnership and the nature
of like what is someone looking for? In the olden days,
it would have been, to your earlier points that both
of you fellas much more about acquisition, about land, about family,
about tying into a dynasty your wife and child, oh well,
(08:50):
of course. And then further back than that it would
have been more about protection, you know, and about this
kind of almost tribalism as opposed to you know, who
was going to be the big spoon?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Mm hmm, yeah. Yeah. As we said in previous evenings,
the escalation of human society is best portrayed as this.
One you have the family, right, everybody's related. Two you
have the tribe, everybody has this common interest. Three you
(09:20):
have the religion. Four you have the state, Five you
have the company right, and maybe six you have the
galaxy or the solar system dream galaxy brand yeah, so
you're absolutely right. No, in terms of the modern day,
right now, people seem to be in the West, I
(09:43):
wouldn't say rejecting, but perhaps interrogating traditional social norms, romantic norms.
The US Census Bureau found in twenty twenty three that
in their estimation, nearly fifty percent of the US population
forty seven percent, they said, considers itself single. The data
(10:09):
doesn't always agree. It makes me think there were a
couple folks maybe putting themselves as single with someone at
home who would have a problem with that. It's complicated, Yeah,
shout out Facebook.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Oh gosh, must we The.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Few research centers says that three and ten Americans are
single either way you slice it historically, that's a lot
of people, right.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Right, Well, I believe that forty seven percent consists of
just over one hundred and seventeen million people in the
United States that consider themselves single. Slash.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
It's complicated, Yeah, single slash. It's complicated. Working it out.
Here's the sad truth that we have to admit a
lot of folks right now who are listening this evening
are single and perhaps maybe not happy with that.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
They may want to.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Be booed up or cuffed. As hip Hop says. This
is where the statistics show us the popularity of dating apps.
In the United States alone, nearly again three and ten
US adults used a dating site or app, and more
(11:28):
than forty percent of people interviewed. They state that online
dating has made dating easier. Now you don't just have
to rock up at an art show, you know what
I mean. Now you don't just have to pretend that
you're at that tree planting or soup kitchen or museum
(11:51):
every day.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, you just say, hey, you're cool, we matched be
at my house at ten.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Flighte whoa super.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Lightt mess I get. Look this, I have no experience
with it. That's what I've been hearing through several of
the sources we were looking at today that it just
becomes at times because there are so many human beings
out there, it's like you gotta just meet who you
can and see if.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
And you know, being a dude as well.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
Like I've navigated through multiple of these and I've met
some people that were great and some people that were awful.
But there is some comfort in knowing that if you're
there for the same reason, you're not gonna accidentally put
your foot in your mouth, or you know, even worse,
get the wrong idea and have someone think you're being
a creep because you know what the stakes are, you
know what the score is.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
You're both there for the same reason.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Not to say that there aren't tons of creeps on
these online dating sites, but that was sort of a
selling point for me, was that it took some of
that that's unknown out of the equation because I am just,
you know, extra concerned about anyone thinking that I have
any intention other than you.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Know, normal wace is that the I guess it. We'll
talk about it varies by the app, like what the
app sells itself as what you will be selling yourself
as when you use the app, right, but I guess
yeah there, and they call those the hookup apps versus
some of the other ones that we'll get into.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Well, I just mean like, if you're matching with somebody,
you know that you're in an early kind of getting
to know you phase, as opposed to having to rock
up to Ben's point, to somebody at an art show
or a bar and feel like you're, you know, peeing
in the wind for lack of a better term.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Well, what we're really talking about there, gentlemen, is the
concept of information asymmetry. To your point, Noel, knowing what
is expected by both parties, what is informed consent? Yes,
that can be a huge win, and there are quite
a few deep economic structures at play. We do know
(13:55):
that it appears the Western world for a while for
super dug they superl liked dating apps. They swiped right
on that stuff because in twenty twenty three in the
United States alone, for people in the dating market in
(14:16):
twenty twenty three in the United States, when asked their
preferential milieu or medium for meeting a partner, thirty two
percent said I'm going to meet them at a concert
or a festival, which I take to mean some sort
of social event. Thirty three percent said I want to
(14:37):
be connected via a friend, a known trusted entity. To
your earlier point, let's grade down on that information asymmetry
if we can. Here's number one with a bullet. Forty
two percent said online dating apps. That's where I get
(14:59):
my kicks.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Oh boy, And with that, we're going to take a
quick break. Hear a word from our sponsors and we'll
be right back with more. And we've returned.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
So where did this all begin.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
I mean, we certainly know, you know, things like the
personals ads and sort of more historical predecessors to online dating. Right,
these actually date pretty far back, but not maybe as
far back as I might have thought. To the late
fifties and early sixties. Stanford students Jim Harvey and Phil
Filer used a questionnaire and an very whole school probably
(15:41):
incredibly large IBM six fifty computer to match up forty
nine men and forty nine women.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Oh yeah, picture the transistors, you know what I mean.
And they they hit a good Vin diagram on forty
nine C and forty nine B or whatever, and then
all of a sudden, the transistors burst like like you're
creating Frankens. We've gone to match.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
It's a love I can never forget guys.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
When we all went to Vegas together and we were
just obsessed with that Frankenstein slot machine.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
That that voice rings in my head constantly. It's alive,
It's alive. Sorry, unrelated, but you triggered me there.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Ben lost a lot of money on that thing, do
you guys remember? Greater great expectations or greater expectations is
the VHS dating SNL spoof? Right, Lle was that Chappelle.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
I don't know exactly where it came from, but I
definitely remember the little theme tune for sure.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
The real thing was called Great Expectations, and it was
like VHS dating very eighties sign up. But because like
how I kept trying to imagine, like how the heck
would you actually get a hold of the VHS tapes
of all the people that are going on aagistics.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Also, it's self selecting at that point for people with
access to certain kinds of technology, which we'll see as
even crooked, which is a word I made up. It's
American emlash. I'm still learning it.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
Tuned into an upcoming episode of Ridiculous History to find
out more on the history of.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
American My gosh, who buddy, So, I would say, our
collective favorite example of early technology or you know, computer
technology beating the Long Road to love is a guy
named Ed Lewis back in nineteen sixty three. This guy
(17:47):
also got a pretty old IBM computer. It was new
at his time, and he made a questionnaire and it
was entirely so that he could quote optimize the meeting
potential at dances for himself.
Speaker 5 (18:05):
That's fun, nothing weird, you know, what's funny about that,
Ben is I was just recently thinking about the old
expression I don't have room on my dance card, to
which I kind of looked that up, and that was
a thing man there was like, you know, women dances,
social gatherings or whatever, would have this thing that has
(18:26):
resembled like the little ticket you'd find at the inside
of a library book, and you would kind of schedule
the boys that you were gonna cut a rug with,
and that you could say if you didn't want to
do something or didn't want to dance, you say, I'm sorry,
I don't have room on my dance card, which is
where that expression comes from, for like not having time
to do something with somebody.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Wow, amazing, And it's weird because we don't have dance cards.
Now we should get them.
Speaker 5 (18:54):
We don't have dances, we should dance, so we should
we should take take Maud's advice.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
From Harold and Maud, it's a really interesting point. I
don't want to jump ahead with it, but it reminds
me of the Atlantic article that I think we all
read for this that was talking about the difficulty of
getting women to use these apps. Again, we're gonna have
to talk about it in a moment, but thinking about
the dance card as a thing where and maybe I'm
(19:24):
wrong here, correct me, guys, But in my mind, the
historically it's often been, often not always been males chasing
after a female is in like, I'm going to pursue
that pretty lady and I will attempt to date.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
That she will be mine, oh yes, or it will
be mine.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Or in this case, I will dance with her. I
want to dance with her. But oh, and then it
is in the woman's position to say no, no, no,
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
But also the stakes were so much higher back then.
If you got on that dance card, you might have
a one out of ten shot of marrying that gal.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (20:00):
I mean, well, sure courtship. What we used to say
back in I guess we call it the eighteen hundreds
is a man pursues a woman until she catches him
fair enough. This is obviously not a thing that has
aged well. But I think what you're proposing here, Matt,
(20:23):
is a sort of Newtonian association right of chaser and chase. Right,
one must be one or the other. And we see
that this is to your point, Noll a function of
the economic and survival realities, the situation, the environment at
(20:44):
the time. Over, if we go back to ED in
nineteen sixty three, spoiler worked out, but not the way
he wanted. Over the next few decades, we see this
continuing trend of computer assisted questionnaires. Now you don't have
to just publish a classified advertisement. Now you don't have
(21:07):
to just say, you know, mail eight hundred and seventy
three years old in tonight walks looking for interesting company.
Now you can just say you tell me, you can
put the onus on the person that you want to meet.
You can say, give give me your answers for this
(21:29):
sort of stuff. And at the same time we see
the rise of things like mail order brides to your
earlier point, we see video dating services. In the nineteen eighties,
we see the rise of dating what are they called BBS's.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
Well message boards right or well yeah, but like physical right,
they would have been actual.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
There was no Internet yet, right, this is not online.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
No, they got out there. There were early.
Speaker 5 (21:58):
Early versions of subscription based kind of almost like newsgroup
kind of situations, very early Internet, that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
And then you get the first modern dating site, by
which we mean a website built entirely to get people together.
It's called kiss dot com. In a burst of creativity,
it hits the net in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Surprised Kiss the Band didn't have that lockdown already.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Where were you.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
G he's a vase, very litigious too. I don't know
if you he's usually on the top of that I
would have thought. I mean, I'm surprised we haven't read
some sort of lawsuit kerfuffle with kiss dot com against
the Kiss or the Kiss organization.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
You guys, let's check it out right now. Kiss dot
com just says kiss dot com see photos of singles
near you. Oh, and there's a button that says match and.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Then it takes you to match.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
Maybe you got the vintage landing page with nothing on
it other than a link out to the modern version.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
So fast forward a little bit.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
We know that yid y id dot com launched in
South Africa just shortly after Kiss dot com, and yid
dot com was a specifically Jewish dating site. Other countries,
other demographics followed.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Suit.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
The world knew there was this crazy horizon ahead. Investors
knew there was a crazy horizon ahead, and dating platforms
only grew more and more and more popular. The real
thing that changed the game.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Aim was a message sorry sorry. That's what changed the
game for me. That's how I've ended up meeting a
bunch of people.
Speaker 5 (23:58):
Online in flirtation machine and random chat rooms.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
What's your asl bro?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Uh oh that People ask me that all the time,
and I pretend like I was a twenty year old.
And then I remember just being like feeling, I like,
I was so cool because I could talk to people.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
So you were like in your teens, but you were pretending, liked,
pretend to be older.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Everybody my age, our age, was in middle school just
acting on the internet like they're everybody and anybody, just
to be weird with it, I think, and we were
trying to figure out stuff.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
It was full school.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
It was so much fun and weird, the humans gregarious.
It's neat to talk to strangers.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
It didn't feel scary at all until we realized it
was terrifying.
Speaker 5 (24:44):
What you're describing is pretty, you know, charming and naive
pretend to being at middle school.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
I pretending to be older.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
But what of course ended up happening was old people
pretending to be middle schoolers.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
And that's where it kids gross exact.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Yeah, and that continues today. So the seeds of the
evil trees were planted long ago. If we go past
aim Messenger to the early two thousand's twenty ten's, the
revolution is the smartphone. We have a thing called Grinder,
(25:20):
which was very forward facing for its time, not just
because it was designed for the LGBTQ plus community, but
also because they took the E out of the word
you know, So now it's they kind of set the
tread on that one.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
One hundred percent, I mean, and again, like you know,
it's not something that I've experienced directly, but that's another
app that part of its selling point is almost like
very quick geolocation of people who just want to hook up.
It is largely looked at, by my understanding, to be
less of a long term meeting my soulmate kind of
(26:03):
app and more of like a casual kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah. And one of the major I would say revolutions
moving away from a laptop or desktop back in the
day largely to the phone, like that is that you're
mobile using this thing, so you're not at home talking
to somebody. You're now at the club or you are
you know, at a restaurant and you can open your
(26:28):
app and see who's nearness.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Yeah to the earlier statement there, you know, dating pre
technology or technological innovation was requisite on socioeconomic or physical proximity.
And to your point, Matt, now with your proximity visible
and approachable, now you can see whomever is near you
(26:54):
wherever you may go.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
And to me, that, to my understanding, that is a
pretty I'm sure there are others you know that have
this feature, but that's a pretty Grinder specific kind of thing.
Whereas you know, if you have an app like Tender
or Bumble or Hinge or whatever you might put in,
I only want matches with people that live within thirty
miles of me, you know, but you're not going to
see them as a blip on a map where you
can walk right.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Up to them.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
That would be considered privileged information and you do not
want to give that kind of information out unless you
are ready to meet somebody in person, and usually then
you meet it like I mutually agreed upon kind of
public place. But Grinder is very specifically I think geo centric.
That's very real time data driven.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Which requires yeah, as you said, Noll, the data and
you know folks, it may be a bummer to say
the love of my life is in me and mar
I will never meet them because I don't have my
settings correct. We have to understand that the appearance of
Tender in twenty twelve reshape the landscape because a gamified
(27:59):
sex and love you swipe right to like you, swipe
left to pass. For a while, this was a free action.
I'm sure it continues now. I have never dated online.
I meet you know, I mean, my lover's the old
school way getting deported suddenly finding finding finding a date
(28:23):
becomes more like playing a game or taking a survey.
Then it becomes like meeting someone and knowing them. It's
a weird, weird audition process to put.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
People in and it really does kind of in many ways,
cheapen the experience. You know, it can sort of like
make you a little bit jaded when everything is just
a picture that you are swiping. It is a pretty
surface level kind of exercise, you know, for the most part.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
And with the advent of Tinder, what you also begin
to see. And again only with hindsight do we realize this,
but we all anyone who is using Tender, who began
that process started to see that there is an endless
stream of individuals out there. So you now get you
(29:14):
start to get into the problem of well, if I
swipe right on that person, I might be missing the next,
you know, person that I really want to date, or
I really would match with her I think would be
super sexy. Yeah, if I'd swipe right on that, maybe
I'm I'm screwing up. I should just swipe left until
I find the perfect one.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
I only got so many swipes. What am I gonna do?
Pay this app?
Speaker 5 (29:39):
The app says, Yeah, that's gamified as well, because like
a lot of like quote unquote free games, you know,
phone apps, there are in app purchases you can you
gotta buy more hearts or in game currency or whatever,
and like in tender, you can get buy the super
swipe again the things that things that obviously changed. I'm
sure I have since I'm that's with it. But all
(30:01):
you do run up against you know, you've run out
of swipes and you have to wait, or you could
pay X number of dollars an upgrade to the premium version.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
The freemium model, yes, which we'll get to. The thing
is there is little to no stigma attached to online
dating today. You know, not too long ago it was
considered somehow inappropriate to meet someone through a classified advertisement
in print, and some of us in the audience tonight
(30:33):
realize how recent that was. Dating online is a normalized
tool nowadays a lot of people have met for casual
flings or they've found themselves in lifelong, committed, happy relationships
having issue I mean by which I mean creating children.
(30:53):
Last year, the boffins at Pew Research found get this,
I think this is an amazing statistic. One inten partnered
adults people are married, living with a partner, or in
a committed romantic relationship. One in ten of those folks
met their current partner through a dating site or through
(31:15):
an app. So those are good results.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
Yeah, I mean I met my current partner through a
dating app, no question about it. And the previous couple
that I've had before that again varying degrees of success.
Obviously I'm not with them anymore, but some of them
were fine relationships I met through those apps as well,
So I'm very much part of that demographic.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
And obviously, folks, when we are saying something is normalized,
we do not mean it is above criticism. This new
genre of romance has garnered tons of controversy, plenty of complaints,
a couple of heinous crimes, and countless broken hearts along
(32:01):
the way. But the deal is, the need is too great.
Some people would pay anything for the promise of true
love and the money, oh, the money, you guys. The
profit potential that is likewise too great for the companies
to ignore. Every dating app is swiping right on profit potential.
(32:23):
Morgan Stanley found dating app users who go to what
you're saying, no, they cross the rubicon of freemium to pay.
They end up spending between eighteen and nineteen US dollars
per month on subscriptions or one off purchases.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah, it is very odd to imagine that every one
of these dating sites, dating apps, whatever they are, start
as free, and especially Tinder if you think about its origins,
fully free for years until company realized, oh, we actually
need to be profitable. At some point, we're moving out
(33:05):
of a venture capital stage and into the we're going
to go public, so now we need to have a revenue.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
Because I know a lot of those things that you
know when they pop like that too, they're just all
about developing a user base. And they're not always thinking
about the profit motive up front. We'll get to that,
but first we have to get to a place where
we have this unimpeachably massive user base.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
And this is what we are investigating this evening, folks,
dating as a business romance, as a digital empire. We
kid the not fellow conspiracy realist, there is a conspiracy afoot.
Speaker 5 (33:42):
Okay, let's take a quick pause in this chat about
online dating. Here a word from our sponsors, and then
come back with more.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
And we've returned.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Here's where it gets crazy. What are we talking about?
All right, let's just name guys. Let's name every dating
app we know, just so we can all hear how
very they appear to be. Maybe take a deep breath together,
because I'm sure we got a lot to go through.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Her hymns.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
No, that's that's that's yeah, Ashley mad O, Tender Tinder.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
We mentioned a lot of these already, Hinge, Okay, the.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
League Yeah, a's are b LK Hakuna pairs, et cetera,
et cetera. Which is a thing I made up, but
I think it's a good idea for a very lazy
dating app. Just et cetera, et cetera. What are you into?
What's your profile now?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
No?
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Coffee meets Bagel is one that I like the name of.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
And then you have like things like Jday, which has
been around for a very long time that is again
specifically for you know, people of the Jewish faith.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Mm. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
And then you have Christian mingle is that one.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Plenty of Fish, which I think is a Christian thing
too because of the fish symbol or is it not? No,
it's not oka. I always assume that it was.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
It's like plenty of fish, yes, but I guess I.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Always assumed that. I don't know why I thought that
the fish thing just just threw me interesting.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Can you can you date citations of plenty of fish?
That's unfair.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
They're mammals, I mean, and it's you know.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
I think the point of this list, including some made
up ones, are to show just how specialized, uh and
varied and seemingly completely different the apps in this massive
world that is online dating can be.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Right specialized across any number of variables, some more specialized
than to others, each with their own unique reputation. You
have a love of your life and mind, you will
find that demographic on insert site here, welcome to et cetera,
et cetera dot org. We're not. Ok yeah, right, well,
(36:12):
that's why we can't get investors because of the profit.
Most dating apps are ultimately owned by a single company.
That's right, fellow conspiracy realist. There is one dating app
to rule them, moll an Illuminati of online romance, a
cable of digital dating. Can we get a drum roll?
(36:37):
Tri force.
Speaker 5 (36:41):
Match dot Com Incorporate LLC.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Incredibly Corporation.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Yes, they're a bill litigious.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
And when we say most, let's let's give that listens
tender hinge. Okay, but plenty of fish. The League metic
asar or As are Chispa b LK, Hakuna Pears. There's uh,
there's more. Well, no, I think that's it. I was
on their website just a moment ago looking at all
of the the different.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
ICI forty five plus. Those are the ones they brag
about there.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, they're they're like topped here, and if you go
on their website you may think, oh, that's all they've got.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
No no, no, no no no.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
No no no no no no. Officially known as Match
Group Incorporated, this company is based in Dallas, Texas. For
anybody not from the United States, Dallas is a pretty
big deal here. President got shot there back in the day.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I think I read something about them, Yeah right, we did.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Au We looked into it as the our buddies, Rob
Reiner and Solidad O'Brien. The idea of match dot com
or what becomes match dot com is pretty fascinating. It's
created way back in nineteen ninety three by a guy
named Gary Craven, Simon Glenski, and pangte Oong in San Francisco.
(38:09):
And at the beginning to the earlier point about classified ads,
that's all they were trying to do. They were taking
the personal classified ads to the Internet and they were
calling it. You love this electric classifieds incorporate breaking to
electric bugaloo.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Oh yeah. And there's a there's one individual dude that
ended up buying up a ton of different domains. They
were like match dot com, super simple URLs that you
could get to and he didn't have anything on him yet,
but he's one of the you know, there's that time
on the Internet where that was a that was a
(38:51):
viable business plan.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Just by sting dot com.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
It still is still is, my friends, I mean, I
think of the show Matt riddle aboutty money.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
That's he does this forget for laughs.
Speaker 5 (39:03):
He bought the URLDJ COVID nineteen just when COVID nineteen
was kicking. Justis in case they're like, you know, when
it's like not too soon anymore that somebody comes out
and wants that artist. There is a story on NPR
not terribly long ago about a dude who truly made
good by just buying up combinations of different political figures
in the hopes or you know, in the case in
(39:25):
the event that they ended up running mates and he
made good and sold some of those to some serious tickets.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, And in this case, this person bought a bunch
of these and then put them together, and all of
them had classified ads essentially for different things. Someone were
for autos, for cars, someone were for this type of thing.
And it is just amazing that somebody had that idea,
created this thing, and then almost immediately it reminded me
a lot of Marshall Brain actually, the founder of houset
(39:54):
works dot com. Where you start this huge thing and
you have an idea for it, and then as soon
as it starts to blossom, it doesn't get taken away.
But there are now investors and board members and they
can make decisions in metastasizes.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Yeah, would be a way to look at it, an
all priest, dude to Marshall brain, Let's go to David
Kusher who puts it this way writing for The Atlantic.
We got we've got a great origin story for our
buddy Gary, and it will introduce the director of marketing
that we were talking about later who really really changes
(40:37):
the game. This is a field of dreams. If you
build it, they will come kind of moment. This will
also ultimately be familiar to anybody who's tried to throw
a house party and get their ratio right.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Okay, and here is that quote about Gary kremin and
again is from the Atlantic, David Kusher quote. There was
a no four letter word for love he knew, and
it was data, the stuff he would use to match people.
He could gather data about each client, attributes, assling interests,
(41:14):
desires for mates, and then compare them with other clients
data to make matches. With a computer and the Internet,
he could eliminate the inefficiencies of thousands of years of
analog dating, the shyness, the mist cues, the posturing. He
would provide customers with a questionnaire, generate a series of answers,
and then pair up daters based on how well their
(41:37):
preferences aligned.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
It's perfect perfect, It's a littleical. I don't know. I
you know there there might be a diminishing return at
sub point, Like we've all been in situations where someone
feels like they're predeciding and interaction, you know what I mean.
(42:00):
Have you guys ever had that moment where you're dating
someone and I'll be a little personal here, and in
the first or second date they described to you the
marriage you're going to have.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Yeah, maybe you know what not yet, Yeah, you got better.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
You got better luck in love than me and.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Mad Hey guys, spoiler didn't work out.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Oh dang, come on man, Well, I want to talk
about a personal thing towards the conclusions of these episodes
or this episode. But uh, it was something an insight
that I've discovered through learning about all this stuff. But
I do not I do not have that experience. I
do think this is one of those beautiful dreams. Right,
(42:49):
you see a problem I can imagine in this person's world,
Gary's world, and then you can see, well, I know
how to do X, Y and Z. Maybe if I
apply that to this big problem, I can save the world.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
Maybe by Excel spreadsheet was the answer all along.
Speaker 5 (43:08):
And the thing is I mean, and you know, again
I mentioned earlier the idea of like you know, there's
no magic bullets to finding love, but the closest thing
that you can sell as that is something like this.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
And the reason that people are buying it is because
it does have a relative success rate to some degree.
Speaker 5 (43:26):
Remember the you remember those E Harmony of course, the
real testimonials, right sure, the guy.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
That would come on, I can hear his voice, I
can't see his face right now in this moment, but
the guy who would say compatibility compatiity, not compatibility. Compatibility
is the number one thing that's gonna find you true love.
And that's why E Harmony.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Only we can sust that out for you with all
of the day.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
Also, also let us let us admire from the from
the higher elevation. Let us admire the absolute aspiration of this,
the idea that you could one could quantify the unquantifiable
things like love for anybody. Right now, if you are
(44:17):
listening to this show and you are head over heels
in love, and that love is reciprocated. You can't really
put numbers on it. Come on, man, that's a different
part of the brain. So there is this idea. It's
again like the like the concept of how science answers
how and spirituality answers why. Love is a ven diagram
(44:40):
between those two things. So is it not a bit
cold to say if you answered X to the following
Z questions, then we are why compatible?
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Sure? Touch, Sure.
Speaker 5 (44:53):
But also it's like if you think about people kind
of romanticizing the idea of like finding your soulmates. If
you think about logistically, which is the absolute you know,
massive amount of possible soulmates that are out there, what
are the chances that you found the one best person
for you? Yes, they might be great, You guys might
be completely compatible. But what systems like this do is
(45:16):
widen that net in a way where maybe I could
actually find that person statistically.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
But I would say also to take it a step
three steps further. First, that reduces people to quantifiable aspects,
which is an unholy thing to attempt. Second, uh, the
idea of a soulmate naturally includes the concept of people
who were born and died before you were here and
(45:45):
are going to be alive and die after you have passed,
such that you know, cloud Atlas becomes an awesome job.
People believe in reading.
Speaker 5 (45:55):
But that's because if you think about it, though, I mean,
I understand what you're saying, Ben, But the idea of
a soulmate is about compatibility, is about a match of
various characteristics. The question is to what percentage, to what
degree are you nailing those matches? And is there a
better version out there you know of the one that
you've already found.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Right, that's the third point, the idea to keep people
eternally chasing the better possibility. When human beings were largely
living and dying within about thirty miles of where they
were born, their choices were limited, right, as were their resources.
(46:36):
Your questionnaire became something like, can you create children? Can
we have child labor on the farm? Do you agree
with my idea about God? Because I certainly cannot disagree
with it, So we cannot have a discourse about this.
(46:57):
This is what our buddy Gary's dealing with. He starts
off the same way we are. He's beginning from his
own lived experiences, his own preferences, and he builds his questionnaire.
He tries to sum the human heart up in a spreadsheet,
right in quantifiable terms, and he realizes all of a sudden, hey,
(47:22):
I'm not the golden goose. And then thank god he
doesn't have an ego, because he says, wait, no dudes,
no straight dudes here are going to be the golden goose.
I can get guys to pay for this service, this
online dating thing, but my real goal is going to
(47:43):
have is going to be to get women there somehow. Otherwise,
why will these straight dudes bother paying for this in
the first place? And we have to remember context. It's
the mid nineteen nineties. People who identify as women are
about ten percent of the folks online. The typical computer
(48:04):
user is one male, two unmarried three at a computer
for hours on end every week.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
Well, yeah, imagine the as we're talking about the history
of I don't know, companionship or whatever this stuff is,
the amount of unwanted male attention man woman experiences and
then asking them to go on and sign up and
put all this information about yourself so that you can
(48:35):
get a crap ton of male attention.
Speaker 4 (48:38):
Right, which still continues to do there.
Speaker 5 (48:41):
But there is a feature built into this that makes
it appealing, which is the idea that you're not going
I mean, I forget again. Some of these apps are different,
but there are certain ones where you're not going to
open up a chat unless the woman consents, which.
Speaker 4 (48:53):
Yeah, but Gary has that.
Speaker 5 (48:55):
I'm just saying, and I understand what I'm just saying,
Like there is a version that we're going to get
to that does benefit women, but even that then kind
of gets bastardized and becomes its own sort of monstrosity.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
So sorry to jump ahead too much, but yeah, where's
Gary going with this?
Speaker 2 (49:10):
But also in the mid nineteen nineties, most of us
were just playing Ultima online and on Aim pretending to
be we're twenty Oh yeah them.
Speaker 5 (49:18):
Yeah, sorry, it's hilarious, dude, I love it.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
I mean, and that's a that's a big part of it,
because people are just like Gary, basing the world on themselves. Right,
this is me, so this must be logically everybody. Gary
is doing a really smart thing. And he says, look,
I gotta go figure out people who are not me.
I gotta if we want women on my weird thing
(49:47):
then and he didn't call this weird thing, then I
have to talk to actual women. I have to figure
out what people's worlds who are not like me, like,
what's going on with them? What do they care about?
And when he had these conversations, the lore of the
story goes that he talked to all of his female
relationships or familial members. He talked to people he just
(50:12):
found on the street, his friends, and they said, your
questionnaire needs a lot of work, because your questionnaire is
about you, and they said in particular, I think it
was a big cold shower for him when unanimously women said, hey, Bud,
(50:32):
your explicit sexual questions are kind of a non starter.
That's a turn off. And then they hit him with
another one and they said, why on earth would I
want random guys to your earlier point, Matt? Why would
I want random guys to see my real name and
my photo online? Because that would mean they could find me.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
I was listening to that podcast it look Deep into
this Land of the Giants. It was like season six
or seven, I think maybe.
Speaker 4 (51:05):
Episode two Dating Games.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yeah, well, the entire series it's all about dating apps
and they go into in depth. There a bunch of
the stuff that was online that people were doing who
were actually developing these things, but hot or not do
you guys remember that that was a big one of
the big pushes there trying to figure out why would
(51:28):
to this specific problem, Why would a woman or a
female put a picture of themselves online for it to
be judged essentially by other people?
Speaker 5 (51:38):
Was it hot or not like the early Facebook model,
or is it that or is it something like.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Things like that. That wasn't the only one, but that
was the big one where it was like, how do
you what is the thing that causes someone to put
their picture on there for it to be judged to
see if people like me? Essentially? Right? That the primary motivation?
Speaker 3 (51:55):
Why would you open yourself up to ridicule?
Speaker 5 (51:57):
Why would you open yourself up to that kind of
judgment and or harassment?
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Ginger Well, yeah, exactly, But what is that thing that spark?
And trying to capture what that is and then somehow
incorporate it into this thing he's building.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
And incorporate a sense of safety, incorporate a sense.
Speaker 5 (52:13):
Of like, yeah, exactly, what's what's the buy in for
someone to be willing to give this kind of information up?
Speaker 2 (52:19):
I I don't mean to say that there's negative motivation
for any of these things that are being created especially
at this time with Gary. It's it is that thing
of how do I get people to use this thing?
Speaker 3 (52:30):
Right?
Speaker 4 (52:30):
It's Field the dreams, Right, it's Field the Dreams. He's
a Kevin Costner, you know, is or whomever Kevin Costner
was acting as in that He's like, how do I
get these people to show up to the ballgame. Eventually
he understands the best way to find out what women
really want the age old quest. He needs get this
(52:56):
you guys, real life women on the team. So he
contacts his former classmate fran Meyer from his time at
Stanford and he hires her as the director of marketing,
and to her credit, she immediately clocks a secondary issue
and she says, Gary, women aren't going to join up
(53:16):
for your internet thing unless they know there are already
other women in the sandbox, unless they're already participating. Hold
the phone, folks, amid all this discourse ed exploration of
monopolization and conspiracy, we hope that you will swipe right
(53:37):
on part two of the Illuminati of Online Dating. We
can't wait to hear your thoughts. Join us later this
week for wait did I say Part two? We'll keep
it in We've got a two part episode. We want
to hang out with you. Please let us know what's
on your mind. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 3 (53:57):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (53:57):
You can find us in the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where
it gets crazy, on x FKA, Twitter, and on YouTube.
You can also find us at the handle conspiracy Stuff
on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
We've got a phone number. It's one eight three three
std WYTK. When you call in and say something like that,
E harmony guy was Neil Clark Warren, Doctor Neil Clark Warren,
the American clinical psychologist and Christian theologian that was coming
on TV and said, E harmony. You could say things
like that, or just give us a little insight into
(54:31):
your world, or is something we missed anything? Give us
a call, give yourself a cool nickname, and you've got
three minutes say whatever you'd like. If you got more
to say than could fit into a three minute voicemail,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (54:44):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive. It's one of the best ways to contact us.
Everything you heard before the end applies to our email
address as well. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the
void writes back, and it could be any of us
that you're hearing this evening. Join us out here in
(55:04):
the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Ben Bowlin
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