=culture =institutions =dating
I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
— Groucho Marx
Alice and Carol are walking on the sidewalk in a large city, and end up together for a while.
"Hi, I'm Alice! What's your name?"
Carol thinks:
If Alice is trying to meet people this way, that means she doesn't have a much better option for meeting people, which reduces my estimate of the value of knowing Alice. That makes me skeptical of this whole interaction, which reduces the value of approaching me like this, and Alice should know this, which further reduces my estimate of Alice's other social options, which makes me even less interested in meeting Alice like this.
Carol might not think all
of that consciously, but that's how human social reasoning tends to work.
In most cases, Alice understands this and doesn't even try to talk with
Carol in the first place.
lemon markets
Economics has
the concept of a "lemon
market". When sellers
have more information about item quality than buyers, and reputation isn't a
factor, sellers will try to sell low-quality items, and consumers will
respond by driving down prices until only low-quality items are worth
selling.
I think a similar thing has happened for social
relationships in many countries over the past several decades.
An
increase in social isolation over time has been widely noted;
Bowling
Alone was written in 2000, and
the issues it described have increased since then. My view is that the above
dynamic is responsible for much of that change.
What are the root
causes of social relationships becoming more of a lemon market? There are
many causes, but 4
causes I consider significant are listed below.
urbanization
In many countries, people have rapidly moved to bigger cities over the
past several decades, and this affects social dynamics.
Human
relationships generally have some upfront costs and then a net benefit over
time. In very small towns, your chance of having a relationship with a
random resident is higher, so the initial upfront costs are amortized over a
higher probability of establishing a good relationship.
In a very
small town, if Dave dates 3 girls at the same time and treats them all
poorly, afterwards, every girl in the town will know to avoid him. Bad
behavior is less attractive when random people you encounter in the future
are more likely to be aware of it, and bad behavior being less likely means
relationships with random people you meet have a higher expected value.
drugs
If you're "friends" with a heroin or fentanyl
addict, and you have some money and nice stuff, they will steal your stuff
to buy drugs.
The US has seen a substantial increase in the number of
drug addicts and overdose deaths, first because of prescription opioids and
now because of fentanyl.
MLM schemes
Sometimes, when
someone in America seems like they're trying to make friends with you, it's
actually because they want you to join some MLM scheme they're involved
with, so they can make money off you. Participation in such schemes has
grown over time, and they've become more aggressive.
screens
Suppose 2 strangers meet at a park. They could talk to each other, but
that option competes with whatever they'd otherwise do. If they're both
addicted to mobile games, or both listening to music, the odds of them
having a conversation are low.
Visiting friends' houses and talking
to them used to be one of the main things people did for fun, but television
gave people entertainment that didn't require any other people.
possible solutions
smaller communities
The effects of
urbanization can be partly cancelled by putting people in a small community.
Ideally it would select for compatible people, but even a random selection
seems to work. The biggest examples of this are students making friends in
high school and employees making friends with coworkers.
excuses
for socialization
In my experience, Americans are
actually eager to talk to strangers and make friends with them if
and only if they have some good reason to be where they are and
talk to those people besides
making friends with people. If there's a situation which can attract people
who don't need to be there to make friends, that's no longer a lemon market.
The biggest example of this is probably employees making friends with
coworkers, but there are many other examples, such as:
- casual sports
teams
- rich people meeting at expensive charity events at art galleries
- gamers meeting teammates
Video games have become more and more popular over time. The main problem with that last item is that most people who meet via video games are far away. Even if games tried to match people in the same city, very few games have enough players to make that an option. I think local LAN tournaments or cooperative challenges could be a community-building thing, to some extent, but the fragmentation of the games and TV shows and other sorts of entertainment people like has increased.
software
Computers are fast. Algorithms have been
developed extensively. Companies like Google and Facebook have lots of
information about people. Maybe software can just match compatible people?
But...what we actually have is people swiping on Tinder. Guys lying
about their height and income and swiping 1000 girls. Girls using photo
filters and all going for the same few percent of guys.
OKCupid tried
to algorithmically match people based on various qualities, and some people
liked it a lot, but then it got bought by Match Group in 2011 (for $50
million, which isn't very much money here) which changed it to be more like
Tinder.
Maybe Youtube could match single people based on the videos
they liked and watched? I don't see that happening, but it seems
theoretically possible.