dating apps killed romance by making it too easy.
we optimized all the friction away. swipe right, match, meet, repeat. a perfectly efficient market for human connection. millions of potential partners, all just a tap away.
but something broke in the process.
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efficiency works beautifully for casual dating. when you want a quick chat or an easy meetup, having endless options is ideal. the apps excel at optimizing these surface-level connections.
but try finding love in a frictionless market. watch how abundance creates scarcity.
we call it swipe fatigue - that endless scrolling sensation, always wondering if someone better is just another profile away. paradoxically, more choice makes choosing harder. we become paralyzed by possibility.
so we're adding friction back in. deliberately. consciously. people turn to old-school matchmakers. limit themselves to one match at a time. create rules and barriers where the apps removed them all.
even the apps themselves are tapping the brakes - one match per day, mandatory question responses, video chats before meeting. small speed bumps on the highway to connection.
we're discovering that love needs resistance to grow.
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this isn't just about dating.
job hunting went frictionless first. one-click applications, automated screening, algorithmic matching. now we're retreating back to human networks and personal referrals. we learned that the best jobs rarely live on job boards.
art consumption followed. infinite streaming catalogs gave us everything and nothing. now vinyl records surge back. curated playlists replace endless libraries. we're choosing constraint over abundance.
education tried the same path. moocs promised learning at scale, available anywhere, anytime. but we discovered that knowledge needs friction to stick. so we're building hybrid models - adding back the human touch, the scheduled classes, the cohort pressure.
we optimized these markets until they broke, then remembered why the friction mattered.
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there's a pattern here.
when an activity requires depth - real connection, true learning, genuine growth - pure efficiency often backfires. we need some resistance. some difficulty. some friction to push against.
markets can optimize for quantity or quality, but rarely both. remove all friction and you get more matches, more applications, more content - but less meaning, less commitment, less satisfaction.
we're learning that some barriers serve a purpose. they filter signal from noise. create space for depth. force us to move more slowly, choose more carefully, invest more fully.
friction isn't always a bug. sometimes it's the feature.
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the pendulum swings back.
after a decade of racing toward maximum efficiency, we're rediscovering the value of slowness. of effort. of intentional inefficiency.
in an over-optimized world, friction becomes luxury. we pay more for vinyl records than spotify streams. choose expensive matchmakers over free apps. pick small classes over massive online courses.
we're not abandoning technology - we're remembering its limits. some experiences can't be frictionless. some connections need resistance to form. some growth requires struggle.
the future isn't just about removing friction. it's about choosing which friction to keep.
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dating apps didn't kill romance. they just showed us why romance needs friction to thrive.
in trying to optimize connection, we accidentally proved why real connection can't be optimized. why love needs obstacles to grow against. why meaning often hides in the mess.
sometimes the best way forward is to slow down. to embrace the friction. to let human nature work at human speed.
after all, the best things in life rarely come with a swipe.