Redacted is a private tracker, I’ve seen a bunch of SACD stuff there. You can interview to get in, they have a website to prep for the interview.

In my experience (I’m a few years out of date with how the app works now, keep that in mind) it’s like 90% looks. You CAN build up a profile, but IIRC only the first sentence of it shows up on your picture. A person has to see your picture and that tagline, be curious enough to actually go to your profile before swiping, then read your profile if they’re going to use it to judge you on.

Most of the people I know who used tinder, myself included, didn’t really do that much. We just swiped based on looks, and if someone was borderline then we looked at the profile to make a decision. But that was pretty rare, most people it was a pretty clear yes/no based on looks.

The apps is designed to encourage that behavior. When I used it profiles were REALLY not being encouraged, IDK if that has changed (I would guess it hasn’t).

I agree, but that just makes this even scummier on Tinder’s part. The people who own and make the app know that, they’re doing this anyway. So they’re targeting people who are already desperate and lonely, and giving them what they will inevitably see as a “lifeline” which actually may make their chances worse.

No, you just heavily implied it. If you didn’t mean to then you need to edit you comment. And I laid out how I clearly disagree with the idea that this is “aimed at creeps,” because it’s aimed at people who have been made desperate by the predatory nature of Tinder’s algorithm. Desperation doesn’t necessarily make someone creepy, but it does make Tinder a lot of money.

Also, why are you making it seem like someone sending a message to someone else on a dating app is somehow a kind of, like, assault? You’re using very aggressive language to describe normal behavior by people trying to date, AKA talking to other people who they may be interested in

Why are you assuming that men who can’t get matched are automatically creeps? That’s not at all a good assumption, and is a BIG part of the problem with tinder.

Back before I met my now fiancee, I never got tinder matches. I only got matches on OKCupid, back when you were allowed to message people before matching with them. That’s how I met my now fiancee, too.

Tinder is incredibly toxic by design and is designed to damage people’s mental health. They’ve taken dating, something that requires a lot of human interaction, and reduced it to a literal slot machine which tinder can rig however they want. They’ve reduced finding a partner to “does this person look attractive to you?” which is NOT how dating works IRL. I know a lot of people who met their partners IRL and were not attracted to them until they started getting to know each other as friends, then fell for each other.

Tinder not only exploits the problematic beauty standards in our society, but actively makes them worse. If you’re not getting matches you feel unattractive, because every piece of feedback the app gives you says you are. It doesn’t matter how charismatic or interesting you are, it doesn’t matter how much you and a potential match may have in common, all that matters is the pictures you put up, and maybe the first sentence or two of your bio.

The whole system is designed to make people using it feel desperate, men and women both, and this $500 to message first thing is incredibly scummy. They suck you in, kill your self confidence, depress you, then offer you what seems like a lifeline.

This is like a casino offering you a slot machine with a 50% higher win rate for a monthly subscription.

This thread is full of people laughing at people who would pay for this, but I actually kinda empathize.

I got REALLY lucky and met my now fiancee on a dating app. It took about 2 years of trying to meet her, and in that time ithink I had maybe 5-7 dates. ALL of those were on OKCupid, back when it let you message people without matching. I am not the most good looking person, but I could get a good first impression through a message.

Tinder though? It killed my self confidence when I used it. I never got a single date from tinder. It is designed tonot get you dates, unless you’re SUPER attractive, especially if you’re a man. A lot of it is that there are so many more men on dating apps than women, I know that objectively. But it SUCKS when you’re actively looking for a partner and swiping every single day to either never get matches or get matches who are bots.

For a lot of guys like me being able to get a good first message in feels like the only chance, and if you’re seriously looking and starting to feel desperate (and these apps are designed to make you feel desperate) then dropping $500 for a month of being able to get a shot may not actually seem crazy.

These apps have designed a “dating economy” around themselves that tells people that they are not attractive or a desirable partner if they aren’t getting matches, then deliberately tailored their algorithms to manipulate people into coming back every day for a chance to meet someone. It’s slot machines, but with romantic relationships, and it convinces people that dating is like gambling. And these apps want you to feel like they are the only way to date, and if you’re not “winning” and getting dates they make it clear that it’s YOUR fault, and if you drop a little money you’ll get some matches.

Yes, some creeps will pay for this to send dick pics, but I think most people who will pay forthis are actually desperate and convinced that it’s their only chance at getting a date. It’s disgusting these apps are allowed to do what they have done. And I say all of that as someone who won the damn slot machine jackpot and came out with a long term partner.

I personally think these apps are doing some serious harm to our society and need to be regulated but that’s a different discussion

I hate the crypto market so much, but ESPECIALLY nfts.

Nfts were blatantly a scam. It 2as a very in your face scam, it was giving money to someone else for literally nothing. It was obvious time from day 1 that it was just an avenue for rich people to launder money and have it look legit.

But the media fell for the new trend hook, line, and sinker. Instead of telling people it was a scam from day 1, which it *obviously was," the major news networks (at least here in the US) talked about nfts as if it was a legit new type of cool investment. They stopped short of telling people to buy them so that they couldn’t get sued, but they hyped the fuck out of NFTs. CONSTANTLY. Any time I listened to any cable news for more than 30 minutes around mid 2021, I heard NFTs get mentioned at least once, and very rarely was that mention skeptical or a warning.

And now all the people who bought into the hype are left holding the bag, as always, a d the rich people who scammed them get to keep all the money, as always, and the media is facing no repercussions for their contribution to the scam, as always. It’s so frustrating to watch

I disagree that this is unambiguous, I was also confused reading this headline. It’s odd wording. It may be technically correct but that doesn’t mean it’s unambiguous.

Is the “commie” in the room with you now? This is an unhinged level of angrv to get over a really quite tame comment.

In what universe have corruption and lying not been rampant in “the west” over the last hundred years? Did you just pull this comment out of a book titled “Red Scare Propaganda?”

I disagree with this take. I live in NOVA. What happened in the last gubernatorial race was that the democrats ran the worst campaign I have ever seen. It was so bad that democratic turnout wasn’t high enough to beat the Republicans. That’s it.

If they democrats had run a halfway competent campaign then they would have handily won.

My fiancee and I both got artificial sapphires in our engagement rings.

Real ones were nearly double the price.

You wouldn’t know they’re lab grown. They look great.

OK, then why fucking make them? Aren’t games supposed to be fun?

This whole genre really bugs me, and I’m someone who LOVES space games. The best game in the genre IMO is elite dangerous, because their ship to ship combat is so damn fun to play that I can hop in for a bit and have a blast without having to engage with the other systems that are often painfully boring.

The problem here is that people what the feeling of being explorers and finding new things, but video games inherently can’t provide that. There aren’t computers strong enough to produce thousands or millions of planets that all have genuinely interesting features on them that are worth exploring for. “Exploration” in current space Sims is basically “stick your name on something someone else hasn’t already stuck their name on, maybe grab some resources from it, and leave.” That gets dull very fast.

Developers COULD choose instead to make a couple of good, big planets that are interesting and full of actually good content. They could give you a reason to explore beyond “look other planets cool.”

If you made 1000 planets and only 10 of them are at all interesting, and your game is centered on exploring other planets and not really focussed on much else, you’ve made a boring game.

It got us so much good will that the French still ban us from wearing religious garments in public, and antisemitic attacks across Europe have been increasing steadily for at least 20 years, with governments seemingly unable to do anything about it.

If you “recognize your roots” but changed your name and also have spent your entire lifetime attempting to murder your parents and grandparents, I think it’s fair to say that you don’t respect or care about your roots.

It’s so funny to me that so many people in this thread are like “well technically it also applies to christians wearing crosses! So it isn’t discriminatory.” I guarantee you that a kid wearing a cross won’t get in any trouble for it, they certainly won’t be sent home. They’d probably be asked to hide it better and let off by the teacher, if anything at all was said.

These kinds of laws are classic examples of laws that are deliberately targeted at specific groups, but worded in a way which technically makes them apply to everyone, with the intent that enforcement will not target the group it wasn’t supposed to.

No, it has Christian roots. I’m Jewish, and I hate the term “Judeo-christian.” We do not believe the same things, and we do not share the same history. Christians have been persecuting us for well over a thousand years, they’ve driven us out of our homes, murdered us en-masse multiple times in multiple different countries in multiple different centuries, and have refused to give us any respect and dignity until after World War 2, when it became politically convenient for them to do so.

Our values are different, our history is different, the only thing we have in common is that the Christians read our bible sometimes when it’s convenient for them to cite it to reinforce their intolerance.

Also I’m willing to bet really good money that if a nun wore a habit to a beach, she wouldn’t get fined. A muslim woman wearing a burkini would though.

We desperately need laws to regulate these kinds of privacy policies/user agreements. The VAST majority are way too long and complicated for a normal person to actually understand, let alone read. We need to limit what companies can/can’t do with them instead of letting them do whatever they want to.

We also need a law that prevents them from changing the terms of service on a product someone has been using, then locking them out of it if they don’t agree to the new terms.

The thing is this shit works for right wingers. They genuinely believe that the ADL calling someone an antisemite, or even suggesting they might be, is the same as the government kicking your door down and murdering you because you used “free speech”

Appendices to LOTR*

They legally cannot use the silmarillion