“I just HAVE to know which of my weird relatives thought that dog photo was cute.”

This Medium post from a former Google “Product Philosopher” (a weirdly pretentious title to be sure, but once you get past that he has a lot of smart things to say) on “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds” is very much worth the 15 minutes it takes to read.

In it, he covers a handful of ways the web and mobile apps are designed to manipulate your choices and play on our human psychological weaknesses to keep you using them, or do what they want you to do vs what you may actually want to do, mostly without you even noticing.

A few examples: using Yelp to find a place to go after a movie will probably lead you to a bar or restaurant to spend more money, when a park bench could do perfectly fine. Notifications just vague enough to pull you back into apps for very little information, which leads to more news feed scrolling. Netflix autoplaying the next episode of a series. Even the basic principle of a menu forcing a choice between a few options they’d prefer you to take. Super interesting stuff we probably don’t think about much (*begin conspiracy voice*) because that’s exactly what they want.

Which apps or website do you think manipulates your choices or steals your time the most?

How aware are you of this as it happens?

What, if anything, do you do to combat these designed manipulations?

The circle of (modern sedentary) life.

Occasionally you come across a trend or opinion piece to which the only appropriate reaction is, “Umm, I think that’s just you.” Getting to judge fancy writers for fabricating a societal trend out of personal experience can be fun and satisfying.

Here’s one: The Times Magazine, “Is Staying In the New Going Out?”.

In it, the author suggests that with all the great technology available to us, from on-demand entertainment to one-click food delivery to right-swipe dating…

…Food, entertainment, romance: The traditional weekend staples are now available entirely on demand. The centripetal force of our homes has never been stronger…

We have memes about staying in (“Netflix and chill”) and phrases like “binge watch,” which suggest pathologically homebound behavior. We no longer dismiss the urge to remain warm, hidden, fed, cushioned and entertained indoors as a lamentable womblike regression.

Though if we were to use actual data, one could reasonably assume that staying in vs going out is a function of some combination of:

1. Aging – having less energy, settling into a comfortable routine, having more obligations and therefore less free time.
2. Relationship status – Not being single, and therefore less pressured to go out to meet potential love interests, or even having a reliable social circle and seeking fewer new friends.
3. Temperament – Being the kind of person that was never that into going out in the first place, and therefore feeling less pressure to do so with each passing year just to impress others.
4. Financial situation – Not having a lot of money to spend on restaurants, shows, Uber/cab fare, bar-priced drinks, and so choosing to stay in out of necessity.

For any given person not still in college, the statement is probably true that “I go out less than I used to” or alternately “I go out less than I’d like to”. I’m just super skeptical that it’s directly related to the rise of mobile apps or streaming services. What do you think?

Do you go out less than you used to? Or less than you’d like to?

What are the reasons behind your growing urge (or tendency) to stay in?

If you feel bad about it? How might you combat it?
If you’re embracing it, why don’t you feel bad about it?

Do heavy Tinder users have the least, or the most, need for a site like this?

The recent Vanity Fair article on the way Tinder is changing dating — or possibly even destroying it, depending on your reading — seems to be taking the internet by storm this week.

One way to read it is that no one cares about relationships at all anymore. It’s just convenient, on-demand sex with acceptably attractive partners, and this is how young people live now. Another is that this generation is going to lose all understanding of how relationships work because of their glut of options for sexual partners.

One thing the article doesn’t seem to address is how the existence of Tinder is changing how people behave in order to do better on Tinder. Are they all obsessed with skin care in ways we weren’t before? Driven harder than ever to have gym-hardened bodies so they get swiped more often when their appearance is their only opportunity to impress? Do they spend hours faking smiles for practice selfies? Become nearly-professional photographers in their quest for the best-lit, perfectly framed headshots?

The image-first style of these apps, and the superficiality and judgment that comes with them, is barely mentioned at all in the article, but that’s what interested me (as someone who has never used Tinder). So.

What would an app with the opposite priorities of Tinder look like?

How would it work? Would you use it if you were single? If not, who would?

Would those people be having as much sex? Better dates? More relationships?