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Top Three Apps I'd Delete If You Gave Me Your Phone

TL;DR

I would delete Snapchat, Paramount+, and most dating apps from people's phones. Online dating can be time-consuming and male-dominated, but there are some exceptions like Hinge, which uses a matching algorithm. Cultural differences can also affect how people use dating apps. However, there are some funny and interesting aspects that can emerge from the social game theory of dating apps. A program exists to help clean up phones by deleting unwanted apps.

Top 3 apps I would delete on people's phones:

  1. Snapchat
  2. Paramount +
  3. Most dating apps

Why Dating Apps?

Online dating sucks. You’re much better off trying to meet people in real-life situations, where there is a more reasonable ratio of men and women, you can learn more about people then their favorite vacation spots, and the people have a lot more time to learn more about you too.
Or, you can try meeting people online but not in a surface-level dating-oriented site. Plenty of people formed couples through discord or their favorite video games. Unfortunately my understanding is that most online places are still male-dominated, but hopefully that’s changing as we are becoming a more tech-oriented and women-inclusive society. (View Highlight)
Have you read the cold start problem? The online dating marketplaces optimize for women and the men naturally follow.
Ie. If there were a bunch of single women in any marketplace, men would naturally flock there, like any social media platforms dms
The users for online dating are women, men are the commodity (View Highlight)
I've been thinking about whether friendships could be described as having a purpose beyond personal fulfillment, and I think it shares some parallels with dating. One of modern dating's great albatrosses is the hedonistic treadmill: the Tinder-induced "Welcome to Hell" of meeting, connecting, dating, and ghosting, repeated ad infinitum. Dating around is a perfectly good way to pass the weeks and months and years, but at some point, if you're not committing to something – building towards a "we" that exists outside of yourself – the initial thrill of intimacy begins to take on a saccharine, artificial quality (View Highlight)

In terms of supply and demand, men are very heavily supply side and women are very heavy demand side. Out of any random number of men, women get to "demand" the best partner for them.

Due to how the "approach game" works, men are usually the ones who "open" leaving women to respond to potential options/suitors.

On dating apps, scale starts becomes a factor quickly. Women are virtually approached by a high number of suitors at the same time instead of sequentially, changing the dynamics of the game substantially.

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Stability, Hinge

Hinge, one of the hottest dating apps out there, differentiates itself from its rivals like Tinder or Bumble by building a ‘like’ system similar to Instagram which allows its users to ‘like’ another user’s posts or photos, instead of doing simple arbitrary swipe left/right for someone’s entire profile. This article discusses how the Gale–Shapley algorithm, an algorithm that solves The Stable Marriage Problem has been applied to Hinge’s platform. The parallel it draws between how Hinge first compiles a front page for you with people that the algorithm finds most compatible with you and how the show Love Island populate a room full of men and women picking from each other points straight out how the algorithm has been implemented on the front end. (View Highlight)
Just like what we learned in class, a stable marriage contains two individual who both prefer one another, Hinge is always trying to have their users reach that state of stable preferences which could lead to a stable and happy relationship. (View Highlight)
Essentially, this classic matching algorithm from the 60s enables users nowadays to better pursue their love interests and relationships digitally online in a highly effective way. (View Highlight)

Not Just an American Phenomenon

Looks like all the dirt of the city assembles here only,” says a man sitting with his wife and three children under a tree in the Kalindi Kunj Park against the backdrop of the Delhi Eye, a 200-foot-tall ferris wheel.Arun believes it’s the man’s persistence to woo them that matters to most women. “People from my strata don’t have the option to trust anyone quickly. How much a person can wait is ultimately the sign of their interest. We don’t swipe each other on apps,” he says while pointing to a cheap smartphone in his hand. Even though China-made affordable smartphones are making inroads among India’s poor people, dating apps such as Tinder remain the province of wealthier people because of the social stigma associated with dating and premarital sex.“High-profile people like you can go to restaurants or hotels. We have just parks”, says Arun, an 18-year-old commerce student.
Take polyamory. I had a revealing conversation recently with a student at an elite university. He said that when he sets his Tinder radius to five miles, about half of the women, mostly other students, said they were “polyamorous” in their bios. Then, when he extended the radius to 15 miles to include the rest of the city and its outskirts, about half of the women were single mothers. The costs created by the luxury beliefs of the former are borne by the latter. Polyamory is the latest expression of sexual freedom championed by the affluent. They are in a better position to manage the complications of novel relationship arrangements. And if these relationships don’t work out, they can recover thanks to their financial capability and social capital. The less fortunate suffer by adopting the beliefs of the upper class. (View Highlight)

Occasionally Dating Apps Do Indeed Work

So, I downloaded Tinder, in an attempt to prove to myself that I still possessed worldly desires. Resultantly, I met up with a cute girl named Sundae on a lantern-lit patio. (Location 449)

And There Are Some Great Bits That Emerge From The Interactions/Social Game Theory

Computation

This program helps you clean up your phone by deleting apps that you may not need. Based on a set of criteria, it deletes Snapchat, Paramount+, and dating apps if you are a man or have had negative experiences with online dating. The updated list of apps is then returned. Try it out and see how it can help declutter your phone!

,   &  Bram Adams
humor, love, social-media, game-theory, computation

Haku Blowing on a Dandelion

I love this creative use of space and form! Spirited Away is also one of my favorite films, and was my first foray into anime as a child. I have a distinct memory of seeing the movie with my father and eating seasoned curly fries.

Chihiro == Lilo

voices of Chihiro Ogino in the English dub of the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away, and Lilo Pelekai in the Disney animated feature film Lilo & Stitch (View Highlight)
,   &  Bram Adams
anime, tv, social-media

Will TikTok Make People Perform as Hard as Instagram Did?

We hire social media to create a virtual representation of the life we want to live, but never actually live it.

I wonder if this is as true in the TikTok era as it was in the Instagram era. It seems that TikTok has much less "self seriousness" than Twitter and Instagram did -- there's less on the line due to the silly meme based culture?[1] Weirdly, influencers on TikTok are less household names than YouTube and Twitch who are already niche. What happened to all those hype houses?

Unfortunately, all the cars/flashy houses/flaunting went to the crypto boys, and hype houses couldn't keep up with TikTok's awful creator payment plan.

There’s a phrase going around that you should “buy experiences, not things.” People, it’s claimed, think that having a lot of stuff is what’s going to make them happy. But they’re mistaken. A Lamborghini may be fun to drive for the first days or weeks, but pretty soon it fades into the background of your life. The drive to accumulate stuff is an evolutionary relic that no longer fits our modern situation. Better to embrace minimalism and focus on immaterial things like experiences, whose memories you can treasure forever.
While I appreciate the Stoic-style appraisal of what really brings happiness, economically, this analysis seems precisely backward. It amounts to saying that in an age of industrialization and globalism, when material goods are cheaper than ever, we should avoid partaking of this abundance. Instead, we should consume services afflicted by Baumol’s cost disease, taking long vacations and getting expensive haircuts which are just as hard to produce as ever. (View Highlight)
Admit it, you’re not really traveling because you want to visit every corner of the world. You’re doing it because all of your friends have the unrealistic goal of traveling the whole world.

TikTok has other problems like promoting fake tics and self victimization for pity engagement ↩︎

,   &  Bram Adams
social-media, tiktok

LinkTree

Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.December 18, 2022

This is probably the fastest I've seen a public user base revolt in unison against a proposed feature. This feature got clowned on so hard it was rolled back before it even went live.

Broadly, I think any social media site gives itself too much credit if it wouldn't expect users to point to their other presences across the web (short sighted as well). People use social media for ego purposes first and foremost, so a winning social media would realize their site is only as useful as it can advertise its users.

,   &  Bram Adams
social-media

Elon Passes the Likability Limit

When people become too successful, they often downplay their success in order to remain in good standing with those from whom they desire approval. This is what is happening with Elon Musk and his Twitter takeover, and it is a reminder of the 'Great Filter' for intelligent life to emerge.

There is a “likability limit” that people like to remain under: Everybody has a level of “success” that they perceive to be admirable—and unthreatening to others. Most things people do are in an effort to “earn” love. Many desires, dreams, and ambitions are built out of a space of severe lack. It’s for this reason that some of the most emotionally dense people are also the most successful: They use their desire for acceptance, love, wholeness, as fuel—for better and for worse. The point is: Once people surpass the point at which they think people will judge and ridicule them for their success (as opposed to praise them for it), they promptly cut themselves off, or at minimum severely downplay/minimize it so as to keep themselves in good standing with those from whom they desire approval. (It’s ultimately not that people value ego and material over love, but that they think those things will earn them love.) (Location 558)

We're seeing this happen in real time with Elon Musk and his Twitter takeover. He went from space and electric car company geekboi to Bond villain in the eyes of the people because he accrued too much power.[1]

It reminds me of the Great Filter (but for popularity):

…we likely are not a "progenitor" civilization in the universe if we only consider planets formation. We might not see anyone out there either because there's a great filter for intelligent life to emerge (so the bottleneck is in our past) or because few/no civilizations get to have an impact on their host stars (the filter is in our future) that would allow us to see them. (View Highlight)

I've always been under the impression that anyone's audience will eventually end up cannibalizing the leader. It's the circle of life (influence). e.g. the tall poppy gets cut.

Tweets From Others

Either die a hero or live long enough to be banned from soccer games for clout chasing a 2017 meme too hard:

  1. aside: people on twitter take that dumb website too seriously, it is not a town square or free speech, its a text serving ad company, calm the eff down

,   &  Bram Adams
social-media, twitter

You Don't Want What You Think You Want

We want to get into the mind of our prospect. What do they really want? It’s rarely the thing you are selling; it’s usually the result of the thing you are selling. The difference may seem subtle, but it’s huge. For (Location 726)

We don't want to use social media like YouTube and Twitter -- we like the status or potential route for income they provide. As a website owner, I spend a lot of effort trying to convey this to others, that long term gains can never be truly realized until the source of why you want to create is unearthed.

Another example from a different sphere:

  1. I want to go to this nice new bar in town, that has a $60 cover
  2. (subtext) I want to go to an exclusive club
  3. (subtext x 2) I want to be a person who feels wealthy enough to go to a $60 cover club
  4. (subtext x 3) I want to signal that I belong in a place like this by dressing up
  5. (subtext x 4) I want to fit in with people I want to be around
  6. (subtext x 5) I want to be loved
A quote often attributed to Henry Ford puts it well: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” (Location 874)

^d533e6

Each one has different thoughts and feelings; each one has a different point of view. The programming in the mind — all of those agreements we have made — are not necessarily compatible with each other. Every agreement is like a separate living being; it has its own personality and its own voice. There are conflicting agreements that go against other agreements and on and on until it becomes a big war in the mind. The mitote is the reason humans hardly know what they want, how they want it, or when they want it. They don’t agree with themselves because there are parts of the mind that want one thing, and other parts that want exactly the opposite. (Location 488)
,   &  Bram Adams
marketing, content-creation, deep-life, social-media

Is Obsidian Publish a Good Venue? Is Twitter?

…law of remarkability. This law says that for a project to transform a mission into a success, it should be remarkable in two ways. First, it must literally compel people to remark about it. Second, it must be launched in a venue conducive to such remarking. (Location 2178)

Im conflicted as to whether or not Obsidian Publish is a remarkable venue.

It's Not Intuitive

I wouldn't go so far to argue that the UX of Publish is unintuitive, but it is foreign to many other websites. Certain UX choices (large gutters, too much emphasis on graph view) don't utilize some of the more traditional design affordances of the web.

All Girls YouTubers Are the Same

Unfortunately, these common affordances squash the total creative space, and causes people to "perform" on the Internet in a similar way schoolchildren learn to "perform" to their peers.

No Social Proof

On social media, everything is viewed through the lens of social proof. Check marks, followers, likes, etc all serve the same purpose. The are signifiers that others found it useful. Unfortunately this social proof is a double edged sword as it obviously leads to justified belief and bad actors, or worse, blind trust in anyone who's verified.

This also creates a tragedy of the commons performance stage where everyone unintentionally becomes the same person as a product (PaaP)

On Publish due to the lack of comments I feel much more comfortable being weird and saying things. I think this is a good thing for the longevity of my ideas but bad for marketability (initially)

End of the day, I'd rather be linked to as source material than commented on like a product that has a star review system.

Note: social proof is a form of justified belief which is not equivalent to truth. Belief can only be justified by other beliefs, which in turn need to be justified. This creates an infinite loop of "it is because it is"

HERMES: Congratulations, Socrates, on your epistemological wisdom. The knowledge that you seek – objective knowledge – is hard to come by, but attainable. That mental state that you do not seek – justified belief – is sought by many people, especially priests and philosophers. But, in truth, beliefs cannot be justified, except in relation to other beliefs, and even then only fallibly. So the quest for their justification can lead only to an infinite regress – each step of which would itself be subject to error. (Location 3893)

It's Still the Internet

At the end of the day, the internet is a venue. The fact you are reading this right now makes it a publicly accessible platform. Very much like the early ARPAnet/CSnet days, links are relied on heavily to disseminate information broadly.

Because larger hubs can recurse or point to each other or smaller hubs in an undirected way, the internet has a fractal like shape. In theory, with the right set of links, any place on the Internet is reachable from any other.

the Internet as the VAX strategy writ large: a “fractal” network of networks that would be self-similar from the scale of the planet down to the scale of a microchip. (Location 11766)
,   &  Bram Adams
content-creation, social-media