That's true if the only alternative to hooking up with randoms in a bar is staying home.
Same as, until the Jet Age, the only alternative to risky world travel by land and sea was to stay home.. and then we invented jet airliners, which made travel multiple orders of magnitude safer than the Age of Sail.
I'm a neutral observer on this tbh, never had anything against bar culture at the time, but if you were a 19yr old weighing up your options today, online dating looks like the same potential reward without all sorts of down sides. Not just the personal safety stuff, but as a guy not having to run the gauntlet of approaching women and getting shot down (no big deal really, but cultural shifts now frown upon asking at all, whereas it used to be more a case of.. ask away, the important thing was to respect it if you got told no).
The flip side is that online dating results in a much more publicly conservative culture, where even merely flirting is at risk of being reframed as sexual misconduct, people have thinner skins and lower tolerance generally because they've never had to develop a thick skin, it takes some of the beautiful chaos out of the world.. people didn't go about the place constantly looking to hook up (well, maybe some did) but the very possibility added something to the atmosphere, even if the probability was low.
And on the subject of beautiful chaos. Take a look at video footage from major rock, pop and dance concerts/festivals from 2000 ish and today. Watch the crowds, look at their facial expressions, energy level, state of mind.
Same as, until the Jet Age, the only alternative to risky world travel by land and sea was to stay home.. and then we invented jet airliners, which made travel multiple orders of magnitude safer than the Age of Sail.
I'm a neutral observer on this tbh, never had anything against bar culture at the time, but if you were a 19yr old weighing up your options today, online dating looks like the same potential reward without all sorts of down sides. Not just the personal safety stuff, but as a guy not having to run the gauntlet of approaching women and getting shot down (no big deal really, but cultural shifts now frown upon asking at all, whereas it used to be more a case of.. ask away, the important thing was to respect it if you got told no).
The flip side is that online dating results in a much more publicly conservative culture, where even merely flirting is at risk of being reframed as sexual misconduct, people have thinner skins and lower tolerance generally because they've never had to develop a thick skin, it takes some of the beautiful chaos out of the world.. people didn't go about the place constantly looking to hook up (well, maybe some did) but the very possibility added something to the atmosphere, even if the probability was low.
And on the subject of beautiful chaos. Take a look at video footage from major rock, pop and dance concerts/festivals from 2000 ish and today. Watch the crowds, look at their facial expressions, energy level, state of mind.
Something is up with that, right?