Dating culture in the first quarter of the 21st century is more about the journey than the destination. So long, of course, as someone else is behind the wheel. Whether it’s a road trip that veers off into a chainsaw-dense no man’s land or just a demolition derby, the entertainment value increases with the chaos, the humiliation, and our own distance from their consequences. Our culture is rife with shows about catfishing, ghosting, and romantic fraud. Personal essays extol the virtues of “heterofatalism,” and screenshots of dating app chat logs are clear breaches of ambiguous courting etiquette. We consume all of these things with the glee of Sadean aristocrats.
Every generation gets the dating culture it deserves. Ours is less debauched than it is disillusioned — we let our phones match people who never get what they want with people who never know what they want. Yet lately, a fatigue seems
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