Part of the reason I struggle to start writing posts is that I’m sat here looking at a blank title wondering what the post is going to be about, and even if I know that, what I should call it. So instead I’ve just started writing in I guess what you would call a stream of consciousness. It’s 00:55 and the reason I’m awake is that I decided to stop killing time watching TV at 8:45 and meditate for an hour instead. Meditation is a good thing but the result of doing that in the evening (which I used to do a lot but seem to mostly do it earlier in the day now) this time is that my brain has become quite active in the headspace generated by doing that. This used to happen to me for the first couple of nights whenever I went cold turkey from Facebook. Since getting a smartphone in Nov 2019 my Facebook addiction has spread to a more general device addiction, some of the worst elements of which have included a Scrabble app, and more recently Tinder. Watching Neflix even became part of it, and little while ago I stopped watching TV for about 6 weeks (which is when Tinder became a serious problem). It’s become obvious that the primary goal of Tinder is not to help you meet someone, but to keep you using Tinder. Not that I really want to meet anyone at the moment, swiping is just an outlet for my addiction. I’ve also become aware that Tinder, OK Cupid and Plenty of Fish are all owned by Match.com which makes more sense of why OK Cupid has changed to have a swiping element to it that you have to match with someone before you can message them. It seems like, just like Facebook seems to have made it increasingly hard over the years to use it to actually communicate with people, dating sites seem to be making it increasingly hard to actually get to the point of going on a date. I get that there’s an issue with people (especially women) getting lots of messages from people they are not interested in, but I’m sure there’s more than one way to solve that problem. I’ve used OK Cupid quite a bit over several years and before they changed it so you had to match with people, I had quite a few good chats, and during periods where I was putting effort in, went on dates. The way it works now just seems like a far more frustrating experience. As one of my friends said to me recently maybe it’s time to “go analogue”. He’d recently starting seeing someone he met IRL when he said that, so may be slightly biased, but I’m increasingly thinking he’s right.
As I might have said on here before, apparently the more you write a blog the better your writing becomes. The only way is up haha. Maybe my next post will be more structured and coherent.