If you are a paesant in USA/Europe from 200 years ago (or even 100 years ago), then you are very very likely to spend basically all your life in your home town, and your dating pool is restriced to a few dozens of people you know in person. Also is not uncommon for your parents to basically arrange your marriage themselves. The dating experience of my grand-grandmother (born 1899) was:
your suitor talks to you a few times while you are walking back home from church
your uncle closely follows you both to ensure nothing scandalous happen
you are married shortly after (then you can start, you know, actually touching your husband)
Of course, the situation was different 50 years ago, but even then, your dating pool was mostly limited to the Dunbar-sized group of people you knew in person. Imagine to be in 1970 Wyoming. Maybe your perfect soulmate lives just a few miles apart in another town, but you have no reliable way to search them. And if your perfect soulmate lives in France (for some reason), you are not going to meet them full stop.
Well, the internet, obviously. I’ve been so used to thinking of it as a good thing, and earning a comfortable living from it, but now it feels more and more like lead pipes in the Roman Empire.
On reflection, this post seems subtly but deeply deranged, assuming this is true:
If that’s true, then all this stuff is besides the point, and the question is what changed.
If you are a paesant in USA/Europe from 200 years ago (or even 100 years ago), then you are very very likely to spend basically all your life in your home town, and your dating pool is restriced to a few dozens of people you know in person. Also is not uncommon for your parents to basically arrange your marriage themselves. The dating experience of my grand-grandmother (born 1899) was:
your suitor talks to you a few times while you are walking back home from church
your uncle closely follows you both to ensure nothing scandalous happen
you are married shortly after (then you can start, you know, actually touching your husband)
Of course, the situation was different 50 years ago, but even then, your dating pool was mostly limited to the Dunbar-sized group of people you knew in person. Imagine to be in 1970 Wyoming. Maybe your perfect soulmate lives just a few miles apart in another town, but you have no reliable way to search them. And if your perfect soulmate lives in France (for some reason), you are not going to meet them full stop.
Well, the internet, obviously. I’ve been so used to thinking of it as a good thing, and earning a comfortable living from it, but now it feels more and more like lead pipes in the Roman Empire.