Cultural Divides
One of my pandemic recreations has been to create profiles on some of the dating apps and then browsing the profiles of others. I'm honest about my temporary status in the Detroit area, and I've taken the trouble not to connect with a single person. It's less so I can find a date (in which I have no interest right now) and more a sociological experiment I can do while we're all under house arrest.
I did this in San Francisco for a few years, both looking in earnest to date and as a pandemic pastime. While viewing the dating profiles of single women in their 30's certainly offers a skewed perception on what kinds of people inhabit a given area, there are very clearly some broad patterns, and what emerges are stark differences between the cultures of the San Francisco Bay Area and the Detroit area.
To start with: I've come to learn that political differences really don't mean all that much to me. If I encounter someone who is a liberal or a conservative, I'm perfectly able to hold a conversation with either one. What I have found is that the important factor is not political persuasion, but how long it will take us to get on the same page, to a place where we can communicate without misunderstanding. There are some people where this is a simple task; you establish quickly and easily to one another where you stand on an issue, where you might differ, and you take it from there. There are others with whom it takes a great deal of trouble to figure out where the common ground is, and to negotiate a shared understanding through which we can communicate. Very often, it takes so much effort, relative to how much I might be able to learn from the other person, that it's better for both of us if we just scrap the conversation early on and talk about the whether instead. If I dodge a political conversation with someone, it's because I get a sense that it will take too much energy invested for too little payoff on my part. It's cost-benefit, and usually my concern is an epistemological one, not a political one.
There are a great many more conservative people in the Detroit area than in the Bay Area. This is completely to be expected. What I've found is that there's a subtle difference in how these viewpoints are expressed. Here they are, clustered by persuasion:
Liberal: NO TRUMP SUPPORTERS. If you voted for Trump, swipe left.
Conservative: No liberals. If you lean left swipe left. I'm interested in someone who loves this country, not someone who wants to detroy it.
There's a curious difference between the two perspectives above. Liberals always say "No Trump Supporters." I've never seen a single profile that said, "No conservatives." It is always Trump supporters, specifically.
On the conservative side, I've only ever come across one girl's profile that said specifically, "No Biden supporters". Most of them simply ask anyone who is politically liberal to pass.
I haven't kept an exact tally, but there are many more liberal profiles that say "No Trump supporters" than conservative profiles that include "No liberals." Quantitatively, there's more liberals with this fire in the belly, but the fact that conservatives dismiss all liberals, even though less common, qualitatively indicates a much broader form of political bigotry.
It's fascinating to me that, given a few hundred characters with which to describe yourself to potential dates, that there are actually people who use a significant number of them to pre-emptively disqualify people with a different political persuasion than they are. (This is anecdotal, but as far as I can tell this has greatly increased in the last 4 years; it seems that people are getting angrier.) This is a non-starter for me; anyone I encounter who talks at length in their dating profile about what they dislike about others, political or otherwise, is not a person I want to end up across from at a dinner table on a date. This is as good a filter as any; if they exhibit a negativity bias right up front, you have a pretty good sense of what they're all about before you even connect with them.
I did this in San Francisco for a few years, both looking in earnest to date and as a pandemic pastime. While viewing the dating profiles of single women in their 30's certainly offers a skewed perception on what kinds of people inhabit a given area, there are very clearly some broad patterns, and what emerges are stark differences between the cultures of the San Francisco Bay Area and the Detroit area.
To start with: I've come to learn that political differences really don't mean all that much to me. If I encounter someone who is a liberal or a conservative, I'm perfectly able to hold a conversation with either one. What I have found is that the important factor is not political persuasion, but how long it will take us to get on the same page, to a place where we can communicate without misunderstanding. There are some people where this is a simple task; you establish quickly and easily to one another where you stand on an issue, where you might differ, and you take it from there. There are others with whom it takes a great deal of trouble to figure out where the common ground is, and to negotiate a shared understanding through which we can communicate. Very often, it takes so much effort, relative to how much I might be able to learn from the other person, that it's better for both of us if we just scrap the conversation early on and talk about the whether instead. If I dodge a political conversation with someone, it's because I get a sense that it will take too much energy invested for too little payoff on my part. It's cost-benefit, and usually my concern is an epistemological one, not a political one.
There are a great many more conservative people in the Detroit area than in the Bay Area. This is completely to be expected. What I've found is that there's a subtle difference in how these viewpoints are expressed. Here they are, clustered by persuasion:
Liberal: NO TRUMP SUPPORTERS. If you voted for Trump, swipe left.
Conservative: No liberals. If you lean left swipe left. I'm interested in someone who loves this country, not someone who wants to detroy it.
There's a curious difference between the two perspectives above. Liberals always say "No Trump Supporters." I've never seen a single profile that said, "No conservatives." It is always Trump supporters, specifically.
On the conservative side, I've only ever come across one girl's profile that said specifically, "No Biden supporters". Most of them simply ask anyone who is politically liberal to pass.
I haven't kept an exact tally, but there are many more liberal profiles that say "No Trump supporters" than conservative profiles that include "No liberals." Quantitatively, there's more liberals with this fire in the belly, but the fact that conservatives dismiss all liberals, even though less common, qualitatively indicates a much broader form of political bigotry.
It's fascinating to me that, given a few hundred characters with which to describe yourself to potential dates, that there are actually people who use a significant number of them to pre-emptively disqualify people with a different political persuasion than they are. (This is anecdotal, but as far as I can tell this has greatly increased in the last 4 years; it seems that people are getting angrier.) This is a non-starter for me; anyone I encounter who talks at length in their dating profile about what they dislike about others, political or otherwise, is not a person I want to end up across from at a dinner table on a date. This is as good a filter as any; if they exhibit a negativity bias right up front, you have a pretty good sense of what they're all about before you even connect with them.