Dollar Tree.
It used to have been an unreal experience witnessing the existence of these stores when they came out. Everything for a $1. No joke. The quality of some things have had corners cut and the quantity might’ve been laughable, but there was a good solid purpose for these stores.
And then I started seeing the signs after a few good solid years of shopping there. The first sign was how they stopped selling eggs. This was before the Bird Flu. They stopped selling eggs because they simply couldn’t afford to buy stock and then the price hike to $1.25 happened.
And now they’ve hiked the prices again to $1.50 for some products in a handful of stores. Additionally, they’ve incorporated items going from $2 ~ $15 so they have long lost the role and title of being the most affordable places to shop.
Gone were the days.
Unless it is a dating platform for tech savvy gay/bi men specifically, it would also have to solve the problem of even lower numbers of women who are users. Even non-fed dating platforms struggle to reach a 10:1, men:women ratio of active, non-bot users.
As a woman (just have to phrase it that way), good luck to any who try. Personally, I can’t think of anything that would entice me to sign up for a federated dating platform.
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You have way more faith in humanity than I do. I think after 1-2 and the novelty wears off, a lot of people would just thumbs up without reading.
And even if people stay diligent in rating first comments, it will take 0.2 seconds for bad actors to realize they can just save their bullshit for message #2.
What do you think about vetting to make a profile, or having a chat that exists for the folks that have matched or spoken with a guy in the past?
Peer vetting? So one has to take on an unpaid part time job to get on the dating platform?
And men vetted by peer men? The ones who are a sampling that will absolutely include some of the toxic online variety we are all trying to avoid?
I simply think initial vetting will never be enough. People aren’t dumb, they are able to behave until they have someone alone before showing their true colors. My real skepticism is that any Fediverse platform would have strong controls to identify and actually block bad people. Mainstream dating platforms have processes to deal with stalkers and sexual assaulters, they permanently block people from the platform and contact local law enforcement at times. A federated dating platform would have none of those things, unless they’re attached to a major corporation like Threads is to Facebook, which would defeat the purpose.
I don’t hate this.