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.
Make the men moderate each other’s first messages. You need 3 out of five thumbs up before that first message even goes through. You have to rate five messages before you can try to send one. Make them see how many fucking weirdos there are and hopefully make them behave a little better to begin with by being self conscious about what five other dudes are gonna see. You want five other dudes to see your dick pic on the off chance 3/5 will upvote it? Good fucking luck. Don’t listen to me I just worked for a week in a hospital without running water my brain is a smoothie.
I really miss the quizzes though. You could also make it so that you can limit your visibility to a threshold of question matching. I reconnected with the guy thought was cool in group therapy a year later when we were both doing much better because we were a 98% match. I didn’t pursue it at the time because meeting a partner in group therapy is a terrible idea particularly because you’re that fresh into recovery but it kind of vaguely felt like a missed connection. Turns out it was because we’re the same fucking person. A year later we were both doing much better and I get this message on OKC like “weird question - did we meet at (the fucking psych hospital we did outpatient at)” and he’s probably the only person in the history of ever that that line would ever work for. Thanks OKC!
Also: and I say this as a crazy bitch who just got into gnosticism / esoteric Christianity, you need to include star signs. Idgaf if you think it’s fake or not (I myself am mostly in it for the cool rocks) but its already been said in this comment chain that attracting female users is gonna be rough. You need to be willing to meet people where they’re at (this also includes UI btw my female friends think a lot of fedi looks sketchy and don’t wanna be putting their photos in it). I’ve been able to make so many more female friends now that I know what my ascendant is and I’m not sure I even put the right birth time in so there’s a good chance it’s not even my real one. Its like saying you’re a packers fan or your favorite Linux distro. It’s a short set of words that quickly identify ingroups and outgroups and provides a noncommitally vague description of your personality. Just get off your high horse and roll with it we’re trying to get you laid here.
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.