Even NPR Agrees: Maybe the Culture of Fornication and the Atomization of Society Aren’t Such a Good Thing

In a pair of stories this evening, NPR wonders whether some of the secular left’s remaking of society has been such a good deal for most of us, and starts to sound almost like the church, or Mark Steyn.

From “In Twitter Rant, Tinder Blasts ‘Vanity Fair’ Article On New York Dating Culture”:

Nancy Jo Sales’ article devoted five thousand words to the modern dating culture spawned by Tinder and other similar apps. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

. . . The Vanity Fair story is titled “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse’”. What apocalypse are they talking about?

Well, the apocalypse is what Nancy Jo Sales, the writer for Vanity Fair, calls the unprecedented phenomenon taking place in the realm of sex. She compares it to the melting of the polar ice caps in some ways. . . . and in talking to dozens of young men and women, she clearly finds a culture in which physical interactions and sexual contact is almost entirely disentangled from romantic attachment—and she talks about it both in terms of the app culture in which you can just swipe away from somebody’s profile or picture that doesn’t appeal to you, and also a culture steeped in pornography; she feels that we’re in a time of emotional alienation, and that apps like Tinder, but not only Tinder, have really contributed to that.

From “Party Of 1: We Are Eating A Lot Of Meals Alone”:

Considering how much time we spend dating online, shopping online, pretty much everything else, we are increasingly—alone.

(Both are my own transcription; transcript not available from NPR as of this writing.)