You're 40. Unless you're also dating 30 and below, it's very possible you've completely missed the generation that started dating on social media, dating apps once they went mainstream (although I started on sparkmatch!), and texted constantly in the getting to know you phase.
I hate to be the one to break it to you mate but being overly concerned with superficial and material things isn't some new phenomenon created by smart phones or social media.
Great, you're arguing against your own point from earlier. Except, yes, people seem even MORE superficial when they know their partner choice is going to be blasted to everyone they have ever known.
Superficial/materialistic people existed before smart phones existed. Then, just as now, the key is to avoid dating people who care more about what you have than who you are.
To be honest, you sound a lot like the retired old white boys who move to Thailand, use their relative wealth to attract a young woman, and then spend the next 30 years complaining to anyone who will listen how "Thai women are only interested in your wallet".
Edit: to clarify a point I think maybe you misunderstood in my original comment:
When I said it's astounding and depressing, I was referring to the idea that someone essentially my own age hasn't yet learnt/accepted that there are people in the world who will like you for you, regardless of what you have, be it money, a car, or a particular brand of phone.
I'm not complaining about anything. I'm just describing what I see. Maybe it's because I'm in California and they're simply heavily skewed towards a certain style..
You're saying materialistic women always existed. Sure. And I'm arguing the women raised under social media are even more materialistic about visible things than women 20-30 years ago. If you don't think that a girls entire lifelong social circle being able to see glimpses into her and her bfs financial expenditures (cars, restaurant quality, vacations, clothes) and their quality and frequency of purchase makes women more image conscious, then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I think women care more about indicators of casual spending ability than they ever did, and the wrong color texting dot is an easy constant reminder of "this guy is a bit cheap" to them.
I do just fine playing the cheap guy. Thank God I'm tall and ok looking. I drive a 2001 Silverado 4x4 Single Cab short bed on dates, and a Chevy volt day to day. They love the truck. They don't love the android. My Google pixel 4xl cost about half of what an iPhone did. My truck now costs $7k maybe since it's nice still. A new bmw costs $45-60k. So it's not just pure money.
I think in their mind using an android is like driving an old BORING car. It's not the cheapness or age, it's mostly the boring. They're probably wondering why I don't want to just fit in and have something nicer since it only costs $500 extra vs an android (even if that's not true always).
Agreed. Making your users appear obnoxious to adjacent non-users is a marketing strategy that only works if you're Apple-sized, and being Apple-sized is a new phenomenon.
To be fair, based on the comments here Android users seem to be pretty good at being obnoxious all on their own. Like the one guy who swears up and down iMessage creates incels.
Yeah, but that guy is going above and beyond. Even just using iMessage as intended with a group of Android users causes you to inject superfluous noise into the chat.
The whole point of having reactions as a separate thing from messages is that they don't distract from the conversation. Sending "X Liked: 'Y'" to every Android user for every iMessage user who likes something makes the iPeople look like a bunch of buffoons who don't know how to read the room and want everybody to know that they have an iPhone, when actually they're just trying to communicate.
Apple is savvy enough to have avoided that situation if they wanted to, so you gotta conclude that it's part of the plan.
Neither Apple nor Google have a vested interest in providing a good experience with SMS/MMS/RCS. Google leadership failed to create a popular messaging platform so now they're trying to compete with FUD.
For instance, tapbacks (from Android users even) come through as foo liked bar on Google Voice. You gotta conclude that it's part of the plan.
