Trae (Trey) Stephens

What are the options?

And it's like paralysis by analysis.

People are like, oh, there's always more fish in the sea.

I can always go on more dates.

There's always more people out there that I need to meet before I settle down.

And what's ended up happening on these online dating apps is that a tiny percentage, I'll speak specifically about men, a tiny percentage of men

get the majority, the vast majority even, 80 plus percent of matches go to like a tiny percentage of generally like over six foot two, very physically attractive.

It's hard to convey personality traits in a way that would have mattered in local communities.

And the sadder part about this is that the bottom 50% of men on dating apps get literally zero matches.

No shit.

Zero.

There's no matching that's happening.

And I think ultimately what that leads to is that you have all these people that are unsatisfied in their jobs, unsatisfied in their relational life, and they become the powder keg of civilization.

You kind of create...

a class of incels that feels like they don't fit in.

And I think we as a technology community have to take some ownership for this reality that we've given a whole chunk of society tools to enable these behaviors that lead to them being unhappy.

And I think AI companions are like that in a supercharged way, where now it's like, oh, I don't need to go through the stresses and difficulties of relationship.

I can just have a companion that's always there, that will never say anything negative.

It's just going to be my own little world, and they're going to validate what I say.

And sometimes the things that they validate end up being violent, whether it's suicide in the worst cases or school shootings or whatever else.