Nobody who uses a dating app is happy with their romantic life.

As someone who swam through the digital sea in a big city, I can say that the swipe economy encouraged me to become the opposite of someone worth sacrificing for. 78% percent of dating app users have experienced relationship burnout, and the ones who stick around are burning nearly an hour a day for a payoff that rarely results in a fulfilling, lasting relationship.

Every year, we celebrate a declaration of independence from a distant crown, but independence from something only tells half the story. How different would America look today if we focused on the other half: independence for something?

The disposability in the creation process becomes disposability in how we treat what we own. We know they won't last long, so we don't invest in them. Poorly made products create careless owners, and careless owners accept poorly made products.

For most of human history, men understood that one's appearance communicates something about his vocation, status, and respect for the people around him. None of these men would have understood the modern claim that "real men don't care how they look."