If @ElonMusk wants to raise birthrates, he should purchase Match Group, the company that controls Tinder and Hinge—over half of the online dating market. No company comes close to Match Group’s chokehold on modern love. And, as you’ll discover, no company is as shockingly evil.… pic.twitter.com/TKqCIVehsO

— Daniel Schmidt (@realdschmidt) October 9, 2024

If @elonmusk

wants to raise birthrates, he should purchase Match Group, the company that controls Tinder and Hinge—over half of the online dating market. No company comes close to Match Group's chokehold on modern love. And, as you'll discover, no company is as shockingly evil.

I first encountered Match Group three years ago when I began college. I was horny... but I didn't want to hook up with random girls so I downloaded Hinge. I went on a few dates. There was one girl that I really started to like. Then I woke up one morning and was suddenly banned.

Did you know you can get banned on Hinge if just one woman reports you for whatever reason she wants? Maybe she didn't like your bio. Or maybe your ex found you. And if you do get banned, did you know the app sends an email to every woman you matched with? Good luck!

You think you can outsmart the system and create a new account? That will require a new phone and a new phone number. You will also need to use a different name and birthday on your account and create the account from a different Wi-Fi and GPS location. You need entirely new photos as well. And that will probably still not work because the apps likely use facial recognition and will detect you. Whatever technology you think these apps have, they're far beyond that.

I've learned all of this because of a subreddit called /r/SwipeHelper. The entire purpose of the community is to help men get unbanned from Hinge and Tinder. There are 34,000 members.

But hard bans are not even the worst thing Match Group does. Those bans are quite generous, actually, as they at least prevent men from purchasing subscriptions or boosts. Indeed, there is a much more subtle punishment in the form of a shadow ban, which throttles the visibility of a man's account and pushes him to spend money in hopes of being seen by women. Here is where the true dystopia begins.

Eleven days ago, someone claiming to have worked in quality assurance for various dating apps wrote a post on /r/SwipeHelper. Their post went into great detail about their work and aligns precisely with what many people have observed for years, so I'm inclined to believe it. I'll link to it in a comment below.

This person says their job was to handle reports about users and decide a punishment. They note that one of the most common reports women make about men is "I just don't like him."

The insider writes: "If you get too many of these types of reports, you will get a temp shadow ban and go on a 'Probation Period' where your profile is not shown to regular members, while you can still see everybody just fine. Any likes you send will never be received by the other member."

The person adds that whether someone gets hard-banned or shadow-banned depends on whether someone is a "repeat offender." If someone has received several reports, they'll more likely get shadow-banned to waste their time and make them think they can still use the app.

It is in this state that men feel worthless. Weeks pass, and they receive zero messages, zero likes, and zero matches. They become desperate and start purchasing boosts and subscriptions.

How much money does Match Group, with a market cap of $9.7 billion, earn from shadow-banning men? Would it surprise you if shadow bans were one of the primary ways—if not the primary way—the company makes a profit? Is this even legal?

Match Group has a direct incentive to make it impossible for men to find love. You can say these men should meet women in person, but do they even have the confidence to do that now? If they get literally zero matches on a dating app, what makes them think they'll be successful in real life? How many give up outright?

A billionaire like Elon could purchase a majority stake in Match Group for less than $5 billion. The first step? Make the algorithm public. Show everyone how these apps have been manipulating them and profiting from it. Explore criminal charges for those responsible.

The rest is simple: eliminate shadow banning, offer amnesty to banned users, and make the algorithm fair. That alone would lead to countless new relationships.

Online dating is the future. Our society has become far too atomized and distrustful for in-person meetups to ever have a renaissance. Men fear face-to-face rejection; women fear "creeps." Media indoctrination has ensured these dynamics are here to stay. Trying to overcome them is futile.

What can be overthrown, however, are the malicious people who currently control dating apps—people who happily demoralize and deprive men of love if it means more profit. Sure, someone like Elon could start an alternative company and face all the obstacles of creating new infrastructure and obtaining new users. Or he could take control of what already exists, as he did with 𝕏.

Let dating apps serve society. The future awaits.

SM2 got an update with a new map and some balance changes. It includes these nerfs to player strength.

>Ruthless: Ammo crates have limited refills per player.

>Ruthless: Player's armour reduced by 20%.

>Substantial: Player's armour reduced by 10%

>Fencing weapons' perfect parry window will now have the same duration as balanced weapons but it will start from the first frame of parry animation

>Basic Auspex Scan: bonus damage on bosses is reduced by 30%.

>Melta Charge: damage to bosses is reduced by 70%.

The most significant change is that last one, basically what it means that you can no longer 1-shot bosses using a melta bomb and the auspex scan.

These changes seem pretty minor right? WRONG.

Wow, so no changes or improvements to Bolt weapons. But we are seeing the tried and true way of balancing a la Helldivers. The overall player experience is getting a downgrade via nerfs.And I love the reasoning given -> "Chaos operations aren't popular but we think they are too easy, so we made them harder".

"Overall player experience is getting a nerf" you wouldn't even notice these changes if they weren't listed you little cute twink. "Chaos operations aren't popular but we think they are too easy, so we made them harder" yes they thought chaos was too hard so they nerfed them but they realised they overdid it so they made them stronger again its called balancing you FRICKING R-SLUR.

All the nerfs to players completely doused my excitement for the update.

Bros...I can no longer mindlessly spam parry and 1-shot carnifexes...the imperium has fallen...trillions must die

Sorry but these nerfs on the player are too far. Limiting armour, fencing AND ammo all at once?! You've gone from one extreme to the other…

This is what all the whinging about the game being stupid because it was too easy after the last patch did

"Wow based devs listening to the players!"

"NO NOT LIKE THAT!"

Oh boy… they are doing a helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 and it's consequences have been a disaster for the g*mer race.

git gud

Shut the frick up. This is Warhammer, not Dark Souls.

Go suck Miyazakis peepee else where we want to have fun.

And here we have my most hated type of response.

>I would like the game to be challenging on the highest difficulty

>UM, this isn't dark souls you fricking SWEATY INCEL. Some of us G*MER DADS just want to have FUN

I FRICKING HATE this game's community and hope all these shitters leave so the devs stop listening to them and let people with triple digit IQs actually enjoy the game.

look at this cute r-slur oml !anime

we aint notifying followers with this one lmao

Article here discussing this:

While cleaning out the freezer of their late matriarch, one family discovered a little (and debatably edible) piece of history.

In late September, Reddit user Andy Wiseman posted in the subreddit /r/mildlyinteresting that his family found something curious while cleaning out the apartment of his recently deceased grandmother Phyllis Nicholas Porter: an 84-year-old biscuit.

The photo in the now-viral post shows a normal-looking biscuit sitting below a piece of paper that reads: "Biscuit made by Mrs. Dora L Chambers in August 1940 at the Blankenship home."

Which means, if the note is accurate, the biscuit was created during World War II, and that it was baked before the polio vaccine, color television and the Slinky came into existence.

"We were just dumbfounded because the names aren't familiar to us either," Wiseman tells TODAY.com. "So, it was like this mystery, and it became this search we had."

He says that his family, who live in the Staunton, Virginia area, contacted his grandmother's last remaining sister to inquire about the names in the note, and she revealed who actually made the biscuit: the grandmother-in-law of his great-uncle Harold.

"My grandmother's sister found Dora Chambers' death notice or obituary, and it was dated 1940," he says. "So we believe that my great-uncle's first wife would have saved her grandmother's last biscuit."

Wiseman says that his grandmother, who loved to throw pizza nights on the first Monday of every month, must have held on to the biscuit for one simple reason: nostalgia.

"My great-uncle and his first wife would have had it at their house in the freezer forever," he says, adding that he later remarried and never had children so his grandmother became the executor of the estate 10 years ago. "My grandmother, for whatever reason, decided to keep the biscuit for the past 10 years."

He was "very close" to his grandmother, so he understands the desire to hold on to something made by a loved one. In fact, the family is continuing the tradition: The biscuit is still sitting pretty in his parents' freezer.

In the comments section of the post, Redditors replied with jokes about the surprising discovery and their own experiences with old food found in the homes of loved ones.

"Put that back in the freezer," commented one Redditor. "It will be valuable to archaeologists."

"Please tell me you tasted it!" wrote another, while others noticed a "bite mark on the side" — perhaps someone in 1977 "had the munchies" after an Electric Light Orchestra concert.

"This reminds me that for years my grandpa kept a microwaveable macaroni that I overcooked because it looked like a hockey puck lol," commented someone else.

"I have a pie in my freezer my mom made 11 years ago," wrote another Reddit user. "She passed 8.5 yrs ago but had a tough battle with cancer so that was one of the last things she baked. Just can't throw it away."

Wiseman says the most common question he has been asked, by far, is if he plans on eating the biscuit — even just tasting a little piece.

"None of us are interested at all in doing that," he says with a laugh. "It smells like freezer, like, the deepest ice you can smell."

!goyslopenjoyers you eat the biscuit? Reddit thread:

https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1fnxjc4/found_an_84_year_old_biscuit_in_my_grandmothers/

We love Chloe. We miss her too. But this game is about moving forward, and we invite you all to take that step with Max... and with us.

— Mallory Littleton (@malmakesgames) October 17, 2024

gen 5 betadex

(long press, load in 4K) pic.twitter.com/100Rw88sL8

— Centro LEAKS (@CentroLeaks) October 17, 2024

Soooooooo much shit holy frick

Incredible things are happening in China pic.twitter.com/N9CoMTDZho

— Genghis Kanye 🦍☀️ (@MaoistGorilla) October 19, 2024

Hey !zoomers! Do you wanna play a cel shaded Gamecube game?

You do?

LET'S PLAY "CAVE EXPLORER"!

(^p sure that dragon guy tries to vore you btw^)

Literally this

Will it affect your employment prospects?

In Phuket and was pleasantly surprised to see a beach named after the 47th President of the United States

!khive !nonchuds

@vappy babe

https://tiktok.com/t/ZTF9uDnQu/

I think you handled it pretty well tbh

(OP): Thanks Autumn I thought so too

The amount of calmness over you all is insane! This is an actual emergency 🔥

Actually they aren't calm theyre oblivious

Why women shouldn't run a country three can't even spray a fire extinguisher into a box

Seriously this is the scary. These are "adults" that are supposed to be our future

Actually they aren't adults, they're women. And they should be living at home with their parents until they're married

BREAKING:

Thousands of Islamists gathered tonight in Hamburg to demand the introduction of Sharia law in Germany

🇩🇪 pic.twitter.com/GyGy9faakI

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 12, 2024

Before chudding out just remember, krauts deserve this and more

I built this house BLOCK BY BLOCK all for a loser to change it because he’s a mega loser pic.twitter.com/iPwih3BpTt

— amboo 👻 (@mbrleigh) October 16, 2024

Linked bottom comment go up the chain.

DramaZions really cannot stop sneeding even when they are winning the fight.

Imagine killing entire terrorist organizations and still coming out sounding like you are the ones who just took an L lmao.

No hard feelings @bobbyvilla I am sure you are a well behaved young man in real life. Sinwar died. You guys won. Stop taking life so hard. Maybe stop picking fights with half the middle east at once if you are feeling threatened by violence right now. Smaller bites to get through a big meal.

Adorable little israeli. Just wants to watch everybody else burn and die terrible deaths along with their families. Which good guy hasn't wanted that before? All of them do obviously. The Israeli's are obviously killing women and children in good faith. Meanwhile those evil Muslims are killing women and children in bad faith. Anybody who disagrees is on the wrong side of history. Heil Israel. Zionist salute.

Serious note:

Israel is stuck in an escalation treadmill where they won't quit until they have escalated to the point of death but the escalation guarantees that the conflict will rise to the point of a direct invasion of Israel. Israel's only choices are a complete victory where they destroy Iran because backing down isn't an option as per the Israeli governments actions. Or they get destroyed because they are already escalated past the point of no return in reply to HAMAS escalating things beyond the point of no return.

Long term effect. Iran is gong to get destroyed or Israel is going to get destroyed. Wildcard entry, the US stops providing support the Israel which is quite possibly never going to happen.

I am going to award the guy a confetti so that he doesn't feel bad. because now I feel bad about bullying the guy who just thinks he is on the right side of history so killing everybody's families is okay.

Have a good day dramatards. May you catch bait as good as mine.