For decades going back at least to World War II, Americans met their wives and husbands through their friends. Since the rise of online dating about a decade ago, that’s no longer the case. This was presented as a good thing by the dating services, Serena Smith writes: “Your dating pool was no longer limited to random acquaintances. . . . It sounded liberating; it was supposed to make it easier for people to find the ‘right’ partner.”

But, she continues,

as most dating app users will know by now, the paradox of choice can be stultifying, especially as these apps hardly allow us to engage meaningfully with the essentially infinite number of strangers we’re presented with.

The result?

Essentially, as a result of the growth of dating apps, rising atomization, and the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, norms have shifted, which has resulted in many young people feeling squeamish about dating friends or friends-of-friends despite this being common practice for older generations.

One 22-year-old woman discussed in the story “explains that she would never swipe right on someone in her social circle” on the grounds that “I don’t know if it’s healthy to have so many friends in common.”

Smith concludes:

Break-ups are always difficult, but break-ups within a friendship group are evidently even more painful. For many Gen Z, it doesn’t even bear thinking about. But by totally writing off people within our social circles, we’re potentially missing out on happy, lengthy, and fulfilling relationships. . . .

Stephen Daisley writes about the slaying of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim:

Yaron and Sarah were murdered in a climate of lies and vilification and hatred. . . . The more institutions participate in this collective madness, the more madness there will be. The more elected officials and NGOs misrepresent the predictable consequences of asymmetric warfare in densely populated territories, where much of the infrastructure of everyday life has a dual civilian/terrorist purpose, the more the citizenries of North America and Europe will come to regard Israelis and Jews as a people who lust unquenchably after blood.

The most intolerant anti-Zionism is becoming a mainstream view, indulged by liberal societies, more concerned with not conflating irrational hatred of Israel with irrational hatred of Jews—as though the distinction between the two is all that well defined anymore.

For years now, and especially after the October 7 massacre, the call has gone up from the pro-Palestinian movement to put Palestine at the heart of Western politics. To pursue the struggle against Zionism in every country, on every platform, and in every setting. To wage worldwide resistance to Israel, not only in Wadi al-Far’a but in Washington, DC. “Globalize the intifada,” they chanted. This is what it looks like.