Have you ever wondered why guys with fish in their profile photos are such a catch in the online dating scene? Join me as we cast our net into the deep and sometimes murky waters of digital romance. With Veronica and a colorful crew of panelists, including two Johns, Jeremy, Robert, and Joshua, we'll navigate through the art of profile crafting, the strange lure of those fish photos, and the quest for genuine human connections in an era where swiping right is the new courtship dance.
This isn't your typical heart-to-heart about love; it's a no-holds-barred conversation that fishes out the humor and absurdities in our modern quest for companionship. We're not just talking dating apps; we're taking a step back to reminisce about the days of community-focused matchmaking and how it compares to algorithmic encounters. In a world saturated with image-focused selections, we humorously toy with the idea of "Just Vespers," an app that's more about shared experiences than eternal promises. It's a session filled with laughs, a touch of nostalgia, and a candid look at how we present ourselves in the hopes of finding something real.
Wrapping up our rendezvous, we delve into the realm of dating intentions and how the digital profiles we craft are akin to placing an ad for a good ol' used car - you never know what you're going to get. Whether we're searching for life partners within specific cultural niches, like Orthodoxy, or just scrolling for a good time, this episode peels back the layers of what we're all truly seeking behind those screens. So tighten your seatbelt and tune in for a joy ride through the ups and downs of finding love, Orthodoxy style, in the digital age!
Found our YouTube channel yet?
https://www.youtube.com/@cloudofwitnessesradio
Thank you for journeying w/ the Saints with us!
Have you ever wondered why guys with fish in their profile photos are such a catch in the online dating scene? Join me as we cast our net into the deep and sometimes murky waters of digital romance. With Veronica and a colorful crew of panelists, including two Johns, Jeremy, Robert, and Joshua, we'll navigate through the art of profile crafting, the strange lure of those fish photos, and the quest for genuine human connections in an era where swiping right is the new courtship dance.
This isn't your typical heart-to-heart about love; it's a no-holds-barred conversation that fishes out the humor and absurdities in our modern quest for companionship. We're not just talking dating apps; we're taking a step back to reminisce about the days of community-focused matchmaking and how it compares to algorithmic encounters. In a world saturated with image-focused selections, we humorously toy with the idea of "Just Vespers," an app that's more about shared experiences than eternal promises. It's a session filled with laughs, a touch of nostalgia, and a candid look at how we present ourselves in the hopes of finding something real.
Wrapping up our rendezvous, we delve into the realm of dating intentions and how the digital profiles we craft are akin to placing an ad for a good ol' used car - you never know what you're going to get. Whether we're searching for life partners within specific cultural niches, like Orthodoxy, or just scrolling for a good time, this episode peels back the layers of what we're all truly seeking behind those screens. So tighten your seatbelt and tune in for a joy ride through the ups and downs of finding love, Orthodoxy style, in the digital age!
Found our YouTube channel yet?
https://www.youtube.com/@cloudofwitnessesradio
Thank you for journeying w/ the Saints with us!
Some of them have really well written bios and they just, they just make you laugh.
Speaker 2:What's funny is Veronica, you had said early on, you're like oh, there's no effort, Right? No? And my first one, I mean sometimes it's not easy writing those, those profiles you know, I mean more of like the swiping thing, Right?
Speaker 1:No, putting together your bio it's hard.
Speaker 4:I used to I used to pour my heart. I used to pour my heart into it and I would see the low levels of effort from other people and I'm just like man. Like am I just in the wrong place? Like you know, I'm just showing all my cards over here. I'm like the naive romantic guy over here.
Speaker 1:I really always wanted to know too, what is up with the fish pictures. I can't tell you how many guys pictures they have so many pictures of themselves holding fish.
Speaker 5:God of the Sun, the old, the spring being.
Speaker 6:I am not an atheist. I've never been, I've never. People are too afraid to believe that they have control over their own actions.
Speaker 2:Hi, this is Jeremy. Hi, I'm John. Hi, this is Robert.
Speaker 4:Hi, I'm Joshua. Hi, I'm John.
Speaker 1:And I'm Veronica.
Speaker 2:We've got two, john, so I think we should do this, as the bad guy is the other one. This is cloud of witnesses. Our new series, yes, but thank you so much for our panel today. This is going to be really exciting. We've got some great perspectives that are going to be had. Are you guys ready to have some fun?
Speaker 3:Excuse me, but you are absolutely beautiful and I would love to take you on a day's time.
Speaker 2:Oh, good song choice. Yeah, right, which believe it or not. John, I can see why you went there. I had the same thought.
Speaker 4:What was it?
Speaker 2:Interesting, and so it's every breath you take by the police, yeah, which I think famously is about and correct me if I'm wrong but something like you might say it's someone, like a guy, who's stalking somebody, or a lot. Yeah, and, and I'll just I'll start us off with this. This is my gut reaction. You have that song playing and it's so fitting because you think about it, right, when you're scrolling on your phone. You know, at home it is kind of like creeping on somebody in a strange way, right, I know it's so normalized now in our culture, but you're looking at pictures of people trying to decide if you like them or not. I think it was a great song choice, very powerful, short little piece.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so that that's scrolling and how you have to look at this person who's crammed themselves into this little box on the screen. They've been forced to commodify themselves and now you're looking at them as a commodity. So, speaking of objectification, it's just a medium. They completely lends itself to objectifying not only others, but yourself.
Speaker 6:Wow, yeah, exactly yeah. And what struck me too again, just a gut reaction here, but what struck me was that the at the second scene he is all by himself removed from the person right. He's not personally right present there, so he's removed and it's dark. He's all by himself and he's just selecting, you know, selecting on, you know on a whim or something. You know, whatever His is, his like is, but there's no personal interaction at all.
Speaker 3:Right Is that? Was it before and after? Or was it like a just position of two to two different interactions?
Speaker 2:Good question.
Speaker 3:It was two different.
Speaker 1:I feel I mean to me my interpretation, because I've actually seen this before in social media. I think he's because this guy makes videos kind of comparing how dating used to be.
Speaker 1:So I think it was like how it was, maybe like I don't know, 50, 60th years give a timeframe, and then kind of like what it is now to answer your question. But my reaction was it's just and this is kind of going off of what Joshua was saying but just like the lack of effort, like you're on a screen, you're just swiping, there's absolutely no effort really being put in. And you know, versus before, when you actually had to go out in public, you actually had to meet people and interact and you know, put out some effort, and now it's just not like that, yeah.
Speaker 3:I all true good statements so far the effort, the risk involved in talking to somebody else versus just, you know, opting in on your own time with little risk. I can't quote it right now if I'll stop my head, but Simon Sinek came to my work once and was talking about the current workforce that only that increasingly only interacts with people through the internet and social media like this, and he was talking about back back in the day. Right, you just have to go through the school of hard knocks, so to speak, of just talking to somebody else, and he used the example of asking somebody out on a date, getting rejected or whatever the case might be. Now, you only ever see who. I mean I've never used one of these these asked before, but I right, you only see the people you match with. You don't see all the people that don't match with you or something right. So it gives you a false sense of connection as well. You're not seeing all the failure.
Speaker 3:Anyway, it was an interesting application for, just beyond the dating scene, how else this affects even the modern sort of workplace beyond dating, yeah.
Speaker 5:My first gut reaction to dating apps, when I realized that it was a whole marketplace, was that it treated human beings like merchandise in a marketplace. And I realized that, or I noticed, that a lot of people, when they talk about the dating scene in the West, they throw around the term market oh the market, I'm on the market as though it's the same as being on LinkedIn and you're looking for a job, looking for work or you're ready to sell yourself and to use a very strong term. When people talk like that, the first thing that comes to my mind is you guys are talking about it as though you're talking about a prostitution rate. Oh, wow, to be really honest, not the biggest fan of the use of the term market. Do the same word back at you again.
Speaker 3:Well then, why is there such a market for dating apps?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Can I jump in here really quick? Please do, veronica. I kind of thought I think the reason is this generation people these days I feel like are just so. I mean, again, it's kind of going off of like low effort thing, but I feel like there's just like a laziness there where they really don't. You don't really have to have that level of commitment. You can just kind of browse, again going off the market thing. You can kind of just browse without actually really seriously having to commit. You can talk to girls, talk to guys and not actually make a true commitment or decision. You can kind of just look around and then it also kind of gives that illusion of options. Right, like you know, a lot of the times people can't commit now is because they say you know there's so many options out there. But it's kind of an illusion of options because it's like John says, a market.
Speaker 1:It's not really true options, it's just the illusion of it.
Speaker 5:Have you ever been to a Boba? Have you ever been to a Boba shop where there are just a ton of options, where every option it just sounds amazing, it sounds delicious. I go crazy, I go insane. I don't like going to those places because of that. I would rather it be just boiled down to at least four or five different options, to simplify it under an umbrella, and that's it. I don't like it when there's too many things to choose. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I can't decide either.
Speaker 6:So I've never used a dating site because it's an old timer, but I imagine that there's also good parts to it, right. I mean you can reach people that otherwise you wouldn't. So I don't think it's all bad. But I wrote a couple of things down that I think are concerns. One is the degradation of social skills. Right, I mean you really don't need any social skills, you can just select and browse and all this stuff. The other thing that I wrote down is superficiality. Right, it's so superficial, it's just all, just the image, the look and the thing, and not that those are unimportant, but it's like there's no depth there and it's really, it's a real concern, I think.
Speaker 4:So, to take your point into the orthodox perspective, it's disincarnate. Wow, it's disembodied, right. And so also to Veronica's point. Yeah, the illusion of options, the illusion of this, the illusion of that. I feel like our world has become more interested in the appearance of things and so, almost like people are willing to deceive themselves as long as what they're looking at meets the idea that they want to have of themselves and the way that they want to be seen. Does that make sense? Yeah, this illusion is they're really being fooled by it and drawn into it.
Speaker 4:But ultimately, what's the point of dating? Well, I mean, at some point the point of dating used to be to meet somebody that you actually wanted to marry and spend the rest of your life with, right. And so now, dating in general to take the point a little further, I feel like has become this weird mix of cheap intimacy and entertainment. Right, it's even intimacy and entertainment. I don't think should be mixed so much, like when you're trying to get to know somebody. You know Father Josiah has talked about this in some of his videos where it's like anybody can think that they like somebody, when they're just having this amazing experience, you know, like fireworks at SeaWorld or you're seeing this amazing play or show or whatever. But if you really want to get to know somebody, you have to strip away, you know, all the external stimulus you know and just see if you can actually connect with that person.
Speaker 6:When you said entertainment, what did you mean by that, Joshua? I didn't quite get that.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So what I mean by that is that people date for fun. Oh, okay, yes, people date for fun Like dating is an activity in and of itself and they forget that old-fashioned purpose of meeting somebody who you actually want to marry.
Speaker 1:I actually know someone who a girl, she, she will sometimes download dating apps just for fun and she literally will just sit there and swipe through people and kind of you know tell me like oh, I'm swiping left for which is a no. You know, that's when you don't like someone. Like oh, he says this, I'm swiping left, like, just for like the most superficial reasons, and it was just like a game to her. She just love starting these conversations and kind of like she likes teasing these men or, you know, giving them a hard time or kind of making one of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just just for the entertainment of it Like she really wasn't interested in like a major commitment. She just it was something fun for her when she was bored.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just can I kind of pose this to you guys, to the panel here there's a who do we just know we lost Robert? There's this notion or part of me that feels a little bit sorry if you can hear the, the sirens in the background. There's this notion that you know what. We're just a bunch of old fogies on this panel. Right now you can't deny it, right, this is where it's at. People can say to us yeah, so be it. And to kind of play devil's advocate, veronica, back in the day you go to a club, it wasn't very different. I would be looking at the people in the clubs going. Well, that's a potential, you know. Oh, I might approach her. Okay, you know, I might ask her to dance. Is that all that different, you know?
Speaker 4:so here's the answer that's not very much back in the day, that's pretty much not that old Jeremy, that's pretty much the same day. Because that is such a random way to meet somebody compared to a traditional worldview where you would only you know. You wouldn't just approach somebody randomly, you would already know, you know this person, or maybe the first time you saw him you would have somebody ask about their family or who they are, but they would be in your community. So I'm pushing even further the other direction just to get the contrast of to actually get a contrast, because seeing somebody in a club is somewhere between that old community thing, you know, way that you would meet somebody, and in a dating app. But it's much closer just approaching random people in public.
Speaker 4:Even that is something that is not really traditional If you're going to go back and look at human history under a bigger scope and so to kind of wrap it up. This is why I think it's all I mean. Okay, it can happen. But for me at this point I'm like why am I even going to approach somebody in a random situation? I'm going to wait to see somebody's personality in a setting where there's no pressure and see them interact with other people before I would even know enough to know if I like them to make an approach.
Speaker 6:I mean, look, I mean a superficiality and entertainment, and you know all of this. You know the lack of social skills. That's nothing new, right? I mean that's you know that's old. But I think the dating apps, the social media, amplifies kind of the bad things. Right, it amplifies the lack of the need for social skills, the, you know the focus on image, you know being able to select, like you know, a marketplace, like what John mentioned earlier. You know it amplifies that whole, that whole, all the bad things, I think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I do apologize I'm not going to step out soon, but I think back to Jeremy's point here and like fun and market, like maybe those are all okay words, but the fact is, when it's in the club or it's like when it's in fleshed and carnate, right, you still like you have to engage, like you could just ask someone out to have fun. Right, you don't have to analyze their, their personality per se, or maybe you do, right, but it's the, it's the give and take between two, like real people, where you kind of have to risk, like you put yourself into the market instead of just trying to consume from the market. And I think, just, I think that helps kind of not normalize but iron out some of the or not. That's the wrong metaphor. Right, like like Robert saying everything's little, maybe too saccharine, just to distilled down to this pure form, which is not good. Right, we need, we need all of the, the messy parts around the boundary, like like John Peugeot would talk about.
Speaker 2:John, can I ask you it's because you have to leave soon. I want to make sure to get your insights on this, would you say, or maybe I'll just ask the question is there an orthodox approach? Is there an orthodox answer?
Speaker 3:Right, you go about that you just have a joke with a little friend still the friend Ben. We thought the orthodox app would be called just Vespers. Right, we're not talking about how many babies we're going to have, right, we're just just go to Vespers. It's just Vespers.
Speaker 2:I'll pick you up. Feel free to use that.
Speaker 3:This is why I want reader John on every episode, Right, because it's like there's just so much like you don't want to put too much on, like too much weight on the little peg of every single relational interaction per se. Right, you want to keep it a little bit light. I guess the thing that came to my mind with Robert's comment about the superficiality of this is that and going back to my kind of question about what Sharan was mentioning about markets is like what will? Yeah, so I guess I feel like the dating apps or whatever is just like one example of a whole host of superficial things that we do, and so the answer would be to try to find or to understand why there's a whole lack of or loss of depth maybe in human experience today, and that would be instead of focusing too much on the relationships per se. It's like you fix it by focusing on trying to find depth.
Speaker 3:I don't know, it's a hard problem, though. I even like school. I mean that's where I met my current life and I mean now school is like remote too and works remote. I don't know how people meet anybody. It's an uphill climb for the modern individual. I don't know, but Just Vespers. So that would be the orthodox app for sure. I just keep it simple. It's not a forever promise on day one.
Speaker 4:Well, I said that I would never get back on line dating, but if you come out with the Just Vespers app, I'll go back on my word. I'll be a fool. I'll be a hypocrite.
Speaker 3:I think it would be just a breath of fresh air.
Speaker 6:Well, it can't really be an app because it is that's Vespers right, so well.
Speaker 3:I suppose you could send them. That's where you meet up to then go to Vespers.
Speaker 6:Oh, okay, got you so exciting Meet. Okay, that's good, I like that.
Speaker 2:You should market that, John. That might be something.
Speaker 4:No, it's great, and then nobody has to think of the first date. You already got that part settled.
Speaker 3:Exactly right.
Speaker 2:Right, hey, and I'll just say it it's cheap.
Speaker 3:Hopefully there's a cheap date yeah. Yeah, and the next date, and then you'll see, you got the bread you know you fed the date and, if it works out, Sunday is the following day you can get married.
Speaker 5:Right after yes.
Speaker 2:Robert, I like how you think. I'd love to hear from Veronica and our bad guy John.
Speaker 1:I think the best part people aren't thinking of bringing someone to Vespers is that your priest gets to meet them immediately and give you their real opinion of them. So you know, I think it's a good fit or not.
Speaker 2:Veronica, what you mentioned there, that immediately brings to mind community, right, it's kind of going off of John's idea of this just Vespers, what you're describing is so true, right, because there, yeah, you're chatting at the after Vespers. You know, agape, whatever you want to call it, your friends are seeing them, the yai-yas are seeing them. You know, there's a chance to kind of fill things out, you know, and have that community involvement which we know as Orthodox Christians is such an important element.
Speaker 1:Well, it's kind of like what Joshua was saying earlier, how you know you kind of want to see how people fit into your environment, you know, with your friends, your community, you know that's important. So I mean, you know, all jokes aside, bringing them to your church absolutely does, you know, show a lot, you know.
Speaker 5:Yeah, when David Erhan was also, having did his stream about this topic, he said something pretty poignant but true, and he said you see how, the way that the environment that these apps foster, look at the way that people are treating each other. They're just flipping through like they're flipping through merchandise on Amazon. This is not the way to sustain society, this is not the way to propagate ourselves. But he literally just went straight for the whole idea that this is a way of disintegrating as a species and you just end up below replacement rate in terms of replenishing your population. Just to go into that whole utilitarian argument too, because David Erhan actually makes that really good and strong point.
Speaker 5:You know, and touching on that whole topic on looking for somebody, looking for somebody that you wanna spend the rest of your life with, yeah, in this day and age it's a lot more inorganic, because people will just look up a meetup group, they will look for a speed dating event, they will download an app and they will just go straight in with one sole intention and that is to meet someone for the purpose of dating them and possibly going further from the first or second date into a relationship living together. Obviously, that's what they do, they don't really get married, they don't really look forward to a committed relationship that would lead it into a marriage. But back then, of course, people would know each other. The whole village would know each other, families would know families and that's how they kind of got to know everybody. They would get to know someone else's son, someone else's daughter, and that's how they would get introduced. But these days you would just be like, oh yeah, let me approach that person. No, maybe not, maybe that one, because they have no connection.
Speaker 5:So they have to just dive right in and go straight forward and it's just weird. It comes off weird and unnatural, and I don't the more I hear of stories like that and all the failures that actually are associated with it, because again, like 80% of it just end in failure. Because again, like our fronima, our mindset is yeah, I want a quick fix, I want to gratify myself and it's all about me. And at the same time, I'm diving it, diving right in with this sole intention and purpose of dating that girl, right, and that's very, very inorganic, it's not natural and that's why it just doesn't work. There's no inner connectivity, there's no right.
Speaker 2:I agree with this completely, and yet I want to walk you through a thought process that I just went through and circle myself. I want to say, yeah, yeah, I agree with you, but are we really envisioning a future that's just five years from now, 10 years from now, where, oh yeah, everyone realized how bad dating apps are? Everyone went back to traditional dating, like, I don't think any of us actually think that right, this is where things are headed. But then I realized, but that doesn't matter for me. All I can do is me, and it's me as an Orthodox Christian. If I choose, by God's grace, to try to meet a woman in the community, right In the Orthodox church at a local parish in that way, or, by God's grace, however else, he might happen to bring her into my life. That's all I can control. What do you guys think?
Speaker 4:I think control is a key word here. And so back to the concept of illusions. It's the illusion of control and opportunity and all these people. It's like I don't need numbers, it's not a numbers game, god only needs one. He doesn't need me to feel like I have all these numbers on my side. So, let's say, most people are going to meet somebody who God puts in their life that they never could have missed. That's the majority of what I hear about successful relations, or just even longer term, right, because they got to know that person without that pressure.
Speaker 4:Now, so, speaking of control, okay, so my general rule I used to approach women in public and I could meet women that way. I was just never able to meet the kind of woman I really wanted to meet that way, if that makes sense, right? So for me now to approach a woman in public, I'm not completely closed off to it, but I would have to feel like it's not just contrived by me. I would have to feel like there's some impetus coming from God to create some kind of situation where we sort of bump into each other, so to speak. It could be anything, but it's not just oh, that's a pretty girl, how can I connive away to act like I'm talking to her for some other reason than the fact that I think that she's physically attractive? You know what I mean.
Speaker 6:So yeah, that's the scenario in the original clip. The first part of that one is he sits there and he's at a restaurant, sees the girl that he obviously likes and that's you know. It is kind of what you're describing there, which actually is kind of odd.
Speaker 4:So if God brings about something outside of my control, again, it's not about me controlling this, but God puts me in some situation where it would maybe be more awkward for me to not talk to this woman, who might otherwise be random, and then having God be the icebreaker, that could be the exception for me meeting somebody in an unexpected way who maybe wasn't woven into my community, you know.
Speaker 4:So that's like what I would call a minor miracle of God and that would be the exception. But, of course, like God can use any means that he wants. But I think, like so many other things, it's like we know where the high success rate ways for things to happen and what are the low success rate ways for things to happen. And, based on my experience in online dating, like everything that everybody described, from the infinite swiping and everything like that, it's just unproductive, it doesn't actually yield, and it does for some people, and God bless them. I think we have to trust our intuition. I've spent so much time online dating, but I never really believed that I would meet somebody that way, and then eventually I swore off of it, with the help of who was my pastor at the time. I just needed one other person to tell me yeah, you're right, you should just stop forever.
Speaker 4:And that was it and I have so much more peace now, because otherwise, I'm telling you, man, it really became this obsession that like what if they're out there and I'm just not scrolling enough.
Speaker 1:I wanted to say really quick too, because I have very similar opinion for me and I've done a dating app thing a long time ago and I've tried it, so I'm not gonna sit here and say like I've never done it.
Speaker 1:I've done it, but a big reason I stopped and hadn't been on in a long time is because for me, I felt like and as Joshua was saying, it was like a control thing. It's like I need to go out of my way to try and find something right, but after a while you begin to feel like am I almost playing God in a way, like I'm trying to find someone. It's all me, me, me like. But again to Joshua's point, it's like you only need one person and if you're really meant to be with someone like you would think God will bring those two people together, regardless of outside of dating apps, like he's gonna make it happen. So, and in my current dating experience I'm now involved with someone where it was brought about very interesting, where, again, I never would have thought.
Speaker 2:But I'm not too much detail, but I'm just gonna be a strong person.
Speaker 1:No, it's just to Joshua's point how did you start living your life? Well, so I've actually known it most of my life, which is funny. We grew up together and we were. We've obviously within the life, within the world of social media, we all kind of stay connected over the years. But we reconnected recently, more directly, and after many years of not really like being friends necessarily or talking, but just like very unexpectedly.
Speaker 1:So it just without going into too many details, my point is that you just never know when it's gonna happen. You don't know how it's gonna happen. True, it could be someone you already know, it could be God bringing someone random in at any time that you haven't met yet. But I firmly believe and not to talk to anybody who does dating apps, because it does work for some people, but I think firmly, if you believe that you're gonna, if God's gonna bring you the person you're meant to be with, like it's gonna happen. You don't have to be on dating apps, you don't have to be swiping. You could be if you want, I guess, but it's gonna happen the way it's meant to be.
Speaker 6:Yeah, jeremy, yeah, I agree with you there, veronica. Jeremy, to answer your question or to respond to your question, I think yeah. Obviously, I don't think we can go back to have no dating apps. I don't even know if that would be desirable. I suppose if there was such a ability to do that, it probably would be good to do that. However, I don't think we can do away with the dating apps, so I think the task is more to say what can we learn from this? What are the pitfalls, what are the dangers? Do you hear about people addicted to dating apps and the anxiety that comes with it? And so I think we have to become. Here's one another tool, right, another technology that is being used for our lives, but I think we just have to say this is where it's good for, but there is a limit, and these are the kind of parameters where it's safe to use.
Speaker 4:Can I share a story? So, to your point, god did something, used my attempts to date online to do something very important. It's actually a big part of my story returning to Christ, because when I was sort of on the fence with my past spiritual inclinations and I was on the fence deciding if I'm going to just be a Christian, and it was actually an experience with a woman that I was trying to date online who encouraged me to continue going in that direction. She's a very important part of my story and it ended up not working out between us in terms of pursuing a relationship and, ultimately, marriage, but she was still a huge boost in the direction of me just following Christ, which soon enough, three or four years later, ended me up in the Orthodox Church.
Speaker 5:Right, God gave you something better Himself. He gave you Him. Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 4:God can use all things for His glory right Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that's what I love about this discussion in general. You guys, it's a complex issue, right, and it's like anything Someone said at the beginning of this conversation I forget who, but it's not cut and dry, right. I know a number of Orthodox people who met on a dating app and they are now married with children, so it does work for some people. I'm not certainly not here to judge it or to judge people that do it. I just think that there does seem to be a bit of a disconnect, right, with the way we have. I love, josh, how you were putting it earlier and I think, robert, you touched on this as well the idea of making it a commodity.
Speaker 2:Right, we've become commodities out there, and to me, the one word that keeps coming back to my mind is dehumanization. Right, when you're looking at a screen, it's just your phone. Right, it's just an image, and you think about how you get into all this. I think ties in with the addictions out there, right Sexual addictions and pornography and all these things that are so similar to a dating app and swiping on images, and so there are certainly demons involved in these things and these technologies to try to tempt us away, and so I think all Christians need to be careful in these waters and God forbid, and God please protect us as we do venture down our various roads.
Speaker 6:Amen.
Speaker 2:Amen. Any final thoughts before we finish up? Today, veronica, I'd actually love to give you the last word, because you are representing all females, are all women.
Speaker 5:You represent me too, and the rest of us as well, hopefully.
Speaker 1:I'm representing that. I'm being represented, so she's speaking on my behalf.
Speaker 5:Starting now, everything she says will also be pinned on me as well, so please be careful.
Speaker 1:No problem, you know actually what I was thinking of. That I would like to say is, I think we can all agree. I think it has a lot to do with intent and this is not just stating apps, it's just dating in general in the modern day world, I think intent is a big thing. I think, on dating apps and off dating apps in the real world, I think one person can have good intentions and, you know, want to find someone, find a spouse, get married, and someone else could not have those intentions or have not so pure intentions, bad intentions, whatever you want to call it, but I think that's really what it comes down to.
Speaker 1:You know, are you really looking for someone to get married, have a family, you know, live that Orthodox life if you're Orthodox, or are you just looking for that entertainment, looking to have fun?
Speaker 2:Hey you guys. I'm going to finish this off. We'll say goodbye. This has been Cloud of Witnesses Radio. This is yes, but thank you so much for watching this far into the episode. Please go check us out on Instagram, facebook and all over the Internet and the interwebs. Joshua, do you have a promo for Waterloo that you want to give real quick?
Speaker 4:Oh no, no Stop, we're going to get sued Exactly.
Speaker 2:All right, you guys, thank you, we've got less. Thank you, bye, bye, bye, bye.
Speaker 1:Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.
Speaker 4:Bye, don't go, don't go.
Speaker 5:YouTube sucks, youtube sucks. I don't like YouTube.
Speaker 2:Demonetized. Yeah, exactly, zulu is listening and John and I got one more.
Speaker 4:I got one more joke, guys, if you're a, humor me. So towards the end of my online dating, the way I felt is I really wanted to write my online dating profile like a Craigslist ad for a used car. Oh my gosh, 1981 model.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, lightly used yeah.
Speaker 1:I will say, I will say from back, when I was original engine.
Speaker 2:And yeah, Veronica.
Speaker 6:Born out tranny.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:I was going to say hi when I was on dating apps.
Speaker 1:That was. That was the most entertaining part, because some of the guys had really well written, like Joshua. Some of them have really well written bios and they just, they just make you laugh.
Speaker 2:What's funny is Veronica, you had said early on, you're like oh, there's no effort, right? No?
Speaker 1:I mean it's not easy writing those, those profiles you know, I mean more of like the swiping thing.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:No, putting together your bio. I used to.
Speaker 4:I used to pour my heart. I used to pour my heart into it and I would see the low levels of effort from other people and I'm just like man. Like am I just in the wrong place? Like you know, I'm just showing all my cards over here. I'm like the naive romantic guy over here.
Speaker 1:I really always wanted to know too, what is up with the fish pictures. I can't tell you how many pictures they have so many pictures of themselves holding fish.