Culture in the US has long celebrated youth and ‘newness’ above all else.  However, wholesale acceptance of youth culture has begun to erode responsibility and resourcefulness.  It also makes a mockery of the normal and workaday portions of our lives.

Couples are waiting later and later to marry and/or have children, so that they can enjoy their youthful freedom.  Grown men run around and act like children.  Parents kill themselves to make sure that Jayden and Olivia get to soccer practice and child yoga and music lessons and Boy/Girl Scouts on time.  Everyone seems to flit from style to style, hipster hats and large glasses one day, garish shirts and holey jeans the next.  The great irony is that all of these items are mass produced.  You may be the first to have ridiculous hat, but there are fifty guys in line behind you waiting to purchase the same thing.  We have replaced individuality with conformity in our race to have the newest, coolest thing.

But this is the worst of it, right?

Wrong.

From NPR’s All Things Considered comes this story of love in modern times:

Modern dating is now a group sport.

And, according to Michael Waxman, you probably shouldn’t even call them “dates” anymore.

“We just call them groupers,” he says. “And in fact, we have a policy of not using the d-word internally or externally.”

What a bunch of hogwash. Well, polygamy, here is your chance!

They’re turned off by labels like “dates.” And, perhaps most importantly, they hate being rejected.

“For a generation of people who grew up with participation trophies, rejection is a hard thing,” he says.

Lemmings.

So, here’s how it works.

You sign up for Grouper through Facebook. And it uses your Facebook profile to match you up with a blind date. Next, you recruit two of your friends. The blind date does the same. And then, Grouper sends all six of you on a group date.

Shocker.  You sign up for this garbage on Facebook.  The place where you stalk people and brag about how busy you are.  Then the machines set you up with a blind date.

Here is the best quote from the article:

“Of course I would go out on my own if I knew other people were going to be out on their own as well. And I wouldn’t be the awkward person alone at the bar, desperate. But everyone’s always in a group these days,” Chloe says.