Is this filtering stuff part of the reason so many people say they are lonely, or account for the increase in suicide, especially among the young?

If your image is faked on-line, how do you cope with an in-person meet? When I asked the young women in my family, they said, that’s why so many women ghost men they meet on-line. And then, they pulled out their phones and showed me images of women we all knew (but I could hardly recognize them). Which made me wonder, how many young men were getting ghosted for that very reason (filtering)?

Isn’t filtering your image, like setting someone up for the express purpose, of hurting, embarrassing or confusing them? I know it would lift my spirits if I connected on-line with some super handsome man. If I met that man in person and he did not look like his on-line photos, I’d feel manipulated, distrustful, and probably angry.

How do you got out in public wearing your real face knowing everyone has seen the face you wish you had on-line? I asked my daughter, and she said, wait until you see our realtor. When I did meet her realtor, she had so much make-up on, she looked like a mannequin.

I’m old now, but I’ve never worn make-up. I’ve been to a hairdresser once in my entire life.

I’ve been called attractive, but no one has ever called me beautiful, or even pretty. And yet, when we were young, I had more dates than every girl we knew, but none of us could figure out why. I thought it was because of the kind of stuff I liked to do, but my girlfriends did not agree. But they weren’t interested in the same stuff so there was no way of knowing.

Eventually, I got the courage to ask some guys who told me they wanted someone who shared their interests – or was interested in learning about the things that interested them. Several guys told me most of the girls they met were boring. That was not exactly good news for my girlfriends.

In the 1970s and 80s, very few women were interested in things like backpacking, civics, the law, unions, engineering, machinery, construction, manufacturing processes, business, architecture, etc. Interestingly enough whenever I talk to the guys I dated back then, we are still talking about our common interests.

Anyways, those are just an old woman’s thoughts.