‘Best connection I’ve ever made’

If it was LinkedIn, so be it,

Somehow, I’m writing about LinkedIn two days in a row. Very different story, though.

One of the truly serendipitous events of my life is that my wife and I got together during summer 2012.

This means we just barely missed the advent of Tinder, which had its soft launch in September of that year.

I mean, I did some online dating back in the day, no doubt, but there was no swiping involved. In fact, I still can’t remember whether swipe left or right is good or bad.

Still, I’m all for doing whatever it takes to find the love of your life. Truly, I have the zeal of a convert.

And if that means using LinkedIn as a dating site, so be it.

I’m sorry, LinkedIn? Yes, at least according to the results of a survey reported in The Wall Street Journal recently.

Zety surveyed 1,023 U.S. employees and found that 26% thought it was acceptable to use LinkedIn as a dating tool. Twenty-two percent said they had either reached out or responded to someone on LinkedIn with romantic intent. Also, 12% said they had formed a romantic relationship that started there.

This, despite the fact that LinkedIn’s official policies include this pretty ironclad prohibition against using the site for dating:

“We don’t allow unwanted expressions of attraction, desire, requests for romantic relationship, marriage proposals, sexual advances or innuendo, or lewd remarks.

LinkedIn is a professional networking platform, not a dating site. Do not use LinkedIn to pursue romantic connections, ask for romantic dates, or provide sexual commentary on someone’s appearance or perceived attractiveness.”

Personally, I think there’s a big difference between asking for a romantic date and making “lewd remarks.” But then again, I don’t run LinkedIn.

Still, the WSJ leads and finishes with the story of a couple who met on LinkedIn and linked up in more ways than one. Now, they’re looking for wedding venues.

“If it was LinkedIn, so be it,” said Rachel Wong, who met her fiancé, Sam Sawchuck, on LinkedIn. “I mean, he’s been the best connection I’ve ever made.”

And, as the Journal points out—although, again, I have no firsthand experience here—modern dating apps have reached the point of “deepening exhaustion” for many users, who keep looking for other alternatives:

“Singles are trying speed dating, connecting through shared real-world interests and even using spreadsheets to break their dating algorithm. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a public-facing platform with clear headshots and ample information about a person’s path in life—everything dating apps today seem to lack—has become a go-to tool in the modern search for love.”

Another LinkedIn user, Esme Gordon-Craig, a 24-year-old freelance journalist in London, talked about having pitched a colleague on the idea of having a conversation about career paths over drinks.

“He was kind of like, ‘This is a date, isn’t it?’” she told the WSJ. “And I was like, ‘Yeah.’”

For what it’s worth, Gordon-Craig wrote a first-person article last December in which she described herself as “back living at home with my parents, more than £80,000 in student debt, and riddled with panic for the future.”

That sounded familiar. I was once in nearly the same situation—right down to the student loans, adjusted for inflation, looking for love in all the wrong places, and moving back home with Mom and Dad for a bit.

And while I sometimes can’t explain exactly how it happened, the student loans are gone, I’m with the love of my life, and things sort of worked out.

I’m hopeful for the generation behind me that things will work out, too.

As much as LinkedIn can make a lot of us cringe sometimes, if it happens to be part of the solution, more power to you.

Now, someone please remind me whether it’s swipe right or left that’s good. I still mess that up.

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Other things worth knowing …

• Axios: Three Anthropic researchers went public this week with chilling concerns about out-of-control AI, warning it could destroy humans this decade. Calling this unprecedented would be a gross understatement. You basically have the fastest-growing companies in human history warning their products could harm or even destroy humanity.

• WSJ: Top White House advisers have raised privately with President Trump the prospect that the Iran war could drag on through the remainder of his term, U.S. officials said — a message at odds with Trump’s public assurances of a swift victory. Trump told reporters Wednesday that the war will end “immediately” after the November midterms “because they can’t hold out any longer.”

• NPR: Ballot seizures seemed impossible. But judges and officials are prepping for them now.

• Yahoo Finance: Apple debuted its first foldable iPhone on Wednesday, marking the largest overhaul of its smartphone design ever. Called the iPhone Duo and starting at $1,999, the device features a passport-like design that opens and closes like a book.

• CNN via Yahoo: Fossilized eggs of the largest known dinosaurs have been unearthed in an unexpected place.

• LA Times via MSN: L.A.’s “perfect” Mediterranean weather is a birthright. Why did it disappear this summer?

• AP: Ten research teams were honored Thursday at a satirical science awards ceremony hosted outside the U.S. for the first time due to travel concerns. Researchers who studied milk from cockroaches and analyzed soil health using underwear received Ig Nobel prizes. The ceremony shifted to Switzerland after 35 years in the United States over concerns about attendees being able to get visas.

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments!