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michaelkeenan comments on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks - Less Wrong
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Hugh, your complaint as I understand it is that society not only doesn't provide rituals which turn "dating and mating" into a well defined process with agreed upon rules, but in fact actively resists the demands of people who would use such rituals.
Yet when one researches the question "what are the formalized rituals of dating and mating", well, there's plenty of information out there. May I suggest that it would be wortwhile to yourself and to your readers to do the research, and report back on what you found, and then possibly point out any remaining large gaps?
Disclosure: I may not have much to say about dating and mating in general, as I have been out of the dating market for twenty years.
I do have a little experience in deliberately transforming myself (from 2000 onwards) from an introverted geek with no friends into an avid business networker with an excellent reputation. I found excellent procedural information for doing so in a book called "Why Should Extroverts Make All The Money".
Back around that time I formulated an informal theory that made the parallel between "finding a job through the want ads" and "finding a partner through classifieds". The gist of the theory was that in both cases there were too many incentives to lie and one would get burned quite easily. The strategy that relied on building up a social network looked a lot more appealing to me, at least in the professional domain.
This seems to some extent taskified, Google "speed dating". My point isn't that encounters on online dating sites systematically lead to speed dating, but that "society" has come up with at least one taskified version of the supposed "problem" of the first meeting with a prospective date. Speed dating wouldn't exist if "society" were as reluctant as you say it is to taskify in matters of intimacy.
That rather depends on the specifics of your problem statement. The "problem" of sexual encounters is at least partly taskified (think "oldest profession in the world")...
In this context, society's enforcement mechanism is social pressure/shame. Your examples - speed dating, online dating, prostitution - are all considered more or less shameful (I know because I've seen the shamed body language of people admitting to them). This shows that society's enforcement measures are working.
I don't know what's your reference group, but I don't know anyone computer-literate who considers online dating shameful at all. It's a mainstream activity, and is almost becoming the default way to find people to date.
It's been a couple of years since I heard censure of online dating too, and I agree that it's almost completely accepted among all the relevant people. I definitely meant it on the "less shameful" end of the spectrum.
But it's been a while since I've heard anyone condemn gays, or atheists, or blacks. I try to ward myself against availability bias by reminding myself that my social group is likely to be a weird little bubble relative to the whole world. If I encountered people thinking online dating is shameful a few years ago, then I can be sure that many people still think so. I'm confident I could find them if I try.
Ok, I just tried, with a google search, and found this, from March 2009. It looks like online dating is still shameful for some people.
When I was recently considering signing up for OkCupid, I asked a few friends (actually on a forum, but a small intimate one) about their thoughts on this:
(...which is what I was worried about. Of course, "a witty saying proves nothing", but it makes sense -- if there weren't a stigma, there would be less need to defend it against claims that there's still a stigma, and fewer people trying to.)
(...which is a pretty good point too. So I took the plunge and joined.)
If that were the case, I'd expect to find a lot more people than I do on the main dating sites. Perhaps you meant to limit your statement to a certain demographic.
Where have you been looking, and what demographics are you after?
Yes, this matches my impression of the subject.