Love is Blind

In the eternal hierarchy of ways in which people make fools of themselves, the position of sex is at least as illustrious as those of religion and politics, and therefore no rational intelligence would be surprised that sex is at least as amenable as the others to entrepreneurial exploitation. Hence Britain's leading liberal newspaper, which holds the powerful to account while owing its existence to their advertising, is amazed, aghast and shocked to discover that the capitalist affair of online dating is geared primarily to profit. Procuring via mobile phone has ceased to be the innocent, romantic business of days past and has become a mere means of extracting revenue, for all the world as if making money rather than churning out happy couples were the whole point of the enterprise. Indeed, given that all three elements in the trinity of human idiocy are transcendently enshrined in family values, the fact that the proper functioning of the enterprise results in fewer and not more happy couples may well come as the greatest shock of all.