I would like to discuss with you a modern problem, one that has the potential to strain relationships, upset family members, destroy old friendships, prevent new friendships, and restrict opportunities of all kinds. All this, you say? Yes, the potential for all this, I say. What is this potentially destructive modern problem? you ask. Let me explain through a story, I explain:

I had gone on a few dates with a sweet, athletic, intelligent, family-oriented, and career-minded man. Wishing to communicate something important to him, I made the regrettable—for more than one reason—decision to do so through text messaging. I am a woman of the modern era; that’s my excuse. Well, and I may also be a rotten and thoughtless person. In any case, he called me the next day.

For twenty excruciating minutes, he beat around the bush. He wanted to talk about anything and everything, except for the content of my text. Meanwhile I, trying to go with the flow, did not intervene, but rather answered his questions briefly and without emotion (see: rotten and thoughtless person, above). Finally, he said, “Well, it doesn’t seem like you’re in the mood to talk tonight.”

“Um,” I blurted out, “don’t you want to talk about my text?!”

(By this point, you’ve probably guessed where this story is going. . . .)

“What text?” he said.

He had not received the text! Caught off guard, I proceeded to completely bungle an oral explanation of what I had written, communicating in the most uncomprehensible English my convoluted point of view; and things ended badly.

In addition to having experienced outbound texting failures, I have also been on the non-receiving end of things. In the past year, I have failed to receive text messages from my mother, my psychotherapist, and my housemate. That last was an especially interesting case, since it was a group text, and the other recipient got it just fine.

Having felt frustrated by this problem for months, I finally found the time to scamper off to the Internet. There, I discovered that many others are having this issue. And then I discovered that my phone service provider offers a text messaging app that can be installed on multiple devices (in my case, phone and laptop) and that, people claimed, solved the problem for them.

The setup of these apps went uncommonly smoothly. And now—whoa!—I can text from my laptop, not just my phone. This is an exciting development, as it means I don’t have to interrupt the flow of my work at the keyboard if I want to shoot off a quick text, or read an incoming text. Moreover, if my phone breaks or goes missing, I can still access my text messages.

Something else interesting occurred when I installed the apps. The missing text from my housemate appeared, in proper sequence, on my laptop’s app! . . . though it is still missing on my phone’s app. Such a mystery!

How many friendships around the world have been damaged, or prevented from flowering, due to missed texts? How many business opportunities have fallen through? How many mothers have sighed, thinking their children were remiss in sending love, when actually they were not? What countless words would Charles Dickens pen about this tragedy, were he alive today?

Have you ever missed an important text? Have you ever sent one that never made it out of the ether and onto the intended recipient’s phone?

I am a paying client of two dating apps. Both allow users to “smile” at matches and receive “smiles” back. This is roughly equivalent to smiling at someone in real life: a way of communicating interest.

Both also allow users to send and receive original messages. This is roughly equivalent to having a spoken conversation.

One of the apps, however, has an additional feature. Users are offered a menu of prewritten questions and can choose to send one or several to a match. The match then receives the question(s), plus a menu of prewritten, multiple-choice answers. (There is also an option to type an original answer.) Whenever two users smile at each other, the app invites them to engage in this canned question-and-response routine.

This is roughly equivalent to bringing your mom and a friend along as you pursue a love interest. After eying him/her with a big grin and receiving a big grin back, you stand there awkwardly, while Mom whispers two possible things you could say in one ear, and your friend whispers two other things you could say in the other ear. You then say one or more of their suggested utterances aloud. You don’t have to feel too embarrassed by this, however, because, as it turns out, your love interest also brought along his/her mom and a friend, who are whispering possible responses in his/her ear.

Simply put, these canned questions and responses are infantilizing. Further, they don’t allow the two people to express who they are and thus get to know each other.

But wait—isn’t choice a good thing? Isn’t choice what makes us free, what makes us individuals? In choosing among a menu of several options, aren’t we expressing our uniqueness as authentic human beings, since everyone has the opportunity to choose differently?

Not according to Matthew B. Crawford. His 2015 book The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction offers one of the profoundest and most far-reaching critiques of modern society I have encountered in a very long time. In fact, there’s so much great cultural criticism in this book that I am able, on this blog, to share only a few of his many, many insights. That being said, here are two of them:

“We are offered forms of unfreedom that come slyly wrapped in autonomy talk: NO LIMITS!, as the credit card offer says. YOU’RE IN CHARGE.”

“Those with a material interest in doing so have learned to speak autonomy talk, and to tap into the deep psychology of autonomy in ways that lead to its opposite.”

Credit card companies, in other words, tell you how much freedom and autonomy you will have in spending money as you wish, while working to trap you in a cycle of increasing debt as a result of exorbitant interest rates and fees.

This dating app of mine uses a similar technique. Yes, it’s in the best interest of the app owners for some people to find significant others through the app; they can then tell stories about how great the app is at helping people. However, it’s also in the best interest of the app owners for even more people to fail to find a partner, yet receive enough encouragement so as not to give up on the app entirely. That is, it’s great for the app owners if lots of people are clicking around on the app, having conversations that don’t lead anywhere, and renewing their subscriptions each billing cycle. In order to make this happen, they must find a way to offer entrapment in the guise of freedom and opportunity.

Hence the genius invention of canned questions and responses. It’s brilliant because being presented with a menu of options seems like being offered the freedom of choice, but it actually prevents users from getting to know one another in any meaningful way.

True agency, as Crawford points out, is the opposite of choosing from a menu of options. True agency arises when you delve into the messy real world, when you make choices that count because you’re choosing from a dizzying array of options—not just four, or even forty—and risking being wrong. True agency happens when you compose a personal note and send it, not knowing how the recipient will react to your opinions, ideas, and choice of words—but thereby revealing who you are, and implicitly requesting a reply that is similarly open and sincere.

Can you think of any other examples of a large company, or another source of wealth and power, offering “freedom” in the form of restrictive choices? If you choose one of the options presented to you, does that benefit you, or them? How might you circumvent the presented choices and do your own thing?

One felicitous thing about being in the dating world is the opportunity to meet a variety of people and talk with them one-on-one. One man I dated briefly expressed an appreciation for the novel Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.

I read The Martian Chronicles many years ago and consider it to be a masterpiece. Truly, truly, if you would like to read a masterpiece, crack open The Martian Chronicles.

Prompted to curiosity by my date’s recommendation of another Bradbury book, I read Dandelion Wine last week. True to form, Bradbury, in this gem of a book, produces some of the most beautiful writing I have encountered in a long time. For example, check out this description of new shoes:

“Somehow the people who made tennis shoes knew what boys needed and wanted. They put marshmallows and coiled springs in the soles and they wove the rest out of grasses bleached and fired in the wilderness. Somewhere deep in the soft loam of the shoes the thin hard sinews of the buck deer were hidden. The people that made the shoes must have watched a lot of winds blow the trees and a lot of rivers going down to the lakes. Whatever it was, it was in the shoes, and it was summer.”

One may take issue with the sentimentality and narrow cultural scope of the book—I will, myself, in a future blog post—but not with the writing. The writing is gorgeous. So for now, let’s shut off the analytical side of our brains and let the romantic side run rampant. Let’s glory in the beauty of summers past:

Dandelion Wine is set in the summer of 1928, the era of Bradbury’s own childhood. This is the tail end of the Roaring Twenties, regarded, from the vantage of the future, as a time of endless luxury and fun and ease: the last year before the stock market crash.

As for the title, what is dandelion wine? I would like to try this recipe one summer. But dandelion wine is more than a mere recipe or delicious drink in the world of the novel. It’s a way of bottling up summer, so one can savor it all winter long. And by extension, the novel itself bottles up childhood so the adult can savor it, again and again.

I do this. In summer, I process veggies from my garden and freeze them. In winter, I relish taking the iced-over bags and containers and jars out of the freezer and using their contents to make dinner—and, yes, they have much more meaning for me than mere sustenance. I also keep and display knickknacks that are important to me, not in and of themselves, but because they represent something powerfully good in my past.

How have you bottled up the best of your past?

The inquisitive one exchanged a few messages with someone cute on a dating app. The person’s profile mentioned art collecting; co-ed, pick-up soccer; and creating sculptures out of acorns, old car parts, and toenail clippings. They decided to meet at a bar in the city, the next day after work.

The inquisitive one arrived at the bar and sat on a stool next to the date. The date’s face, neck, and arms were coated in a thick layer of sweat. The sweat glistened in the dim lights of the bar.

“I was almost late getting here,” said the date. “Things got crazy at the end of my work day. I scrambled to finish everything. Then I had to ride four Metro lines and take three buses to get here. And I had to run the last two miles on foot. But luckily I wasn’t late. I hate tardiness!”

“Oh,” said the inquisitive one.

“What do you like to do for fun?” said the date.

“Well,” said the inquisitive one, “I enjoy running and hiking. Sometimes I see strange things in the forest. And sometimes strange things happen. Then I think about them. Some might not think these things are strange at all, but I do.”

“Oh,” said the date.

“What do you like to do for fun?” said the inquisitive one.

For some reason, the date started talking about hot peppers. That was when they discovered they both had an interest in growing, cooking, and eating hot peppers. The bartender brought wine, and they talked about the intricacies of hot peppers until the wine was all drunk.

That’s when the date said, “I should tell you something.”

“What?” said the inquisitive one.

“See, my job is very important and top secret. I’m about to be sent to Asia for work. I probably won’t be back for a few years. I can’t tell you anything more, because it’s classified.”

“Oh,” said the inquisitive one.

They said good night and went their separate ways.

And then, two days later, they followed each other on Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.