This ironic distance is crucial. Popular media has taught us to consume everything with a layer of irony. We watch The Bachelor "to laugh at it." We click on meet2girls.com "as a joke."
Beyond the URL: How Www.meet2girls.com Exposes the Blur Between Dating, Entertainment, and the Male Gaze in Popular Media
Because the scariest part isn't that meet2girls.com exists. It’s that popular media spent twenty years building the theater where it gets to play. Did you click the link? Be honest. And while you’re being honest—consider what you were really looking for.
This is not an accident. The site has absorbed the grammar of : the bachelor party montage, the spring break documentary, the "how I met your mother" sitcom that always features a "crazy" ex.