Oh absolutely. I spoke with the mutual friend after and she was being all coy asking me if I was going to ask the girl out on a second date. Hard Pass.

She looked a little sad, I think the date girl had a nice time and was willing to go out again, but I explained my perspective from the date, and the mutual friend reluctantly understood.

Mutual friend never explained why the date girl acted like that. If it was just shy nerves, I probably would have given her another chance, but that’s probably just how she is.

Back in college, a female friend hooked me up on a blind date with her friend. Hands down she was the cutest girl I’d been on a date with at that point in my life.

After some back and forth it ends up being a double date, which was no big deal. But it was with a random engaged couple I didn’t know. Which was fine. But they picked Macarroni Grill or Cheesecake Factory or similar restraunt on a Friday evening. It was like an hour and a half wait. The couple wanted to wait, there was a mall nearby, so the other couple went off by themselves shopping and left us alone.

So, for the next hour or so I tried my hardest to engage in conversation with this girl. I’ve lost count of how many first dates I’ve been on. My small talk/get to know you banter is solid. But it was no match for her lack of social skills and one word answers.

I tried everything and ran dry WELL before the couple finished shopping and we actually started the meal. We sat on a bench and I’d break the awkward silence with the occational: “So, see any good tv/movies lately?” Only to get a “Not really” back. Or “What sort of hobbies do you have?” “None really”.

She didn’t come off as disinterested or bored. It felt like she wanted to be there, but if we were a ven diagram the only overlap would have been our mutual friend.

It was the most painful 3 hr date of my life.

We are in a bubble. Several bubbles, actually. One popping will likely trigger the others to pop. One of the reasons we are in a real estate bubble is due to housing being used as an investment by large corporations. There are many empty houses sitting around like a stock earning value for shareholders. We are also in an AI bubble. NVIDEA is NOT worth over a trillion dollars, but that’s what the shares are priced at due to the bubble. People make the most money in a bubble riding it to the peak.

Let’s pretend the AI bubble pops. Something happens, investors get spooked and start selling AI stocks off en-mass. The stock market corrects, and we enter a recession. This is normal and good, and to be expected. However, as company’s stocks lose value, they divest themselves of assests to keep paying shareholders, and sell houses while they still have value. This causes the Real Estate bubble to pop. As prices go down more and more corporations try to quick sell before the houses value drops below what they were bought at. Boomers die, and their kids place old homes they can’t afford to maintain on the market causing it to further collapse. Prices plummet to rock bottom. People who own multiple homes may also sell off the extras due to mortgages being owed for several times what the property is now worth. This has happened before and will happen again.

This takes years, but houses will become affordable again. Lots of people will watch the falling prices and try to time the bottom. They’ll rent for another year or two and see the market get flooded with houses for sale. Some will buy too early and the prices will keep dropping. Eventually though things will get cheap enough that people will, en-mass start buying again and the prices will stabalize.