The Internet's Favorite Sex Researcher

It goes against everything we know about love. Stendhal, who was no monogamist, wrote that falling in love was a process of "crystallization" in his classic On Love [1] in which case the person you are falling in love with seems absolutely singular [2] If, on the other hand, you are looking at it from the viewpoint of this is a selection process that is a long and wide funnel, you will never feel this person is singular.

Authors like Slater [3] and Illouz [4] agree that the problem with online dating is that, like Aella, you imagine you're selecting people from a vast pool and that you could always find somebody better if you just sampled more -- so you never fall in love.

Aella's popularity is an interesting question, as I've observed her over time my impression of her intelligence and judgement has gone down as she keeps falling into the most obvious traps, but the rationalist movement she's associated with is selected for incredulosity (e.g. making a Harry Potter fanfic a canon work will do that) and there is not a lot of quality information about sex out there. (When my evil twin went looking for answers in the stacks of a big academic library we were convinced that those answers were not there.)

[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/53720/53720-h/53720-h.htm

[2] as that state of limerence is a temporary thing nothing stops you from feeling it for different people at different times while still harboring less intense feelings for one or more of them (the point is not mono vs poly but rather Aella is far beyond poly)

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Love-Time-Algorithms-Technology-Meeti...

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Why-Love-Hurts-Sociological-Explanati...