Objectivists in Love: Ayn Rand Fans Get Dating Site
From Time Magazine:
Let me get one thing out of the way: I have never read Ayn Rand. In fact, until recently I was one of those uneducated boors who thought the author’s first name was pronounced Ann. A few of her readers have corrected me over the years, but for some reason, I assumed they were joking — which is also what I assumed when they told me they’d just read a great book about government intervention in the railroad industry. (That book is now a movie, Atlas Shrugged: Part I, opening Friday, April 15, in the U.S.)
But then my editor asked me to look into the dating website the Atlasphere, on which Randians can search for their soul mate among fellow objectivists. I didn’t have time to read all 1,200 pages of Atlas Shrugged or even the 680-page The Fountainhead beforehand, so I did what any self-respecting journalist would do: I called up a friend. “Quick, can you explain Ayn Rand’s personal philosophy to me in one sentence?” I asked Fahad Siadat, a professional musician who’d just finished reading Atlas Shrugged. I know this because he’d cornered me at a dinner party and told me all about it. Which is what people tend to do when they’ve just discovered Ayn Rand.
“O.K., it’s like this,” Siadat said. “According to Rand, it’s your moral obligation to manifest in the world the best that you have in yourself. In other words, do whatever it is that makes you great.” That greatness has nothing to do with public opinion of you. “Think of Kanye West,” he said. “He’s a total douche bag, but he writes good music. According to Rand, that’s what counts.”
And isn’t everyone who follows Rand supposed to be selfish? “They are selfish,” Siadat said. “To become the best, you have to do what’s right for you, not someone else.”
That doesn’t sound like the conventional makings of a solid relationship. Maybe these people really do need their own dating site.