Billionaire investor Bill Ackman said Wednesday he was pleased that his dating advice went viral on X over the weekend, adding that he hopes it encourages more real-world connection in an age of social media isolation.
On Saturday, Ackman wrote in a post on X that “the online culture has destroyed the ability to spontaneously meet strangers.”
“As such, I thought I would share a few words that I used in my youth to meet someone that I found compelling. I would ask: ‘May I meet you?’ before engaging further in a conversation. I almost never got a No.”
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The post has received more than 3.6 million views, 25,000 likes and 4,400 shares.
“We have a generation of people sitting at home on Twitter, or more likely on Instagram or wherever, looking at people living sort of fake lives. The reality is human interaction is critically important,” Ackman said during an interview on “Mornings with Maria.”
Ackman linked the decline of in-person relationships to broader social trends, including falling birth rates and loneliness.
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“You look at things like the population decline that you’re experiencing globally and I think you could go back to social media being a primary cause,” he said.
The Pershing Square chief, whose net worth is estimated at a cool $9 billion, doubled down, saying his line actually worked and that his life has been “transformational” since meeting his wife, Neri Oxman, eight years ago.
“I feel like one of the most fortunate people in the universe because I met an amazing woman, and we now have our fourth daughter, which is really an amazing thing and that’s not going to happen online,” Ackman said.
Ackman noted that his approach seemed most effective when he was on the move.
“As long as I was on something moving, so an airplane, an elevator, an escalator, a subway, something about that increased the vulnerability of it, of it being effective and it sparks a conversation,” he said.
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