Ah, Thanksgiving: the annual American tradition in which we cleanse the violent colonization that founded our country and travel home to dine with drunken parents, aunts, uncles, and all the other riff-raff.
But before Thanksgiving comes another sacred tradition: Blackout Wednesday– as Americans return to their hometown bars to catch up with old friends, meet other singles and maybe even reconnect with a high school flame.
At least that’s what I’ve heard. I am not culturally heterosexual enough to have participated in that tradition. And my family left Las Vegas, where I grew up, half a decade ago.
Still, I’m fascinated by the rituals we have around relationships and sex, especially those that predate smartphones and dating apps. It seems like everyone I know in a relationship met their partner on Tinder or Hinge.
According to Pew research, 10 percent of partnered adults met through an app, and that number is even higher for younger and queer people. Twenty percent of adults with a partner under the age of 30 and 24 percent of adults with a lesbian, gay and bisexual partner met their partner through an app.
The messy, sexy, IRL ways we meet people, like Blackout Wednesday, are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. And if the classic traditions of going out to dance, being hosted by a friend of a friend, or attending a house party are over, what dating traditions have replaced them?
Love in the chronically online age
While a significant portion of young adults and queer adults appear to be finding each other on apps like Tinder and Hinge, it appears that public opinion about the apps is souring.
A class action lawsuit filed in 2024 even claims that the dating apps produced by Match Group are not designed to help you find love as advertised. Instead, the complaint alleges, apps like Tinder and OKCupid are designed to “erode users’ ability to disengage from the platforms,” so that they will “purchase increasingly expensive subscriptions to unlock unlimited and other ‘special’ features” that only serve to “anchor users to the app forever.”
But if dating apps are on their way out, what will take their place?
I asked my friends what they consider modern-day dating traditions, and it seems like we still haven’t broken up with our phones.
Shana—one of my best friends and my 25-year-old Gen Z correspondent—says the only real tradition she can think of is the “group chat review.” While the women are on Sex and the city discussed their dating lives over brunch, we share a text message thread with two other women that we ironically named Toxic Male Groupchat.
In the group chat review, we explore the character of the stranger we recently matched with on Hinge. We screenshot profiles and message exchanges, and share them– yes, without the other person’s consent – with our friends to be criticized, analyzed and judged for their dating potential.
I’m definitely guilty of sharing Tinder profiles with friends. “Is this person cute enough to go on a date with?” I could ask. Or, “is it a warning sign that their passion in life will linger?”
And there’s another new contemporary dating tradition: the DM slide.
When I asked my slutty Millenial and Gen
Swiping up on someone’s Instagram Story to send them a direct message can read as platonic or flirty. It carries a bit of cultural baggage– getting into someone’s DMs can be associated with creepy, perverted, or unwanted advances from strange men on the Internet – but if you do it right, it feels a lot like the Internet equivalent of striking up a conversation with someone at a house party.
And it can really work: the relationship I was in for seven years started with a DM slide on Twitter (RIP)!
Long live the running club?
The positive feelings I personally have about forming online relationships are in stark contrast to the widespread opinion that the Dating App is a bit dying.
My friend Avery, 27, one of the aforementioned Toxic Male Groupchat members, is suffering from Tinder burnout. After a summer of dating, she recently quit ‘the apps’ because she discovered that across the genders and ages she dated, there was a difference between the types of relationships between people said they wanted and what they Actually popular.
Another friend Ben, 55, is also taking a break from the apps. Ben, like me, considers dating almost like a hobby; it’s a fun way to learn more about the world and the people in it. So when he said that, he even feels a little exhausted from constantly being on the hunt and the dopamine casino of swipingI felt a little shocked.
Maybe burnout in the apps will help explain why more adults than ever are living celibate lives. Nearly a quarter of 18 to 29 year olds have not had sex in the past year according to the General Social Surveya federally funded national poll.
That’s double the sexlessness rate ten years ago.
But if Tinder is dying, will we build new ways to meet our soulmates?
The good news is: yes. We haven’t given up on love yet.
Where I live, several new spaces and groups have sprung up to meet people in person, both platonic and romantic. Chicago girls walking And Chicago gentlemen walking surfaced to bring bringing together lonely people in the city and creating real friendships.
And if you’re less interested in a friendship between lovers, you can turn up the heat at a running club, the sweaty, endorphin-laden jogging alternative to the sterility of swiping through Tinder profiles on your phone. While some veterans resented the horny newcomers joining the frayother running clubs leaned into the atmosphere and explicitly labeled themselves as one place where singles can meet each other.
There are many other forums for meeting people IRL, and not all of them are curated like this.
Over the past few years, my friends and I have been using the monthly celebrity lookalike contests. Besides the fact that at least a dozen people there will resemble bizarre versions of Jeremy Allen White, Timothée Chalamet and other honorees from the “White boy of the month”meme, many more strangers who don’t look like these men will show up to watch them compete. And they’ll probably be good-looking, young, single, and eager to talk to other good-looking, young singles.
Looking for: wild, random, exciting connections
To me, all these so-called real-world alternatives to dating apps indicate that we are not done with the internet yet; we just have to use it differently.
The reason why lookalike contests are big events is the same reason why octogenarian influencer Olivia Salomone advises young people to participate in Sit-At-A-Bar September and NeverHome November (her own inventions). And the reason is that these ideas resonate with people who spend a lot of time connecting with others on the internet and would like to connect in the meaty meat space.
Wild, random, exciting hookups happen in places where social boundaries between strangers are a bit more porous and these viral memes can attract a pool large enough to get your photo taken with a few sexy strangers once or twice.
If dating apps are casinos designed to keep you spinning, advertising these events (these parties, actually) where the goal is to meet new people is kind of like shuffling the cards. It’s a bit more random. IRL blending takes some of the control away from our tech overlords and gives it back to the people.
The answer, I think, is not a complete abandonment of the internet and apps, but perhaps a recalibration. We need to find the right combination of analog and digital connection methods – that is, using the Internet to bring people together in the meat space.
The internet is a wonderful tool for connecting people across time and space, and hopefully Generation Z can have much, much more sex, including on Blackout Wednesday.
#Gen #leave #Tinder #find #love #IRL