When I first researched dating apps and intimacy almost a decade ago, participants would regularly reach for romantic comedies to describe the kind of love they were hoping for. Eyes meeting across a crowded room, accidental encounters in parks, coffee spilled on strangers who would later become soulmates … the standard tropes. The references were remarkably consistent; Meet Joe Black, 10 Things I Hate About You, Bridget Jones’s Diary. Participants would even name actors as shorthand for the kind of luminous, serendipitous romance they imagined for themselves – and Jennifer Lopez was somehow always in the mix.
Then came the reality check; these encounters only happen if you look like Lopez. For everyone else, romance took place somewhere far less cinematic: the dating app. By comparison it’s a sterile interface, a place framed as the domain of the romantically ordinary. One participant summed it up bluntly: “Romcom love is for hot people. The dating apps are for the rest of us.”
