Modern romance has become a churn. Peak swipe fatigue has hit, with many resorting to a form of dating sobriety. The meet-cute is still an option, but only for some.
Before dating was app-ified, we tended to meet people through social groups and activities. Dating culture researcher and host of the Later Dater Today podcast, Lakshmi Rengarajan, who worked at Match.com when Tinder launched in the early 2010s, witnessed the cultural shift. Online dating was mostly “for people in their 30s or 40s, when you weren’t running into people as much, or you felt like you had exhausted your friend circle”, she explained. “Before that, you exercised your IRL muscles – having a crush at work, [or] talking to people in a bar or at a club.”
