My friend met his future wife through a mutual friend, proposed six months later, and married five months after that. Gossipy church ladies will play matchmaker (“He should meet your daughter! They’re about the same age!”), friends will hook each other up (“I know somebody who knows somebody who’s single!”), and relationships and marriages happen quickly. My best friend is deeply involved in a tight-knit religious community. At the same time, I lament the void left by the continued erosion of communities. I live in a different state from my family and my friends have moved all over the country, so personal networks aren’t too helpful either.ĭating apps are an easy, ready-made way to meet people. I work for a tiny company with only three or four colleagues, all men, and I’ve worked from home for almost five years now, so I’m not going to meet a potential partner through work. I’m a 32-year-old man seeking women, and in one sense, dating apps have been a lifeline. Read: The uncertain forecast for Europe’s energy crisisĪlex is a deeply ambivalent dating-app user searching for love and marriage: Is this an example of “finding love through technology,” or a simple matter of luck-because certainly proximity came last, not first! Either way, an outcome to cherish. And now, 26 years later, we’re still together and very happy. Fast forward to 1996, when I moved to Montreal to be with him, and we married. Lo, he had a trip planned to San Francisco, where we met in person and subsequently fell in love. In 1992 or 1993, I joined one called RockNet, where people met to discuss rock music I made a lot of friends all over the world and, eventually, “met” Chris, a Montrealer who shared my love of Billy Bragg and the Jazz Butcher (among many others). Sharon tried online dating––perhaps in Las Vegas?––but didn’t like the outcome:īack in the early days of the internet, when connection was dial-up and images were limited to type on the screen, there was a company called CompuServe, which ran various discussion boards called forums (yes, I know, they couldn’t be bothered with correct Latin and call them “Fora”). Am I on the apps? Yes, but only as I feel like I have much choice. When I started my graduate school program I assumed a lot of people would be single like me and looking for like-minded people to date instead, almost everyone in my grad school cohort is dating someone. I also think they reduce the possibility of organic connections. The dating apps have created a culture in which people seem afraid to try for an organic connection in the “real world,” as the apps provide the illusion that the other people on them are ready for a relationship (a debatable premise). I also think they are negatively changing the rest of the dating landscape. I find them very surface-level and honestly struggle to see myself ending up with someone I met on an app. I feel like (or at least hope that) I’m part of a silent majority of people in my generation who hate dating apps. I’m a 25-year-old woman, currently in grad school.