19 Readers on the Rise of Dating Apps
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week, a person who came of age in the online era tweeted this question: “Literally BAFFLED as to how people found love before dating sites and social media. Was settling the norm? Or did everyone just happen to be romantically compatible with the person sitting nearest to them in class?” I asked readers to answer that question or to address whether apps are an improvement.
Jenni worries that apps are displacing all alternatives:
I’m a 25-year-old woman, currently in grad school. 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 find them very surface-level and honestly struggle to see myself ending up with someone I met on an app. I also think they are negatively changing the rest of the dating landscape. 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 reduce the possibility of organic connections. 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. Many of them met on an app. Am I on the apps? Yes, but only as I feel like I [don’t] have much choice.
Sharon tried online dating––perhaps in Las Vegas?––but didn’t like the outcome:
I’ve tried these dating sites, which are pig-in-a-poke and not nearly as successful as moving around in many social contexts. I once filled out a long “application” process listing every imaginable interest and preference (I’m an overeducated classical musician). I was matched with an Elvis impersonator, complete with gold chains. If you can’t do better than that unassisted, there’s something wrong with you!
Alison met her match the old-fashioned way: CompuServe.
Back 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”). 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). Lo, he had a trip planned to San Francisco, where we met in person and subsequently fell in love. Fast forward to 1996, when I moved to Montreal to be with him, and
