It’s no longer taboo to meet your partner on the internet. The evidence is everywhere: it’s on your refrigerator door, where you’ve hung up the wedding invitations of friends who met on Tinder. It’s on your Instagram feed, where a friend shares a sappy post about her one-year anniversary with a woman she met on Hinge.
But when Zeke Rothfels tells people that she met her husband online, she’s not talking about swiping left until she finally found the right guy. She’s talking about cultivating a relationship across the U.S.-Canada border with a man she met in a Facebook meme group.
“I think we both felt kind of like, is this crazy?” Rothfels told TechCrunch. “Do I acknowledge that this feels like something, or will that ruin it?”
It was crazy, but it was also real – six years later, Rothfels is reminiscing about meeting her husband after she’s just put their two-year-old child to sleep.
“Do I acknowledge that this feels like something, or will that ruin it?”
Everyone is tired of dating apps. This mass disillusionment has sent the stocks of dating giants tumbling. The stock prices of Bumble and Match Group – the company behind 45 dating apps, including Tinder, Hinge, and Ok Cupid – have declined about 90% and 68% over the last 5 years, respectively. Together, these companies have shed $40 billion in market cap since 2021, struggling to capture the attention of Gen Z users.
But the internet’s presence in our social lives won’t just disappear. As singles grow weary of the slog of swiping, couples are getting to know each other on traditional social media sites — in the Tumblr “Ask” box, in Reddit DMs, and even on newer platforms like Bluesky.
People may not turn to social media with the intent to find love, but these online spaces naturally forge connections, and sometimes, those connections grow beyond friendship. Here, people are no longer at the mercy of dating apps’ mysterious algorithms and emphasis on physical appearance, nor do they have to face an inexplicable number of fish photos. It makes these unexpected digital “meet-cutes” look more appealing than updating your Tinder profile again.
Swipe fatigue
Image Credits:Pew Research Center
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