The Era of Dating Apps May Be Morphing

Magdalene Taylor has seen the future of dating, and there's a lot less swiping involved. In a first-person account at Slate, the culture writer describes her visit to an in-person dating event and how it exceeded her expectations. Did she find the partner of her dreams? Not quite, and that's just fine. Her story provides the larger backdrop for the piece: Dating apps once exploding in popularity appear to be on the wane, and it's not hard to find stories documenting the trend. As a result, big players such as Tinder, Bumble, Match, etc., are sponsoring more and more events in which humans actually meet other humans in person. Taylor attended a Tinder event, where, she recounts, "the near-universal sentiment was that, whether or not they were on the apps, they'd grown tired of the digitization of their romantic lives."

As for Taylor, she found the mixer "deeply affecting." She was impressed with participants who struck up the nerve not only to attend, but to introduce themselves to others. "I think in those moments, we seemed real to one another in a way that's nearly impossible to replicate online." Dating can be a mess, but it can help people learn about themselves as well as others, Taylor adds. "It's going to take some work before this sort of thing feels normal to us all again, whether we're looking for love, friendship, or something else," she writes. "Maybe Tinder is partially responsible for getting us in this position in the first place, but if the app wants to be the solution, so be it." Read the full essay. (Or read other stories about online dating.)