Romance has the urgency of breaking news now. Dating apps are editorial fodder

The Print

6 days ago

The documentation of dating in headlines started with buzzwords—'20 Dating Terms You Must Know in 2024', 'Situationships to delusionships—30 words to learn before getting on the apps'. The interns had their work cut out for them. However, in the past couple of years, as editors learned more and more about the unhygienic mating dance performed by the younglings, the opening paragraph of Gen Z dating listicles has become more intense—part cautionary tale, part psychological warfare.
The media's love affair with labelling every micro-emotion in modern love has given us a dating glossary longer than the Constitution. And just as legally binding in the court of Instagram. From The Times of India to The New York Times , every big and small news outlet in the world is bubbling with thinkpieces on modern dating. Even the horoscope section in newspapers is now warning the Aries and Scorpio duo to take it slow. The constant is that everyone seems confused about polyamory.
Never in the history of romance has love been treated with the urgency of breaking news—and I say that as someone on a deadline.
'Gen Z is one of the few age groups to take mental health and its serious consequences into consideration, however, amidst the constant battle, a lot of individuals have fallen prey to narcissistic behaviour and casual encounters,' mentioned a Hindustan Times article on lovebombing. The panic alarms get louder with every subhead. And none of these articles go unread.
In Lena Dunham's latest Netflix show, Too Much, the protagonist is seen reading a listicle on red flags to figure out if her new boyfriend is problematic—because how else does one diagnose potential dangers? The target audience—20-somethings navigating dating in the online world—very much needs it. We study these articles like scripture.
Unsurprisingly, dating apps are the usual suspects at media trials, being flogged for their many crimes. Thanks to pop-psychology, ample data is being cited to prove the fruitlessness of swiping on the apps. Endless thinkpieces have been written about how these platforms encourage ghosting, breadcrumbing, and all sorts of abhorrent behaviour.
Several critics have scrutinised Hinge's much-touted 'designed to be deleted' tagline, arguing that the app's architecture is far more parasitic than liberating. Jiya Tanna, wrote on her Medium blog that in practice, Hinge limits free likes and nudges users toward paid subscriptions—'gamified' features that feel like emotional extraction. An Observer article calls out how dating apps—including Hinge—exploit the insecurities of people looking for love.
Last month, Catherine Pearson, an NYT reporter, wrote about how the apps are struggling to retain users. Bumble has lost more than $40 billion since 2021. To all the hopeless romantics cursing the app's algorithm after yet another failed talking stage—congrats, justice is served.
Suzy Weiss, The Free Press reporter and producer, recently said in a podcast that dating apps might be dying, and that's a good thing. According to her, the apps made people feel degraded and hampered their ability to hit on someone in real life. 'Because we haven't exercised this muscle of being rejected, we're more and more afraid of it, and it sort of atrophied,' she said. Her last words? 'I hope we look back on dating apps and think, what were we doing. We were not in our right minds.' Tell that to the person deleting and reinstalling all four apps at 2 am, still hoping a slightly better match is just one swipe away.
Also read: Bucket lists, PTA meetings, Ozempic—welcome to online dating for 50-plus Indians
Is there hope for Hinge?
The global media is not only interested in flagging what's going wrong in the dating world, but also going back to the root of the problem. A popular podcast, Land of the Giants, interviewed Jonathan Badeen. He's the co-founder of Tinder and the monster who invented the swipe feature. Apparently, he did this after his acting career tanked. The mean comments about his screen presence pale in comparison to the hate he now gets for allegedly ruining romance.
Badeen got the coders excited. The geeks working at big tech companies ran to disrupt the dating market. Most of them were lifelong video game lovers anyway, so they applied the same logic to dating: Trigger rewards, keep the user guessing, make sure no one ever wants to log off. The goal wasn't love. It was retention.
Well, the jig is up. Singles are tired of the game—and now, they're tweeting about it, too. So when articles about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's Hinge love story went viral, it felt almost unbelievable. News websites started flooding the internet, talking about his unconventional marriage and what it can mean for a generation of people dying to find a romantic partner.
Cameron Kasky didn't hold back while interviewing Mamdani for The Bulwark. On a hilarious rant about his broken heart, Kasky spotlighted one of the most pressing troubles of the politician's vote bank—the disastrous dating scene in New York. While Mamdani talked big about revitalising third spaces for Gen Z to meet each other in person, he also advised Kasky to 'reconsider' dating apps. 'There's still hope.'
'Zohran's big Hinge reveal indicates that one of the top contenders for NYC mayor has probably spent 20 minutes (at least) picking out his six most flattering photos and identifying his main dealbreakers. It also means that Zohran's familiar with the draining experience of trudging through 'how was your Tuesday' exchanges. Which, now that I think of it, probably doesn't differ much from the campaigning experience. If anything, swiping primed him for politics,' wrote Annabel Iwegbue in a Cosmopolitan article.
Also read: Why the 'long-term relationship' label is killing your dating game
Problems don't end with a match
I know the dating apps are responsible for the romance rot—but they were only the start of the problem. Mumbai-based Nod Magazine, which calls itself 'the new authority on modern living', has been taking the conversation forward. In an article published in April this year, Saachi Gupta talks about how Gen Z's sex life is bearing the brunt of their living arrangements. Turns out, the youth of the generation are being paid peanuts as salary and can't afford to move out of their parents' home. Hence, they're not getting much physical action. It's a big problem.
Another concern highlighted by journalists is how the new generation is not crazy about lifelong romantic partnerships. Infamous for my hot takes, I, too, was called on TV (twice) to explain how Gen Z lovers operate. Let's just say I left the older panellists more confused than they were before entering the studio.
I mean, just because I write about modern dating, am I supposed to understand it too?
Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)