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The meet cute. It’s the adorable how we met story that all girls (and let’s face it, most guys) dream of having once they come across the right person to settle down with. The story that you can tell your friends, family, and children over and over again until they’re tired of hearing it. The insufferable, “No you tell it, you tell it better” line that you’ve heard countless times in romantic comedies? That’s the meet cute. Your grandparents and parents probably have one. But you? Me? And a big part of our generation? We’re totally fucked.
It’s not that couples aren’t still getting together in capital ‘A’ Adorable ways. It’s the fact that those scenarios are becoming the anomaly. The new normal, which is destroying the meet cute for many of us, comes from the rise of technology and online dating.
Picture the following scenario for a blind date twenty years ago (1997):
A man and women who are complete strangers meet in a restaurant. Going into the night, the only thing they know for sure is that they have a mutual friend. Both of them are nervous, but as soon as they lock eyes in the restaurant, sparks begin to fly, emotions run wild, and it ends up being love at first sight. They go from dinner, to watching Titanic in theaters, to a walk in a park, where they share a kiss at midnight. He ignores the three days rule and calls her from his landline phone the next day, much to her delight. They set another date for that weekend. Nine months later they’re getting happily married surrounded by friends and family and they have a story to tell forever.
Sounds pretty nice right? A blind date turned into love and they lived happily ever after. They’ll tell their kids and grandkids about how they were set up by a friend and it blossomed into a beautiful romance. A little bit cookie-cutter, but easy and sweet enough to make anyone smile.
Now picture the modern blind date scenario:
A bleary-eyed, violently hungover man pounds his morning coffee down and makes his move to the office bathroom. He sits down on the toilet ready to rain hot lava on the seat beneath him. Once situated, he opens up Tinder and starts swiping right with reckless abandon, his body shooting out the poison he’d ingested from the Thursday night before. A fiery, unforgiving whirlwind of fecal matter, despair, and shame is expelled from his body at breakneck speeds. Ten or fifteen minutes later, he returns to his desk and sends an identical message to the six girls he matched with during his near-death bathroom experience, “Hey, plans for tonight?”
One of them responds, and they set up a time to grab drinks after work. Love, however, is not what they notice when they lock eyes for the first time. Rather, it’s the ten-to-fifteen plus pounds of holiday weight that was conveniently left out of their photos on the app. In a last ditch effort to bypass this unexpected weight increase, their initial order of beer and a glass of white wine is switched to shots of tequila.
A staggering amount of money later, both members of this blind date are sloshed enough to make a move. They engage in a far from tasteful bar makeout, and agree to Uber back to one of their respective homes. A night of forgettable and passionless lovemaking ensues, ending with the man in our story promising to text her that week… but he never does.
Nine months later, the woman hops in an UberPool after a fantastically unsuccessful Bumble date. She looks to her left and sees none other than the guy who never messaged her all those months ago. They exchange a polite hello, he apologizes for not texting her and asks if she’d like to get dinner sometime. Flustered from being asked out in person and not via text for the first time in what feels like years, she agrees without hesitation.
One to two years later, the heroes of this love story are still together. The pressure of turning 30 bears down on them relentlessly until they crack and decide to settle down for real, reluctantly getting married… not quite the story you want to tell your grandchildren.
So, is that it? Is our generation doomed to a lifetime of awkwardly avoiding the how you met story? Or do we lie and make something up to tell our friends and family? Personally, I think you tell the truth about meeting online, but maybe leave out some of the more controversial details, if there are any. Perhaps there is still hope for our generation, but only time will tell.
In the meantime, get out there and try to meet someone while you’re not on the toilet. You never know what might happen. .
Image via YouTube
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Post Grad Brad
Recent post grad whose name is Brad. That pretty much sums it up. Email me at postgradbrad@gmail.com.
Okay, girls want the “meet cute” thing, yet every time I try to talk to a girl at a coffee shop or at the bar, they get creeped out. Double. Standard.
Not going to lie, if I saw a 2,000 y/o zombie talk to me at a coffee shop, I would get creeped out too.
Harsh
Its flirting if they find you attractive and creepy if they don’t find you attractive. That could also be because some guys out there think that tinder pick up lines work in real life. And they don’t. They’re cheesy at best on line and awkward at best in real life.
Yea, I’m ugly AF, so that doesn’t help.
Can confirm the uphill climb on this
Jesus was celibate
That’s not what your mom said. AAAAYYYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Does “banged after Christmas party” count as a meet-cute?
Meet? Yes. Cute? Depends how you were dressed: Ugly sweater, semi-formal, b-cash. (But more than likely not cute.)
Meet and then get married 9 months later? That just gave me the Scaries.
That doesn’t even give you the chance to know each other for a full fiscal year. You’re missing out on an entire quarter which is essential to knowing how someone operates through the ups and downs of the business cycle.
I might add this is especially true if you’re seeking an accountant. No way should you be marrying someone you haven’t known/dated during Q1.
What is a dating life during Q1?
Can confirm
Name checks out
Or a full sports season, depending on the time of year
Grandma, this is my boyfriend. He slid into my DMs, isn’t that adorable?
Like with anything in life, it’s whatever you make of dating apps. Personally, I think that they’re better than being set up on a blind date because at least you get a chance to talk to the other person and see what they look like. And most people these days don’t take anything you say on dating apps seriously anyway.
My girlfriend and I exchanged like 10 extremely random messages on Tinder before agreeing to meet up and then we had a 4 hour first date (where neither of us got hammered nor went home with the other person) with a much longer second date a few days later. As cliche as this sounds, when you know, you know.
If you get hammered on your first Tinder/Bumble/whatever date and nothing comes out of it, it’s probably a product of your dating skills and/or the person with whom you went on a date with, not necessarily the apps themselves.
Yeah I don’t blame Bumble for me still being single. I blame my anxious personality, difficulties engaging in meaningful conversation, and overanalyzing of everything I do ever. I might need to start pregaming my dates so I start the night off just shy of that sweet drunk zone where I’m actually charming.
Wait, there are people who don’t pre-game dates?
Username checks out
People give dating apps a bad rep. It’s basically like seeing a cute girl at a bar (swipe right) and walking up to her and saying hello (You have a new match!) If the two people are serious about it, and you set up a first date, I don’t get what the huge deal is as long as people are on the same page. I’m no dating expert by any means but it seems like you have a better chance to interact initially over a casual app than you do just randomly walking up to someone at a bar and being like “hi you’re cute let’s talk.”
Pretty much. At the end of the day, does it really matter how you two met? I’m sure that your parents or grandma will care much more about whether your significant other is a good person than the fact that you swiped right on them while taking a dump on the company dime.
If parents are going to be upset their millennial child uses a dating app to meet people, then they should be just as if not more appalled that their single friends in their 50s are using one of the over dozen dating websites to meet other single baby boomers.
Agreed. My parents are as technologically illiterate as it gets and they had no problems understanding how Tinder works. They also like my current girlfriend much more than my previous one, whom I met organically at a Jewish singles event.
I’m waiting for our first couple that start with a “Sup?” in the comments.
Sup?
And we’re off!
I’ll bite. Hey!
I’ll be in DC end of Feb lets “cute meet” at a bar
No we should cute meet on the metro.
DC, what would your honest opinion be of a dude trying to pick someone up on the Metro?
When Metro is all fucked up during rush hour, just look for a girl near you without earbuds and say something like “this is ridiculous, damn red line.”
Jesus Christ no.
Depends on when, what line. Early morning on the silver line? Probably have enough time to spit some game. Red line at 5:30? Train is going to be packed and she’ll be annoyed by the single tracking.
If this does happen I hope they at least have the courtesy to invite all of us to the wedding.
While on a tinder date at a bar, my date had a meet cute with the bartender. Modern romance is a lie.
Watching a Tinder date slip into the arms of another is like a starving man watch a doughnut be incinerated.
dream meet cute is me chilling at the bar on Karaoke Tuesday after crushing Journey’s “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin'” and this solid 8.5 – 9 comes up runs her fingers across my mildy buzzed face and utters the words “is this seat taken?” Shooters gonna shoot and I’m all about aggressive women.
Sup?
Sup right back at ya red.
Come to Boston and we can karaoke any Journey song you like.
Come to Houston any we’ll pound all the margs we can drink and I’ll take ya to brunch cause I’m a gentleman like that.
Don’t threaten me with a good time
Hahaha not a threat if I deliver on it and like fed ex i always deliver.. I’ll also sweetin the pot and toss in no snow and street tacos.
Dude, come on. It’s Friday.
The thirst is real on this thread