My Kingdom for a Meet Cute

The last time I felt this kind of gut-wrenching dread, I was standing in line for a ride on the Fujiyama roller-coaster at the base of Japan’s Mount Fuji. Once the largest and fastest in the world, it speeds up to 130 kilometres per hour and boasts a 70-plus metre drop.

Now, I’m sitting in my car on a quiet East Vancouver street, about to try something equally terrifying: speed-dating.

The concept is, admittedly, a little cheesy (hence my nervousness). It originated in the late 1990s in response to more traditional dating events in an effort to level the playing field and give more people a chance to meet someone special. Everyone who attends a speed-dating event gets to meet each participant at least once; if the same two people note that they’re a match, the event organizers will connect them.

Now, in the year 2025, I find myself resorting to this method of courtship because the modern equivalent — dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and Bumble — just aren’t working for me anymore. I’ve been on and off these apps for three years, yielding one serious relationship, a few not-so-serious relationships and enough psychic damage to almost put me off dating entirely.

Tired of mindless swiping, meaningless conversations and trying to decipher the difference between seeking a “short-term, open to long-term” and “long-term, open to short-term” relationship, I decided to quit the apps and give the real world a try.

The problem was, I wasn’t sure I knew how to do that. When Tinder first hit the market, I was 13 years old. I’m 25 now, and dating apps have been ubiquitous with everything from casual hookups to long-term commitments for my entire adult life.

That’s how I ended up parked on that street in East Van, gearing up to attend an event at Single Slice, a speed-dating style meet-up at Slice of Life, an art gallery, gift shop and event space just off Commercial Drive that Sheena Botelho owns and operates.

Single Slice started as a way to combat the cliché but (as most clichés are) true statement that it’s hard to meet people in Vancouver, said Botelho. “We wanted to make a casual way to have a conversation with every person in the room and take the edge off that serious and gendered speed-dating algorithm.”

At a Single Slice event, attendees can expect to have a four-minute conversation with everyone, regardless of age, gender or sexuality. The connections participants make don’t have to be strictly romantic, as indicated by its tagline, “make a friend or something more,” but the vibe I got was that most people went into the event open to the possibility of finding their person.

As one of my speed dates told me, “It’s nice to put yourself out there. And if I meet someone, who am I to spit in the face of love?”

Dating events like Single Slice have grown increasingly popular as more singles seek out in-person spaces to find romantic connections.

A report from the ticketing website Eventbrite revealed a 42-per-cent increase in dating event attendance from 2022 to 2023, and another 49-per-cent increase from 2023 to 2024.

Meanwhile, dating app giant Match Group — the company behind Tinder and Hinge — and Bumble, their main competitor, have lost more than $40 billion in market value since 2021.

This year, Botelho increased the frequency of Single Slice events from monthly to almost every week in response to community demand.

“I feel like we’re, as a generation, over the dating app. It’s disingenuous. It has a purpose, but it’s not necessarily finding true love,” she said. “I think that’s why demand is increasing, because there’s actually something to this, something that can’t be expressed online.”

On the night I attended Single Slice, I met more than 20 people in two hours. The interactions ranged from totally effortless to slightly awkward. I swapped book recommendations, debated over the best Albertan city and (on my most cringeworthy date) asked a jazz musician if he’d ever seen La La Land.

I didn’t make any romantic connections, but I did leave with a sense of accomplishment and a rush of adrenaline — the same way I felt after disembarking the Fujiyama roller coaster.

On the apps, the vibes have deteriorated

For-profit dating apps are financially disincentivized from helping users form genuine love connections. Online dating has grown into an industry worth billions, and the more people find “the one,” the less they spend money on Tinder Plus, Gold and Premium (something that sounds straight out of a Black Mirror episode but are the actual names of the app’s subscription tiers).

It’s an industry that thrives at the expense of its users, many of whom don’t even enjoy using the apps.

A 2023 Pew study shows that almost half of online daters have had an overall negative experience. Another 2024 Forbes Health survey found that 78 per cent of respondents reported feeling emotionally, mentally or physically exhausted by dating apps.

Other research indicates that younger users, particularly those from generation Z, are more likely to experience disillusionment with the online dating experience.

Finding a match off the apps is easier said than done, but events like speed-dating can help smooth some of the awkwardness that comes with trying to find romantic prospects in person — a real barrier for people (like me) used to flirting through their phones.

It’s one thing to see someone cute at a bar, but another to actually talk to them. What if they have a partner? What if they reject you? What if they think you’re a creep?

Riley Orr, a Vancouver-based actor who has been looking for love for the last seven years, admits that these are the questions running through his mind on the rare occasion he considers approaching a stranger to flirt with in real life.

“It’s hard to approach a stranger cold, but with a screen, with a dating app, it feels like that’s what you’re supposed to do,” Orr said. “Real life is not where you meet people. Where you meet people is on your phone.”

This cultural shift is described in a 2024 class action lawsuit filed against Match Group on behalf of a group of former customers. While the lawsuit’s legal argument centres on the company engaging in false advertising by unlawfully misleading users with promises of romance, it also details how they have “altered social reality,” transforming the dating scene for an entire generation.

“A millennium of traditional courtship has been replaced by technology,” the lawsuit states. “Striking up an in-person conversation with a stranger cannot compete with the convenience of swiping left or right on a profile, and no person could engage with a hundred potential partners in person in a matter of minutes.”

Orr and I were sitting in a coffee shop, having this conversation about the hardships of modern dating, when he gestured at the tables around us. They were all occupied by people chatting in pairs and quietly working or reading alone.

“Do I just go up and be like, ‘Hello, my name is Riley. Nice to meet you. What is your phone number?’” He shook his head. “How do you do it?”

Still, Orr said he doesn’t actually like the alternative, which, for now, is seeking romantic connections on the apps.

“Dating apps don’t feel good, but they also feel like such a part of life,” he said.

I asked why he still uses them.

“Because I don’t know what else to do,” he replied.

“I don’t want to be single for my whole life.”

People are available, but they’re not all on Hinge

Dating apps take advantage of the pervasive problem that many people just aren’t as social as they once were. Post-pandemic, we are still going out less, throwing fewer parties and meeting fewer people — all tried and true methods of finding romantic connections.

The apps promise that all we need to do to meet someone is invest a bit more time on our phones, devices we’re already all too comfortable using for hours, doom scrolling.

Rachael Brewin-Caddy was tired of the constant swiping and mindless chatting that dating apps tend to incentivize when she brought Thursday, a dating event company that started in London, England, to Vancouver last January. Thursday dubs itself “the biggest IRL dating brand in the world,” hosting weekly singles events in over 85 different cities, including seven across Canada.

When Brewin-Caddy’s first Thursday Vancouver event sold out its 100-person capacity and still had people at the door trying to buy tickets, she knew it was going to be popular.

“I think it just really shows that people are craving that in-person connection,” she said. “You can get really bogged down by thinking all the single people must be on the dating apps. There are so many people in Vancouver that are available; they just don’t happen to use Hinge.”

Unlike speed-dating, Thursday events don’t have a set structure and are meant to emulate the experience of a regular night out at a bar (where everyone is single, of course). Attendees still need to muster the courage to approach people, but they at least know everyone is open to being approached, because that’s why they’re all there.

Brewin-Caddy says the events typically attract a crowd of people around 25 to 40 years old, a demographic of older gen Z and younger Millennials who have been mostly reliant on dating apps for the last decade. “I think we’re just getting really bored of that,” Brewin-Caddy says.

“We’re all getting older. We want to meet somebody, and it’s like, ‘Hang on a minute, why are we relying on our phones?’”

As part of my dating-in-real-life journey, I went to a Thursday event in February. It looked, at first glance, like a regular night at a regular bar. But throughout the evening, the tables where people would typically camp out with the group they arrived with remained empty, the space instead filled with people moving around to mingle.

While I can’t say I welcomed every advance, I’ve never spoken to that many new people on a night out, and it was refreshing to be surrounded by people so eager to connect with one another.

Whether or not I find my person out in the wild, there’s a strange comfort in trying. After years of curated profiles and algorithmic matches, it feels radical — even romantic — to believe in chance encounters again.

I don’t know if I believe in love at first sight, but I certainly won’t find it by staring down at my phone.