In the hour before the Chaotic Singles x Tinder dating event kicked off at the Moxy South Beach in Miami, the sky opened and the downpour began. The patrons of the nearby restaurant where I’d been dining were caught in the deluge, the rain soaking them as though they’d just swum in directly from Biscayne Bay.
This perhaps had a cleansing effect—some sort of spiritual clean slate upon which to begin the night’s mingling endeavor. But on a more literal level, it meant that the hotel’s gorgeous rooftop would no longer be the venue for the night’s icebreakers and hopeful attempts at romance. Instead, the event would be held in the lobby, alongside guests of the hotel. It felt intimate but intimidating, especially considering what I was there to do. My assignment was simple: explore the rise of app-sponsored in-person dating events. Nervous, I took a breath and stepped into the lobby.
Many have asked if this year will mark the death of the dating app. Headlines have emphasized that apps are facing an “existential crisis,” that Gen Z is “ditching dating apps,” that we’re all “sick of swiping,” and that we’ve “fallen out of love” with the technology. Since 2013, dating apps have been the most common way couples meet, but now they’re on the decline. Stock prices have fallen dramatically—Bumble’s dropped from $75 at its IPO to $6, last I checked—while Tinder’s annual downloads currently sit at around two-thirds of what they were at their 2014 peak. The problem, naturally, is that many people feel as though the apps no longer work. They’re not meeting the right people on Bumble, Tinder, or Hinge, but they’ve forgotten how to meet people in the real world too.
It makes sense, then—or, rather, makes it the app’s responsibility—that Tinder would try to bridge this gap by hosting in-person events. Over the summer and into the fall, Tinder has been throwing singles events across the country. At outdoor food markets in Los Angeles and New York, it held “ice cream socials,” where participants wore wristbands signaling their availability and willingness to mingle among other ice cream–eating patrons. In Austin and Nashville, it held line-dancing classes and arcade tournaments. These two particular events occurred in the hour prior to Chaotic Singles Parties, a nationwide singles event founded by Cassidy Davis, a young woman who went viral for inviting her Tinder matches over for a massive house party. Soon, she began throwing the parties elsewhere, inviting whoever was interested in attending—so long as they brought a Tinder match. The idea, of course, is that although you might bring a specific person as your date, they may not be the person you leave with, so to speak.
Other apps have been pursuing similar in-person models. Bumble has hosted Bumble IRL for several years, Feeld has “socials” where you can “take it offline,” and Match Group app Yuzu put on a speed-dating event over the summer. In fact, for as many stories as there are about the decline of dating apps, there seem to be an equal amount about the rise of in-person events. Speed dating and similar activities weren’t uncommon before the apps, but they’ve begun to flourish again post-lockdown. Members-only clubs like Ambyr periodically host speed dating with a chic, exclusive ambience, while Eventbrite is filled with events like “September Intelligent Singles Mixer” and “Queer Speed Dating Extravaganza.” According to Eventbrite, attendance for these types of events grew 43 percent from 2022 to 2023. In New York, there are parties of this nature nearly every night of the week.
But in-person events sponsored by dating apps offer their own specific appeal. There’s safety in familiarity, a comfort in the knowledge that, at very least, one can expect the audience for a Tinder event—and its overall vibe—to be similar to that of the app itself. Tinder is considered to be relatively casual and low-pressure: a good, albeit nonspecific choice for anyone curious to see what’s out there. This inherently attracts a broad demographic that was represented by the event’s attendees. As on the app, there was no particular age group, income level, gender, or sexuality who seemed overrepresented. I saw white women in their 40s and 50s giving it their all during a salsa class as they paired up with Chet Hanks look-alikes in their 20s. There was a pair of ethnically ambiguous adult male twins in their early 30s who pretended they weren’t actually twins. A few Gen Z girls donned heart-shaped bisexual pride stickers.
In fact, the only real commonality among them seemed to be a mutual desire to replicate the ease of app dating in the real world. Tinder’s own data reflects this: According to a media alert for the event series, “over half (58 percent) of young singles prefer to meet matches in group settings, and 52 percent [are] interested in events that bring singles together.” Stephanie Danzi, senior vice president of global marketing at Tinder, told me that much of this has to do with nostalgia—singles are longing for the sorts of iconic “meet-cute” moments that swept them off their feet in ’90s movies and sitcoms, and they’re turning to IRL gatherings to make them happen. The irony of this is obvious: Though people yearn for opportunities to meet others in person, it’s the ubiquity of the apps themselves that has lessened their chances of doing so. App-sponsored dating events, then, are something of a win-win for apps and users alike. Apps get to maintain their status as the preferred dating platforms, while users get to relearn how to navigate dating in the real world.
Prior to the party, I attempted to secure a platonic Tinder date. Using Tinder Platinum’s Passport feature—which the app provided for this story—I was able to browse Miami’s Tinder pool long before I arrived. I was also able to impart more rigid standards than regular users do, narrowing my options to include only those with a bio and indicating that my interest was only in friendship. If I wanted, I could have been even choosier, selecting for, among other things, zodiac signs, sleeping habits, and communication style. I was mainly hoping, though, to discover what Tinder had to offer on its own, freed from my preordained constraints.
It was my first time on the app in close to a decade. I was enthralled by the experience of swiping. There was indeed a seemingly unlimited supply of attractive, interesting-enough men. And there were just as many I didn’t like. Dating apps, I find, often change our sense of our own desires: We think we want a man over 6 feet tall, but were we to meet a man who didn’t fit that requirement in person, we might not even realize it. I don’t think Tinder is an exception to this problem—it just belies a more honest representation of it. Unlike Hinge, Tinder does not try to fluff itself up with required lofty philosophical prompts or cutesy profile features. It’s your photo, some surface-level information about you, and that’s it. There’s nothing to do but go with your gut.
As for my own profile, I added a handful of photos of myself, provided some details about my personality (i.e., “smoker when drinking”), and wrote in my bio that I was looking for someone to platonically accompany me to the event.
I had a few potential takers. Most fizzled out when they realized my intentions, perhaps having not read my bio at all. Others seemed to hope that I was lying or that they could convince me it wasn’t actually platonic. One particular man seemed to be a fit, agreeing he’d be willing to chat with me about his experience for the piece. “My experience might not be like everyone else’s, I’m quite the specimen,” he said. “Plus I might bring my dog, and she’s a real lady killer.”
“I’m not sure you should bring your dog to this event with hundreds of people at a hotel, but let me know if you want to come,” I replied. I saw that he unmatched me.
My experience at the event itself was a bit more fruitful. I told everyone I spoke to that I was a writer who covered these themes, but for all intents and purposes, I functioned like any other participant. I wore my little sticky name tag, grabbed a bingo sheet encouraging us to meet people at the party who tick off boxes like “Regularly drinks whole milk” and “Has been to a Chaotic Singles event before,” and entered into the crowd.
Quickly, I met a slew of eligible bachelors. There was a teacher who lived down the street, an attorney from the next neighborhood over, a younger engineer from Lima who’d been living in Miami for the past six years, and a pilot in his 50s who’d driven an hour to be there. Some had been brought to the event by a friend; others had heard about it directly from in-app ads on Tinder. One even told me he’d found out about it on Meetup.com. 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. The bars and other traditional venues in which they’d previously expected to meet someone were hit-and-miss, and they often felt too awkward to approach people in person at all. So, they figured, why not give this in-person mixer a try?
The first half-hour began slowly, with patrons waiting for their drinks to be made or the buzz to kick in, but it didn’t take long for the initial discomfort to fade. Every few minutes, I’d look around to see that the population of the party and the energy associated with it had doubled in size. As on the app, most women couldn’t stand alone for more than a moment before a new suitor approached.
The gender ratio was about equal. Even so, I did notice men—attractive ones!—who spent most of their time alone. About halfway through the evening, the hosts led a game akin to musical chairs. The music would play, and you’d walk around the room until it abruptly stopped. Whoever was right in front of you would be the next person you spoke with, usually about a specific prompt, like “What’s your biggest red flag?” As I ambled my way through the crowd, I saw several guys standing still, expectantly. “You’re supposed to be walking around!” I said to a few of them, flashing a smile. “Oh, am I?” they’d respond, with a sort of sly smirk. “Why don’t you just stay here and talk to me?”
“No!” I’d respond. “I’m here to PARTICIPATE!” Later, when the game was over, I’d see them alone again.
While some people couldn’t get out of their own way, the party was filled with plenty of others who were trying their absolute best—and seemingly having a good time doing it. In the few free moments I had to look around, what I observed resembled a liquor ad, where everyone at a bar is smiling and laughing and not looking at their phones. I saw the pilot I’d spoken to earlier apparently hitting it off with a woman in a faux leather jacket, and a few young ladies in bodycon dresses cackling with men across the bar. Did anyone form a relationship? Or maybe even just go home with someone? I can’t say for sure, but for a solid few hours, they were at least present—dabbling in real human connection, however fleeting it was.
This, as I heard from attendees and hosts of other in-person dating events, was the point of going. While I don’t yet know anyone personally who has found a partner at these events, I do know plenty who have enjoyed giving them a try—at a minimum, they’re a small act of resistance against our overwhelmingly digital world. “Whether you consider these events to ‘work’ depends on what your success metric is,” Allie Hoffman, host of the dating event and speaker series Feels, told me. “I’m not selling you your next boyfriend or your girlfriend. I’m selling an opportunity to be human in a new way.”
As I tried to pay my bill and call a car toward the end of the night, there was, quite literally, a line of men waiting to speak with me. It was honestly the ego boost of the season, something that does not often happen to me at parties or bars. To some, it may resemble the experience of swiping on the apps—there can be dozens, perhaps hundreds, of men virtually queuing up for a shot at one woman, some even going so far as to pay to send a digital rose that goes unnoticed. It’s easy to complain about this imbalanced heterosexual dynamic online, but it was hauntingly earnest to witness in person. Their hopefulness—conveyed not in still images or bland DMs but in growing smiles and flirtatious tones—was deeply affecting. I was touched that they’d willingly submitted themselves to hours of attempted human connection, then tried their chances, at the end of a long night, with me. It was impressive that they’d garnered bravery to confront me. I think in those moments, we seemed real to one another in a way that’s nearly impossible to replicate online.
One slightly emo man who stood in that line stuck in my mind. “I know you’re trying to leave, but I’ve been seeing you all night and I wanted to give you this,” he said as I turned off my barstool, handing me a bronze heart sticker. When we’d each first arrived at the event, we had been given one to bestow upon the person we liked the most at the party. I left with three—one being my own, which I never gave out—and a pang of guilt. He’d chosen me, and I’d chosen no one at all.
There was a sense of sadness that lingered with me in the hours following the event, as well as anxiety about how everyone else who had attended was feeling. I hoped they were proud of themselves for getting out there and trying something, and for striving to meet new people regardless of how “successful” they were. I wished I’d done more to convey that to the people I spoke to.
Perhaps, though, this is all how it’s supposed to be. Dating can be miserable, heartbreaking, and hopeless, regardless of where it takes place. But it can also be exciting, fun, and enlightening just the same. If you learn nothing of someone else, you will at least learn something of yourself.
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. 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.
