How Do You Date Without Dating Apps? We Asked People Who Manage to Do It

In the last decade, the art of dating has shifted from making eyes at a cute stranger in a café until they come over to ask what you’re reading (can you imagine!) and onto screens. Most of us now find people to sleep with via one of the numerous dating apps on offer: Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, OKcupid, Feeld, or Raya. We create an impressive shopfront of ourselves, then swipe, judge, match, maybe talk and eventually, supposedly, meet. In 2021 alone, there were 250 million active users on dating apps around the world.

But not everyone has taken the path of algorithmic romance. There are outliers, people who have chosen to ignore the promise of limitless cheap dopamine followed by soul-crushing despair and bravely persevered with a more traditional, in person and completely offline pursuit of love.

How is such a thing possible, particularly during a pandemic in which access to clubs and bars has been limited? We spoke to three romantic visionaries to find out.

VICE: Hi Eileen. So, you’ve chosen to stay off the apps – how do you go about meeting people to sleep with?
Eileen: Before the pandemic, I would joke that UberPool is a dating app, and, really, I was only half-joking. That service is a distant memory at this point, but it still represents my general attitude about meeting new people: every interaction is potential for connection. I’m lucky to be a part of a pretty broad music scene in the city I live in, and that’s where I meet most new people… I have no problem walking up to someone who seems interesting and talking to them. An effective way I’ve found to jumpstart rapport is to have tentative plans for the next hang by the end of the conversation. It feels a lot more natural to ask, “When do you want to try out that sushi spot we talked about?” rather than “Wanna get dinner sometime?”

Why have you abstained from dating apps?
I guess you could call me a dating app truther, in that I find the companies cringe and think they stack the odds against you. The more popular dating apps are publicly traded companies, and they publicly admit that people getting into meaningful relationships using the platform are a direct risk to their business. But mostly, I abstain because I find that it encourages me to be less lazy and not to treat people as dispensable. A couple of weeks ago, my roommate and her date asked me to get drinks with them and his friend, and despite being tired, I accepted – hot guys are always friends with other hot guys. If I’d been on the apps, I probably would have said no and swiped on my own time.

VICE: Hi Louisa. How do you find people to date without swiping on a screen?
Louisa: I’m a serial dater – I realised recently that I haven’t been single for longer than a couple of months at a time since the summer of 2017. Every one of these people has been a friend of a friend or someone I already know, and has sort of appeared into my life at random, usually via an in-person introduction.

Is it hard approaching strangers?
I’m a stand-up comedian, so I have an extended network of acquaintances and friends of friends that I have no problem dating. Plus, there’s the added bonus of going on stage most nights and essentially giving a pitch about why I’m an interesting and attractive person. I’ve also worked in a lot of public-facing jobs so I generally have done a lot of seeing and being seen, and I don’t really feel any nerves about just talking to a stranger I fancy even if it means getting knocked back. In the smoking area of Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, I once listened intently to a Dev Patel lookalike talk about his PhD on the behaviour of flies for 15 minutes before his friend brought up his long-term partner.

How has your dating life been affected by the pandemic? Is it harder to meet people?
I haven’t been single for a great deal of the pandemic, but my dating philosophy is that I try not to go out of my way to meet people, and just let things happen. I tend to find when I just focus on looking after myself and investing in my career and friendships, people sort of gravitate towards that. A watched pot never boils, etc.

Why did you decide to abandon dating apps?
I first realised that I probably needed to ditch the apps when I found myself using them specifically to find people I already knew. I think that’s because I feel like I need to be excited about the person I’m dating, and I find it really difficult to be properly excited about someone I met on an app. I think a lot of my feelings of attraction come from seeing someone in context – the way they carry themselves, the way they relate to their friends and how they fit into their own life. Unfortunately, I’m also a messy bitch who lives for drama and I like being able to tell a friend I’m going on a date with XYZ, or feel a fun sense of camaraderie with the person who introduced us.

VICE: Has your usual method of meeting people been impacted by the pandemic?
Berty: I wouldn’t say it's necessarily impacted it in terms of how I meet people - it's just that I don’t really do much of the stuff I used to before, like go clubbing. It's mostly just been through my mates trying to hook me up with someone they know - which went quite horribly a few times if I’m honest. I think I prefer to meet new people through friends… I don’t really put myself in situations where I would meet complete strangers that often.

Has any romance blossomed from your encounters?
Not really any “romance”, but I’ve had a few funny encounters. I once met a girl at a mutual friend's house by chance, and she invited me back to her place. I woke up in the morning without a single recollection of what had happened after we drank a bottle of tequila – all I knew was that my head was throbbing and so were my arse cheeks. I crawled out of bed to go to the bathroom to inspect the damage, which is when I found that the bedroom floor was covered in an array of spanking and whipping equipment. My first thought was “not bad for a first date”, if you could call it that, but nothing really came of it and we never saw each other again.

Have you ever tried using the apps?
I was always against the idea of being on a dating app, because it’s much nicer meeting people in real life and knowing whether you were attracted to someone or not, or them to you. One of my mates made a profile on one of the apps for me by force, but I had it for about six months before I got rid of it. I did go on a few dates from it, but I soon realised that I much prefer meeting people in real life situations.

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