A year into their relationship, Jess and Nate got engaged next to the sea. "It was a golden, sandy beach – empty and secluded," says Jess, 26. "It was just us two there, so it was really intimate."

Except that the couple were actually hundreds of miles apart – and they were role-playing their engagement in the video game World of Warcraft.

Nate, 27, was living just outside London – and Jess was in Wales. After meeting briefly at an esports event in Germany in March 2023, the pair developed a long-distance relationship, playing the game together "from the moment we woke up to the moment we went to bed", says Nate.

The couple still play the game daily, even though they've been living together in Manchester since March 2024. And they know other couples who have found their partners through video games: "It's a different way of meeting someone," says Jess. "You both have such a strong mutual love for something already, it's easier to fall in love."

Nate agrees. "I was able to build a lot more of a connection with people I meet in gaming than I ever was able to in a dating app."

A selfie of Nate and Jess on the left, and on the right, a screenshot from World of Warcraft showing Nate proposing with the words, "Will you marry me?"

Nate and Jess (pictured, alongside their virtual engagement), found love online - but not on a dating app

Nate and Jess are not alone. According to some experts, people of their generation are moving away from dating apps and finding love on platforms that were not specifically designed for romance.

And hanging out somewhere online that's instead focused on a shared interest or hobby could allow people to find a partner in a lower-stakes, less pressurised setting than marketing themselves to a gallery of strangers. For some digital-native Gen Zs, it seems, simply doing the things they enjoy can be an alternative to the tyranny of the swipe.

Internet dating at 30 - a turning point?

Since it first appeared with the launch of match.com 30 years ago, online dating has fundamentally altered our relationships. Around 10% of heterosexual people and 24% of LGBT people have met their long-term partner online, according to Pew Research Center.

But evidence suggests that young people are switching off dating apps, with the UK's top 10 seeing a fall of nearly 16%, according to a report published by Ofcom in November 2024. Tinder lost 594,000 users, while Hinge dropped by 131,000, Bumble by 368,000 and Grindr by 11,000, the report said (a Grindr spokesperson said they were "not familiar with this study's source data" and that their UK users "continue to rise year over year").

According to a 2023 Axios study of US college students and other Gen Zers, 79% said they were forgoing regular dating app usage. And in its 2024 Online Nation report, Ofcom said: "Some analysts speculate that for younger people, particularly Gen Z, the novelty of dating apps is wearing off." In a January 2024 letter to shareholders, Match Group Inc - which owns Tinder and Hinge - acknowledged younger people were seeking "a lower pressure, more authentic way to find connections".

"The idea of using a shared interest to meet someone isn't new, but it's been reinvented in this particular moment in time – it signals a desire of Gen Z," says Carolina Bandinelli, an associate professor at Warwick University whose research focuses on the digital technologies of romance.

Getty Images Joggers running in a parkGetty Images

Many younger people are exploring alternatives to dating apps, from gaming to running clubs and other social activities

According to Danait Tesfay, 26, a marketing assistant from London, younger people are looking for alternatives to dating apps, "whether that be gaming or running clubs or extra-curricular clubs, where people are able to meet other like-minded people and eventually foster a romantic connection".

At the same time that membership of some dating apps appears to be in decline, platforms based around common interests are attracting more users. For instance, the fitness app Strava now has 135m users – and its monthly active users grew by 20% last year, according to the company. Other so-called "affinity-based" sites have seen similar growth: Letterboxd, where film fans can share reviews, says its community grew by 50% last year.

Rise of the hobby apps

And just as in the pre-internet age, when couples might have met at a sports club or the cinema, now singletons are able to find each other in their online equivalents.

"People have always bonded over shared interests, but it's been given a digital spin with these online communities," says Luke Brunning, co-director of the Centre for Love, S*x, and Relationships (CLSR) at the University of Leeds.

"It's increasingly difficult to distinguish between behaviour that's on a dating app and dating behaviour on another platform."

Hobby apps are taking on some features of social media, too: in 2023, Strava introduced a messaging feature letting users chat directly. One twenty-something from London explains that her friends use it as a way to flirt with people they fancy, initially by liking a running route they've posted on the platform. Strava says its data shows that one in five of its active Gen Z members has been on a date with someone they met through fitness clubs.

"[Online] fitness communities are becoming big places to find partners," says Nichi Hodgson, the author of The Curious History of Dating. She says a friend of hers met his partner that way, and they're now living together.

The same appears to apply to Letterboxd, too. With users including Chappell Roan and Charli XCX, it's a popular platform for younger people - two-thirds of members in a survey of 5,000 were under 34.

The company says it's aware of several couples meeting through the app, including one who bonded over a shared love of David Fincher's opinion-dividing 2020 drama Mank. "It could be that seeing other people's film tastes reveals an interesting aspect of themselves," says Letterboxd co-founder Matthew Buchanan.

Why the shift?

So what might be driving this? While dating apps initially appeared to offer "the illusion of choice", and a transparent, efficient way to meet partners, the reality for many has often proven to be different. The Pew Research Center found that 46% of dating-app users said their experiences were overall very or somewhat negative.

The recent decline in user numbers might also be a response to the way some apps are structured – in particular, the swipe feature for selecting potential partners, launched by Tinder in 2013 and widely copied.

Its creator, Jonathan Badeen, was partly inspired by studying the 1940s experiments of psychologist BF Skinner, who conditioned hungry pigeons to believe that food delivered randomly into a tray was prompted by their movements.

Getty Images A psychological experiment with pigeons conducted by BF SkinnerGetty Images

Tinder's swipe mechanism was partly inspired by Harvard Professor BF Skinner's psychological experiments with pigeons in order to understand the brain's reward system

Eventually, the swipe mechanism faced a backlash. "Ten years ago, people were enthusiastic and would talk quite openly about what apps they were on," says Ms Hodgson. "Now the Tinder model is dead with many young people – they don't want to swipe any more."

According to Mr Brunning, the gameifying interface of many dating apps is a turn-off. "Intimacy is made simple for you, it's made fun in the short term, but the more you play, the more you feel kind of icky."

The pandemic may have had an impact, too, says Prof Brian Heaphy at the University of Manchester, who has studied dating-app use in and after the lockdowns: "During Covid, dating apps themselves became more like social media – because people couldn't meet up, they were looking for different things."

Although that didn't last after the pandemic, it "gave people a sense that it could be different from just swiping and getting no responses – all the negatives of dating-app culture," says Prof Heaphy.

And in that context, the fact that video games or online communities like Strava or Letterboxd aren't designed for dating can be appealing. By attracting users for a broader range of reasons, there's less pressure on each interaction.

"Those apps aren't offering a commercialised form of romance, so they can seem more authentic," says Prof Heaphy.

The World of Warcraft characters of PurplePixel and Wochi

The humans behind Wochi and PurplePixel (pictured) met while playing World of Warcraft, though they say finding a partner wasn't their original intention

It's a type of connection free from the burden of expectation. A different couple who met on World of Warcraft – and go by the names Wochi and PurplePixel – weren't looking for love. "I definitely didn't go into an online game trying to find a partner," says Wochi.

But although initially in opposing teams, or guilds, their characters started a conversation. "We spent all night talking until the early hours of the morning, and by the end of the night, I'd actually left my guild and joined his guild," says PurplePixel. Within three years, Wochi had quit his job and moved to the UK from Italy to be with her.

According to Ms Hodgson, "While some dating apps can bring out the worst behaviours, these other online spaces can do the opposite, because people are sharing something they enjoy."

Because of these structural elements, she doesn't think the recent decline in numbers is temporary. "It's going to keep happening until dating apps figure out how to put the human aspect back."

New kinds of dating app

The dating apps aren't giving up without a fight, however. Hinge is still "setting up a date every two seconds", according to a spokesperson; Tinder says a relationship starts every three seconds on its platform and that almost 60% of its users are aged 18-30. In fact, the apps appear to be embracing the shift to shared-interest platforms, launching niche alternatives including ones based around fitness, veganism, dog-ownership or even facial hair.

They're also evolving to encourage different kinds of interaction. On Breeze, users who agree to be set up on a date aren't allowed to message each other before they meet; and Jigsaw hides people's faces, only removing pieces to reveal the full photo after a certain amount of interaction.

It means that it's premature to proclaim the death of the dating app, believes Prof Heaphy. "There's now such a diversity of dating apps that the numbers for the biggest ones aren't the key indicator," he says. "It might actually be a similar number to before, in terms of overall membership."

And there's a downside to people going to more general-interest apps looking for love – people might not want to be hit on when they just want to talk about books. Dating apps, at least, are clear about what their purpose is.

What might the future look like?

In an increasingly online world, the solution to improving relationships might not simply be to go offline. Instead, apps that can offer an experience which more closely mirrors the best of IRL interactions, while tapping into the possibilities of digital ones, might also show a way forward.

With the imminent integration of AI into dating apps, we are "right on the cusp of something new", says Mr Brunning. "It's interesting to see if we'll end up with specific apps just for dating, or will we end up with something a bit more fluid?"

He points to platforms in China that are more multi-purpose. "People use them for chat, for community, and conduct business on them – they can also be dating platforms, but they're often not exclusively for that."

In the meantime, the interactions possible in less mediated communities like World of Warcraft could offer more of a chance to connect than conversations initiated by a swipe.

Jess and Nate's in-game engagement on the beach might not have been real, but the couple are hoping to change that soon. "It's a matter of when, really. There are a few things we need to tick off the checklist, and then she'll be getting her ring," says Nate. And there'll still be a gaming element.

"You can role-play getting married," says Jess. "So it could be funny to get all our friends together at some point in the World of Warcraft cathedral, and we could have a marriage ceremony."

!sex_havers good for him but she's going to raise tard baby

!r-slurs !neurodivergents

Milei refuses to apologize for $LIBRA memecoin scam: "If you went to a casino and lost money, what's the complaint?"

On promoting the scheme: "I didn't promote it, I spread it... I used my personal account"

"But you're the president"

His lawyer then interrupts the interview pic.twitter.com/ojncW9jVDo

— COMBATE |🇵🇷 (@upholdreality) February 18, 2025

Your average modern era "video game award" show experience pic.twitter.com/UZhKnPNoWb

— Kabrutus (@kabrutusrambo) February 16, 2025

I'd only been talking to this girl for like a day, she asked me about my weekend. For context, my week before had been super busy so I wasn't looking to do a ton of social activities last weekend just a nice, chill couple of days. I clearly cracked a joke about the fact that it was kind of a boring weekend, but I never expected her to reply like this

___

Reddit is split on whether she is being ironically edgy or whether she really wants him to end his own life.

Suicidal Redditor tells OP to chill out

It's clearly misogyny at play

I'm not even sure why OP cares,

AI ENHANCE AI ENHANCE

It never even began

lol

Jumbotrons are down, I repeat jumbotrons are down

Trump knows True Democrat Patriots are in control and will arrest him

Is Dark Brandon rounding up MAGA chuds to have them mass executed in the Capitol Arena? Possibly.

Is Trump's inaugeration committee going to turn Judas on him and install a favored Republican President in a very rare double steal?

Further Patriots plan on executing Operation Lalala I can't hear you

Vance annoyed by papparazzi, this is a sign

If any word has described blue-anons since the election, I don't think happy would be it

Protoclone, the world's first bipedal, musculoskeletal android. pic.twitter.com/oIV1yaMSyE

— Clone (@clonerobotics) February 19, 2025

The Protoclone is a faceless, anatomically accurate synthetic human with over 200 degrees of freedom, over 1,000 Myofibers, and 500 sensors.

— Clone (@clonerobotics) February 19, 2025

Torso 2 with an actuated abdomen. pic.twitter.com/ciggvr7b06

— Clone (@clonerobotics) December 6, 2024

same vibe pic.twitter.com/CTgtgFDyDu

— Chansoo Byeon (@ByeonChansoo) February 19, 2025

!schizomaxxxers

Period.

It's in the Constitution

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-9/clause-8/#:~:text=No%20Title%20of%20Nobility%20shall,%2C%20Prince%2C%20or%20foreign%20State.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

I want one so I can play Uboat https://store.steampowered.com/app/494840/UBOAT/ the xbox controller keyboard mapping is confusing

about $150-200 https://us.nerdytec.com/products/couchmaster-cycon2

I feel like it's crossing into some new nerd realm

So my wife (29f) and i (28m) have been together with the exception of a long break when we were 18 and 19 for 10 years. (She left me for another guy) and every year or two since we've been back together i keep finding things on her phone. The first was a fetlife account where she was chatting with multiple men. The second was a coworker she was speaking explicitly with. Third she asked a random neighbor out for coffee in our apartment complex in a flirting manner. And finally this. I found nudes of her that I'd never seen before, and looked in the deleted pictures on her phone and found pictures of another man's nudes.

We've had some rough patched with my finances and depression as well as hers. I must admit I was feeling sexually frustrated last year and went to a "massage parlor" but didn't go through with the end part. And she found out. She's insists that nothing has become physical any of these times and would leave if she were going to go through with it, because she did when thats what she wanted.

Our relationship is great except for this horrible bi annual ritual of her seeking attention. She makes the money In the relationship and I'm very limited in my capacity to support myself for any sort of trial separation. I don't want to leave. I love her. But I feel I need to advocate for myself despite my own wrongdoings. I feel so trapped and hopeless.

Came across this amazing post. But what's even funnier is if you visit his profile and see the only other post he's made:

This might be the dumbest man on Earth.

Oh, he's from Portland? She's not cheating on him; he's just unknowingly in a poly relationship.

BREAKING:

2 judges on the Supreme Court of Iran, have just been shot and killed.

Ali Razini & Mohammad Moghiseh were killed in front of the Supreme Court building in Tehran by a guard who had enough of the Islamist dictatorship

Both judges were hardliners, known as “hangmen” pic.twitter.com/b5LAHxmF2N

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 18, 2025

The assassin increased the moid suicide rate too

!moidmoment was he one of the few good scroteoids?

1. "this is Phite Wower , he's still in training" "you alright Tyrone"

2. "Nite Biggers walked so these good boys could run" "your Mom forgot to swallow"

3. "y'all racist as F..."

4. "they are so cute!" "read their names real hard" "oh wow... they still cute though"

5. "what happened to Jynce Lews? He's adorable?"

6. "they had to retire Will Khitey"

7. "BITE WHO"

8. "The Father of Nite Biggers can't be found" "you ugly" "you ain't though" "I know but ugly as F"

9. "This is racist as heck! Too many POCs in here laughing and shit..." "you deserve it"

DUI suspect caught speeding at over 130 mph said he was in rush to see his cat: cops https://t.co/bhFU83s7NV pic.twitter.com/XX2K3NJW73

— New York Post (@nypost) February 7, 2025

Max announce the release of the 'Luigi Mangione: The CEO Killer' documentary on February 17th. pic.twitter.com/nwIEA87QUp

— Pop Tingz (@ThePopTingz) February 13, 2025

Imagine whatever you think the "male" version of this behavior in the workplace is like - maybe some performative jocky behavior between men - then ask yourself if women feel welcomed or alienated working in that environment. https://t.co/3loqq4u7mz

— AnechoicMedia (@AnechoicMedia_) February 1, 2025

Do you think if your boss posted a video of himself dancing at the office and chanting about his peepee this would dismissed as "guys having fun"? There is a lack of equal standards for workplace behavior for women.

— AnechoicMedia (@AnechoicMedia_) February 1, 2025

Someone manages to work in Visualizing The Apple and The Heatmap into gen z boss and a mini criticism

Visualize the apple + heat map

When you realize the vast majority of them cannot imagine what the other side thinks, you begin to understand why things are the way they are pic.twitter.com/MjvVAWMi5p

— Judefetzen (@mistermugabe) February 1, 2025

He missed incorporating the BQ but someone else has his back

This is the "How would you feel if you didn't ear breakfast this morning?" Question for women.

Some won't understand, but many will just answer "it's ok for us to behave this way, but not men, because muh patriarchy or muh made up wage gap."

— QuietStorm (@AudibleStorm) February 1, 2025

YWNBAT is a novel take

What Armand feels rage about is not being a "cute girl" having fun at the office

— Brian Little (@BrianSculling) February 1, 2025

SPAL jumpscare

Facts

We live in a matriarchy, not a patriarchy

And it needs to end

— Alex (@Marsey_Le_Tigre) February 1, 2025

This is the first time I've seen anyone rightly call out the scrote menace with regard to this though. So even after like a year on, the discourse is still evolving

The real problem is that guys want the cute girls in their workplace even if the girls destroy the work culture because they think there's a chance they might bone them.

— Dr. hbd nrx 🐸 (@HbdNrx) February 1, 2025

!misandrists

xD

More wholesome reddit parenting stories:

A classical Greek tragedy about hard work, big egos, and French culture.

His fanatical attention to detail, frenetic work ethic, and discerning palate, propelled him to the top of his profession, and earned him a knowledgeable and loyal, but unforgiving and demanding clientele.

In the late 1990s, a new form of Asian-inspired "fusion cuisine" swept France, catering to an international corporate class and pleasing trend-driven "foodies" (a neologism of the movement), which Loiseau resisted.

Loiseau was downgraded from 19/20 to 17/20 in the Gault et Millau guide and received a strong negative media review from the gastronomic critic François Simon in the newspaper Le Figaro, but he still had his three stars in the Michelin Guide. Criticism continued to pour in and the media speculated about a possible future loss of a Michelin star.

But on February 24, 2003, the chef finished his lunchtime service, rolled up his apron and drove home. Telling his ten-year old son – one of three children – to go and play outside, he went upstairs, locked the bedroom door and shot himself in the head with a hunting rifle, a present from his wife.

After his death, three-star chef Jacques Lameloise said Loiseau had once confided, "If I lose a star, I'll kill myself".

Derek Brown, Michelin director at the time, said: "The idea of telling him about the concerns we had about some of his cooking was in order to give him an opportunity to consider whether he wanted to do something about it, which he did, as it turned out."

All in all, a messy story sparking many debates about whether reviewers should really be brutally honest, and if they are unfairly harsh. Perhaps it inspired Ratatouille (2007)?

These mayos have no sense of humor