All Of The (Mostly Crazy) Ways Dating Has Changed Since 2000
Welcome to the roaring 20s where even if you delete a dating app from your phone you'll still get droves of unsolicited messages from thirsty folks on Instagram. To ghost or not to ghost is always the ultimate question but it's quickly followed by the thought that the selfie with your dog you just uploaded to Hinge might get you people who like your dog more than you. Like... what are we even doing anymore?
If you're 80% confusion, 19% fear of dying alone, and 1% actually emotionally ready to date again, dating has changed a lot since the 2000s. And by a lot, I mean a lot and way too quickly for any of us to follow. Don't worry if you've got whiplash though, because we're all in this together.
2000: The Rise Of Meeting Strangers On The Internet
We all grew up hearing from our parents to never give away any information to strangers on the internet because that 16 year-old-girl that you absolutely fell in love with in a chatroom is actually a 45-year-old murderer from Ohio. You know, that old saying.
And yeah that's true sometimes, but 2000 marked the year that for the first time more than half the households in America had internet access...and statistically half of America can't be murderers, right? So with more and more people going online everyday from their computers, slowly dating culture moved into cyberspace.
2000: eHarmony, Tinder's Cousin Who Went To College, Was Born
We can largely thank eHarmony for most of the push that saw dating get more digital in the 2000s. In 2000, relationship counselor and clinical psychologist, Dr. Neil Clark Warren founded eHarmony with the goal to get its users rings on their fingers.
Dr. Warren's approach was unique in that it marketed itself as pairing singles up based on compatibility, which they found out by filling out a questionnaire. Dr. Warren initially put an insane 450 questions on. That got whittled down to a staggering 150, and in 2016 got slashed down to "just a few" to compete with other platforms.
2003: ProxiDating Finally Found Those Hot Singles In Your Area (30 Feet To Be Exact)
We're now used to seeing the little caption under someone's profile that they're "five miles away" and immediately getting worried and excited you're going to see them at the grocery store, but that used to be a fairly new thing.
Back in 2003, sites like ProxiDating and Match started using the Bluetooth location services on cell phones (probably Nokias) to alert users when a match was within 30 feet of them. That didn't stay trendy for long because of the obvious concern that someone would run up to you Jason Bourne chase style in public and ask if you're on Match.com.
2004: Facebook Became The Relationship Mecha
Even though the site's founders told Time magazine back in 2004 that the site wasn't created for "online dating" but to "enhance the college experience" in general... let's be real, dating is exactly what a lot of people did in college. But one thing they do agree with is that when Facebook jumped into the online ecosystem it completely changed the dating game.
"Facebook stalking" was how you figured out if Brad from chemistry was a weirdo or a potential date. Facebook's "recommended friends" feature kept exes in your life who you were trying to ignore. And becoming "Facebook official" was the only way to know if it was real. Because baby, it was so freaking real.
2005: The "Selfie" Shattered Our Universe
Often times, we make big yes/no decisions on dating apps all based off of one picture—the selfie. Because that questionably high angle and basement background just say so much about a person. But the term or the action wasn't always popular.
With the advent of smartphones and phones with rear-facing cameras (woah) we could see ourselves while taking photos of ourselves and ohmygod did we love that. Photographer Jim Krause coined and popularized the term in 2005 after experimenting with the technique.
2006: "Texting" Became The Equivalent Of Flirting
Believe it or not, we weren't always able to text someone and actually have it go through and get a response. Texting was first launched in 1992, but it didn't actually get good until 1999 when you were finally able to text someone on a different phone network than you. 2000 had people sending roughly 35 texts a month, while fast-forward to 2006, it became the norm with over 205 million UK messages sent on Christmas day alone.
With its rise in popularity, texting became the way that you flirted with someone, and the statement that you two were "texting" meant that things were getting more romantic.
2007: Tumblr Helped Artsy Kids Find Love Too
Remember the good ol' days of Tumblr where we'd voluntarily scroll past hundreds of black and white GIFs of people doing the nasty until we found some Harry Potter fanart we enjoyed and decided to reblog? It's a slightly different experience now since they've banned adult content, but Tumblr still holds a lot of power in connecting people.
Because the site is so fandom-based, many users found themselves forming relationships with other users with similar tastes in television (Gossip Girl and Naruto) and movies (Harry Potter). These people would meet up and no doubt hope that the other person was who they said they were.
2009: Omegle Made Us All Want To Burn Our Eyes Shut
Just when we thought that online dating was the new "normal," in 2009 Chatroulette and Omegle were introduced and made everyone scared to go on the internet again. Seriously.
Even though these "dating" sites paired up strangers via webcam with innocuous intentions, a study conducted by RJMetrics found that 1/8 of the pairings were with someone jerking it. But hey, some people find love in a hopeless place and Chatroulette and Omegle are those very dark and very hopeless places.
2009: Grindr (Finally) Arrived
Say what you want about Grindr and the people you may meet on there, but this app was the first of its kind and it deserves mad props for that. In 2009, Grindr launched and became the world's first men-only dating app.
It was designed to give queer men a safe space to talk, hookup, and flirt, and for that, it deserves a round of applause. Thanks to Grindr, a new age of digital dating started that wasn't completely catered to heterosexual people.
2010: Facetime Made Long Distance Slightly Less Terrible
Long-distance before cellphones and decent internet connection meant that all the relationship-building you're doing was over the phone or by mail. And anyone who's been in a long-distance relationship can tell you that that sounds like hell. But a worse hell from what they're already in.
Facetime was released in 2010 and is an app that allows iPhone users to video chat one another from their phones instead of Skyping on the computer. It makes people feel like they're talking face-to-face and long-distance relationships feel almost tolerable.
2010: Ask.FM Made It Easy For People To Ask You 100 Times Who You've Hooked Up With
When Ask.FM launched, its creators probably expected that people would use it to anonymously ask their friends what their favorite colors were or what they wanted for their birthday.
Well, little did they know that we'd all use it to ask the most wildly inappropriate and personal questions in a weird and very public way of finding out whether we could see ourselves with this person or not. At its height in 2013, Ask.FM had 65 million registered users on there asking people if they were into "foot stuff."
2010: Also The Year We Learned About "Breadcrumbing"
We got so wise to people's player ways during the 2000s that we even invented a name for it—"breadcrumbing." The term was defined in 2010 on UrbanDictionary as "the act of sending out flirtatious, but non-committal texts" designed to keep the other person interested and sent with no intention of actually starting a relationship.
Unfortunately, just because we know what it means doesn't stop any of us from getting led on and our hearts broken by players in snapback hats. We're just kind of toxic like that, hi.
2010: It Was A Big Year For Catfish
Thanks to Nev and his horrible experience, we were blessed as a society with the documentary Catfish and a spin-off MTV series all about exposing people who were pretending to be other (hotter and cooler) people online to lure others into relationships.
The show was so iconic that the term "catfish" was invented to describe someone who doesn't quite measure up in person to their online profile. There's something sinister and sad about these people that don't ask for your money or support, they just want your love and attention.
2011: Snapchat Blessed Us With Proper Sexting And Stalking
Before 2011, we all knew about sexting and phone-sex and all that fun stuff, but until Snapchat we never really got a real taste of how far we could push it over the phone. Because the app's messages and pictures disappeared quickly and altered users when someone screenshotted their images, it made the app the perfect place for sexting.
But the platform's "Snap Map" really got people invested because now you could see where your significant other or crush is at all times. And more importantly, whose house they're at.
2012: Tinder Came In Hot And Cringe
If there's one thing we can thank Tinder for, it's for enabling and contributing to our hookup culture and the whole ghosting generation. Launched in 2012, the app let you easily create a profile with a couple of pictures and (maybe) a bio. Or just your Instagram handle if you're vain like that.
The app introduced swiping, and all of a sudden dating and meeting people became a game that we all got addicted to. Are you actually going to message that guy with a chinstrap holding a salmon he just caught? Who knows, you're just here to play the game.
2013: Yik Yak Made It Easy To Be Thirsty Anonymously
Yik Yak was like Twitter and Ask.FM's illegitimate lovechild that weirdly only popped into their life when it went back to school. The platform where people could post, vote on, or respond to messages anonymously, all based on geographic location, only really took off in and around schools where there were a lot of people in close quarters.
People liked to anonymously confess who they thought was cute in chemistry, leak gossip about who hooked up with who, and to buy and sell... stuff.
2013: "Her" Followed In Grindr's Footsteps
Let's hear it for the ladies because in 2013 "Her," a dating app just for queer women, launched and took the world by storm. Even though Tinder had the option for you to match with the same gender, what the digital dating world needed was a solid app like Grindr that would be a safe space for queer women.
The dating profiles of the users have similar layouts to Pinterest boards which I'm sure was a strategic move on Her part. Because who doesn't love Pinterest?
2014: "Ghosting" Became A Thing
You were definitely doing it, living through it, and hearing about it before this, but in 2014 the actual term "ghosting" became popular thanks to writer Hannah VanderPoel.
Even though people get heated about whether doing it is "right" or "wrong" we can't lie to ourselves and say we haven't been tempted now more than ever. Sometimes digital dating feels like we're not dealing with real people behind the screen, so it can feel easier to just stop messaging them and fade away into the background. Hopefully, they take the hint and not think you're dead or something.
2017: We Learned What "Orbiting" Was And Immediately Deleted A Big Portion Of Our Insta Followers
The term "orbiting" came from Elliot Scott in a YouTube video in 2017, but Anna Lovine defined it in 2018 as watching people on social media that you used to be or are interested in, but not actually interacting with directly.
It's downright creepy, and no doubt a pretty hurtful thing to go through if you're constantly seeing your ex's pics with their new boo, but if you think about it we're all guilty of doing it. Because you just want to "see what they're up to" right?
2018: We're Full Circle With Facebook Dating Again
Even though a lot has changed in 20 years in the dating world, it really all comes back down to Facebook again, doesn't it? Even though Facebook was in hot water in 2018 with the senate, that didn't stop them from still looking for new ways to use the platform and thus, introduced a dating feature to the site.
At the F8 developer's conference in 2018, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will have a dating feature for its users (that little "single" icon in someone's bio). It makes perfect sense since we're always updating our relationships on there... but you have to wonder what would have happened if they decided to embrace the dating site look 20 years ago.