Twilight of the dating apps
While I wasn’t strictly speaking a fan when the show was being broadcast once a week on the CBS, every now and again I find myself dipping into the Frasier back catalogue (available in full on Crave) and laughing my head off. The show looks unusual now, as if it were a throwback from a much earlier era: has there ever been another network sitcom with a hero who’s a classical music and high culture snob, and could such a sitcom possibly be made again? The final season aired around 2004, which in technology and culture years is many lifetimes ago.
One of my favourite episodes is in the last season, and guest-stars Patrick Stewart as the Seattle Opera’s most in-demand opera director who presumes, based on his fan-boying, his taste in opera and his well-appointed apartment, that Frasier is gay. When, many VIP events and lavish gifts later, Alistair introduces Frasier as his boyfriend, our hero doesn’t rush to disabuse him from the notion. “I always wanted to be one half of a power couple,” he dreamily shares with Niles and Daphne, and riffing on Some Like It Hot, reminds them that “no couple is perfect”.
Eventually Frasier does extricate himself out of that particular tangle, but he continues dating and being set up with women: one of the recurring storylines in the final season is Frasier trying to find Ms Right, or at least Ms Right Now. This is how Laura Linney comes on to the show: as the owner of a matchmaking business with the office in the same building as Frasier’s private psychotherapy practice. Frasier pays her a handsome sum and she goes to work on her binders full of women (literally).
So obviously 2004 was still the pre-internet dating era and even more so the pre-dating app era since the smartphone was yet to appear. How did people meet? Via professional matchmaking agencies still in the early naughts it appears, apart from the being-set-up-by-friends method.
After almost two (ravaging) decades of outsourcing mate-finding to algorithms in the casino-like apps which made sure that the house always won, for the first time since their introduction, according to the Times, user numbers are down for dating apps such as Tinder, Hinge and Bumble, with millennials and Gen Z leading the way. This, notably, doesn’t mean that people are spending less time online; it means rather that they use the apps that prioritize and facilitates socializing in real life. The Times technology piece mentions apps like Thursday and Bored of Dating Apps whose sole purpose is to organize meet-ups of singles in bars, and a basic internet search will easily yield a Thursday page in your own city (Thursday works on a decentralized, franchise principle: local reps organize local events). There really isn’t much to it. Follow the page, check the schedule, show up on the night. Everyone there will be single.
Why didn’t digital-era humankind think of this earlier? Perhaps the app exhaustion had to happen for a critical mass of people to start considering the alternative, that is, the pre-app way?
Are we really turning the corner on dating apps, in Canada’s large cities too, I wondered, and how do young vs older, straight vs gay differences factor in? Thursday is a heterosexuals-only, for example, so are there perhaps lesbian and bi options anywhere? What I found out gives me hope that the kids may even end up being alright.
I’m about to break some news for you now which was shocking to me, so be sure you’re seated. The online hotbed of in-real-life organizing, speed dating, singles nights, coffee meetups, crafts nights, you name it, for women young and old is this up-and-coming network you might have heard of called
Instagram.
Instagram stories, in particular, which appear for a day and poof, disappear in the ether. Given that both Facebook and Instagram timelines are now full of junk and ape TikTok by pushing short videos of content you never asked for, if you’re organizing anything, an Instagram post that you send into the universe will be seen by a small number of your followers. What will be seen by everyone is the Stories. Stories is also good for its ease of re-posting content from other profiles.
So here are some of the ways the app refusenik women find each other in Toronto.
Very Queer Toronto
Run by a women who’s only known as “KT”, the VQT is like a Madame Verdurin salon of lez and bi younger-leaning dating in Toronto. She is also incredibly savvy about reposting job ads, opportunities, calls for submissions through her Stories. And her “Sapphic Speed-Dating Events” come with the ice-breakers in-built into the format. So she would throw a Lesbian Lit Lovers Speed Dating Event, in which women are invited to bring a book they love and would love to tell others about…
…or throw a Sapphic Speed Dating as Plant Addicts Anonymous event:
There was another one for “Sapphics and their Doggos”, ie you could just go, pet the dogs and leave. KT also makes funny videos about “special invitation for the sapphics between the ages of 35 and 46, do you even exist? make yourself known”, or about becoming fast friends with the people you didn’t quite click romantically with at a dating event. None of these is structured as the trad speed dating: it’s, like Thursday, a come and hangout event. Rooting for you, kiddos.
Queer Coffee Toronto
This is a daytime RL event for anyone on the LGB(T) spectrum but the clientele appears to be mostly women. Every month, the owner of the profile scouts a nice and spacious coffee shop in Toronto and invites everyone (within the set age parameters, or indeed everyone) to come out and get coffee. That’s it, that’s the concept. As you can see, she doesn’t bother with the profile posting: all info goes to the Stories. Instagram profiles that post daily in Stories and not at all in the profile are not uncommon.
Three Dollar Bill, Parkdale
This is a bar that in daytime—gotta love the earnest Gen Z—would like to be known as a “queer community hub”. They do a ton. Food drives, ‘community potlucks’ (bring a dish, eat with others, hang out sociably or not), Sunday afternoons of Stitch & Bitch, Cowgay Karaoke, movie screenings (Love Lies Bleeding & Champagne brunch for Valentine’s, for example).
Teenage Girls Shape the Music Industry Bingo:
…and the Girl So Confusing night for bi, pan and/or the people confused by the notion of one sexual identity:
Lesbian Film Society Toronto
=…is what appears to be another young-woman-(and occasionally her friends)-savvily-used-Instagram profile, in this case aiming to connect “the lesbian community, friends, & neighbours through the love of cinema”. This is a hub posting all things lez and cinematic in the GTA. Don’t be put off by the pinned “Who’s your favourite trans lesbian on film” post; that is the only nod to the notion that men too can be lesbians in the entire profile. Awaiting the time when this kind of ideological purity ID-ing will not be necessary.
For more traditional clubbing…
This still exists, I am glad to report. I used to think that DJ Cozmic Cat parties are the only specifically lez-marketed dance event left in town, but there are new lez and lez-friendly DJs coming up, it turns out.
Toastr (page inactive since December, though). They used to throw classical music events too, beside the more traditional clubbing dos. Toronto opera lovers will recognize two young(ish) Sapphic sopranos with their respective partners in this Pride party photo
The Society of Beer Drinking Ladies
This delightfully Victorian-sounding group (“a collective launched in 2014 with the goal of creating safe spaces for women to enjoy beer”) is not lesbian-geared per se but is for women primarily and lez friendly, naturally. The society used to throw quite a lot of its own events, many of which entailed masses of women tasting micro-brewed hops, but now that it's settled down in the Society Clubhouse, a charming brick-and-mortar on College St, it’s more of a venue rental business. For groups of varying degrees of oddball-ness, NB. Upcoming events include Dancing Our Relationships, The Walking Therapist, and a menstruation-themed Galentines event involving “crafting your own yarn-wrapped uterus as a piece for your altar or to place somewhere special”. Never change, users of the Society Clubhouse.
REUNION: An alcohol-free dance party for women
This is an interesting one: a totally alcohol-free DJ’d dance experience for women only, sometimes in non-traditional spaces (a forest; a disused church; a warehouse). The booze-free policy? It’s “so you can remember who you are” (rather than drink yourself to oblivion). “Bring your weirdest, wildest, most radical self”. The event is billed by its creator Rachel Molenda aka DJ Rae as a wellness event as well, but I don’t expect the woo woo factor is significant. This is proper clubbing, with some “sound-healing” marketing speak sprinkled liberally. Tickets, the only downside, have been unusually highly priced (the forest event was around $70 per person, plus a car rental to get there). I expect she’ll iron out the kinks with practice.
The March 8th event, in cahoots with the Luna Women Ecstatic Dance company, promises to be a banger.
So, no more excuses (and Netlix is on a path to fatal enshittification anyway). Remember 2020? Carpe the hell out of diem.