The Meet-Cute
“Meet cute- (noun; in a film or television show) an amusing or charming first encounter between two characters that leads to the development of a romantic relationship between them.”
Harry meets Sally through a stranger, as they are both moving out east. Elizabeth meets Darcy at a ball. Mark is set up with Bridgette through their parents at a painful-to-watch Christmas party. Yes, the meet-cute has been around since the dawn of Romantic Comedies (or perhaps even before). The female lead will be going about her normal life when, poof! The man of her dreams (or maybe quite the opposite) seems to land in her lap. They fall in love and live happily ever after. But is this the way we fall in love today?
According to a Stanford University study 39% of American heterosexual couples met online in 2017. That’s a surprisingly large statistic when the example set in our pop culture would suggest quite the opposite. In a group of 10 friends, nearly half have met their partner online. What does that mean for those that refuse to start swiping left and right on the Joe and Marks of the Tinder-verse? Will they be left with Netflix’s auto-play night after night? Should they be a bit more open minded to the possibility of finding their Mr. Darcy on Bumble or Tinder?
Sure, our world is wired together through a 5G network and Google, and yes, I’m aware of our ever increasing connectedness through social media. However, I couldn’t help but say I was still a defender of the meet-cute. There is something magical and wonderful and unpredicted about meeting someone the old fashioned way, from letting serendipity play its part. And while I still stand by those sentiments, I will say my mind was opened after taking to Instagram to see what kind of things people had to say about online dating. I picked some interesting responses & shared them below.
Was I being closed-minded before? Does serendipity now go by the name of “algorithm”? Quite frankly, why do do we view it with such stigma? Sure, we all know the cliche stories of what can go wrong on a dating app. But maybe this is the best way to connect in our current world. Just think, we spend hours per day online. In the time of social-distancing, it’s frowned upon to even meet up with friends at a restaurant, never mind meeting a stranger for drinks at a bar. No, we do not live in an ideal dating world. But what if there was a way to meet people without having to meet people. What if you could sort of vet them in advance? Enter: online dating. Serendipity is changing, and now it feels as if it lives on Tinder. With the amount of bad matches out there, finding a good match could be similar to a sort of chance meeting at the corner market. So maybe the meet cute isn’t dead after all, it’s simply gone virtual.
In fact, it’s not that we didn’t see this coming. You’ve Got Mail was created in the the 90s, telling the story of a small bookstore owner falling in love with her big business competitor on the internet. No, we can’t quite say we didn’t see this one coming. That only makes me think, what does the next 50 years hold for dating? Will Bumble become a thing of the past, making room for a new AR version? Will we slowly decline into a Black Mirror-esque world of rating systems that match you with a similar score? When I think of it that way, our current online dating environment really feels pretty organic.
I only expect the numbers to grow in years to come, seeing more and more partnerships forming online. But one things I know for sure is this: the meet-cute will never die. We won’t ever stop running into people through chance encounters at the local coffeeshop. But when that doesn’t quite cut it, the internet is a trusty sidekick of serendipity that will happily bridge the gap.