I met no fewer than four men at Starbucks in my mid-20s. I didn’t have a smartphone.
Granted, I was living in a military town near Fort Benning, Georgia (USA).
Fort Benning was once mentioned in a Robert Ludlum book I read (maybe The Parsifal Mosaic), and it piqued my interest because back when my eldest uncle, Uncle Steve, was in the US Army and was in the 82nd Airborne Division, he used to practice his parachute jumps on the base. Of course, this was back in the 80s when his youngest daughter, Michelle, and I were merely babies.
I had a flip phone. Probably my red Motorola Razr, given to me by my Uncle Dave when he upgraded his flip phone. I’d wanted one when they came out, but my Mum, who bought me my first cell phone at age 18, didn’t want to shell out for the more expensive model. I wasn’t even allowed text messaging and preferred – like an absolute weirdo – to ring people. On. The. Phone. Like, phone calls. Now, I’m almost allergic.
I would only text when I’d get a pay-as-you-go SIM when visiting family in England and shortly realised how soon you ran out of texting and calling credit.
You young’uns out there (said in my best old lady voice) don’t know about the days when phone calls and texting were expensive, and you could only call your friends on landlines after a certain time.
When discussing the Social Media Ban in the UK with my niece Caroline the other day, she sounded in distress because I was informed that you (being teens) only have the phone numbers of your close friends. It’s just ‘weird’ to ask for people’s number, I was told.
Everyone else gets added to Snapchat.
Let me tell you, they do very inane things on Snapchat. One friend of hers sends her real-time GRWM (get ready with me) videos that my niece feels compelled to watch even though she doesn’t want the play-by-play. Another friend constantly messages her some variation of ‘What’s up’ or whatever is the Gen Alpha equivalent. It’s just constant photo swaps with emojis and messages across the screen. This is what passes as communication to them.
But I’m getting off track.
Practically every young man I met when dating in my uni and grad school years (2005-2011ish) I met in person on campus, at a party, or via friends of friends (i.e. they came on my radar via Facebook stalking).
I met The Air Traffic Controller, whom to date had seemed like the hottest man I’d ever encountered, at a party where I realised that I knew him from Facebook stalking, and I held onto his hand for far too long.
I did sign up to OkCupid once – the website version – and met a few men that way, but I always preferred that people were ‘vetted’ by people I knew first.
Online dating had been somewhat destigmatised by the time I tried it in the early 2010s, but even still, it didn’t feel ‘entirely safe’ in the way that smiling across the room at some guy at a party did.
I guess now people are considerably more online stalkable. They weren’t then. You didn’t know everything about them in thirty seconds flat.
Back then, we even took photos with our flip phones or, if you were like me, had an actual digital camera. How amazing was it when my camera got upgraded to a lovely Sony Cyber Shot 12 MP. TWELVE. WHOLE. MEGAPIXELS.
After nights out, I’d dutifully plug my memory stick into my Sony Vaio (I didn’t have the money for a MacBook back then – The MacBook Brigade were rich kids, but joke’s on them, their Microsoft Word files were always corrupted) and download the night’s pictures, seeing as I got progressively drunker.
I even took selfies of a sort before they were a thing. And then I’d find myself with my arm around people I couldn’tidentify. Blackout drunk Elaine was very friendly.
My friends eagerly awaited my documentation of the night, my witty Facebook album names, and silly captions. I think albums were limited to 60 photos back then.
Don’t you wish that Karen could stop uploading her 265 holiday snaps now, eh? Especially when we are just watching a bridge open, frame by excruciating frame. Reminds me of that time our old neighbour in Oldham, Lancashire, whom my Mum referred to as ‘Boring [Insert Name Here]’ came over to show us his Canada holiday video. True story.
He filmed something equally long and boring. Poor man. I do miss the days of physical photo albums, though.
I once met my gay bestie, Ian, at a party. I came armed with a bottle of horrible wine (so no drink spiking, even though I never knew anyone who had that done) and my camera. He nicknamed me ‘the collector’ (of people, friends, dates) because he said he revealed more about himself and knew more about me in the hour we chatted than he did about some of his best friends.
Honestly, I miss my attention span.
We weren’t glued to our phones because nothing much interesting happened on a flip phone.
I mean, I also couldn’t keep that many photos on there, so would have to delete some to make room for others. I always kept a picture of my cats on there and probably a lingerie selfie to send to The Red Haired Sex God in case I could entice him for a hook up. Very pathetic behaviour. No girl-bossing in the 2010s. No ‘know your worth-ing.’
At parties, we spent time chatting about ideas and whatever we learned in class and probably sounded to outsiders like pretentious t*atbags. But it’s a rite of passage for early-20-somethings, surely?
I remember having the attention span to read for hours, to chat for hours, to enjoy lying on the front lawn of campus, doing absolutely nothing.
Oh, the freedom that would give our brains and nervous systems now.
I’m not saying this past time was better because things were objectively not better in some ways (the media, consent convos, young people with psychologically aware language), but smartphones have a lot to answer for, and I’m sad that the youth will not experience life without these light-up boxes of addiction.
Heck, I’m sad that I’m now so addicted to my phone.
How many encounters will young people miss because they’re busy Snapchatting each other? Will they miss catching someone’s eye across the room, smiling, chatting, flirting? I’ll report back when my niece is interested in dating.
In the meantime, I’ll wax nostalgic.
QOTD: Tell me what it was like for you, dating in YOUR pre-smartphone era.
If you love stories of romance, you might enjoy reading the story of how I met my husband – my very own rom com in reverse. Here is a great place to start. I have also written a book, THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT CLUB, longlisted for the 2025 Mslexia Novel Competition, currently on submission with the Big Five, hoping to find its home. You can read about that journey, here.
If you’re interested in the people I met at Starbucks:
I am amazed there is someone who remembers those days: when we met people through friends, when we could read books for more than a few minutes, when we remembered phone numbers. Actually, I think I am one of the original online dating population, but it was, as you said, stigmatized, like a "you must be so lame to look for someone online" kind of vibe. So it's surprising that nowadays it is mainly through online dating.
Thank you for the delightful post and a chance for a walk down memory lane.👍💕
Awesome post!! I'm too old to have dated in the era of mobile phones!! But I still miss my attention span. It's not just aging that has turned my brain to mush! xoxo