Is Dating Culture Broken?

Is it too early to say that Jola Ayeye and Feyikemi Abudu, co-hosts of the I Said What I Said Podcast, have mastered the art of shaping and driving internet discourse? In the past few months, they have stirred controversy in their near-weekly explorations of the social currents and topics relevant to the zeitgeist. Interestingly, each bout of drama they have unwittingly stirred has been more polarizing and intense than the last. The duo has excoriated Lagos’ housing shambolic market, skewered men who vape, and debated the fine line between abusive parental behavior and discipline. At the heart of their latest drama, however, is the topic of modern dating—a relentlessly plumbed one I might add. 

“We joke about it that there’s no yearning anymore but everybody is too cool for school,” Jola observes in an excerpt from their latest episode posted on social media. “So when you say you like me and you’re texting me every other day, or maybe once a day,” she continues. “You actually don’t like me enough,” Feyikemi offers, completing her statement. The clip, which has now been viewed 3.8 million times on X, instantly cascaded into a sweeping argument with a kaleidoscopic range of opinions. As people on both sides have fired off their opinions on the subject, one thing has become clear: men and women have diametrically opposite views on the matter, and this bifurcation might explain why dating in this age is often described as fundamentally flawed. 

Women, by and large, have echoed Jola’s views. The art of courtship, they argue, is entirely lost on this generation. The slow, sensate process of eliciting affection, which often involves actions that pack valor and tenderness in equal measure, has become unfashionable. Men, in turn, have countered this rhetoric, arguing that it’s the women who no longer view romance—at least the sappy, consuming, unpragmatic kind—as fashionable. “I am a love (sic) person. Recently my talking stage failed because in her words: ‘you are too real to be true, you are love-bombing me.’ What did I do? Call her in the morning, send a “check-in on you” text and poem by noon. Long talk by pm (sic) when she’s off work,” one tweet reads. 

As the clip winds to a close, Feyikemi turns down her customary humorous delivery and gets candid. For context, Feyikemi and Jola are discussing the plight of a “30-year-old man trying to find love in Lagos.” The man in question has embarked on 9 dates with little success, his only real prospect rejecting him for not “applying pressure.” Cue the part where Jola bemoans the decline of “yearning.” Speaking to the man’s dilemma, Feyikemi says: “He might just be approaching babes (sic) but not actually able to put the effort in because it’s almost like a game of numbers for him.” 

Scrolling through social media, we’re constantly inundated with pictures and videos of attractive people, flashing smiles that bespeak a perfect internal state, and often evincing what some would describe as “their best lives.” This phenomenon is usually at its peak on weekends. We see couples at picturesque upscale restaurants; beautiful beach photos; flicks of ravishingly attractive and bohemian people at Group Therapy, Ile Ijo, or some other rave. What all of this does, is subliminally implant in our consciousness the idea that there’s a near-infinite supply of potential partners. And in a world with a surfeit of possible partners, is anyone really indispensable? 

The logic that issues from this kind of thinking goes something like this: dating like most other things in this generation—job hunting, house hunting, grant programs—is simply a game of numbers; if you flip the coin enough times, regardless of technique or any concerted effort, you’ll arrive at a favorable outcome. 

Indeed this phenomenon was front and center in the recently concluded last edition of Love Island USA. This year’s cast, which mostly featured zoomers, delivered explosive drama, affecting friendships, and an excess of meme-worthy moments. Something fundamental to the show was however missing: romantic pairings. As Faith Hill put it in an essay for The Atlantic “Contestants have paired up—but largely never heated up.” “If this season feels like Situationship Island,” she continues, “ that’s because Gen Z is the situationship generation.” 

The topic of the fraught dating and relationship habits of this generation is not limited to Nigeria. Publications across the globe have lamented the decline in dating and sex amongst young adults. “Gen Z is having less sex,” Sarah Jones declares in an article for NewYork Magazine. “Modern dating is in a crisis.” This ominous sentence opens an article by Dazed Magazine’s Serena Smith titled The Dating Crisis is Going Global. In another article by John Burn-Murdoch for the Financial Times, the topic of this generation’s “relationship recession” once again comes into focus. What’s most fascinating about the Burn-Murdoch article is that it takes a data driven approach to analyzing trends in countries around the world. “The trend is global. From the US, Finland, and South Korea to Turkey, Tunisia, and Thailand, falling birth rates are increasingly downstream of a relationship recession among young adults.”

An essay by David Brooks titled We Are The Most Rejected Generation opens a window into the psychology of rejection and establishes a throughline between this and the dating patterns that pervade this era. Brooks’s essay takes a holistic approach to the topic of rejection, broaching the suffocatingly competitive job market and the often convoluted admissions process of many Universities. “Psychologists like Roy Baumeister and others have studied the long-term effects of rejection, and they are not pleasant. People who have suffered rejections become, on average, more aggressive, less empathetic, and have a harder time with self-control,” he writes.  

This insight might provide clues to parsing our generation’s embattled dating situation. The perception—or illusion—of a near infinite supply of partners has made people more prone to cursorily handing out rejections, and ghosting has also never been easier. And as Brooks notes, there’s a strong correlation between rejection and nihilism. And so this creates a negative feedback loop—rejected people are more likely to dole out rejections; anyone who has watched those “pop the balloon or find love shows” will know this all too well. 

It’s at this point in an essay that the writer typically trots out a pithy statement that offers a solution, or a rebuke, or some promise of better times ahead. Unfortunately, I have nothing of this sort to offer. The closest thing to a salve is something Jola says later in that episode. “You entertain a number of conversations and you develop a sense for who is serious.” Admittedly, this is somewhat mechanical, the opposite of the serendipitous kind of romance that is often valorized. But the rules have changed and the only way to hone your sense for who is serious or who is, for lack of a better term, playing a game of numbers, is by actually putting yourself out there.