Playing the Feeld
Balkans and girl dads and siblings
Hypothesis
Singles events are good practice for the big game: asking someone out in the wild.
Background
Between winding down 2025 and adjusting to 2026, I’ve hardly had any time for The Great Offline Dating Experiment! I don’t know about you, but it’s left me feeling super rusty – approaching people in the wild and flirting feels unimaginable – but maybe that’s just the stunted social atmosphere of dry-January blowing off. Regardless, it felt good to be back in the lab this past weekend at an over-30s in-person dating event thrown by the app, Feeld.
I’ve always been curious about the events thrown by dating apps. These singles nights started to pop up two or three years ago when the apps first sensed the changing tides of a post-pandemic user-base that wanted to connect in person again. Some of the events are open to non-app users, but they aren’t easy to find out about if you don’t have a profile. I purchased a ticket for £9 earlier this January, which I felt was a reasonable price, especially given that the ticket included a free drink. The day of the event, I got an email saying that if I couldn’t make it, I could still get a full refund because they had over eighty people on the waitlist. You gotta love the confidence.
Method
They scanned my ticket at the door and gave me a drink token and a goodie bag which contained a black silk blindfold. They made sure to mention that the bar was running a special deal: if you buy a bottle of champagne you get a room upstairs that night for two. Knowing Feeld’s usual clientele, they probably should’ve offered the room for “two, or three, or four.” I looked past the greeters into the room of single people having staid conversation over glasses of house wine and couldn’t help but feel that Feeld’s idea of how this night was going to end didn’t match the reality that stood before me. But perhaps I wasn’t using my imagination.
At the bar I exchanged my free drink token for a suspiciously vague bottle of beer that only had two words on the label, “Bavarian Beer.” A woman ran after me as I exited the crowd at the bar and grabbed my arm, “I love your dress!” she said, then added, “not in a way, like, ‘I like your body,’ I don’t mean it like that, just the actual dress itself!” I thanked her, “it’s actually a skirt and top,” I replied. “Of course it is! Oh my god! It’s so great, and brown looks so good on you, I don’t look good in brown. Men say weird things to me when I wear brown, they say I look swarthy. I prefer navy.” She tugged on the lapels of her navy blazer.
I couldn’t tell if she just really liked my outfit or if she was hitting on me. Regardless, I was grateful to have someone to talk to so early on. I pointed to her nametag, which looked very official pinned to her blazer and asked if she worked for Feeld. She didn’t, they gave out to everyone, she said, pointing at a table a few feet away where people were swapping pens and stickers. I excused myself to make myself a nametag, ensuring her I’d be right back.
I didn’t make it five feet before I was intercepted again. This person was also wearing a nametag with his name etched deeply into the paper, and I informed him I was just on my way to get one for myself. He loomed over me so that I had to lean back to keep my distance, “You’re American, aren’t you? Yeah, you’re quite chirpsy.” I confirmed his suspicions and he seemed proud of himself for a correct identification. I asked him where he was from. “Guess!” he prodded me.
There’s only one thing worse than being forced to guess someone’s age and that is being forced to guess their accent. “Ummm, North England?” He sounded like John Lennon to my ears, with a drooping, nasal voice. “No, I grew up in England but I’m from somewhere else. Guess!”
