Let’s call it what it is: dating apps didn’t just digitize romance. They privatized it. What used to be a public, communal, sometimes awkward but often serendipitous part of life, meeting someone at a friend’s party, in a class, or across the bar has become something sleek, isolating, and terminally optimized. Love, once a shared social ritual, is now a task you do alone on your couch in between doomscrolls.

Sociologist Marie Bergström has a name for this: the privatization of intimacy. It’s what happens when dating becomes less about being in the world and more about managing risk. When swiping replaces conversation. When we start believing that compatibility can be calculated by prompts and proximity, and not by curiosity, surprise, or shared history.

And here’s the thing: even the apps are starting to admit they’re part of the problem. Newcomers like Breeze and Left Field have popped up, declaring themselves the “anti-dating app dating app,” offering limited matches or spontaneous IRL encounters. They’re an attempt to patch the hole the original apps blew through how we connect. But these are still tools that outsource the actual work of connection. They may feel more charming than Tinder’s endless feed of “here for a good time, not a long time” types, but they’re still trying to solve for something that isn’t technical. It’s cultural.

Ditto, the AI dating concierge currently making the rounds, is perhaps the logical endpoint of all this. Why go on dates at all when you can have your own personal robot draft flirty messages and filter out people you might not vibe with? It’s outsourcing emotional labor in a way where its genius is outweighed by how deeply bleak it is. Connection is not something you can delegate. Attraction is not a formula. And intimacy, the real kind, doesn't show up because an algorithm told it to.

The issue isn't just that these apps make dating annoying (though they do). It's that they distort what connection is for. Love is messy. It’s surprising. It often arrives in places you weren’t looking and asks things of you you weren’t prepared to give. And in its best form, it stretches you. Not in a “here’s my list of dealbreakers, do you qualify” kind of way, but in a “you weren’t what I expected, and maybe that’s a good thing” kind of way.

When dating becomes privatized, when it’s something we do alone, behind screens, by design, we lose the friction that used to make it human. We stop being exposed to people outside our economic class, or politics, or taste level. And maybe most critically, we stop seeing love as something communal. Something that, even if it happens between two people, is held by the people around them, like the friends who introduced you, strangers who witnessed your first kiss, and communities that remind you what care looks like.

Necterine isn’t here to add another bandage to a system that’s already hemorrhaging. We’re here to say: connection can’t be privatized. And no one, not even your AI matchmaker, can do it for you. Real love, like any real relationship, is inconvenient. It’s analog. It asks something of you.

Connection doesn’t need a concierge. It needs you.

We’ve got a question for you… 👇👇👇

Before you yell at us, it was fucking hot here in LA last weekend, so we didn’t give out free dating advice in the park, and honestly, we hate that.

So let’s try this again.

Holly (our founder) and maybe Auggie (her precious dog) will be posting up at Silverlake Meadow this Saturday (5/17) for in-person dating advice. But because the weather is seemingly not on our side (read: there’s a chance of rain?), make sure to peep our IG and TikTok for the official time and date.

We’re not kidding.

Optimism gets a bad rap. It’s often mistaken for denial, or worse, toxic positivity whereby if you ignore the shit around you hard enough, things will magically improve. But the more compelling version is quieter. It’s the belief that out of all the ways things could unfold, there are still futures worth choosing. We live in the best of all possible worlds. Not because everything is amazing, but because, out of all the chaotic timelines the universe could’ve picked, this one still has the most potential.

Isn’t that incredible?

This version of optimism dates back to the 1600s, but we think now, more than ever, it’s one of the best ways to face the world we live in. Why? Because if you believe there are still good connections to be made, then every conversation, every small risk, becomes a chance to move toward something better.

That kind of outlook doesn’t live in data or swipes or third-party AI assistants. It lives in people. People who are willing to pay attention. Who stay open. Who keep trying, not because they’re certain, but because they know their effort matters.

This isn’t about waiting for the right world to show up. It’s about choosing to participate in the one we’re in.

We’re rooting for you.

xoxo,

Team Necterine