Speaker 1: Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex
Speaker 1: and Frooms catch up podcast.
Speaker 2: Fumi's had far too many cookies on air. Her tummy hurt.
Speaker 2: It's not unusual for for me to come to the
Speaker 2: studio sick and unwell. For me, it is a rare
Speaker 2: occasion that we've doubled up, unfortunately, but we will get
Speaker 2: through it because we can do all things together. It's true,
Speaker 2: we can. What we can also do together is discuss
Speaker 2: and unpack some gen Z dating habits. My goodness, what
Speaker 2: are the ages of gen Z? I think the oldest
Speaker 2: gen Z would be twenty six or twenty seven right now?
Speaker 2: Twenty seven to get twenty seven. So Frem's on the cusp.
Speaker 1: I know that because I'm twenty eight, and that hurts me.
Speaker 2: No, you're on the cusp, Energetic. No, she's not on
Speaker 2: the cusp. We've got a key, we've got a representative.
Speaker 2: Why would you throw me on the boulder of a
Speaker 2: gen D spectrum. At my old job, we kept on
Speaker 2: having these gen Z meetings and I was the only
Speaker 2: ten Z there and I was sick of these customers
Speaker 2: coming into the room.
Speaker 1: I was like, get out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they tend to do that.
Speaker 1: There's clinging on to their youth. Let it no, I'm
Speaker 1: fully back in the millennial camp. Okay, okay. I enjoyed
Speaker 1: the fruits of the labor of being friends with older people,
Speaker 1: and now that the times come around, why am I
Speaker 1: trying to lean into my ninety five heritage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not for you. It's as someone who's been
Speaker 2: in ninety four. I'm firmly a millennial, and I think
Speaker 2: I'm quite millennial coded. That's called millennial at that but
Speaker 2: millennial coded.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing.
Speaker 2: E Harmony is a dating app, not one that we use.
Speaker 2: But what they do like and what I do appreciate,
Speaker 2: is that they take the data that they mine from
Speaker 2: their users and from the Internet broadly to create these
Speaker 2: annual surveys that tell us about dating habits. So it's
Speaker 2: not about presuming, it's about getting to the core. Their
Speaker 2: topic of choice this year was gen Z and what
Speaker 2: we found is you're just so strange. Now. The most
Speaker 2: common social media turn off for gen Z singles is
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly a bad taste in memes, with forty two percent
Speaker 2: of people saying yuck. Discuss if you don't have the
Speaker 2: same memes as me, then we cannot be together, followed
Speaker 2: by being an influencer or that one hurts yeap, that
Speaker 2: one that one's personal, follow by using gifts regularly, which
Speaker 2: I'm quite funny about too. I don't really understand a
Speaker 2: gift if a reaction image. Thirty one percent say a
Speaker 2: turnoff is not having an active social media presence. So
Speaker 2: it's like, if we use gifts, you're turning people off.
Speaker 2: If you're not online, you're turning people off. You can't win.
Speaker 2: And then the last one, which confused me, thirty percent
Speaker 2: of gen Z singles say that sliding into dms before
Speaker 2: meeting in real life is a turnoff.
Speaker 1: What are you reading that correctly?
Speaker 2: I'm reading that correctly. Wow, I paused when I read
Speaker 2: it the first time. So it's very contradictory. You can't
Speaker 2: do anything right. Fifty percent of gen Z singles survey
Speaker 2: so they've got dating app fatigue, which is very unsurprising.
Speaker 2: I think that number is quite low considering the reality
Speaker 2: of what's going on in these apps. Fifty six percent
Speaker 2: of single gen Z respondent said they've met at least
Speaker 2: half of their romantic partners on social media and dating apps. Again,
Speaker 2: I thought they'd be much higher. Where are you guys
Speaker 2: hanging out? Honey d Twenty five percent wait a few
Speaker 2: months before sharing details about their relationship online, and twenty
Speaker 2: one percent wait until they're exclusive, but thirteen percent don't.
Speaker 1: Share anything at all. Bitter me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Literally.
Speaker 2: The one thing that I knew about Frumi before we
Speaker 2: became partners is that people are constantly speculating about Frumi's
Speaker 2: sexuality and her dating status.
Speaker 1: And will we confirm all tonight?
Speaker 2: Know we will?
Speaker 1: My ability girls and boys.
Speaker 2: We shared a lot of harrowing information about dating and
Speaker 2: romance broadly over the last two years, about how a
Speaker 2: majority of men will be infertile by twenty sixty.
Speaker 1: Was it.
Speaker 2: There's a big dramatic issue with like women not having
Speaker 2: children and like what're going to do the population? People
Speaker 2: aren't getting married like they used to, and then people
Speaker 2: getting divorced at higher rates. There just seems to be
Speaker 2: this big confusion with dating broadly, And it's only an
Speaker 2: issue for me personally because I believe in my heart
Speaker 2: of heart the only thing that will make life inherently.
Speaker 1: Enjoyable is a romantic partner.
Speaker 2: No is to love and be loved, But I don't
Speaker 2: think people have the wherewithal to explore that in their
Speaker 2: platonic and professional and familiar relateationships, because a lot of
Speaker 2: those things are quite set in stone, Like if you
Speaker 2: have a very tense relationship with your mum, there's very
Speaker 2: little you can do about that as an adult and
Speaker 2: as like you know, it just is what it is.
Speaker 2: If you found yourself raised in a regional town where
Speaker 2: nobody relates to you because you exist on the fringes
Speaker 2: of society, there's not a lot you can do in
Speaker 2: your current circumstance. I think for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: dating feels like a fresh go I get to try
Speaker 2: new things to get this thing, this beacon, this prize.
Speaker 2: But what's concerning me is that we're not learning. We're
Speaker 2: not learning people. I reckon any single person right now
Speaker 2: who is dating. If you surveyed them and said, are
Speaker 2: you guilty a perpetuating behavior in dating that you dislike
Speaker 2: in other people? Unanimous one hundred percent yes, and you
Speaker 2: would think there should be joy in that self awareness.
Speaker 2: It's not. It's not it's unbecoming, it's boring, it's lazy.
Speaker 2: It's taking us so far from the prize.
Speaker 1: We all know what we.
Speaker 2: Want, we all know we want.
Speaker 1: Do we all want that? Though?
Speaker 2: No, I'm not saying we all want the same thing.
Speaker 2: I'm saying we all know what we want. Yes, And
Speaker 2: I think if we will prioritize that, like that eye
Speaker 2: on the price, that is the vision, and we ensured
Speaker 2: that everything aligned in a way to make that plausible, it.
Speaker 1: Would work out.
Speaker 2: There are plenty of people, So let's talk about the
Speaker 2: fact that people don't want to be having children. Right,
Speaker 2: whether you're an anti natalist, or you just don't have
Speaker 2: the right income, or you are raised in a family environment,
Speaker 2: that means that it's not really something you want to do.
Speaker 2: Whatever the reason is, the reality of the situation is
Speaker 2: there are enough people who want to do it that
Speaker 2: won't for fear of what it looks like, Oh, I
Speaker 2: don't want to have a kid because like, oh I'm
Speaker 2: just too progressive for that, or like that's outdated. I
Speaker 2: don't want to get married, it's outdated. I don't want
Speaker 2: to be I don't want I don't want to be
Speaker 2: single forever because people are gonna think I'm a spinster.
Speaker 2: It's like, get out of that. Nobody cares. Nobody cares.
Speaker 2: This is like the.
Speaker 1: Overcorrection from main character syndrome.
Speaker 2: You're not living your life for consumption unless you literally are,
Speaker 2: but you are of zero point zero one percent if
Speaker 2: you are.
Speaker 1: And then if we are, what do we have to do?
Speaker 2: But even if you are living your life with consumption,
Speaker 2: remove those people out of the equation. That leaves ninety
Speaker 2: nine percent of the rest of the world. You get
Speaker 2: to live your life simply for you. And yet there's
Speaker 2: this imaginary spectator who you're performing for, who's dictating what
Speaker 2: you can and can't do.
Speaker 1: It pains me to know that a lot of us
Speaker 1: are going to get to the end of our life
Speaker 1: and be like, done what I wanted?
Speaker 2: Oh, my God, should have done what I wanted?
Speaker 1: So is the point to text that person?
Speaker 2: I mean, if you want to dwindle down everything I
Speaker 2: said to that sure, text them.
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