Jilted on dating apps but undeterred in the quest for romance, 20 young singles gathered in Madrid to share activities and flirtatious smiles in a rediscovery of real-life love.
The 10 men and 10 women, aged between 25 and 35, had eyed up each other nervously barely an hour before their first plunge into the "slow dating club."
The concept is gaining popularity in Europe as youngsters fall out of love with apps and try to find their potential soul mate through serendipitous face-to-face encounters.
Eva Sanchez, 28, launched the club in the Spanish capital to rekindle her romantic flame after a potential suitor she met online "ghosted" her, suddenly cutting off all communication – with no explanation.
"My generation wants healthy relationships, but applications have created pessimism in love. We find it hard to believe in it," the creative director told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Once a month, the Spanish-Peruvian organizes a cocktail with a different venue and theme and participants pay around 30 euros ($31) to mingle around games and manual activities.
The singles "don't feel like they are on a date," and "everything is a reason to bring out their cutest side," said Sanchez, who plasters the walls of Madrid with posters promoting her club.
Dating app giants Tinder, Bumble, Meetic and Grindr have seen their downloads tumble by almost 20% since 2020, according to Sensor Tower, an agency that analyses digital data.
The stock market valuation of Match Group, the parent company of Tinder, Hinge and Meetic, has slumped from its peak of 47 billion euros in 2021 to 7.7 billion euros more recently.
The younger generation increasingly "prefers to meet people in person rather than online," Sensor Tower's Seema Shah told AFP.
One of the participants at Sanchez's event, Damian, knows the "murky underside" of dating apps all too well after working on their algorithms as an IT developer.
"I decided to meet people in real life by going out and socializing. It's harder," the 33-year-old Franco-Spaniard said.
Isabel, a 28-year-old Chilean jurist, agreed that people "are almost scared to come up to your table" for fear of seeming "a bit weird or intrusive."
"We have become so used to the screen that we have lost this attraction for direct interaction with people as our parents used to do," she said.
With their revenues falling, online dating companies have been forced to diversify their offering with group activities or informal meetings.
An expat group run by Briton Tom Hopcroft has also prioritized in-person meetings, targeting new arrivals in Madrid and Barcelona on his Instagram page with sessions that are fully booked.
Psychologist Esther Jimenez has seen firsthand how the young patients she receives in her Madrid practice are growing "disenchanted."
Online dates are "consumed, but without an intention to really connect with the other person, more as entertainment," the specialist in couples told AFP.
"For that reason, lots of despair is showing up among the young who would like to meet someone with whom to share their life. Their self-esteem is affected."
Jimenez believes "slow dating is working because it changes the paradigm ... you assume you will meet other people keen on the same thing as you, connecting with others."
The expert said that the method prospective daters use matters less than how they use it.
"Are we consuming people or seeking connections?"
In a hyper-connected society where "the widespread feeling of loneliness is scary," we must remember that "ultimately we are gregarious and we need others, that's why we seek connections," Jimenez said.
