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