Troy Francis and Sukaina Benzakour explore Chelsea’s dating scene decline post-COVID, blaming factors like the "beer bug," dating apps, and shifting social norms. Situational interactions—hotel lobbies, galleries—are preferred over forced street approaches, though both have merit. They critique apps for failing many men, citing a £600 "Super Likes" flop on Hinge, while urging better real-life conversation skills and broader social engagement. The episode reveals how organic connections thrive when effort replaces algorithms. [Automatically generated summary]
Just a bit like, well, we didn't ask like how many houses you have.
Why did you just randomly drop that?
My friend thought that was a red flag.
But did you think he meant, oh, sorry, you know, I think he was just trying to because Chelsea is a nice area, isn't it?
Yeah, but he just kind of dropped.
I have an apartment in Chelsea, and we were kind of like, how, how, okay, how often would you say you get approached in a normal week?
Um, oh, have you?
Because I think it's been less like I've noticed a decline in the amount of people that approach in the last like, yeah, I feel like I feel like it's less common.
Yeah, I think, I think post-COVID as well, sort of post, you know, the beer bug or whatever you want to call it, it's certainly less common and less common anyway because of the reasons we've said, because of the dating apps and because of, you know, the where do you have guys approach?
Well, Columbia.
Because you don't have these problems.
No, I mean, I mean, look, when people talk about approach, I mean, the classic sort of slightly creepy idea people have about approach is like, oh, it's going to be in the street in the daytime.
It's going to be really busy and it's going to be this really weird, awkward thing.
But I mean, really, the reality is there's so many places that you could start up a conversation with somebody.
Like, it could be the hotel lobby.
It could be you're in the dry cleaners.
You're in Starbucks.
It's not, like, the more organic the situation, the better, I think, really.
Rather than, I mean, you, you can, you know, I mean, I've, I've done it plenty of times.
You know, you see somebody who looks nice, you walk up and you say hi in the street.
That's a slightly unusual thing to do.
I mean, sometimes often women will like it, but it's not a conventional thing to do.
But if you're, if you're both in a gallery and you're looking at something or, you know, you're saying in a queue in a shop and or you're looking at, you know, you're in a shop and you're looking at a display or something, you could kind of use something situational to start the conversation.
I think that's much more natural.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah, I think, yeah, when it's like that, it doesn't feel like so.
I mean, the other thing to say is forward.
The other thing to say is as well, I'm not completely like, I'm not like anti-the dating apps particularly.
I think the dating apps have their place, but the problem for guys with the dating apps is, to be quite frank, they don't work very well for a lot of dudes.
You know, guys just aren't really getting the results off them.
So I think having the skill set to be able to have conversations in real life is a great thing to do.
And then you've got the dating apps.
You might have a little bit of social circle.
You know, you might go to like Salsa classes or whatever.
You can have these other.
There's a variety of different ways.
I know a man who spent £600 on super likes on Hinge.