“Do you recall the chaotic era of internet dating when chatrooms dominated the online landscape?
Back then, you might have chosen a rather embarrassing username like ‘Sk8rBoi88’ or ‘XxLonelySoulxX’ and dived headfirst into a random chatroom, which resembled a digital free-for-all. Individuals from all walks of life would inundate the space with cries of ‘ASL?’—the shorthand for age, sex, and location. This was our unique interpretation of speed dating.”

If you connected with someone, you would transition to a ‘private chat.’ At that point, things felt serious—you were essentially engaged. You would attempt to type out flirty lines, but the chat lagged so terribly that by the time your jokes appeared on their screen, you often forgot what you had said. Meanwhile, you would be anxiously hoping that your mom wouldn’t pick up the landline phone in the other room, disrupting your connection just as you were typing, ‘So, do you want to maybe… meet in real life?’

**Hooking up in the past** was a rather intricate affair: “Let’s rendezvous at this coffee shop if our bus schedules match, and fingers crossed, you actually look like the picture you sent—even though I’ve only caught a glimpse of half your face so far.” Also, hopefully you are not some raging lunatic about to cut me into pieces and store me in your basement cave. If they responded with a casual “lol” or “brb” to your sincere declaration, you’d interpret it as a **Shakespearean promise of eternal love**.

Certainly, people frequently discuss catfishing these days, but we now have the advantage of multiple pictures, social media profiles, and even the option of a video call. In contrast, back in the day, we had to rely on a shaky Polaroid scan named something like ‘MeProfile.jpg,’ which took an eternity to load. If it froze midway, you might end up staring at a snapshot of just a nose and an eyebrow. Yet, remarkably, we still showed up for those dates—armed only with our hopes, dreams, and perhaps a printed transcript of our chat log, courtesy of a dot-matrix printer, as a good luck charm!

The next time you feel disheartened by someone ghosting you on a dating app, take a moment to reflect on the challenges we faced back in the day. Picture trying to connect with someone while a phone line dropped every time Dad needed to send a fax at 10 p.m. That was the level of dedication we had to online romance, my friend. We weren’t just pursuing love; we were battling for bandwidth!