Can I find the love of my life at a PowerPoint presentation singles night?
It’s no secret that dating apps aren’t working, forcing all of us to get creative with our romantic exploits. I, for one, have tried everything to resuscitate my dating life. I’ve shamelessly commented flame emojis under people’s selfies; I (unsuccessfully) chatted someone up whilst they were working at a garden centre; I even gave my number to a stranger I met at a casino on, I’ll be honest, a pretty ropey night out.
Sensing this dating app disillusionment, over the last year a number of singles events have sprung up across the country (and beyond), with dating apps themselves — whose users are, in fact, dwindling — even getting in on the action, launching IRL events like run clubs and meet-ups. And on Monday night, having exhausted all my options at every garden centre in my local area, I found myself at one such singles event. This one, though, has a twist.
Not your typical speed dating event, Pitch-a-Friend — which hosted its first ever UK iteration in Clapham this week — is, essentially, a viral TikTok trend come to life. Specifically, it’s a #PowerPointNight, except instead of cooking up a presentation on absurd in-jokes to show to your mates, your mates cook up a presentation on… you. And then — here’s the kicker — they pitch you as a romantic prospect to a pub full of singles.
The event was started in the US in 2022 by friends Melissa Schipke and Ariana Brogan (who were inspired by a viral iteration in Seattle) as an alternative to formulaic singles nights, with the aim of taking the pressure off the person looking to date and, well, putting it on their friends instead. On Pitch-a-Friend’s website, the event is described as designed to “celebrate friendship by allowing friends to give short slide presentations about their remarkable single friends to a lively audience of available singles”.
It’s a fun idea on paper, but at the inaugural London event, it didn’t quite go to plan. Although there were multiple sign-ups (according to the event organisers), on the day many pitchers pulled out — including, much to my disappointment, my friends. Despite having created my Brat-coloured presentation over the weekend — which detailed traits such as my tiramisu-making skills, love of the cinema, and devotion to my cat — by Monday, my friends had all been taken out by illness or overtime at work. But that didn’t stop me going along. Further events are planned and I figured I’d use the night to suss out how it might go down when my friends and my Brat presentation are ready to roll.
There were only two pitchers brave enough to stand in front of the 20 or so attendees (in the US, the average number of pitches at each event is between seven and 12). Mahima, who works in finance, was pitched by two friends. The first joked that at five-foot tall, she will “always be looking up to you”, while her second friend boasted of her cooking skills, and insisted that Mahima needs a minimum of eight shots to get drunk (legend!).
The other person being pitched was Hannah, whose presenter, Josh, received the most effortless laughs of the night thanks to his flawlessly comedic delivery. Perhaps herein lies the problem with Pitch-a-Friend’s set-up: while Josh came alive while giving the presentation, Hannah remained flat in the pitch. In fact, the only thing that stopped me asking for his number was that he wasn’t wearing the red heart sticker that identified the singles in the room.s
To combat the low number of actual pitches, our American host Colby pitched his co-host Ariana, via a presentation showing off her graphic design work, family photos, and collection of dogs. Then, after the official pitching session was over, he invited attendees to pitch on the fly, which quickly turned into an off-the-cuff dating roundtable, during which we all debated whether you should acknowledge an ex if you run into them and what the ideal first date is (bowling beat out drinks, FYI).
Despite the night’s hurdles, the hosts kept spirits high. When kicking the event off, Ariana was frank about how dire her experiences of dating in London were, a comment that was met with consolatory cheers from attendees; clearly it’s not just the expats who are struggling. For Shalewah, a 28-year old-single man who came solo to the event but ended up finding a friend in fellow stag attendee Bob (aged 27), the apps are hot and cold. He explained to me that he’s “looking for genuine relationships” but his experiences of online dating are extreme, as people are “either emotionally unavailable or want to get married”, leaving no room for “real connection”.
While all those in attendance shared an exhaustion with the current dating landscape, this mutual disdain isn’t really enough to kindle romance. At Pitch-a-Friend, much like other singles events geared I’ve attended, the problem lies in the vague, open-ended invitation. Being single (and sick of it) isn’t enough common ground to get things going, and when you’re tailoring a presentation to literally any single attendee in the room, it’s hard to strike the balance. Much like a dating app profile, if it’s too niche you alienate potential matches, but if it’s too open no one is enticed to approach you. In this way, the presentation model too closely resembles a dating app profile; despite all attendees being sick of this format, here we are once again looking at a flattened portrait of a person, with their job, age, and image at the forefront.
As well as the fact that it launched on a Monday (the least sexy night of the week), there’s another reason why it didn’t quite land for me: the earnestness. While Pitch-a-Friend has been a huge success in the US, its insistence on kindness — the rules explicitly state that this is “not a roast” — goes against our British flirtation go-to of teasing. For an event like this to really work, we’d need a Best Man-style speech that digs into all the friend’s most embarrassing and unhinged moments.
That’s not to say it can’t ever work. There’s another event in London tonight (October 11), which, as it’s a Friday, might be more of a success. Besides, this isn’t the first presentation-style event to hit the UK. Hot & Bothered, a queer London-based event organiser, hosts dating nights for lesbians (trans and non-binary inclusive) and have been running a successful Lesbian Hot Seat night intermittently over the last year. At these events, instead of talking about yourself, you use the presentation to talk for three minutes about a niche interest of yours, like the Mothman or your kind-of-concerning X-Files obsession.
As we move away from dating apps, the need for in-person alternatives is clear. But this overcorrection into dating events — where socialisation is goaded like you’re at a work function — is just putting even more pressure on singles to ‘form a genuine connection’ via a forced (and sanitised) format. It doesn’t seem to me that the cure for the current dating epidemic is to bring the same two-dimensional profile designs we’re sick of resorting to into the real world. Even if watching people make their friends squirm is a bit of a laugh.
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