Online dating isn’t dying. Here’s why you should give apps another chance Are we so afraid of having a negative experience that we’re no longer in it for the experience at all? Share “This date couldn’t have happened in any other time or place,” the man beside me said. We were walking down a tree-lined street in Palo Alto. He was a Syrian Muslim immigrant; I am an American Jew with a half-Israeli father. Eventually, that would lead to our breakup. But on that bluish Monday night on the Peninsula, summer was just beginning, and our meeting felt cosmic. One of those decisions was a “like.” Having spent my 20s either in a relationship or on dating apps in cities where everyone is too obsessed with developing themselves to look for a relationship with anyone else, landing in comparatively low-key San Francisco for the long term made me want to try looking for someone to spend that time with.