What TikTok's viral trend "dating wrapped" says about our love lives in 2022
Dating can be very tricky. But you’ve got to take the good with the bad, and the ghosting with the breadcrumbing, and the cookie-jarring, the power PDA and hard and soft launches… Now, as the year ends, it’s only natural we start to reflect – and cringe – at some of our dating decisions. Forget the group chat though: “Dating Wrapped” is the TikTok trend for serious dating analysis.
As the name suggests, it’s like “Spotify Wrapped” only about your sex and dating encounters. Singles are brushing off their Microsoft Office and Canva skills to give an annual summary of their best and worst dating moments this year – they’re drilling down into figures, statistics, dates and personal trends that detail everything from one-night-stand frequency to the correlations of promising connections that fizzled out. Currently, the #DatingWrapped hashtag has gained over 24 million views on TikTok.
The first Dating Wrapped video was posted by Alexandria McLean earlier this month, where she recounted going on 21 first dates, most she had met on Bumble with Hinge coming in at second place. Alexandria noted she never saw most of her first dates again and she only cried over two because, “We don’t cry over men.”
In another TikTok, Natalie Gotko presents how she also met most of her dates on dating apps, mentioning how moving to a new city after a break up impacted her dating choices. Out of the 22 people she dated, only met two she met “in the wild” (AKA as in-person) an experience she described as, “rare.”
Of the dozens of Dating Wrapped TikToks we’ve viewed at Cosmopolitan UK, it seems a lot of us are noticing the same trends. Many have struggled with dating fatigue, ghosting, and turning first dates into second ones.
With over 300 million people using dating apps worldwide, social media seems like it won’t divorce with our romantic and sexual lives any time soon. With dating trends like bae-realing (daters being more authentic on their dating profiles) and conversations about ‘intentional dating’ to beat the fatigue and inauthenticity we face up to online, we hold out hope for things to get better.
Recent research from Bumble revealed that almost half of the single people around the world surveyed were pressing reset on their dating lives. Take TikToker @notyourbubbe as one example. She said in her own Dating Wrapped: “This year I ventured into the Lesbian-verse and exchanged contact details with 22 different people.”
Others highlight how people are more keen to show a vulnerable side, setting healthy boundaries and bidding farewell to toxic relationships. @Giannagiovi’s Dating Wrapped relayed that she was “really feeling” herself after her relationship ended, and went on 30 different dates (she also put this down to hunger – relatable).
After summarising her dating stats, TikToker @0nlyjenny reflected on the possibility that she might be the problem – her figures showed that she ended most of her relationships before a certain point.
Earlier this year, eharmony dating expert Laurel House identified the trend of "prioridating”. This describes a shift in our dating behaviours, zeroing in on what matters most to us. Basically: making clear what we want and how we want it with our love interests. TikToker @69vk420 did by forming friendships with four of the 23 people she dated this year.
Whether you’re loading up Canva to make your own presentation or feeling it out in the WhatsApp chat, if this year has shown us anything, it’s that our journeys through romance, sex and desire will yield interesting reflections on ourselves, have bumps in the road, and bring about plenty of surprises. Sure, take a leaf out of Drew Barrymore’s book and reframe any bad dates as “awesome” (read: positive learning experiences and fodder for girls chat). Dating provides great lessons, stories and of course, good old goss.
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