It was a Tuesday afternoon in September when I witnessed the unthinkable. I was seated in a coffee shop in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, pretending to work but actually eavesdropping on the two baristas on the other side of the counter. A lanky, shag-haired guy walked in and ordered something caffeinated from the employee with the tightly coiled ringlets. She made him his drink and he left. A few minutes later, the same shag appeared in the doorway. He seemed to hesitate at the threshold before strolling to the counter.
“Hey, didn’t I meet you at [inaudible name’s] party?” Shag asked Ringlets.
“Oh, maybe?” Ringlets replied. “You’re friends with [different inaudible name], right?”
By the time Shag invited Ringlets to his Oktoberfest party that weekend I almost couldn’t believe my ears, and not just because of all the lederhosen he promised to wear. This rarest of acts – two Gen Z adults in the wild not only striking up an organic face-to-face conversation, but actually flirting – unfolded right in front of me, in the year 2024. Nobody cried, screamed, or spontaneously burst into flames. I considered alerting the local news.
Public flirting with strangers has been trending down since the advent of the internet, but the proliferation of dating apps and the mandatory isolation of the pandemic torpedoed it into virtual nonexistence. That’s at least what it feels like as a 20-something who used to occasionally get approached by strangers but now can’t get anyone new to even look me in the eyes.
In 2022, 63 percent of singles acknowledged that dating was harder than before the COVID outbreak, and people like comedian and writer Saidah Belo-Osagie would say that’s because we’ve forgotten how to flirt.
In a recent installment of the Instagram series “Subway Takes,” Belo-Osagie said we need to bring back flirting for our mental health, which host Kareem Rahma initially rebuked.
“Bro, flirting is mentally unhealthy,” Rahma said into his MetroCard mic.
But Belo-Osagie disagreed. She argued flirting is a perfectly natural way to let off steam. Since 2020, “we have lost a sense of play.” We’ve been trying to fill that gap with pickleball and trivia nights, when instead, we should all be going to our local cafe, bar, or dentist’s office to “meet somebody with a good vibe, and have a little fun with it.”
But flirting is scary, Rahma said.
“We live in a fear-based culture,” Belo-Osagie shot back. “We can’t be running in fear.”
It’s true that connecting with a stranger in any context, whether or not you think they’re hot, is one of life’s more intimidating activities. That may help to explain why researchers in 2014 found flirtees could only accurately perceive another person’s flirting 28 percent of the time – one of those classic “are they flirting or do they just also have to pee so they stood behind me in line for the bathroom” scenarios. If you keep it subtle, popular thinking goes, then the rejection stings less.
But before Tinder, in-person meetings were the standard. For generations, people went up to strangers and introduced themselves, and suddenly they weren’t strangers anymore. While there are reasons to appreciate dating apps – convenience and accessibility, to name two – their effect has been coddling, so much so that few among us today can stomach the not-knowing inherent to flirting in 3D.
Yes, it’s hard to initiate flirting with a stranger, but that’s kind of the point. Romance is going out on a limb for somebody you’re attracted to – more so than just shooting off a message to a disembodied avatar who might have already given you the green light. In-person flirtation is a thrill, infused with a little danger, a little risk.
There are times when that danger can sometimes be too real, however. For women and queer people, it can be physically unsafe to approach strangers in public without established trust, or knowledge of how they identify. Women and femmes often struggle to make the first move, an unnatural behavior for anyone taught that they’re the prey to a flirter’s predator. And of course, the hard line between creeping and flirting is consent. Misreading body language, intentionally or not, or approaching someone with the expectation that they owe you their time or body will land you on the wrong end of that spectrum.
I later learned that Ringlets is a 24-year-old named Kierstyn Cummando, and her last serious relationship started the same way, with a customer who approached her at that same Philly cafe. She and her fellow barista agreed that it’s not uncommon to get hit on at the coffee shop by people, especially men, who may feel more entitled to their attention in a service setting. But everywhere else – especially places like bars, where they might actively be looking for some flirtation – feels like a dead zone, they told PS.
Before the pandemic, I was so proud of my knack for talking to strangers, regardless of whether or not there were flirty undertones. But 4.5 years on from the initial shutdown and I still feel totally out of practice. It’s more taxing now than before to summon the energy and courage to approach a stranger – even asking Cummando for a comment was stressful. Add the discomfort of possible romantic rejection, and most of the time flirting with a real human feels not worth the squeeze.
But Belo-Osagie made an important point: Flirting isn’t always about landing a date or a hook-up. In fact, it’s better to be unattached to any one particular outcome and instead remember that sometimes, it just feels good to connect with someone new. (And it doesn’t hurt if they’re cute.)
“It doesn’t have to be to find somebody else, or a partner. It’s just to find a little amusement, a little fun,” she told Rahma. “If I were a doctor, I would prescribe 30 minutes of walking a day, 15 minutes of meditation, and probably at least 10 minutes of flirting.”
By the end of her spiel, she’d changed Rahma’s mind entirely. “That sounds like a recipe for success,” he agreed.
Emma Glassman-Hughes is the associate editor at PS Balance. Before joining PS, her freelance and staff reporting roles spanned the lifestyle spectrum; she covered arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, travel for Here Magazine, and food, climate, and agriculture for Ambrook Research.
