What is the Seattle Social Club?
Ever since the Seattle Social Club launched, we keep getting asked what it is? Is it an actual club that members join? Is it just an event hosting platform? Is it something else? I thought I’d take the time to provide some insight on where the idea came from, what our goals are and where we plan to go. Over the next few blog posts I’m hoping to provide some additional insight into what The Seattle Social Club stands for!
It all started with a Group Chat
Let’s get right into it with how this idea came about! It all started in a giant group chat that we were members of focused on Dating in Seattle. People came from all over Seattle to share dating profile reviews, talk about their hits and misses in dating, and generally lament about what dating is like in 2022. Conversations always devolved into how exhausting dating was and how stressful it can be. In my view, dating should be fun! It should be lighthearted and a chance to meet a new person and see if you enjoy eachothers company. It shouldn’t be a science or so systematic that it feels like a chore you have to put up with. It takes all the fun out of it.
As these discussions went on, several common themes kept popping up that were hard to ignore:
Trying to capture your goofiness in a profile is hard!
Theme #1: Online Dating SUCKS! It’s incredibly hard to craft a profile that accurately represents a person, and even when you do most people only spend a second on your profile before swiping left or right. It’s a lot of effort with very little payoff. It’s also incredibly easy to burnout between swiping and not getting any matches to having so many matches that it's hard to keep up with them all. It's all very tiring no matter where you sit on the dating spectrum. We also kept hearing it's very hard to do a vibe check over the apps, too many people had vetted dates through their profiles only to show up to an hour long plus date with someone that totally did not match their expectations. Do this enough times and it's easy to see why people are exhausted!
Theme #2: Another common theme was that everyone craved in person interaction and most people viewed themselves as coming off better in person. Texting can be hard and it can be hard to establish a rapport over text conversations. You lose a lot of the subtleness of language and expression when you type things out. This can make it extremely difficult to build a connection and really make dating a rather boring experience. People really want to go back to finding people in bars, on the street, or anywhere they can express their true personality. Unfortunately, we’re in a pandemic in Seattle so this can be a rather hard uphill battle when you’re combating both a disease and the Seattle Freeze!
Theme #3: As conversations went on, I put forth questions to get people to think about their approaches to dating and what they bring to the table when seeking a partner. These were things like what are ways you like to deal with conflict with a partner, what's your view on what a good date looks like, do you know what your attachment style is, etc. As people answered, it was easy to see that most of those participating were emotionally aware individuals that knew themselves and were quite level headed. All people that should have no problem dating, yet they still struggled. In short, they were all great individuals that deserved nothing but happiness.
An Idea takes hold
As discussions went on and these themes kept popping up, we thought what the heck! These are all really cool people that deserve to find their matches. Let’s get all of them all in a room and see what happens! Thus the speed dating experiment was born! We worked together with a local brewery and posted an ad in the dating chat for our speed dating event. We had 86 people apply and from that we selected 60 men, women and nonbinary folks to attend the first event.
Our first speed dating event!
Everyone had 3 minutes each with about 12 dates, enough time to do a vibe check and connect at a surface level and then an hour long mingle where they could meet and talk with anyone in attendance. It was a HUGE success. People showed up and brought their authentic selves. Everywhere you looked people had smiles on their faces, were laughing, and generally had a good time. They were having such a fun time that a bunch of folks even carried their conversations over to the pizza place next door after the event ended. We went into this event with not much hopes of matches due to it being our first one but in total we had way more matches than we expected and were happy to connect the potential daters with each other!
After we hosted the first event, we did an internal recap and decided we had so much fun planning and hosting it, our friends had so much fun attending, and the venue brought in so much business that we had something real here.
The Seattle Social Club from an idea to reality
Thus the Seattle Social Club was born. We want to keep hosting events like speed dating and several others to bring back the fun in dating and to connect people in real life! We’re not a physical club with membership fees, we’re more of an idea. An idea that people should have fun dating and meeting new people. That dating and friend making can look different than endlessly swiping left or right on an app. It can be hard out there as an adult to be social and expand your friend group.
There’s a common saying in the dating field that lots of dates and friends come from so-called “weak-tie connections”. These are the people you meet at parties, that are friends of friends, coworkers, people that live in your building. They are people that are not necessarily your friends right now but you encounter throughout life and bring in unsuspected new light to your life and can become your next best friend or significant other.
The Seattle Social Club is an idea that helps you expand and add to these weak-ties and broaden your community. We’ll elaborate more in future posts about where we’re going and what other fun events we have in store but for now check out our events calendar and come say hi at one of our events!
