I Went To A Sydney Singles Party As A Break From Dating Apps & It Wasn’t What I Expected

It may be embarrassing to admit, but I’ve been on and off dating apps since their birth in 2012. I was at university when Tinder landed in Australia, matching with my friends in a way that we all found hilarious because we just wanted to see what all this new-fangled technology was about, not necessarily date each other. new BrightcovePlayer('6103636748001', '1656287865355575363', 'zf2tqmk2', 'brightcove-video-player-c28fe80682');Since the end of my last long-term relationship in 2017, I’ve had a longer relationship with being on the apps than with anyone I’ve met from them.

From long COVID lockdowns and repetitive online conversations to short-lived situationships and painful first dates, I’ve become well-versed in online dating culture and the many highs and lows. Last year, I deemed enough was enough and quit the dating apps for six months. I needed a hard reset from the small dopamine hit of new matches and from the pattern emerging that no one really had vested interest in making things work long-term.



Dating had become such a difficult landscape to navigate and getting to know people was no longer fun. Instead, first dates often felt like boring job interviews at best or borderline therapy sessions at worst, where men would dump on me all their past relationship trauma. At the end of the night, I was tempted to charge them $200 instead of splitting the cost of two wines.

As I took a break from the apps, I noticed a slight shift in my single life and the life of my single friends. When we went out, people were talking to each other again. People were approaching, or making chit-chat at bars, or starting to remember what it was like to meet someone in the wild and grab a number or an Instagram handle and continue the chat.

Deleting the apps hadn’t actually destroyed my dating life. It had just changed it, once again.As I entered 2025 single (for something new), I began to get hammered with targeted ads for Thursday, a dating app that has now turned into one of the biggest singles meet-up platforms in the world.

It hosts everything from bar nights to ski trips, all in the name of connecting singles IRL.So after years of Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble putting me through pain, I figured I had nothing else to lose. It was time to try a Thursday dating event.

Image credit: Tahlia Pritchard / InstagramAn honest recap of a Thursday dating singles party I gathered two single friends to go with me and chose an event that had a loose music-theme at a Sydney bar, because I figured if I was giving an IRL singles event a red hot crack, I may meet more likeminded people at an event based on a common interest. It turns out I was wildly wrong.What I thought would be a night of the bar playing good tunes and people discussing their favourite bands for icebreakers was far, far different to what the event turned out to be.

Not a tune could be heard over the loud rumbling of a bunch of single people trying to get to know each other in a small room, which needless to say made some conversations difficult.While the ratio of men to women wasn’t bad, there were definitely more girls than guys at our event. As soon as we walked in, we were flagged down by a Confident Guy (hereby known by that title) and some guy he had also just met.

We all exchanged pleasantries, before the usual polite first date chat began. Now as obviously stupid as it sounds, going to an event like this is truly like navigating a dating app IRL, but to the point I felt like I was some random Sim being controlled by a slightly psychopathic bored teenager at home. I wasn’t sure if they were going to send every bad conversationalist my way or if they would soon set the pub on fire and let us all perish, waving our hands around screaming.

People’s level of banter was less “going to a house party and meeting new, fun people” and more “20 rapid speed dating questions that hit every single generalisation of something you’d be asked on an app”. It felt like everyone in the room was bonded by one thing: we were all longterm, seasoned and potentially jaded serial dating app users, and all the conversations truly sounded like it.After names were exchanged, it fell pretty quickly into “what do you do?” “is this your first event?” and “tell me, why are you single and what are you looking for?” The event became less fun and more frenzied as you jumped from different groups and had similar versions of the same chat before making up excuses to walk away and repeat the same behaviour or finding small moments of solace at the bar or hiding in the bathroom.

At some stage, two wines in, as a guy showed me the current book he was reading on attachment styles and how he classed himself, I got desperately afraid people would start introducing themselves soon based on every other dating app stereotype. Like someone would approach me citing their Myers-Briggs personality type, introducing themselves as an INTP while I screamed, “But what does that EVEN MEAN?” As the Attachment Guy and I discussed his book, and as the Confident Guy pushed a glass of rosé my way before accidentally throwing his fourth straight whiskey over his pants. Another man circled back to our dysfunctional group, phone out, showing us a photo of his dog.

“I taught him to bark by barking at him,” he told me. “And then when he learned to start barking, as soon as he did it, I’d say ‘STOP THAT!’” I looked up desperately towards my Sim creator in the sky, mouthing ‘Help’, my energy bar fast turning from green to red. They ignored me.

I even found myself replying to a Bumble match in the middle of an event, feeling like I was now two-timing this singles party. When my Bumble match asked how my night was, I was that spun out that I replied, “I am at some terrible singles party”, as though that was anything he would care about. Confident-And-Now-Very-Drunk-Whiskey Guy approached again at some stage.

“I reckon you’re quite spicy,” he slurred. Dog Guy was still standing there, his photo of his dog constantly open on his phone. My friends and I side-eyed each other and came to an unspoken agreement: it was time to finish our margs and get out.

The saving grace of the event was, unsurprisingly, the camaraderie of all the women there who found themselves in the same position. At each bar break or toilet break, you’d speak to another single sister about the event, if they had their eye on anyone, if they had any good chats so far, and the current dire dating landscape. “Are the men here even OK?” one woman asked me at the bar.

“Watch out for the Dog Guy,” I replied.Average “Dog Guy”When I told one of my friends who came with me I was writing a review of the event, she summarised it very succinctly when I asked her if she had any notes.“I knew within five minutes there wasn’t a single man there who I would ever date.

Did I try anyway? No,” she said. “Did I enjoy the convos with any of these men? No. Did I have fun with the gals? Yes.

” We left after two hours, with one fake number exchanged, and found solace in a nearby bar that was, conveniently, pumping with single men (just without the ticket price). It didn’t take us long to start celebrating some guy’s 39th birthday with him and his mates before calling it a night, with at least one out of us swearing off dating ever again. Thursday may have not helped me find a romantic connection, but by some weird turn of fate, the Bumble Guy seemed to find it funny I was emotionally dying at a Thursday singles party.

We started dating not long after. So maybe I do have to thank Thursday for something after all that. Tahlia Pritchard is a freelance writer and podcast host who reports on all things reality TV, music, celebrity, and sex and relationships, and is the author of dating newsletter Shit Straight Men Say.

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