Online Dating — Silhouettes of a man and woman at computers with pink hearts between them

Online Dating

1993internet subcultureclassic

Published September 19, 2026

Online dating covers the web services and mobile apps people use to find romantic partners, starting with Match.com in 1993 and expanding through OKCupid, Grindr, and Tinder. The category fed a decade of internet humor, spawning image macros like Dating Site Murderer and callout blogs like Fedoras of OKCupid and Bye Felipe.

dating memes relationship memes cringe memes early 2010s memes smartphone memes

Overview

Beyond the apps themselves, online dating fed a steady output of internet humor through the 2010s. Screenshots of bad opening messages, cringe profile photos, and hostile responses to rejection turned into recurring content on Tumblr, Reddit, and Instagram, with formats ranging from advice-animal image macros to whole archive blogs dedicated to specific dating-app subcultures2.

The tone was usually mockery, letting a screenshot of bad behavior, a weird fetish, or a fedora-in-profile-pic speak for itself. Urban Dictionary entries from the era show the split public read, with some users defending internet love as legitimate and others framing it as a fake teen playdating that ends in cybersex and heartbreak1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Match.com (origin); Reddit / Tumblr / Instagram (meme spread)
Date
1993

The first internet dating site, Match.com, was founded in 1993 by entrepreneurs Gary Kremen and Peng T. Ong as a proof-of-concept for electronic classified advertising systems2. It launched publicly as a free beta in 1995, letting users build profiles with photos and personal information for matchmaking. That template of profile picture plus written self-description set the visual language that later meme formats would take aim at.

How It Spread

OKCupid launched on March 4, 2004 with a compatibility-survey system, and it produced its own screenshot culture over the following years. On August 29, 2011, Gizmodo published intern Alyssa Bereznak's account of an OkCupid date with Magic: The Gathering world champion Jon Finkel, in which she mocked his hobby; Redditors piled onto her in return, and Finkel ran an AMA on Reddit in response2. In 2012, OKCupid user 'Squart Guy' gained notoriety for typo-heavy explicit fantasy messages, and on July 24 that year the Tumblr blog 'Fedoras of OKCupid' launched to mock men wearing fedoras in their profile pics.

Mobile apps expanded the source material. Grindr launched March 26, 2009 as a proximity matchmaker for gay and bisexual users, and Tinder rolled out in September 2012 at USC, UCLA, and select colleges in Texas and Boston before going worldwide. On March 21, 2011, Redditor spawn02000 posted his own dating-site photo to r/WTF with the caption 'I uploaded my picture to a dating site... So far no hits...', which fans recaptioned into the Dating Site Murderer advice-animal series. Two screenshot archives followed: Creepy White Guys on Tumblr (February 2, 2013), collecting racially charged pickup lines from white men to Asian women, and Bye Felipe on Instagram (October 14, 2014), launched by Los Angeles resident Alexandra Tweten to log abusive responses to rejection.

Timeline

1993

Match.com founded by Gary Kremen and Peng T. Ong as a proof-of-concept for electronic classified ads.

1995

Match.com launches as a free public beta with photo-and-text user profiles.

2004-03-04

OKCupid launches, using compatibility-survey matchmaking.

2009-03-26

Grindr launches for gay and bisexual users based on proximity.

2013-02-02

'Creepy White Guys' Tumblr launches, archiving racist come-ons sent to Asian women.

2014-10-14

Alexandra Tweten launches the 'Bye Felipe' Instagram, collecting hostile male responses to rejection.

Frequently Asked Questions