People are ‘deleting the apps’ so they can meet someone the old-fashioned way – 17 funniest meet cutes

Around 10 per cent of relationships grow from meeting up via an official dating site, and another 10 per cent through chatting on social media – but this meme on Bluesky might signal a drop in those figures.

People are vowing to avoid the apps and do things in a more organic way – like in novels and films, for example.

Here are some of our favourites.

1.

Deleting the apps so I can meet someone the old fashioned way (hiring her as a governess after locking my current wife in the attic).

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— John Oxley (@joxley.jmoxley.co.uk) July 14, 2025 at 8:01 AM

2.

Deleting the apps so I can meet someone the old fashioned way (traipsing around in a wet field near somebody else’s home until I get pneumonia or at least a very heavy cold)

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— D. V. Bishop’s CARNIVAL OF LIES out now (@dvbishop.com) July 14, 2025 at 7:41 AM

3.

Deleting the apps so I can meet someone the old fashioned way (seduced by an immortal count after he saw a photograph of an employee’s fiancée)

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— Felicity Hannah (@felicityhannah.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 7:56 AM

4.

Deleting the apps so I can meet someone the old-fashioned way (accepting a proposition from a shipping magnate to track down his playboy son in a fictionalised coastal town in Italy)

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— Polis Loizou(-Denyer) (@polisloizou.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 2:57 PM

5.

Deleting the apps so I can meet someone the old-fashioned way (rescuing her from a space prison only to discover she’s my sister so I can, with relief, live out the rest of my life single and living it up)

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— Patrick Ness (@patricknessbooks.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 2:32 PM

6.

Deleting the apps so I can meet someone the old fashioned way (sleeping with my husband’s dad and then having my affair exposed on Christmas Day by his psychotic daughter).

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— Shar A (@sharal.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 8:55 AM

7.

Deleting the apps so I can meet someone the old fashioned way (marrying an annoying clergyman because the alternative is financial instability)

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— Louie Stowell (@louiestowell.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 7:43 AM

8.

deleting the apps so I can meet someone the old fashioned way

(he smiles up at me from the sewer and offers me a balloon)

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— K.C. Mead-Brewer (@kcmeadbrewer.com) July 14, 2025 at 3:39 PM

9.

Deleting the apps so I can meet someone the old fashioned way (being presented with flattering portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger)

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— Thomas I-G (@thomasig.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 9:11 AM