A Generation Tired of Swiping. Gen Z Return To Match Making

 A Generation Tired of Swiping

By the time Lawren Saunders walked into her first date with the man who would become her fiancé, she had already shed a small armor of performance — the towering heels, the fluttering lashes, the carefully placed wig. At 25, she had taken the advice of her matchmaker, Alexis Germany Fox, and shown up as her unadorned, everyday self.

She wasn’t alone in her exhaustion. Like many Gen Z singles, Saunders felt used up by the endless scroll of dating apps — the recycled prompts, the shallow matches, the sense that romance had been boiled down to a single flattering photo and a clever line. Authenticity, she realized, wasn’t just a desire; it had become a craving.

The Rise of the Gen Z Matchmaker

Germany Fox saw the shift before most people. After 2021, her Gen Z clientele surged — a 35 percent climb that echoed the collective burnout of a generation raised on digital connection yet starved for real-life presence.

“Dating apps feel dead,” her clients often say. Ghosting, catfishing, emotional misfires — the stories repeat themselves. And for a cohort often pigeonholed as unserious or chaotic, many are quietly longing for something traditional: intention, stability, sincerity.

Germany Fox spends time learning her clients deeply — not just their preferences, but their values. She guides them toward what she calls the “Rule of Three,” peeling away the surface-level wants until only the essential traits remain. For Saunders, those traits were loyalty, adventure, and faith — qualities that turned out to light the path to her future partner.

When Matches Start to Feel Real

Working with a matchmaker introduced Saunders to a different dating pool — one filtered through shared intention rather than shared algorithms. Seven first dates later, she met the man who made all the earlier disappointment feel like background noise. The match felt grounded in something sturdier than luck.

“When I met someone through Alexis, I knew they had taken the same leap,” she says. “They had sat with her, reflected, and made a choice to look for something real.”

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New Formats, New Courage

But matchmaking isn’t just the quiet, curated introductions of old. It’s also becoming a spectacle — a live experiment in vulnerability. When college campuses reopened, Jackson Beer, a 23-year-old navigating questions of gender and sexuality, longed for connection outside the confines of a screen. Yet isolation and discrimination made those attempts feel fraught.

Then came Tinder Disrupt, a live dating show in Brooklyn where friends pitch contestants and questions cut straight to the bone. For Beer, the experience bridged the digital and the organic — honest, immediate, and startlingly human.

“It felt more real,” they say. “Like people had to show up as themselves.”

A Hunger for Endorsement

The creator of Tinder Disrupt, Rose Oser, says the show began as satire but quickly became something earnest. People, especially younger singles, were looking for a nudge — some version of endorsement, whether from a friend, a matchmaker, or a stranger willing to vouch for their character. In a sea of endless profiles, endorsement felt like truth.

READ MORE: HOW PEOPLE BECOME WITCHDOCTORS

Even if Beer didn’t walk away with a new love, the experience opened the door to more in-person matchmaking. What they wanted wasn’t perfection — just the sense that someone who understood them believed they deserved a chance.

Rethinking What Matchmaking Can Be

Traditional matchmaking hasn’t always been built for everyone, often centering the majority. But Gen Z’s offline revival is widening the field. Shows like Tinder Disrupt intentionally highlight people with underrepresented identities, while matchmakers like Germany Fox work with clients across diverse backgrounds.

And this doesn’t mean dating apps are disappearing. Instead, the future looks hybrid: part digital, part in-person, part community-driven. Apps like Hinge and Tinder are already experimenting with gatherings and friend-based matchmaking tools.

As online researcher Dr. Aditi Paul notes, Gen Z is often more themselves online — in memes, finstas, and private jokes. Blending those natural digital habits with in-person spaces might be the key to a healthier dating landscape.

The New Dating Rulebook— Written Together

For Saunders, who is now engaged to the man she met through Germany Fox, the lesson is simple: guidance matters.

“No one teaches us how to date,” she says. “There’s no rulebook.”

Matchmaking didn’t replace dating apps for her — it simply offered clarity, intention, and the courage to show up as who she really is. And for a generation carving out a new path to love, that may be the rulebook they’ve been waiting for.