It’s no longer taboo to meet your partner on the internet. The evidence is everywhere: It’s on your refrigerator door, where you’ve hung up the wedding invitations of friends who met on Tinder. It’s on your Instagram feed, where a friend shares a sappy post about her one-year anniversary with a woman she met on Hinge.

But when Zeke Rothfels tells people that she met her husband online, she’s not talking about swiping left until she finally found the right guy. She’s talking about cultivating a relationship across the U.S.-Canada border with a man she met in a Facebook meme group.

“I think we both felt kind of like, is this crazy?” Rothfels told TechCrunch. “Do I acknowledge that this feels like something, or will that ruin it?”

It was crazy, but it was also real — six years later, Rothfels is reminiscing about meeting her husband after she’s just put their 2-year-old child to sleep.

“Do I acknowledge that this feels like something, or will that ruin it?”

Everyone is tired of dating apps. This mass disillusionment has sent the stocks of dating giants tumbling. The stock prices of Bumble and Match Group — the company behind 45 dating apps, including Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid — have declined about 90% and 68% over the last five years, respectively. Together, these companies have shed $40 billion in market cap since 2021, struggling to capture the attention of Gen Z users.

But the internet’s presence in our social lives won’t just disappear. As singles grow weary of swiping, couples are getting to know each other on traditional social media sites — in the Tumblr “Ask” box, in Reddit