All Together Now
By HANNAH SELIGSON
New York
To the untrained eye and ear, the scene of young professionals sipping cocktails with a steady stream of popular music playing in the background seemed like a typical Thursday night at Forum, a trendy Union Square watering hole for those born around, say, 1983. The only clues that there could be something out of the ordinary taking place were a bright orange sign that said "Ignighter" and a large supply of blue drink tickets that were cycling through the crowd. No, this wasn't a corporate morale booster, an alumni gathering or a charity event. It was a group date.
Group-dating -- think of it as double-dating on steroids or as Facebook in the flesh -- is making a noticeable blip on the dating radar, as a younger generation turns away from such courtship rituals as the blind date. Even Web sites like e-Harmony and Match.com have become passé. Instead of just going out alone or in pairs, a bunch of people -- roughly equal numbers of each sex -- engage in a social activity together. One group of three or four friends meets up with another.
Group-dating plays to the tastes of a generation that's become disillusioned with Internet dating sites, particularly the lies that users tell about themselves online; the futile process of trying to meet people at bars; and blind dates that feel like job interviews. Instead, these young men and women want to have their dating lives simulate the way they meet people in real life: through concentric circles of friends. Especially for recent college graduates who suddenly find themselves without the social anchors of a campus, going out on "a random," as Internet dates are referred to, is like jumping into a pool of sharks.
Ignighter.com, a free site geared toward 20-somethings (their median age is 24), was created in 2007 to solve these problems. The site is the brainchild of Daniel Osit, 26, and Adam Sachs, 25, who found themselves bereft of any appealing dating options when they graduated from college. "Our social lives were so routine, and we weren't meeting anyone. We wanted to come up with a way to meet new people and still be with our friends," Mr. Sachs said.
On Ignighter.com, groups are formed through an ambassador -- a kind of social director -- who invites his or her friends to join. The group is given a name, a members' photo is montaged together from the individual ones that have been submitted (creating a sort of artificial group picture), information about the group is filled in, and a link to everyone's Facebook profile is inserted. Then, the dating begins. And this is where it becomes a bit different from your typical singles event. Groups go out with other groups. Any individual in the group can ask another group out on a date, but everyone in the group goes, eliminating some of the awkwardness that plagues singles events.
Group-dating came on the scene in 1998 with 8at8, a service that sets up dinner dates with four men and four women and now has 25,000 members in six major metropolitan areas. Then came the Internet and, with it, sites like TeamDating.com, which has a concept similar to Ignighter's. TeamDating's 40,000 members are concentrated mostly in urban areas and field teams that average three people. Ignighter's 10,000 users also mostly hail from big cities. IamFreeTonight.com allows its 70,000 users to post double-date and group-date listings. Meet New People, a Facebook dating application, has more than three million users who post when they are free to "hang out" and RSVP to group gatherings.
The groups often try activities a little more adventurous than dinner and a movie, perhaps because there is less one-on-one pressure to impress than on a traditional date. Participants go bowling, take a hiking trip or try a night at the Philharmonic.
The concept, of course, is nothing new. "There's been a long history of group-dating in this country," says Beth Bailey, the author of "From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth Century America." "In the 1920s, people went to 'petting parties,' where young people made out in the presence of their peers. It was a way of saying 'I belong to youth culture.'"
While the sexual license of "petting parties" shocked Jazz Age parents, by the 1940s and 1950s group-dating was encouraged for reasons of propriety. "Parents wanted to keep their daughters from being alone with a man, since having a child out of wedlock would ruin your life back then," says Ms. Bailey.
And, of course, many religious communities have continued to promote group-dating throughout the 20th century. "Group-dating is the only kind of dating we encourage up until about the age of 20," says David Pack, the Pastoral General of the Restored Church of God, in Wadsworth, Ohio. "It's a lot easier to maintain barriers with other people around."
But there are others who worry about what this trend means for young people. Dan Cere, the author of "The Experts' Story of Courtship," a report put out in 2000 by the Institute for American Values, is concerned that this practice is part of a "hanging out and hooking up" culture. If a group date ends in men and women pairing off to engage in some kind of sexual activity, he says, it "may feed into a male tendency toward loose, noncommitted sexual relationships with women."
But talk to women who group date and you find that they are not looking for no-strings-attached relationships. Just as group-dating protected women of the Greatest Generation, many today see it as a shield. "I don't know how willing I would be to go on a date with a stranger," explains Jacqueline Malan, 25, who has been in two groups set up through Ignighter.
Ray Doustdar, the co-founder of TeamDating, says his most positive feedback isn't from men giddy about doubling, tripling or quadrupling their odds on date night; it's from female participants who are relieved to have found a certain amount of security. The guys, meanwhile, see the perks as social lubrication and a fleet of ready wingmen.
In many ways, 21st-century group-dating is a confluence of its past iterations. It's become a way for people to identify with youth culture, the Facebook generation's rebellion against the traditional dating model, and a means for women to dial down the pressure of today's hypersexualized dating scene. All while increasing the odds that these faces in a crowd will find the right someone.
Ms. Seligson is the author of "New Girl on the Job: Advice From the Trenches."
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