‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.’ – Albert Einstein

It was as I was stood in a semi-circle surrounding a makeshift dance circle, while I watched 18 fellow singletons enthusiastically shaking their stuff in a dancing-on-one-leg dance-off to the soundtrack Europop classic ‘Pump It Up!’, that I really questioned my life choices. Whilst this wasn’t the first time I had done so that evening, it was the most out-of-body crisis variant so far. How had I ended up here? What had I really thought I was going to achieve this evening? And, most significantly, why has my life so far led to the the point that attending a Squid Game themed dating event felt like the best possible step to solving the problem that is my total absence of a love life?

The blurb for Squid Game Dating read, ‘Squid Game Dating is a brand new immersive experience. This event is for ages 21-45 age guide and will have an equal ratio of men and women. After booking your ticket you will be invited to attend Nordic bar in London for our in-person immersive Squid Game Dating event. Expect to meet around 30 people with equal numbers of men and women. When you arrive you will be issued with your player number. All players will be invited to get to know one another at the bar until the games begin. Are you ready? Games will include several from the TV show including Marbles & Honeycomb along with several unique games for this event. All the games are designed to get people working together and helps to break the ice which is perfect for a singles event. Are you ready to play? Don’t hesitate this event will be fully booked in advance. P.S – Don’t worry, no one will actually be murdered…’

By not just alluding to, but directly referring to the Netflix smash hit tv series from 2021, the presumption would be the event would share some sort of similarities with Squid Game. A semblance. A sliver. My friend Sarah and I had both bought our tickets ticket envisioning a big group event, with challenges from the show, split into four teams, getting to know people along the way. A massive misconception with the silver lining that maybe Sarah and I should do into dating event planning as that sounds like a banging night.

Instead with found ourselves doing speed dating in booths with puzzles. Which was essentially a repeat of what I’d tried and loathed a month prior, through a different company. It was only this morning that I realised not-Squid Game Dating was run by the company who provided this nightmare of an evening. And so last night instead proved that ‘third time’s a charm’ is actual a falsehood and, quite possibly, based on this track record, every dating event is awful and humanity is screwed. Who’s to say?

A last minute venue change resulted in us spending our Wednesday night in Loop, a basement bar just off of Oxford Street at, and I repeat, an event called Squid Game Dating. Which is why I was wearing a Green Tracksuit that potentially evidenced the following things about my character 1) I love a theme, 2) I’ve long since lost the want for subtlety, embrace joy and go out at all times and 3) I have a vast and eclectic wardrobe.

Unlike last time, I won’t talk you through date-by-date. I’ll instead tell you of the prevailing feeling of despair that prevailed for the majority of the evening. Whilst the ratio was more positive than previous events (18:15 instead of 390:10) being provided the opportunity to talk to 18 men counts for nothing when the majority of them are so fixated on the games that they don’t actually talk to you. Or look at you. And they ignore the questions you ask. Or choose to avoid feigning even the most fleeting interest in you or what you’re saying.

A list of lowlights in no particular order:

• being mansplained anime whilst I was wearing a My Neighbour Totoro Uniqlo bag (which he hadn’t noticed, I pointed out, and he continued the monologue anyway)
• watching the most conventionally attractive man of the night spend the entire ten minutes of our ‘date’ ignoring us, swearing away as he tried & failed to build a House of Cards
• the second most conventionally attractive man of the night dismissing me & my job with his eyebrows
• the man I’m pretty sure I’d met at last month’s event and who awkwardly pretended not to notice me
• the man who – at the end of our round/date – left our booth with the manner of someone liberated from prison and clung to the woman he’d previously had a date with
• the man who thought that repeating a ‘missing marbles’ joke as often as possible during a game of marbles would ensure that we finally found it funny (spoiler- we did not)
• the man who asked I’d ever heard of a ‘little show called The Big Bang Theory’)
• and the following conversation during which I finally killed my will to live:

[Talking about the past dating events I’ve attended]
Him: Did they ever work out well? Any successes?
Me: [smiling, clearly joking] Yes! I’m married now!
Him: [silent, visibly looks at my left hand for a wedding band]
Me: … that was a joke…
Him: [still silent}
Me. …sorry?

And so, two hours after we arrived, Sarah and I left as soon as we possibly could – having lost all hope for ever finding romantic love and having found PTSD for this song.

Booking the ticket to the speed gaming dating event had been an impulse purchase a couple of weeks back, and one I was really starting to regret the night before it’s happening.

I was looking over the website again and had shifted from ambivalence over attending to a state of near-total dread. Apparently the event had sold out for women but there were still ‘plenty’ of tickets left for men. A prospect which brought back flashbacks to this event last year and solidified my ongoing suspicions that eligible single men in London were as likely to be spotted in the wild as The Loch Ness Monster. Although meeting the GREAT LOVE OF MY LIFE would the ideal outcome of a dating event, at the very least good company and a bit of a flirt would be possible? But how could that happen if, yet again, I would be attending another taco fest?

Magically, when I looked again at the website 24 hours later, on my way to the event, the men’s tickets were now sold out. Something which felt suspicious and weird. It was a puzzle that would be solved shortly after arriving at the private area of the board game café where the event was being held, when the host introduced me to one of the male attendees who accidentally disclosed that he’d been asked, the night before, to attend. Several others would later mention having experienced the same. Few things invoke as much joy and optimism as hearing that the other guests of an event only attended as they were asked to and offered a free ticket, whilst you spent £15 for that very same privilege .

Whisky Lemonade in hand, stood in the area that was so cramped we had to politely shuffle around each other, we all made politely awkward conversation. Two things were quickly apparent though and both presented their own possible problems. Firstly, I was a solid half a foot taller than most of the other guests (both male and female). Coming in at a mighty 6ft, this isn’t an uncommon situation for me. I am also aware I am not a roller-coaster and therefore do not come with a height limit for those wishing to partake in this ride. However, feeling as if I’d arrived to take the Hobbits to Isengard didn’t fill me with hope for romantic prospects or being regarded with any semblance of desirability. Secondly, instead of asking me to move, one of the men had wordlessly just grabbed me by the small of the back and moved me. This is a massive pet peeve of mine, why do men – strange men, in both meanings of the word – touch women there?!? It’s such an intimate spot. In fact, why touch us at all? Use your words! Suffice to say, I was desperately trying to cling onto my last shred of optimism and remain open to what the universe would provide.

Immediately this was tested further once we took our seats. There were six group tables, with board games in the centre – we were to be sat in groups of 4, spending ten minutes getting to know each other over a game. At time up, the men would then move onto the next table and meet the women sat there. The questionable result would be that, each round, it would be up to the women to explain the game to the men each time – arguably an unfortunate use of emotional labour. Every other table was comprised of two men and two women. Except my table, where I was the only woman. This meant I would be on my own each round whilst everyone else got a wingman/woman, it meant things would feel a bit more draining as I didn’t have anyone else to help pick up the slack of conversation – or help me out when things would get a bit much, as they inevitably did later on.

Date 1: Things started off well enough during the first round. Our assigned game was Wavelength, something we were all pretty unfamiliar with. Here’s the rules if you want them, I can imagine it’s quite fun playing with people you know as opposed to the edge of awkwardness of playing with strangers… All you need to know is that the game involves you picking a card which has a spectrum (e.g Terrible actor, incredible actor). You decide the topic for the range (e.g Tom Cruise) and secretly lock in where you’d place that topic on the spectrum, the rest of the group need to guess how your answer. It was all going reasonably well until the end, when one of the men decided to use it as an opportunity to explain The Godfather to me. When I snorted and asked if he’d seen Barbie, we quickly established he’d totally missed the point of that scene and taken it as something worthy of replicating rather than avoiding. This mansplaining aside, we’d all picked safe topics and a nice enough time was had all round.

Date 2: I’d not considered that the ability to pick own topics could be used for creepy reasons, but I’d quickly see the error of my naivety. Only two men on this round, a nice guy and a Geezer. Geezer is the one who had forcibly moved me earlier on, so my back was already up (literally and metaphorically). Geezer was clearly feeling out of place, a bit of an anomaly in this room full of polite nerds and, possessed with a seemingly total inability to read this fact, he made 3 increasingly fascinating (said dripping with layers of sarcasm and irony) topic choices for his go at the game.

• 1. The spectrum was least beautiful to most beautiful. His chosen topic? ‘Charlotte’. Layering on the smarm, he’d put me at ‘most beautiful’. There are some people in the world who would be able to do this in a charming way. He was not one of them.
• 2. The spectrum was least important to most important. He picked ‘how important good morning texts are in a relationship’. He was very proud to reveal he considered them very important and that was something he would love to provide me with.
• 3. The spectrum was round to pointed. He picked ‘boobs’ as his topic. Obviously. Did he prefer round or pointed boobs? That was what this 30-something year old man wanted us to guess. I tried to deflect by asking if we were considering Madonna’s iconic pointy moment. He explained to me that no, that was in fact lingerie (No! Really?!?), and he was referring to breasts – gesturing towards my chest to illustrate his point. I nodded to confirm I was, in fact, aware of the concept of breasts. Saved by the end-of-round bell, he left the table proudly declaring – in case I was worried – he liked round breasts best. My relief was palpable.

Date 3: This was the best date by far, and not just because it was a total respite after the chauvinistic nightmare I had just endured. The two men had developed a sweet rapport and, for the first time so far, we were able to chat as well as play a game. They were nice company and both would definitely make someone out there very happy.

Date 4: After a halftime break, the next two guys arrived. One quieter than the other, who clearly viewed himself as charming – a general manager at a restaurant whose opening gambit was a proclamation that ‘Hackney is where it’s at and happening in London’. Another fascinating (*ahem*) specimen, he spent the entire round flirting with the women at other tables – watching one of them order another drink at the bar and stealing food off the plate of another. He did grant me one slither of attention though, when he queried as to whether my red hair was natural – gesturing to my lower half to clarify his meaning. He even did an eyebrow wiggle, just to really lock-in the creep of it all.

Dates 5 & 6: These two dates were very similar, both in terms of dynamics and the fact my social battery was starting to run out after the conversational heavy lifting I’d been having to do all evening. During these rounds we talked more about experiences of dating, both in person events and the apps. It made for some really interesting discussion, sharing of different bad experiences and getting to see the male perspective on certain things. Some of their answers about things they’ve been messaged and how they’ve been made to feel echoed the reflections in this article.

And so we reached the end of the evening, at which I made a swift exit. It was a school night after all. Since then, it’s been hard not to reflect on it all – the evening itself and dating in general. When did the dating trenches get so bad? With half of those between the ages of 25-40 being single, we are all so battle-weary and disillusioned – how do you keep going and believing that romantic love is out there?

Answers on a postcard please, because at this point I really do not know.