Entries Of A Loser: Your Free Trial Has Ended

Double texting. Three-month rule. Situationship. Avoidant attachment. All are phrases our generation has become all too familiar with. So my question to you is—where has all the romance gone?

The epidemic of being “nonchalant” has experienced a resurgence since the “performative man” trope gained traction in our culture. At first, it was just a joke, something men and women alike poked fun at. But have we taken the joke too far?

As a young black girl who grew up in mostly white spaces and was privileged enough to attend private schools, the feeling of being “othered” in romantic settings was never lost on me. Still, having a mother who was addicted to 1950s black-and-white films—those stories of yearning, passion, and love raised my expectations of what romance could look like. I grew up believing in the slow burn, in the idea that love was something intentional, patient, and expressive.

So I wonder: are we, as a generation, unfamiliar with love because we’ve never truly seen it? Or is it because we’ve lost the physical spaces that once allowed love to grow naturally? The bookstores, the cafes, the movie theaters—and instead turned to digital substitutes like Hinge, Instagram, and that hellish app we know as Snapchat?

Why does the dating scene, especially for Gen Z, feel like a constant battle of tug-of-war? Don’t tell them you like them. Don’t be too easy, but also not too hard to get. Play it cool, but make sure they don’t lose interest. The love of the game has become exhausting—like trying to solve an equation that is constantly rewriting itself, and chasing a feeling that seems unattainable.

Playing things cool has never come easy to me, surrounded by tropes like the “cool girl” who loses herself in her partner, and the “emotionally unavailable guy” who pretends to read feminist literature. Musicians like Brent Faiyaz have turned detachment into an aesthetic, glorifying the art of caring less, as if love is only valuable when it’s withheld. Intimacy now equates to performance, making it easier to hide behind TikTok slang and ironic humor to mask our real emotions. And in protecting ourselves from rejection, we’ve lost the creativity that once made romance exciting.

Where are the confessions? The poems? The CDs and letters? The hugs from behind that said everything words couldn’t? Has being a romantic gone out of style—or are we just too afraid to admit we still want it?

Or maybe romance isn’t dead at all. Maybe it’s just quieter now, buried beneath layers of fear and irony. Maybe it’s waiting for someone brave enough to care first. To double text without hesitation. To say “I like you” and mean it. In a generation obsessed with being unbothered, choosing to care might be the most radical thing we can do. Or maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic. But I’ll let you decide on that one.