Dating, Illustrated
The comedy and quiet arithmetic of modern dating, drawn one cartoon at a time.
Dating, Illustrated
The comedy and quiet arithmetic of modern dating, drawn one cartoon at a time.
At a glance
MEDIUM
Digital illustration, hand-drawn on iPad · Short-form comics
TIMELINE
2019 – 2024
CONTEXT
Self-initiated · Drawn in the New Yorker's single-panel tradition
WHERE IT LIVED
Self-published · Submitted to The New Yorker
The impulse
Dating in your thirties, post-apps, is its own genre of small disaster. The slow fade, the four-hour reply that says "haha yeah," the material that keeps every dating essay online in business. I was living it; drawing it was cheaper than therapy and easier to send to the group chat.
The making
Each panel is one true thing, whether mine, a friend's, or something the group chat couldn't stop retelling, pared down in the New Yorker's single-panel tradition. Across the series it reaches for the whole texture of modern dating, and thirties in particular; the recognizable patterns, the situations everyone half-remembers living, the lives that no longer follow one script.
The resonance
People saw themselves in it, same stumbles, same stubborn hope. It became a shared kind of therapy. Laugh at the pattern first, then take the note on how to move through it as a decent person.
MY STATEMENT
Dating changed shape on the apps, and 30's dating has its own weather: the tropes everyone knows, the strange arithmetic of wanting a life that no longer arrives on schedule. These are drawn straight from it; my experiences and the ones my friends keep bringing to the table. Fulfillment has become the luxury good of modern dating, and the comedy isn't the joke, it's the cover it gives. You can look straight at the loneliness and the hope you're embarrassed by, as long as everyone's also laughing. A diary that happens to be funny.
At a glance
MEDIUM
Digital illustration, hand-drawn on iPad · Short-form comics
TIMELINE
2019 – 2024
CONTEXT
Self-initiated · Drawn in the New Yorker's single-panel tradition
WHERE IT LIVED
Self-published · Submitted to The New Yorker
The impulse
Dating in your thirties, post-apps, is its own genre of small disaster. The slow fade, the four-hour reply that says "haha yeah," the material that keeps every dating essay online in business. I was living it; drawing it was cheaper than therapy and easier to send to the group chat.
The making
Each panel is one true thing, whether mine, a friend's, or something the group chat couldn't stop retelling, pared down in the New Yorker's single-panel tradition. Across the series it reaches for the whole texture of modern dating, and thirties in particular; the recognizable patterns, the situations everyone half-remembers living, the lives that no longer follow one script.
The resonance
People saw themselves in it, same stumbles, same stubborn hope. It became a shared kind of therapy. Laugh at the pattern first, then take the note on how to move through it as a decent person.
MY STATEMENT
Dating changed shape on the apps, and 30's dating has its own weather: the tropes everyone knows, the strange arithmetic of wanting a life that no longer arrives on schedule. These are drawn straight from it; my experiences and the ones my friends keep bringing to the table. Fulfillment has become the luxury good of modern dating, and the comedy isn't the joke, it's the cover it gives. You can look straight at the loneliness and the hope you're embarrassed by, as long as everyone's also laughing. A diary that happens to be funny.
My takeaway
I started these sure my dating life was uniquely cursed; almost no one's is. Drawing the bad date is how you stop being its subject and become its author, and how you laugh at a thing instead of drowning in it. I hope it hands the same pen to anyone who finds themselves in a panel.
More play
Dating, Illustrated
The comedy and quiet arithmetic of modern dating, drawn one cartoon at a time.