A new dating event, Pitch, Please! is coming to Dublin. The premise is simple: participants invite a friend to create a short PowerPoint presentation pitching them to a room full of singles. The aim is to get people offline and offer them an opportunity to make in-person connections in a fun and low-pressure way.
Dating apps: where everyone meets their soulmate after one hilarious and easy first text and a beautifully romantic, thoughtfully planned first date… If only it were that easy!
Instead, dating has become dominated by the ever-expanding complexities of online interactions. Complexities that are exponentially greater for the LGBTQ+ community. The endless swiping, liking, and even woofing is exhausting, not to mention the constant texting, only to never meet in person.
The early-2000s meet-cute in a coffee shop has gone the way of the fax machine, and the queer community was rarely represented in that adorable trope anyway. While the days of approaching someone in public and giving them your number are not as commonplace as they once were, there’s a unique new method to meeting people IRL.
Sabrina Carpenter hits the trials and tribulations of dating on the head, singing, “I heard that you’re an actor, so act like a stand-up guy,” but now you really can. Introducing Pitch, Please!, a queer dating event where you can stand up and pitch your friend to a room of singles.
The presenter creates a PowerPoint presentation showcasing the best qualities in their friends, including anything and everything from their successes to some of their crowning embarrassing moments. Some heartfelt, light roasting from the wingperson is all part of the fun to intrigue those watching.
Similar formats have been a hit in other parts of the world and in Dublin. Pitch a Friend Ireland took off in 2024 and has hosted several successful events since. Their goal is to encourage people to relinquish some of the social anxiety and cynicism that is created from bad experiences on the apps.
However, Pitch, Please! is the first dating event of its kind specifically for the LGBTQ+ community in Dublin. It aims to not only introduce you to potential matches but also create a new space to meet others in the community. After your wingperson breaks the ice with a few embarrassing stories, you’ll at the very least have a room of friendly faces with shared experiences.
The event is being hosted at Street 66 in Dublin on July 9. After the presentations end, it’s encouraged that people stay and continue to mingle and meet others in the community, offline.
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