To understand the problem, we need to talk about dating apps. Because if anything is responsible for the death of real-life rizz, it’s them. Since Match.com launched in 1995 as the first online dating platform, the category has boomed to become a $15 billion industry, with a projected annual growth of 7.4 per cent. According to Statista, 3.2 million Australians used dating apps in 2021, with millennials making up the largest proportion, followed by gen Z. But while it’s widely accepted that the majority of singles are on the apps, it’s now almost begrudgingly so. In 2022, data analytics company Singles Reports surveyed 500 18- to 54-year-olds and nearly 80 per cent said they felt ‘emotional fatigue or burnout’ from dating apps. And gen Z are turning away from them altogether, with a 2023 survey of university and graduate students finding that 79 per cent don’t use them even once a month. The disillusionment with the apps has calcified – a January article from Bustle proclaimed them to be in their ‘flop era’ – and most of the people who I spoke to for this article expressed a similar sentiment: that they don’t want to be on online dating platforms. But, as 26-year-old Tim said, “The issue is: what’s the alternative?”

Meeting someone in real life, obviously. Arguably, relearning the art of the flirt starts with us closing dating apps, looking up from our phones and actually interacting with people in the wild. But even then, it’s not exactly straightforward. Take Dulcie, for example. When we talk, he’s 208 days free from dating apps. “It hasn’t changed how I am necessarily,” he tells me, “because I think I already bring a lot to my interactions with anyone I encounter. But it’s definitely made me realise that we don’t have spaces to just meet people. And even in places like the gym, or a coffee shop, I’m no more likely to strike up a conversation with someone because everyone’s usually in their own world and I don’t want to be imposing.”

The idea of meeting someone organically is a novel concept, one thought of with the same kind of wistful nostalgia as plugging in a phone line to surf the web. We’re living in an age where approaching someone in a bar, or the grocery store, is almost incomprehensible. (Social anxiety is rife, with one in three Australians aged 16 to 24 affected by an anxiety disorder, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.) Instead, if you want to signal your romantic or sexual interest, you’ll ask for their Instagram and slide into their DMs. As a result, our real-life conversational mojo, our ability to small talk – whatever you want to call it – is declining fast.

In struggling to master the technique, those looking for love use humour as a coping mechanism and document their struggles on TikTok. One video with 1.3 million views uses the audio from a Challengers scene between Zendaya’s Tashi and Josh O’Connor’s Patrick. In it, he tells her, “Maybe you just wanted to see me,” to which she replies, “I have seen you. You look like shit.” The caption for the video reads: “Unfortunately this is how I flirt.”

People like Chicken Shop Date creator Amelia Dimoldenberg, whose flirtation style is defined by awkwardness, are a beacon of modern-day courtship. She went viral when she interviewed Andrew Garfield on the 2023 Golden Globes red carpet because their chemistry was palpable – “Compulsively watchable lightning strikes”, declared one Guardian article. Her interviews with Paul Mescal, rapper Aitch and The 1975 frontman Matty Healy all went similarly viral because they captured the same electric frisson we associate with some of Hollywood’s greatest pairings: Meg and Tom, Julia and George, Kate and Matthew.

People are desperate to replicate that energy themselves. Online ‘flirt coaches’ are becoming increasingly popular as we search for help – people like Benjamin Camras, who shares videos and tips with his 121,000 followers on everything from ‘flirting at the grocery store’ to ‘dating outside your type’. Likewise, Jean Smith, a cultural anthropologist and social intelligence coach, has been helping people flirt for more than 20 years. She says the problem is twofold. “It’s a combination of people outsourcing the work to their phones and a fear of rejection.” Because the key to being a good flirt, she goes on to say, is actually in removing the other person from the initial equation. “A good flirt is not relying on anything from the other person,” she instructs me. “They’re not relying on the other person to give them their self-worth. A good flirt isn’t afraid of rejection; they’re just doing it for fun. It doesn’t mean to say that they’re not interested in having a partner or a sexual encounter or whatever else, but mostly it’s just for the good vibe, and if something else happens, fabulous.”

Isabella agrees. “You have to not give a shit,” she says. “The thing about it is, you know when you have a crush on someone? Usually it’s because you don’t know anything about them; it’s a lack of information. The better you are, the better you think they are because you’re hopeful. But when you realise that 99.9 per cent of the time it is absolutely not the case that they’re as good as you, you stop giving a shit about whether they’re going to reject you because you’re like, ‘I’m better than you anyway, who cares?’” In other words, it helps to be a touch delulu about the whole thing.

As a bartender and bar manager of Centro 86, Brianna Aboud has seen the best and worst of it. “Everybody wants to hit on the bartender,” she laughs. She says that people tend to overextend themselves when they want to flirt, which often leads to disastrous attempts like when a man approached the bar and told her, “I have the biggest tongue in Sans Souci.” In her experience, and after years of observing people, Aboud tells me that with flirting, “the success comes from them being polite, honest and actually trying to have a conversation, not just being weird.”

Which gets to the heart of what Smith says is the biggest misconception. “You don’t just start flirting,” she explains. “Flirting can only happen with two people.” Where it starts, she says, is with a question. Rather than even thinking about it as a conversation initially, Smith advises that people simply approach, ask a question and then wait to gauge their response. “Pressure is the enemy of flirting,” she reasons. “The minute we find someone attractive, or the minute we think, ‘Oh my God, I have to flirt with them’ – pressure. So instead, you just think, ‘I’m going to ask this human a question and then leave space for them to respond.’ This is what’s missing and how you avoid coming across as creepy.” If they’re into it, great, ask another question, if not, walk away.

“What I’ve learnt about flirting over the 20 years I’ve been doing this is that people think that you go in flirting or that flirting happens, like you find someone attractive and that’s it,” explains Smith. “How do I flirt with them? No. The key to everything is everyone approaching everyone else as a human first.”

But how can you tell if someone’s being responsive or when someone is flirting with you? In her book, Flirtology: Stop Swiping, Start Talking and Find Love, as well as on her Fearless Flirting tours, Smith advises people to check off H.O.T. A.P.E: humour, open body language, touch, attention, proximity and eye contact. If those six signs are all there, they’re probably flirting with you. “If the people and the timing are right at that moment, it will turn into something.”

And even if it doesn’t, you probably enjoyed a surge of adrenaline anyway. Because when we’re getting down to it, flirting is just good for the soul. It releases endorphins, encourages positivity and almost always leads to an outcome you can’t anticipate. “What I found in leading these tours is that what people think is going to happen stops them from actually [approaching someone],” says Smith. “But people do it and then they come back and they’re shocked because what they thought was going to happen is not what happened – it’s always better.”

Later that night, I called a friend from the bath and could hear her smile the whole time.