Refund My Shit Date wants you to share your worst date stories
When I make the decision to write about dating culture, I always need a short preparation time beforehand, just so I can make sure to be as unbiased by my own experiences as possible. This time, however, is different—my nightmarish dating stories are merging with the rest of the world’s strange encounters. How come? As it turns out, I’m not the only one that feels entitled to get reimbursed for some of the worst dates I’ve ever been on.
Refund My Shit Date is a new project which was created by art director Daisy King and musician Alexina and allows anyone to share their shit date story and how much they spent on it for a chance to win a £100 refund. Through the website, both co-founders want to “give back to those who have lost out to love, to provide a safe, anonymous space for people to let rip on their worst date stories ever and create a community who can come together and laugh, cry and leave feeling a little better about life.”
I spoke to Alexina about terrible dates and how exactly they might have led her and King to this project, and about whether dating apps have ruined dating culture for the new generation. “I’m a musician and songwriter and I wrote the song Where Are All The Boys? about a series of shitty and terrible dates I went on last year,” Alexina told Screen Shot.
When asked whether a specific date made her feel the urge to ask for a refund, the musician explained: “I actually wrote the lyrics to the song in the bath after a particularly bad date where the guy I’d been out with that night insinuated that because he’d paid for a fancy dinner, I owed him a second date. I use my music as a platform to vent my frustration but also to try and empower people about very real, often shitty events. When I sat down with my creative collaborator Daisy to look at creative ideas for the campaign, we discussed those themes at length and Refund My Shit Date was born pretty quickly.”
It makes sense that Refund My Shit Date was born out of the dating scene’s many negatives, just like many other great projects. The website gives people a platform where they can vent their frustrations and receive something back too. “And I hope people leave feeling a little better about their experiences,” added Alexina, and as someone who went on the website and revealed my own worst dates, I can say Refund My Shit Date has been tested and approved.
Apparently, I’m not the only one to celebrate the platform and the opportunity it gives many daters. “The site has had a madly overwhelming response, it’s been a whirlwind of a journey reading, crying, cringing, loling over all of the stories, I think we’ve had nearly 900 so far. It’s been a wonderful trip,” shared Alexina.
But looking at the website’s neatly aligned receipts for people’s ‘shit dates’, I can’t help but wonder whether these are also proof of how dating apps have shaped the way we meet new people. Is this highlighting the problems of modern dating culture? Alexina seems to agree with me on some points, “Modern and online dating has opened this absolutely vast and unknown space for total strangers to meet. A space that literally didn’t exist until 5 years ago. Pre-iPhone and dating apps, you’d perhaps get set up with a friend of a friend or meet someone linked to your social group. You’d hang out in person, get to know someone face to face, you’d be able to understand and process their body language, get to know the real person. There really wasn’t too much to hide behind.”
Online dating lets most of us depict an unrealistic and sometimes fake image of ourselves. Not only do we expect our dates to look the best and be the best, we also seem to get bored quite quickly. Let’s be honest, how many times did you date someone you described as ‘perfect’ to then move on to the next thing three dates after making that statement? “We can quite literally be anyone we want online. I feel that we’ve also become a bit of disposable society now too. We have the ‘right, what’s next’ mentality, our concentration spans diminish, we get bored incredibly quickly,” says Alexina.
Yes, dating culture has definitely changed—I like to compare it to how much teenagers can change over a span of 5 years—it went from a soft-faced and naive teen to a tall and lanky monster craving sex and not much more. When I asked Alexina whether she thought there’s a correlation between the number of shitty dates we go through and the shift dating culture has undergone in the last decade, she answered with: “Absolutely. There’s quite literally a million times more people we can connect with. 99.9 per cent of them are total strangers who can ghost you as quickly as they connect with you. My advice would be, make sure you put yourself first in all of this, love yourself, don’t take it all too personally otherwise it’ll take you down like the monster the big dark dating web has become!” See, I told you, dating has become a monster.
So why don’t you go Refund My Shit Date’s safe space and let it all out? You will feel better, and you’ll have a laugh while doing so. Post-COVID, Alexina and King are planning on throwing a London exhibition featuring all entries from the site as well as a live set from Alexina and her band., which sounds like a perfect date night to me. For the website, the first winner of £100 will be announced this Sunday 2 August. Get typing!
