What Happened When I Invited 100 Girls In My Phone Out For Pizza — At The Same Time

Swapping phone numbers means nothing these days, especially not to the millennials who have embraced mass right-swiping, ghosting, and social media as the norm. 

For a pretty young woman, it now means "I'll let you be another notification." Another dopamine spike from my smartphone that I can respond to or ignore along with the hundreds of tweets, Likes, and Tinder matches.

I’ve accumulated hundreds of random women’s digits since buying my Samsung S5. Bottlerats I’d met in nightclubs and never saw again. Tinder matches who’d disappeared after I sent a stupid meme. Women who came on one date in 2015 and told me there was "no chemistry." Contacts like "Sophie The Pretty Butterfly" and "Britney Funny Brixton."

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We live in a world where it’s acceptable for short-lived romantic interests like these to disappear into thin air. Does that mean we hate each other? Or that we wouldn’t have an awesome date? Not necessarily. Sometimes life just gets in the way.  

As I sat mindlessly scrolling through my  smartphone contacts, I pondered what would happen if I engaged in a dating experiment.

A dating experiment, in which I invited each of them out for pizza — at the same time. 

Surely it would yield more success than the average Tinder right-swiping rampage? After all, these girls liked me enough to exchange numbers at some point. Plus, everyone loves pizza.

I constructed a suitably intriguing text, then got to work.

My stomach tensed as I copy-and-pasted my way through 86 SMS and Whatsapp messages. Even as part of a dating experiment, it’s not pleasant being ignored or rejected — and that’s what I was mostly expecting.  

At the same time, it was a wonderful digital stroll down memory lane. A 40-something-year-old Swiss woman I’d met at speed dating. The Russian waitress from a nearby shrimp restaurant. The French one-night stand who politely asked why I was so bad in bed. All amazing girls...

As the responses rolled in, there was a definite theme that emerged from the SMS women:

Whatsapp proved a little more successful.

I slid into the DMs of another 14 girls on Instagram to make it a total of 100 invites.

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Time was running out. My only genuine hope was "Natalie :-)" who had shown interest from the very start.

The only stumbling block was that I had no idea who she was, how we met or what she looked like. I decided to call her, charm her and invite her out in person.

I came clean about the social dating experiment but told her she sounded like fun anyway.

"Aww, that makes me feel really special," she said sarcastically.

I asked if she believed in awesome things happening out of random situations. She said she did but was already booked up that evening. We swapped Instagram details, kept chatting and agreed to meet the next week.

The cold, hard numbers? Out of 100 women invited, ten replied and one agreed to come out on a date. A couple more showed signs that they eventually will once they’re free.

Meanwhile, several were alarmed.

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Hawaiian may not be everyone’s favorite pizza topping, but it’s great for resuscitating dead romances. If that’s better than your Tinder ratio, why not give it a try?

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