10 Huge Ways Flirting Changed From 2007 to 2017

While it’s all about breezy beach pics and soft Instagram filters now, 2007 was a more dramatic time for the ~sexy~ shot. Your best selfie was always (1) in your room, (2) taken from a top angle to make your eyes look bigger and, let’s be real, your boobs too, and (3) overexposed into oblivion because you always used flash. By now, you know better and always seek out natural light and an eye-level shot, but damn. Baggy eyes were way easier to hide back then.

Ahhhh, the Facebook/Twitter/Instagram like. Universal in its simplicity, subtle in its form, and just overall the best training wheels to actually starting a conversation. But 2007, two years before Facebook introduced the revolutionary thumb's up, was a time where people did what is now the unthinkable now: poke each other. You’d poke a person, they’d poke you back. It felt pointed but meant nothing. Eventually, you’d be desensitized from your multiple pokes a day, just in time for technology to advance and find better ways of getting your crush’s attention.

OK, but for real: How did so many of us agree to publicly write back-and-forth paragraphs on each other’s walls, for friends and frenemies alike to judge and decode? Thankfully, now we just slide into each other’s DMs like fucking normal people who appreciate a modicum of privacy in our quest to hook up.

Back in the day, you’d add them to your top eight to say, “Psssssst, you’re kind of important to me.” Done. Easy. Today, proving that you’re real friends and possibly more is a more engaging task done by keeping up a Snapchat streak. You have to send one every day, and they do too, or it breaks and so does all hope of an eventual relationship. No pressure though!

Waiting is always the most excruciating part of texting a crush. In 2007, the culprit was the phone itself, where you’d have to hit a key three times for “c” or had to manually clear out your inbox. Now, despite the immediacy of iPhones, you still struggle with patience but it’s so, so much worse because of the TYPING ELLIPSES. Take this technology back and let us live in simpler times where we assumed our bae was just taking a long time to type, “yes I’d love to go with you,” and not crafting the world’s longest rejection letter.

In the aughts, you’d have a janky graphic of Disney princes, and you’d subtly tag your crush as “The Hot One” (Prince Eric) for everyone to see. Thankfully, in 2017, you can tag your crush in the comments of a meme about making out, and let it be buried in between all the other comments aimed at prospective boyfriends.

Vaguely hinting at a crush online, writing-wise, hasn’t changed much over the decade. It’s where you decide to post “my crush only ever asks to study together but never a real date :/” that's come a long way. In 2007, it was tucked away in your daily paragraph blog post via your Xanga; today, it’s a standalone tweet, which is much more likely to be seen, TBH.

Your default “message” is crucial in baiting your crush. The ‘00s were all about what you were currently doing (~*~BRB, on the phone with BeCkY~*~) and the most profound pop punk lyrics you could find (aka you cycled through every song on The Black Parade). Today, it’s all about Instagram stories/Snapchats that, while impermanent, update your crush with everything from what you just ate to “plans canceled, HMU.” You traded neon backgrounds for flower crown filters, and life couldn’t be better.

To successfully woo a crush, you always need a little help from your friends. Nowadays, you are blessed with plenty of ways to show off how alive and well your social life is. You even have a choice between a stand-alone party gram or a fleeting series of Snaps. But in 2007, you had to organize and upload an entire album of your mall hang/weekend sleepover, with a clever name and everything, to prove you were cool. Impressing your crush was actual work.

You’d post a poorly designed, probably kind of offensive “bumper sticker” on their wall when you drew a blank on actual conversation topics. Today’s iteration of that is definitely Bitmojis, which at least are flattering cartoon versions of yourself and have beautifully on-the-nose options like “sexy time.” Society has progressed.

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