BREAKING! Gen Z Haz Sad Because 2 Poor 2 Date

I read a war report in my favorite humor magazine, The New York Times, titled “Gen Z Can’t Afford a First Date.” It’s truly dramatic. It’s incredible how much Gen Z suffers. I don’t think we fully appreciate that we should create an entirely new protected class just for them. Governments must urgently roll out social action plans to rescue Gen Z from its misery. More than half of single young adults, according to a study cited by the Times, say money is the biggest obstacle to dating. I imagine it never even occurred to the researchers that they might simply be ugly or idiots.

We’d all love to take our dream girl to a luxury hotel, whisk her away for a weekend on a tropical island, and wake her by showering her bed with petals made of gold and diamonds. There’s just one problem: 90 percent of people from every generation — past, present, and future — can’t, couldn’t, and never will be able to do anything like that. It’s astonishing that the generations who lived through the 1929 stock market crash or Europe’s bleak postwar years somehow still managed to fall in love. (RELATED: How Schools Made Gen Z Weaker)

The best proof that purchasing power and romance go hand in hand is Africa. As everyone knows, on the poorest continent on Earth, romantic relationships between men and women are almost nonexistent, and so is the birth rate. Unlike the wealthy, luxurious West, where we have so many children and partners that we no longer know what to do with them.

Irony aside, I confess that both the article in the Times and the study left me speechless. Among the testimonies it collects, one person says he isn’t even considering a relationship because he couldn’t afford a wedding (I’m not making this up); another complains that dating happens less than once a month because two entrées, two drinks, an appetizer, and a tip are simply too expensive to do regularly; and another laments that after a first date with someone who turned out to be an idiot, he feels doubly miserable because he also wasted money that could have gone toward a better date.

I’d say Gen Z is sick if it weren’t for the fact that the truly sick one is the author of the article, who has obviously cherry-picked the testimonies to paint such an overwhelming tragedy that World War II looks like child’s play by comparison. In reality, not everyone in Gen Z has such absurd ideas about love, dating, and money. But for those who still believe they have so little romantic success because they lack money, perhaps something needs to be made clear. (RELATED: Gen Z Women Want a Gaggle of Kids and Sourdough Bread)

The perfect date, kids, is one spent with someone worth your time.

Nothing in the entire history of humanity has ever prevented two people who want to be together from going on a date simply because they didn’t have enough money — except, perhaps, couples who live thousands of miles apart and have no choice but to pay for the trip. The notion that love must be ideal and perfect is foolish enough, but the insistence that a first date has to mean a restaurant with a $200 bill, brand-new clothes, and a luxury hotel afterward is even more ridiculous. “The perfect date,” they call it.

The perfect date, kids, is one spent with someone worth your time. Someone worth your time might meet you for dinner at a five-star restaurant or to feed ducks by a smelly lake under a bridge. Falling in love is what makes the world more beautiful — not the number of dollars in your wallet. That’s why there are extraordinarily happy couples living in extreme poverty, while millionaire spouses spend their lives wishing the other one were dead. (RELATED: The Collapse of Courtship for Gen Z)

Love is not a perfect date. Love has nothing to do with whether you have money for a wedding or not. Can’t you get married some other way? What the hell will your wedding matter if you might be dead tomorrow? Are you really going to give up marrying the person you love because New York is too expensive? And while we’re on the subject, who’s running New York that the economy has become such a complete mess?

Love, in short, is something else entirely. It has nothing to do with perfection, convention, or what everyone else thinks when they look at a couple — what they do or how they do it. Love knows nothing about money. And let’s settle this once and for all: Does money help you get dates? Probably. But so do good looks, basic hygiene, not being bitter, not having a criminal record, and not voting Democrat.

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