Alcohol is everywhere on Tinder. Here’s how non-drinkers cope.

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Iced Tea? –

May 2, 2019 – You could be forgiven for mistaking the profile pics on popular dating apps for contributions to an alcohol advocacy campaign. Here is a 20-something blonde whose hair echoes the golden hues of her California chard — in her profile, she makes clear that if it’s not from Napa, she’s not drinking it. Here is a scruffy middle-aged jock celebrating an ultimate Frisbee league win with a pint of the quirkily named local microbrew — though he clarifies that his favorite beer is still Bud Light. And here is a 34-year-old single mom clearly out for ladies’ night — one hand clutches a cosmo, the other is wrapped around the delicate shoulder of an unseen pal; her hobbies include yoga and “dranks with friends.” So many users post profile pictures of themselves with booze that the nondrinkers among them — former drinkers working at staying sober as well as people who simply have no taste for alcohol — get a clear message: This dating-app world isn’t for you.

It’s not just the imagery. Platforms like Tinder, Bumble, Match, Grindr and Raya thrive on, and amplify, drinking culture. “The default date is: Let’s get a drink,” says Quinn Matney, 27, a psychological testing and diagnosis technician in Asheville, N.C. (“craft-brew central,” he notes), who’s been in recovery for three years. “It makes things challenging.” And of course, people use alcohol to quell dating jitters, to dull their inhibitions and maybe to loosen up a potential sex partner. Life as a nondrinker in a drinking world has always been tough. From Super Bowl parties to after-work happy hours, the tantalizing call to imbibe with your fellow humans is potent. But there used to be more social mechanisms that kept single people of every drinking stripe in the same dating pool. Years ago, when a sober man met a drinking woman in a bar, he could nurse his club soda and the pair could have a conversation before ruling one another out or proceeding romantically. Friends could set up a nondrinker on dates and gently explain the drinking situation to both parties.