What Meet Cute Is on Facebook Dating and How to Turn It Off

Meet Cute is a Facebook Dating setting that matches you with other people without either of you swiping. When you get a Meet Cute match, Facebook sends you a notification and the match shows up in your Matches section. To turn it off, tap Menu, tap Dating, tap Matches at the top, tap the three-dot icon in the top right, and tap Turn off Meet Cute.

Most of Dating is you making choices. You look at someone, you decide, you move on to the next person.

Meet Cute takes that step away. With the setting on, Dating can put you together with someone without any swiping from you, then tells you about it with a notification. The result sits in your Matches section next to everyone else.

So a Meet Cute match is not a sign that she picked you out of a crowd. It is Dating making an introduction and leaving the rest to the two of you.

The switch lives inside your Matches area, not in the main settings, which is why men go looking for it and give up.

Tap Menu, then Dating. Tap Matches at the top of the screen. Tap the three-dot icon in the top right corner. You will see Turn off Meet Cute if it is on, or Turn on Meet Cute if it is off. Tap the one you want.

Because the same menu works both ways, nothing here is permanent. You can switch it off for a busy month and switch it back on when you have time to talk to people again.

Leave it on if you are early in using Dating and want more chances to start conversations. A man with untested photos learns more from ten conversations than from two, and Meet Cute adds some of those chances without extra effort.

Leave it on, too, if you are open-minded about type. Some of the best dates men go on are with women they would have passed on in a quick scroll.

Turn it off if your Matches section is already more than you can keep up with. A pile of introductions you never answer does nothing for you, and it buries the women you actually chose. Turn it off, as well, if you have a clear idea of who you want and keep finding that Meet Cute sends you someone else.

The mistake men make here is treating the introduction as the conversation. It is not. Neither of you has said a word yet.

Before you write, look properly at her photos and anything she wrote. Find one specific thing to react to: the dog in her third photo, the city she clearly loves, the prompt answer that made you laugh. Open with that.

Skip anything along the lines of "Facebook thinks we'd be a good match." It hands the credit to the app and gives her nothing to answer. Skip "hey" on its own for the same reason.

Keep the first few exchanges easy and warm. Then suggest a specific plan for a specific day while the chat is still going well. A conversation that runs on for a week without a plan usually dies there.

Some men leave Meet Cute on, collect introductions, and feel busy without anything happening. More names on a list is not progress.

The number worth watching is how many of those conversations become dates. If Meet Cute gives you a steady stream of women you enjoy talking to, keep it. If it mostly gives you people you never write to, it is noise, and the switch is three taps away.

Quality beats volume for a practical reason. Every conversation you start costs attention, and your attention is better spent on five women you are curious about than on twenty you feel you should answer.

Meet Cute changes how you get introduced. It does nothing for what happens next.

What happens next depends on your photos and on how you write. A woman who likes what she sees reads your opener generously, and the same line lands flat with a woman who is unsure about you. If introductions keep going nowhere, look at the set of photos she sees first, and at your first lines, before you blame the setting.