Your Friends Are Trying to Help You Date. Please Do Not Listen to Your Friends.

It starts innocently enough. You mention, maybe in passing, maybe in a moment of excitement you'll later regret, that you have a date on Friday. A real one. With a real person. Who texted first.

Within four minutes, the group chat has 47 unread messages.

WinkCoo spent a month collecting (anonymized, with permission) screenshots from group chats across the country — texts, DMs, and voice memos that friends sent to people before their dates. The results were, depending on your perspective, either a heartwarming testament to human loyalty or a masterclass in accidentally terrible advice. Possibly both.

The Hype Squad: Undefeated, Unhinged

Every friend group has at least one person whose primary love language is aggressive, unconditional, slightly terrifying encouragement. You know who they are. They're the ones who respond to "I have a date" with the energy of a coach delivering a halftime speech when the team is down by 30.

One screenshot, sent to a 29-year-old from Nashville named Jamie, read: "You are that girl. You are THAT girl. Walk in there like you already own the restaurant. Actually, DO you own the restaurant? Because you should. You could. You're built for this."

Jamie did not own the restaurant. Jamie had been to the restaurant exactly once before for a work lunch. But for approximately six minutes after reading that text, Jamie felt like she could own the restaurant, and honestly, that energy carried her through the appetizers.

Another hype-squad classic, sent to a 34-year-old from Atlanta: "Okay so I looked him up. He has 312 Instagram followers which is normal, his LinkedIn says he works in 'consulting' which could mean anything, but his dog's name is Biscuit which is ADORABLE so I say go for it."

The dog's name was, in fact, Biscuit. The date went well. The hype squad takes full credit.

The Play-Hard-to-Get Veterans

Then there's the other camp. The strategists. The ones who came of age reading advice columns that recommended emotional unavailability as a romantic superpower and have not updated their software since.

These are the friends who text things like: "Don't seem too excited. Let them wonder. Mysterious is attractive. Don't laugh too much at their jokes."

This advice was sent, word for word, to a 26-year-old from Denver named Tyler, who then spent the first twenty minutes of his date actively suppressing genuine laughter at a genuinely funny person, creating what he described as "a face that probably looked like I was having a mild medical event."

The second date happened anyway, which Tyler attributes to his date having "a very high tolerance for awkward."

The play-hard-to-get veterans are not malicious. They are nostalgic. They believe, with the conviction of people who have watched too many romantic comedies from the early 2000s, that the path to someone's heart runs directly through calculated indifference. They are wrong. They mean well. They are very wrong.

The Friend Who Accidentally Turns It Into a Tactical Operation

Somewhere between the hype squad and the strategists lives a third, rarer species: the friend who approaches your date the way a general approaches a campaign.

One screenshot collection, submitted by a 31-year-old from Seattle named Alex, was genuinely staggering in its scope. Over the course of a single afternoon, Alex's friend Marcus sent:

• A bulleted list of "conversation topics to deploy and in what order"
• A separate list titled "topics to avoid at all costs" (which included, inexplicably, the movie Titanic)
• A suggested timeline for the evening, broken into 30-minute segments
• A reminder to "establish dominance early but subtly"
• A follow-up text clarifying that "dominance" meant "paying for the first round"
• A voice memo, 4 minutes and 22 seconds long, that Alex described as "basically a TED Talk about eye contact"

Marcus, for the record, has been in a happy relationship for six years. He is extremely proud of his system. Alex did not follow the system. The date went fine.

The Wildcard: The Friend Who Just Sends Quotes

Every group chat has one. You mention you're nervous about a date and they respond with a quote. Not advice. Not encouragement. Just a quote, dropped into the conversation like a fortune cookie that wandered in from a philosophy seminar.

Real examples from our collection:

"'The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.' — Joseph Campbell. You got this."

"'Do one thing every day that scares you.' Go get 'em."

And, our personal favorite, submitted by a 28-year-old from Philadelphia: a friend who responded to "I'm so nervous, what if they don't like me" with a single, uncontextualized Sun Tzu quote about knowing your enemy, followed immediately by three fire emojis.

The Sun Tzu friend means well. The Sun Tzu friend is a mystery. The Sun Tzu friend probably has a lot going on.

What All of This Actually Means

Here's the thing about terrible dating advice from people who love you: it's kind of the whole point.

Nobody is texting you a bulleted conversation strategy because they think you need a tactical briefing. They're doing it because they're excited for you and don't know what else to do with that energy. The hype squad is loud because they want you to feel seen. The strategists are cautious because they've watched you get hurt before and they're scared on your behalf. Even the Sun Tzu guy — especially the Sun Tzu guy — is just trying to say I'm rooting for you in the only language he knows.

Dating is weird and vulnerable and strange, and your friends, bless them, are just as lost as you are. They're winging it with the same mix of hope and confusion that you are. They just express it in the form of voice memos and ancient military philosophy.

So take the hype. Leave the tactical timeline. Laugh at the jokes even if someone told you not to. And for the love of all things good, do not under any circumstances bring up the Titanic thing — apparently that's a whole situation, and we're not asking.

You've got this. You're THAT person. You could own the restaurant.