Emily Becker held up a weed wrench. It was enormous, made of steel and painted orange.
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“We call these the jaws of persuasion,” she said.
She was showing her audience of mostly single people how to pull up invasive bird cherry and choke cherry saplings at a local park — roots and all.
That’s right, single people: Unlike Becker’s regular plant pulls with the Anchorage Soil and Water Conservation District, this one was geared toward finding love.
Or, if not love, at least a moment of connection, said organizer Aurora Roth.
“I really want to frame success as you got to share with a stranger, and you felt listened to and heard by a stranger,” she said. “Success isn’t necessarily you meet the love of your life”
Roth said she wanted to give people the opportunity to meet in real life because, as the event invite states, “Dating apps suck.” And that’s not just the vibe in Anchorage. Kathryn Coduto researches online dating at Boston University. She said data shows that nationwide, fewer people are paying for dating app subscriptions, and people are spending less time on the apps overall.
“I think some people feel like using dating apps as a humiliation ritual where you’re putting yourself out there over and over,” she said.
Coduto said there’s also a nationwide trend toward in-person events like singles mixers and speed dating, but they’re not always quite so creative as the plant pull.
At Tikishla Park, Roth was quick to tell the crowd that she didn’t come up with the idea. She heard about a similar get-together in Minnesota. Although she’d never even been to a singles event before, the idea immediately appealed to her. It included so many things she loves: being outdoors, doing ecology work and connecting people..
“We all love our trails, we love this community,” she said. “This is such a fun way to spend an hour. Also dating apps are terrible, so why not combine both of them?”
The focus on invasive species serves as sort of a filter, helping bring like-minded people together, Roth said. And when you’re trying to pull trees out of the ground together, you’re going to learn about people, she said.
“It really brings out things that you can’t know about people in a sort of a standard date sense,” she said.
In some ways, dating apps are just like invasive species, Roth said. Seeds can transfer from one place to another in a globalized world, and then take over the local and native ecology and push out local plants.
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“These dating app corporations have come in and are pushing out our ability and our muscles to connect with each other,” she said.
That’s why, she told participants, they would have to do the hard work of making connections themselves. The event was not a matchmaking service, she said.
“If you really enjoyed a conversation with somebody, you may have to ask them for their contact information,” she said. “I will not be doing that for any of you.”
Nearly 40 people made their way down the hill into the brush, garbage bags, clippers and gardening gloves. They wore sensible shoes: sneakers, hiking boots and Xtratufs. They paired off, two or three to a group, struggling with the weed pullers.
Bridger Reed-Lewis said he was glad to be doing service work. He came to the event hoping it would attract other community-minded people, since that’s what he’s looking for.
“Someone who’s nerdy, someone who’s an activist – I’m wearing a free Palestine shirt myself,” he said. “And someone that really cares.”
Ryan Choi lives in the neighborhood and jumped right in with the weed puller.
“What it’s designed to do is to clamp down at the base of the large stem and to really have a lot of leverage to be able to yank the root system out of the ground,” he said.
Choi came to the event mostly to pull invasive species. He said he was only looking for friends.
Hayden Vahle was filling a garbage bag with saplings. He said every few months he’ll download dating apps again. Then he deletes them. He’s not getting great results. But he’s also not used to having to ask someone for their contact.
“I fill this bag and I get one phone number – that’s my goal,” he said.
If not, he said, at least he’s outside, getting exercise.
Nearby, Genevieve Mina was wrestling with a weed wrench. (Yes, the Democratic state lawmaker who’s running unopposed for reelection.) It’s the first time she’s participated in a singles event. And while she has been meaning to come to the invasive species pulls that the Anchorage Soil and Water Conservation District hosts in her neighborhood, this feels different, she said. It takes a lot to put yourself out there. At first she wasn’t sure she wanted to go, but then some other single friends agreed to come with her.
“And I puffed myself up, I listened to some music,” Mina said.
Specifically, Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Run Away With Me.”
It did the trick.
“I made it over,” she said. “But it took a lot of effort.”
On the phone the next morning, Mina said she didn’t make any love connections. But she is excited to go to more invasive species pulls in the neighborhood now that she knows how to use the “jaws of persuasion.”
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And if one happens to be for singles, she’s up for that too.
The next plant pull for singles is scheduled for Oct. 2.