Romance has been swiped out by Tinder

THE days of wooing with cheesy chat-up lines or love letters are over. Now all it takes is a swipe.

Dating app Tinder — where users swipe right on a profile if they like a snap and left if they don’t — has killed romance, according to historian Lucy Worsley.

Ahead of her new three-part BBC Four series A Very British Romance, which starts tomorrow, she said:
“Is romance dead? I fear it is. How could Jane Austen have written her novels about the slow, exquisite torture of love in an age of Grindr and Tinder, when bored singletons search for one-night stands with a few clicks of their mobiles?”

Traditional romance is dead ... Tinder dating app

Research scientist Justin Garcia hailed internet hook-ups as one of the two biggest dating changes in FOUR MILLION years.

Justin, from America’s Kinsey Institute For Research In Sex, Gender And Reproduction, said it was on a par with the agricultural revolution 15,000 years ago, which saw people migrate less and the establishment of marriage.

Here, two avid Tinder users reveal their experiences that started with a swipe.

Nick Watkins, 28

Messages from girls to Nick: 'Why on earth wouldn't you want to hook up with me? I'm hilarious'

SUN man Nick is recently single having dated someone for three months after meeting them on Tinder. He says:

BEFORE Tinder (BT) I could count the number of dates I’d been on with one hand.

Now, after two years on Tinder, I have been on more than 40 dates — my love life has never been busier.

This is the world of modern dating and as the app’s popularity has grown, the stigma of online dating has faded.

Now you’re weird if you’re single and not on it.

But Tinder has made people more disposable — you don’t need to get emotionally attached because there is always someone else waiting.

Don’t like your date? Make an exit plan with a quick swipe of your thumb.

In the early days I went on a terrible date lasting SIX HOURS. The girl spoke about herself the whole time, including recounting a long story about how she dressed up as a Minion for a kids’ birthday party.

I didn’t have the heart to get up and leave.

Nowadays that wouldn’t happen — I’d just tell her I wasn’t enjoying myself. That’s how cut-throat it is.

'You sure you don't wanna sleep with me?'

The first girl I met online was Jo and we went out for three months. It was ten dates or so before I finally stayed at hers.

In today’s Tinder game, that seems like a lifetime.

There are some girls on the hunt for sex.

One girl popped to the bathroom to “sort herself out” on a date, then sent me a filthy video of herself.

But most of my single female friends are pretty fed up — they’re losing hope of finding anyone they actually like.

Apparently guys are way too forward, incredibly rude and angry when they get rejected.

My male pals use it mainly for sex.

The girls can also be strange. While I was on holiday in Austria, one girl turned up at my hotel room uninvited.

She didn’t speak a word of English — yet could somehow type it.

The only time I’ve thought about deleting the app was when I walked into a hostel during a holiday in Bali and a girl recognised me from my black and white profile picture.

It turned out we’d matched on the app in London nearly a year ago.

That night we went out — but it was a bit weird and unnerving that she remembered me.

'Do assume I want to sleep with you because I've liked the photo'

After getting bored of having the same conversations on Tinder dates, I tried another app.

But I was soon put off after I matched with a girl who worked in the same building.

One morning we got in the same lift together and didn’t say a word despite having messaged each other constantly beforehand. That was the end of that.

Another Tinder match messaged me while I was in McDonald’s stuffing my face.

She said she was “checking me out” while I shoved a Big Mac in my mouth.

I’ve never taken app dating too seriously, but it does come with the same insecurities and disappointments as normal dating.

Although I don’t think Tinder is the best place to find romance, that’s not to say you can’t find something meaningful.

I know friends in happy relationships who have met through the app.

There’s no thrill of the chase with Tinder — all you do is swipe.

Rosy Edwards, 29

Messages from lads to Rosy: 'I am finding you very sexy right now in your huge sombrero'

ROSY, author of Confessions Of A Tinderella, met her current partner on the app after 30 dates.She says:

THERE was a moment when, mid-sex with Matt — a man I’d met six hours previously — I thought to myself: I’m sure dating used to be different.

I’ve read Pride And Prejudice: subtlety, modesty and romance you could set your watch by. Isn’t that what dating is about?

Looking at Matt doing his thing in the bedroom, I felt a lot of things, but romance was not one of them.

But have dating apps like Tinder actually killed romance?

I thought not when I was matched with a man called Adam. As hundreds of messages flew back and forth between us, I felt I’d known him for years.

We both loved The West Wing. We both wanted to visit Iceland. He was essentially my soulmate. Then . . . the messages stopped.

At first I assumed he was busy, then on a last-minute holiday, then . . . dead.

Wasn’t he different? Didn’t we have something special? Perhaps, but this is Tinder, a method of dating that can be nasty, brutish and short.

Not dissimilar to some of my past dates, in fact.

'There won't be anything you want to do that I haven't or wouldn't do'

A lot of people assume Tinder is some type of all-out sex fest where everyone just wants to hump and dump.

And sure, there are plenty of men who think “Want to have sex?” is a brilliant chat-up line.

Jim, a marketing exec from South London, announced he was “only here for intercourse” by his third message. Frankly, I appreciated his honesty so I invited him round, because sometimes that’s what us girls actually want.

Jim and I had a very pleasant hour and I sent him on his way.

In my experience, however, there is more to Tinder than sex.

I’ve been lucky enough to have dates with handsome, kind and (importantly) normal men.

Archie took me on a dinner date at The Shard. Beautiful surroundings, delicious food and plenty of nice wine.

I got home and told my best friend I’d met the man I wanted to marry. Tinder can be a great way of meeting wonderful people. Sadly, on our second date, Archie turned out to be lecherous, arrogant and borderline racist.

With Tinder, you can only expect the unexpected — you are signing up for a date with someone off the back of five photos, after all.

Pictures can say 1,000 words, but unfortunately 988 of these might be lies.

For instance, a picture can say “I’m tall” — when in reality the man is 5ft 5in.

'I'm with my mate - fancy coming over?'

Take Marcus, 32, whom I couldn’t wait to meet after a week of fun, hilarious messages. When he turned up, I barely recognised him: he was at least a stone heavier and had a nose the size of a people carrier, a feature he’d managed to disguise in his photos. Tinder has not changed the passion, excitement and occasional humiliation of dating.

But it has sped up the whole process by several hundred light years.

Relationships that might have once spanned months can now be started, enjoyed, endured and ended in the space of a fortnight.

Messages must be replied to almost instantly if you don’t want to lose momentum and dates must be arranged ASAP if you don’t want a potential suitor getting bored and wandering off.

Tinder may not be the best way to meet someone, but it is a way — and after yet another Saturday night on the sofa eating cereal out of the box, you might just be tempted to log on.

— Confessions Of A Tinderella (Century, £9.99 ) is out now.

Hints add to allure

A RESEARCHER from an Oxford University group that looks at the impact of the internet on society believes there is no reason to think the online world is replacing intimacy.

Dr Bernie Hogan, of the Oxford Internet Institute, said: “There’s evidence to suggest that sparse messages prompt us to think even more about the ‘person as a mystery’ and thus invest more intimately with them until they meet in person.

“What has changed is a shift towards individualism.

“Dating — and especially mobile dating — is now a very individualised matter, with people meeting one-on-one rather than as parts of larger groups.

“This is because we now create individual profiles and expect each profile to stand on its own.”

— 1.6 billion swipes per day

— 26 million matches per day

— 9 billion total matches

— Tinder is used in 196 countries

— Average user checks it 11 times a day