The internet is ruining dating for everyone – or has it always been like this?
A Vanity Fair piece published this week struck an ominous tone for 2015’s singletons. Headlined “Tinder and the dawn of the dating apocalypse”, it was brutal about the New York dating scene, placing the blame squarely at the feet of Tinder and other dating apps.
Following the piece, Tinder’s Twitter account had a bit of a tantrum, criticising the piece’s author Nancy Jo Sales and hailing “the Tinder generation”.
The Tinder Generation is real. Our users are creating it. But it’s not at all what you portray it to be.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Hadley Freeman was among those to point out dating has always been a bit strange. She wrote:
At the risk of indulging in the kind of generalisations of which Carrie Bradshaw was so fond, New York dating is a weird mix of frenetic meet-ups and Edith Wharton-like formalised unions of those from similar backgrounds. (For examples of the latter, I refer you to New York Times Vows column, which in one recent and typical entry mentioned eight times that the featured couple had attended Yale.) I dated in New York in my early 30s and can verify that the horrors described in Vanity Fair’s article are very real. But seeing as I lived there before Tinder even existed I, like Carrie Bradshaw, could not blame the dating app for any of them.
Meanwhile, the internet is awash with tales of online dating gone awry. Take Instagram account Bye Felipe for example, which collates some truly baffling, and often abusive, messages received by women on all sorts of dating sites:
But is modern dating truly in a catastrophe? Has Tinder ruined relationships for everyone? Or has dating always been this way?
We want to hear your tales of dating in the internet age: whether you’re a seasoned user of dating sites or prefer something a little more old-fashioned. What are your experiences? If you’re in a relationship, how did you meet your current partner? And if you’re not, what have been your experiences so far?
If you would like to share screenshots of messages you’ve had on dating sites, please bear in mind we will not publish anything with identifiable information such as photos and usernames.
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