Person 1: ‘I had a date last night.’

Person 2: ‘From Tinder or happn?’

…begins most dating conversations these days. ‘I mean, what would I even do if I met someone in a bar?’ joked a male friend of mine last week. Except he was only half joking.

And so I bring you THIS astute and well-researched piece from this month’s Vanity Fair, headlined Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse’. It refers to the New York dating scene but I reckon is pretty applicable to London too.

Two observations I like very much in it:

1. The remarks from an actual scientist about the new age of dating. “We are in uncharted territory” when it comes to Tinder et al., says Justin Garcia, a research scientist at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. “There have been two major transitions” in heterosexual mating “in the last four million years,” he says. “The first was around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, in the agricultural revolution, when we became less migratory and more settled,” leading to the establishment of marriage as a cultural contract. “And the second major transition is with the rise of the Internet.”

2. The phrase ‘pussy affluenza.’

Enjoy.