Tinder feelings

Through some freak accident of PR, I was invited to an event organised by Tinder. If you’re over 40 or have become prematurely married, you might not know what Tinder is. It’s the mobile-phone app that facilitates courtship by allowing people to signal their interest in other users within a certain radius — you can set it to just a mile, if you’re in a real hurry to ‘connect’. It’s the modern human version of mating calls and frog croaks.

A million Londoners are said to use it. But Tinder is now under threat. Trendy dating apps such as Happn or Hinge, which present themselves as a bit less nakedly Darwinian, are growing in popularity. In response, Tinder is launching Tinder Plus, and the venue for the launch is a boutique gym called One Rebel. Tinder Plus lets you find out a little bit more about people, lets you change your mind and retrieve people from the dustbin, and also allows you to trawl foreign cities in advance of travel.