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. Also, the new app is trying to preserve the youthful aura of Tinder by charging older users (that’s over-28s) nearly four times as much as younger users. It’s because younger people have less money, says Tinder, but a cynic might say that it’s in their financial interest to ensure there is plenty of young flesh in play.

One Rebel is in the City, right by the Gherkin. In the window a video is playing of people exercising under flashing lights in an intense, focused, urgent, almost angry way, with a slight hint that they’re also rebelling against a stifling political order like in The Hunger Games. ‘High Intensity Re-shape Workout’ flashes up. I have agreed to join one of these sessions, which has a special Tinder theme.