by Lauren Sharp and Marie Syrimis
“Come to mine, we can get a pizza and chill.”
This is a standard request from the occasional encounter where one has swapped numerous texts within a week after matching on the Tinder app.
Who says romance isn’t dead? From experience, the word ‘Chill’ has been used habitually on this specific app, which was founded four years ago.
William Shakespeare tells us our love issues date back centuries, before we were slaves to technology. The romantic writer notes this in his play Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth.”
Furthermore, as kids we’re all deluded into thinking (courtesy of Disney movies) that we would meet somebody and would fall in love at first sight and get married. That is definitely not the case – not in this day and age anyway.
By comparison, the old school way of dating was that a mutual friend at a social gathering would introduce two people to one another. Then after the initial meeting would come a first date.
This may be repeated on a regular basis, and could eventually lead to “courtship” as the two get to know one another through hours of conversation, spread over months.
To older readers, the scenario above may have at least a vague, distant familiarity. But to younger readers, it may be utterly foreign and unrealistic.
Now online dating is the norm, Tinder, Match.com, Twitter and Instagram to name a few, have all been key in linking up couples in the 21st Century.
So what has caused the world to change the dating pattern? When was traditional courting replaced with the Facebook ‘like’ button and waiting for your inbox to input a new message?
Is online dating to blame for the crash of romance? [Mulan via Flickr CC}
“There is unlimited choice now. People become fussier than they used to. Online dating is the balance between meeting people in real life and in dating apps. It is good because you can read through the profiles, find a date pretty quickly and find exactly what you want. Use paid website not like the free things like Tinder and Plenty of Fish. If you pay for a service you are more likely to meet somebody who is more serious about meeting on a long term basis.”
Preece is a regular contributor to national newspapers; recently publishing in The Guardian on the best way men can overcome their shyness in the dating game. He has appeared on Channel 4 and ITV in order to help the love-lost fishes out there waiting to be caught.
For a student and twenty-something looking for love he gave Artefact some advice: “The best way for students and those in your twenties is to actually get out there in the real world, attend parties, and say hello to somebody you like- don’t be afraid to do that.
“Dating apps like Tinder can be useful to find out who is single, who is in your area and who is up for a bit of a laugh straight away. Tinder is good for ‘hooking up’ its not one for a long term relationships and you cant tell much about the person very well because of the short profile and you cant narrow it down in terms of height and personality through the app.
“With Tinder you are going purely on photographs, which is fine but it is much harder for guys because girls tend to wear makeup in their photos, do their hair etc. It is much harder for guys to sell themselves.”
A recent article found on the male self-help website goodmenproject.com argues that social media is the problem which has caused us to become lacking in effective communication, and says we should all be less sociable on social media.
“Relationships thrive on communication. We’ve accepted so many unacceptable things: sitting at the dinner table with our phones out, arguing over text, publishing every minute of our lives on social media,” the site said.
More people use online dating than ever, many also complain about being unable to find ‘the one’ amongst all the faces popping up on their screens.
For 23-year-old student Durell, dating has always been a complicated interest.
Durell told Artefact: “Dating nowadays consists of apps and situations, it’s completely changed this generation. They don’t fight for their relationships. Just find it easier to let it go then try again, its like an achievement for how many people a person has been with now.
“People jump into relationships without actually realising how much work and effort needs to go in to making one work. Plus I don’t like naming things (boyfriend/girlfriend), I feel like people just want a title rather then the actual relationship, which is boring. For me, I only tend to think of dating a girl if she has that spark; girls today just want to go on a free meal and then snapchat it without you in the picture. If I really want to take a girl out ill just ask her out the old fashioned way. Can’t go wrong with that.”
Similarly, Kent student Naomi Yanos believes that dating is difficult in this century because people interpret the definition of dating differently.
“Dating is strange, in interacting with someone where it’s confusing and uncertain where you stand with the other person. Are you actually together or are you just a bit of fun and somebody’s ‘sidepiece’,” she said. “Social media has made a mockery of dating. Having said that, I do believe dating can be exciting if it’s done right, the way I grew up around – the traditional way. My personal dating experience is quite brief because I don’t usually date; I by pass this stage by just remaining friends until we form a committed relationship.”
“I don’t think it’s unusual to meet people online. In the society today, people are often too busy with work or studying or both to have time to meet people. Also this begs the question of where do you go? Assuming you haven’t met someone at a work place, at university, or more popular places like bars or clubs, opportunity to meet new potential romances is very scarce,” Naomi added.
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She also feels the internet is like a safety barrier when it comes to dating. “I personally don’t think the old school way of meeting and dating is ‘out dated’ but I think people are a lot more unwilling to put themselves out there and experience rejection or even the initial nerves of approaching someone. Now that there is the security of the Internet, people would rather not experience potentially mortifying situations and use the safety veil of the Internet, protecting their feelings and pride.”
Dating website match.com has 35 million visitors per month worldwide. However, only 17 per cent of adults aged 25-34, use the site.
Tinder is deemed popular to the twenty something year olds, having 48 per cent of its users. Author Jean-Claude Kaufmann writes in The Single Woman & the Fairytale Prince (2008), that online dating can become an addiction: “The infinite number of possibilities loses its charm, and the vast number of partners on offer becomes nauseating. But it is still impossible to log off. The attraction is too strong. Even though it becomes nauseating, virtual reality proves to be less virtual than one might think because thousands of threads irresistibly attach us to the screen, give us that feeling that we exist and are recognised as existing. How could anyone turn down such an intensification of the Self?”
Artefact carried out a Twitter poll of 30 students asking where they met their current partner. 46 per cent of people who voted had meet their partner on social media, with college or university in second place with 30 per cent followed by through friends and family with 19 per cent and finishing with ‘other’ with 6 per cent.
What did we do in a world without social media? How did one show they were interested without the use of a ‘like’ button to click on every photo and status from their crush’s profile?
We spoke to 76-year-old Judy Sangster; she tells me what it was like to date as a twenty year old back in the 1960s.
Since 1972, the average age for partners to marry in the UK has increased by almost eight years for both men and women according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
In 2012 the average age being 34 for women, two years lower for men being aged 36 years. As the researchers at the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia put it: “Culturally, young adults have increasingly come to see marriage as a ‘capstone’ rather than a ‘cornerstone.” It seems we now have plenty more opportunities such as travelling, a wider choice in career movement, causing people to settle down later in life.
According to ONS the highest peak for the general marriage rate in the UK was at its highest in 1942 with 475,000 marriages took place.
Judy said World War Two was often the reason being people felt they had to get married: “You never knew when you was next going to see your partner again, or if he would come back from War. Everything was so unpredictable back then and if you loved somebody you wanted to marry them straight away. People very much lived in the moment then.”
So now we have learnt that beneath the apps, the Netflix, the chills and the pizza meal deal there is a way to having a successful romance, which doesn’t include any of the four.
Shakespeare is right, love is tough, but the road to putting Pizza Hut out of business isn’t impossible. It is just a click away or even a face-to-face conversation if you have the guts to log off and log into the world around you.
Featured Image by Mulan Via Flickr