When I first researched dating apps and intimacy almost a decade ago, participants would regularly reach for romantic comedies to describe the kind of love they were hoping for. Eyes meeting across a crowded room, accidental encounters in parks, coffee spilled on strangers who would later become soulmates … the standard tropes. The references were remarkably consistent; Meet Joe Black, 10 Things I Hate About You, Bridget Jones’s Diary. Participants would even name actors as shorthand for the kind of luminous, serendipitous romance they imagined for themselves – and Jennifer Lopez was somehow always in the mix.

Then came the reality check; these encounters only happen if you look like Lopez. For everyone else romance took place somewhere far less cinematic, the dating app. By comparison it’s a sterile interface, a place framed as the domain of the romantically ordinary. One participant summed it up bluntly: “Rom-com love is for hot people. The dating apps are for the rest of us.”

A decade later, the joke has lost its punchline. People no longer describe dating apps as the consolation prize, they’re the only venue. The meet-cute, it seems, has been culturally retired.

In its place sits what might best be described as........

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