Like Gatsby’s endless examination of Daisy’s green light across the bay, the singleton’s incessant search for “ideal” remains always out of reach (I’m a dating app evangelist – but even I’m not on Tinder any more, 15 August; Dating apps have made our love lives hell. Why do we keep using them?, 16 August).
The promise exceeds what reality will deliver: the facade of beauty, wit and chemistry conjured through our screens belies doctored images, unrepentant creeps and bores. The collective romantic subconscious, carefully curated by Disney and Richard Curtis, cannot survive its collision with reality.
And this is to say nothing of those we leave in our wake: the flattened Myrtle Wilsons and proverbial pulped fruits at Gatsby’s door waiting for the next swipe-right to pick through. Yet we continue in our quest, boats against the current, in hope of a changing tide despite all evidence to the contrary. We continue to reach for music and magic undeterred, borne back ceaselessly into the (dating) past.
Vicky Littler
Sale, Greater Manchester
• Justin Myers is obviously an attractive young thing (Grindr is the daddy of today’s dating apps – it wasn’t just about simpler hookups, 18 August). However, thousands of gay men and women are over 60. Many live well outside large towns. I don’t have a smartphone.
When a friend announced that he had joined Grindr, I asked him to show me who was within a 20-mile radius of my house in rural France: just one (rather unsuitable) person.
Within 30 miles there were a few more, in a large town – all young men wanting quick sex, and not prepared to travel out to the sticks for an eroto-cultural evening and possibly breakfast.
Anthony Weir
Caylus, France
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