Is the Swipe Era Over?

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.3 • 107.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2012, Tinder revolutionized dating apps with its swipe feature. With the flick of a finger, singles could accept or reject a potential mate. While this innovation has worked for many, some have grown weary of the simple swipe, and long for a more nuanced way to find love. Today on “The Sunday Daily,” Rachel Abrams examines two dating tends on the rise: in-person mixers that are far from old-fashioned, and emerging A.I. technology that promises singles a ‘soul’ match. Rachel speaks with The New York Times’s dating columnist Gina Cherelus; Luke Vander Ploeg, a producer on the “Daily”; and Amanda Hess, a writer at large at The Times.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily on Sunday.
0:13.2	When Jonathan Bedeen is asked about how he revolutionized dating, He talks about taking a shower.
0:22.7	It was 2012.
0:24.2	He was a software developer in California.
0:26.9	And he'd forgotten to turn on the fan in the bathroom.
0:30.3	So he gets out of the shower, and the mirror is all fogged.
0:33.1	And he swipes to clean it off.
0:35.3	After a second, it fogs up again.
0:37.6	And he swipes again, and again, and again.
0:41.1	Until he finally sees his face.
0:44.7	And this gives him a world-changing idea for his new dating app, Tinder,
0:50.1	which is that users should also be able to swipe.
0:56.4	Tinder could show you a person's face, a little bit of bio,
1:00.0	and within seconds you could swipe yay or nay, left or right.
1:04.8	And people loved it.
1:07.5	Other apps copied it, and in the years that followed,
1:10.6	swiping changed how we date.
1:14.1	But fast forward more than a decade to our current moment. And daters have turned on Jonathan's
1:20.4	brilliant invention, and they are demanding something different. Today, I talk with my colleagues, dating columnist Gina Sherrillis,
1:30.4	daily producer Luke Vanderplug, and writer-at-large,
1:33.5	and writer-at-large about dating in the post-swipe era.
1:37.9	It's Sunday, February 22nd.
	...

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