Tinder breeds ‘d**k pic pervs’ — new dating app Pickable puts women back in control

IN the past decade, online dating has not just kicked romance in the nuts but stood over its prone corpse laughing.

A refuge for pants-down pervs who swipe right on everything with a pulse, apps such as ­Tinder have made dating toxic for women like me.

There was the guy who asked me to walk on him in heels, the guy who sent me three surprise d**k pics in a row and the guy who asked how often I have bottom sex.

My dad saw that one pop up on my phone. Good times!

Of course, I’ve huffed at how gross the game is but I’ve done precisely squat to change it. How else am I supposed to meet men?

But one woman is fighting back. Clementine Lalande, 36, got so sick of being treated “like a piece of meat” online that she created her own dating app.

Pickable puts women in control — they do all the picking and men cannot even see their profile without first ­getting liked.

Clementine says: “I felt bullied and cheap on Tinder. My first match wrote, ‘You look like a hot slut.’

“It was 11am on a Monday and I was at work — what am I meant to do with that?

“My friends all had horror stories, too. One got sent a photo of this guy’s vast — in every sense — sex toy collection.

“He wrote, ‘Choose one that you’d like to use on me’. Urgh!”

Clementine felt that the odds were stacked against women — and that online dating was leaving her and her friends feeling depressed and ­harassed.

She puts the blame for that squarely at the door of men.

She explains: “The problem is that most swipe-based apps are sexist — they are designed to feed the hunter mentality in men.”

‘FOR ROMANCE TO HAPPEN, A BIT OF MAGIC IS NEEDED’

Love Under The Algorithm, a recent book by French writer Judith Duportail, showed that Tinder was using a creepy system which ­automatically matched rich older men to hot young women.

Clementine tells me about a work colleague who admits he swipes right on 100 women in an evening without even looking at them so he is ­guaranteed a date at the weekend.

The net result? “Women are feeling dehumanised, like slabs of meat at the butcher’s ready to be haggled over.”

So Clementine, who grew up in ­Toulouse but now lives in Paris, set about creating an app that put all the power and all the choice back in women’s hands.

Launched in November, Pickable shows you men of all ages, with those geographically nearest to you first. If you like them, you swipe . . . and only then do you appear on their feed.

If he likes you back, you have just 24 hours to get chatting before the link disappears.

And users seem to love it. A 24-year-old Italian woman sent Clementine flowers, gushing that Pickable had made her feel good about herself for the first time in months.

The app now has a ­million users worldwide, with 200,000 in Britain.

So does she think French men are more romantic than Brits? Umm, no.

She says: “The French aren’t better at dating but there is definitely a ­different culture around romance.

“We understand that a bit of magic is needed for real romance to happen. Here you meet in any old pub for a drink.

“But in France, there is an expectation that you’ll want to make each date special.”

Clementine met her now-husband, Amazon manager Raphael, 36, at university in 2004 but they did not start dating until 2014.

For three years before that she was busy online dating, but she is now off the market after getting married in 2017.

She says: “He said he was always there, but I just hadn’t noticed him.”

Clementine listens in horrified silence as I tell her about my boozy nights out with men I barely like.

'GETTING DRUNK ON DATES IS UNATTRACTIVE'

And the lacklustre messages that go back and forth over weeks and weeks before they ­simply ­fizzle out.

“No, no, no! I don’t want to seem like one of those ­arrogant French people who think they know best. But to me, this is all wrong.

“You should meet very quickly in real life. You want momentum.

“And you must stop getting drunk on dates. It’s really unattractive.”

She adds: “Also, stop trying so hard to project something desirable. You want to come across as natural.”

I ask her how many men I should focus on chatting to and seeing at once. When she replies simply, “One,” I splutter.

She explains: “Multiple dating doesn’t even exist in France.”

For now, Pickable is building a steady band of new fans — but Clementine has big plans.

She aims to make the app the ultimate “wing woman”, helping ladies decide not just who to date but what to wear and how to stay safe.

She says: “Beautiful, fascinating women are being made miserable and insecure by the current set-up. My mission is nothing short of a love revolution.”
Hmm, a revolution without pubs or wine, though. Maybe I’ll sit it out.

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