15:13: "To all gen on here good luck. To others who lied shame on you – you made me give up ~ Lynn."I have no idea who Lynn is or what "gen" means, and I'm not on my laptop or my phone to find out. Instead, her text has just popped up on my TV screen in a live thread of horny 70-year-old subs, crossdressing husbands and BBWs from Salford, all looking to meet potential romantic and sexual partners.I'm watching Kiss Me TV, a Tinder-on-the-telly service that you'll find nestled suggestively amid the adult channels, ready for channel hoppers looking for some real-life fun. Aesthetically, it resembles a kind of souped-up Teletext, only instead of displaying football scores it's there to help people interested in foot-jobs find one another and turn the texts into touching.
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Owner Stewart Lund tells me over the phone that Kiss Me TV was started by himself and the late grime hero Darren Platt – founder of the groundbreaking Channel U – in 2014 after they "saw that [TV dating services] Rabbit and Gay Rabbit were profitable, and that there was an opportunity to start a similar service". A year later, the two Rabbit ventures were removed from Freeview, leaving just Kiss Me TV and its LGBT channel, Proud TV, to rule the airwaves.WATCH: Digital Love Industry
For those of you understandably unsure of how you go about finding a sexual partner via your television set, here's how it works: the process begins with you texting your date of birth to Kiss Me TV's phone number, and that text thread then becomes your "inbox". You're then given a unique six-digit code and can text in comments for 80p, or privately reply to on-screen texts for £1.20 by sending a text starting with someone's code. You can also send in a cheeky pic for free.To someone frightened of numbers, the whole process seems diabolically complex. Yet, like wired internet connections and AOL's mail client, it's one of those slightly antiquated things that seems to make more sense to older people. And "older people", generally speaking, is Kiss Me TV's primary demographic. Almost everyone who texts in with their age is 40 or above, and there are a surprising amount of people in their seventies and eighties using the service to look for love and companionship.
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Besides the over 40 skew, there's a large minority of male users interested in group sex and cross-dressing – signified by the letters "XD", which, for ages, I thought was just that Bebo-era smiley. In fact, there's a whole dictionary of jargon, including "gens" for genuine users (which, I now know, is what Lynn, was on about); "GSOH" for good state of health; "TV" for transvestite; and "NSA" for no strings attached. Locations as vague as "North" and as specific as "gentleman of Fife" are thrown around day and night.
To find out why people still date on TV when newfangled services like happn and "the internet" exist, I text various numbers onscreen asking if people will speak to me. A surprising amount are up for it. "Dazza" tells me he's been using Kiss Me TV for three months, after he found that "computer and phone dating had a lot of fake accounts and people wanting money". He adds that he's looking to get a "threesome sorted". John sees it as a "good release for stress", pointing out that it's good for open-minded people as "there is something for everyone".Ray from west London chats with me on the phone for almost half an hour, telling me he "doesn't go out drinking" as he works night shifts. Since people mainly go to pubs or clubs to meet people IRL, he says, "I don't get to socialise at all, and I'm never able to meet anyone. I just stay at home."Ray's been using the service since it started, and sees it used by those on the other end of the scale from Dazza – "by people who feel lonely. People misrepresent themselves just so they can get that phone call and get that little bit of excitement. I don't want to just text – I want to call, or meet. I want to have sex," he tells me.
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Soon, this whole process stands to become more user-friendly. Owner Stewart tells me that the text service currently used in the UK is being replaced by HBBTV (Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV), a "more feature-rich language with better graphics". His hope is to connect internet and TV through "supplying content from the web through Smart TVs, so you'd be able to go onto our channels and see pictures and videos, and so on".
Messages from more interested parties
At first glance, flicking through Kiss Me TV, it's easy to see the service as relatively seedy. It shits me up, for instance, when a guy called Alan texts me, "I thought you were going to ask me some questions, paper boy." But my call with Roy leaves an impression: the people who use the service are often "lonely", and many appear to be older folks recently widowed or broken-up with, struggling to get to grips with the new world of digital dating. People stick together, offer support and are sometimes just looking for "fsp" (friendship).A few minutes after Lynn sends her text, replies come flooding through:15:39: "Lynn I understand, new to this myself. It makes you hesitant. But do not give up always hope. Best wishes, Phil."16:02: "Hope you find what you're looking for eventually, sweetheart. Life goes on."16:55: "Don't give up Lynn, there are some idiots around but also a lot of gens. Alan xx"While there are, of course, plenty of people using Kiss Me TV to look "for no strings fun" with "singles or couples" in their local area, there are also a great deal of people using the service to find companionship through technology they understand. Much, I suppose, like any other dating service out there. The only difference here is that this one has a pretty obvious shelf life: until the generation that favours it over phone apps disappears.
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To find out why people still date on TV when newfangled services like happn and "the internet" exist, I text various numbers onscreen asking if people will speak to me. A surprising amount are up for it. "Dazza" tells me he's been using Kiss Me TV for three months, after he found that "computer and phone dating had a lot of fake accounts and people wanting money". He adds that he's looking to get a "threesome sorted". John sees it as a "good release for stress", pointing out that it's good for open-minded people as "there is something for everyone".Ray from west London chats with me on the phone for almost half an hour, telling me he "doesn't go out drinking" as he works night shifts. Since people mainly go to pubs or clubs to meet people IRL, he says, "I don't get to socialise at all, and I'm never able to meet anyone. I just stay at home."Ray's been using the service since it started, and sees it used by those on the other end of the scale from Dazza – "by people who feel lonely. People misrepresent themselves just so they can get that phone call and get that little bit of excitement. I don't want to just text – I want to call, or meet. I want to have sex," he tells me.Soon, this whole process stands to become more user-friendly. Owner Stewart tells me that the text service currently used in the UK is being replaced by HBBTV (Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV), a "more feature-rich language with better graphics". His hope is to connect internet and TV through "supplying content from the web through Smart TVs, so you'd be able to go onto our channels and see pictures and videos, and so on".