Goodbye to sex: a short and heartfelt eulogy, by Eva Wiseman.

Born in 1963, died 2016 – alas poor Sex. We knew you well. Well, not WELL. We knew you. Slightly. That was a good summer.

But it was with great regret and some tears that last week we learned of your death. All of us will remember where we were when we heard, of course – we were not having you. We were sitting on sofas, TV on, loungewear on, jointly scrolling through our phones for more updates on what the millennials are thinking, eating Doritos.

There was a time when we all thought you were eternal, that pursuit of you was vital to our humanity – “wars and lechery”, morning, night, how foolish we were. Of course a day would come when somebody would invent something better, like a game where you had to throw pretend balls at invisible monsters. You gave off such heat – of course a day would come when you burned out.

This is priceless:

Is it that you got cocky, falling for your own hype? You saw your name scrawled on bus stops, the way you were called upon to sell both perfume and cat food, and you thought: they love me, the world is mine.

But, we see now, you had one hit, and you traded on it for too long. …

Meanwhile, young people (traditionally your biggest supporters) found other things to entertain them. Their phones replaced the places you used to live – cinemas, parties, the office late at night. Tinder replaced tenderness, and rather than evolve, you became trapped behind those screens – you live twice removed from any touchable skin. …

One day we’ll look back at you, Sex, as a much-loved but frivolous game, much as our ancestors must have done at jousting, or the lost art of dice. And we’ll marvel that you lived so long, that you inspired such art, such death. But you made your bed, Sex, and now you have to lie in it. RIP.