Good, old-fashioned romance has well and truly died a death, but who's responsible?

It's the 21st Century, and  good, old-fashioned romance appears to have finally kicked the bucket.

It put up a pretty good fight, doing it's level best to survive the onslaught of 'sexting', pornography and the death of it's dear friend, the love letter.

But, sadly, it ended up dragging itself across the cold, hard floor of modern reality like a dying animal. Alas, it is now consigned to the history books as that funny old thing our grandparents did way back when.

It's hard not to mourn the demise of romance as it used to be, even for those of us who claim to not have a romantic bone in our bodies. It inspired thousands of authors, film makers and play-writes, and gave us all hopelessly unrealistic - yet spell-bindingly seductive - expectations of what our future partners and lives would be like.

It almost certainly played a part in getting our grandparents together, and may have even reared it's battered and bruised head at a few first dates. But then the computer age arrived like a harbinger of doom and threw romance out the door - but only after beating it around the head with an Apple Mac and a copy of FHM first.

The arrival of a purely technology-driven society saw the drastic acceleration of a hard and fast consumerist culture. In bygone eras, we Brits were traditionally a nation of frugal, reserved stoics who made do and got on. Now, 'all I want is everything' seems to be a more fitting motto for the people of a thoroughly modern Britain.

When we realized that, instead of waiting for a date to get in touch, we could hop on to Zoosk and literally shop for a 'quickie' in the meantime, we leaped straight in to bed with modernity and left romance pawing at the bedroom window. It's all about commodity culture, and the term 'commodity' can, sadly, be applied to love in the modern world. It can be bought and sold online, and is readily available to anyone with an internet connection and a wandering eye.

But it's all a little too convenient to blame something so general and unstoppable for the demise of a universally treasured concept. So what, or more specifically who, is to blame?

It's quite far-fetched to hold books accountable (sorry, iPads. Tangible literature is just so last century! Apparently). If we all looked to literature for how best to lead our romantic lives we'd be living in giant rural manor houses wearing bodices and bitching about each other's beauty spots, and all while some aristocratic arsehole mercilessly played us off against one another. I'd probably end up locked in an attic, like Wuthering Heights' Cathy, or killing myself with rubber abortion tubing like April Wheeler in Yate's classic, Revolutionary Road.

All that aside, literature acts as a window to the world for many ardent readers, and is more likely to encourage a sort of curious voyeurism than explicit emulation. Sure, there are plenty of books that ridicule and rebel against orthodox romance. The aforementioned Revolutionary Road is at it's most effective when portraying it's married protagonists as bitter enemies. But this hardly spoiled it for the rest of us. The prevailing titles adorning today's school curriculum pay homage to the soaring, epic love story - Emma, Jane Eyre and Gone With The Wind all evoke classic, sweeping romanticism.

So if not books, then what? Can we realistically blame television? Probably. At least partly, anyway. Even as far back as the 1960's we had Oliver Reed beating the lovable prostitute Nancy to death in Oliver!, and you don't need to prescribe to radical feminism to feel a pang of sympathy for almost every female soap character ever. They're either being left at the altar, slapped around by their abusive partners or suffering miscarriages.

The male reaction to these events, in soap land at least, appears to involve a few too many pints at the local pub and an affair with a svelte co-worker. So far, so not romantic. But there are hundreds of famous films celebrating romance and true love and, despite their anachronistic limitations and decidedly sexist undertones, we can't help but feel uplifted and inspired after watching them.

It is a truism that a big screen romance has the power to captivate us all, especially when it unfolds exactly the way a melodramatic love story should, and it's something we've all bought in to at one time or another.

At the end of Titanic, there wasn't a dry eye in the cinema as Leonardo Dicaprio drifted to the bottom of the Atlantic clutching a door and some handcuffs (?) as Kate Winslet sobbed hopelessly and waited to die. Why did we cry? Because we believed in their love. We'd bought in to it and felt like a part of the magic for those three cripplingly long hours sat in a packed movie theater.

So now from film and television to the music industry. At last, I think we have a few eligible culprits here. Popular music increasingly seems like the last bastion of socially acceptable misogyny and faux-romantic indecency. I defy any of you to peruse the UK Top 40 chart and pick out a song - that isn't by Adele - that talks about romance without mentioning casual sex or technology.

Nowadays we've got the likes of 'Fiddy Cent' watching a bunch of hapless, half-naked ladies jiggling around on the hood of a souped-up car, or Akon deeming 'damn you sexy bitch' a respectful term of romantic endearment. There are, however, two main offenders who fall in to this category.

Bruno Mars may seem like you're archetypal sweetheart - he wears 'ironic' lens-less glasses and sings about female beauty in a way that isn't even vaguely reminiscent of Akon's 'respectful' Sexy Bitch - but the lyrics from his latest single Grenade read more like the manic etchings of a psychiatric patient. Sure, this man may think you're beautiful just the way you are (though featuring a flawless top model in your music video doesn't really inspire confidence in most women) but, if this latest ditty is anything to go by, he also wants to 'catch a grenade' for you. Not only that - he also wants to 'throw his hand on a blade' and chuck himself under a train, all in some bizarre, bloody attempt to win you over.

I don't know about you, but I don't think there's a man - or woman - alive who'd willingly blow themselves to smithereens for a loved one. Sure, they might say they would. After all, the whole 'I'd take a bullet for you' cliche doesn't appear to be getting old any time soon. But the truth is, even these 'die-hard' romantics would leg it in the opposite direction and leave you holding the damn thing!

On an even more worrying note, you can see the misguided sentiment all over his sweet little face as he strains out his whacky lyrics. He genuinely believes he's being romantic. And maybe he's right. He does, after all, have an army of adoring female fans, all apparently queuing up to catch a bit of his splattered corpse. Maybe this is the 'new romanticism'. Or maybe there are a hell of a lot of impressionable young girls out there who've never had a guy do a single nice thing for them.

Then there's the abhorrently catchy (or just plain abhorrent) Mike Posner, a man who looks like a grimacing, post-Chernobyl Justin Timberlake. His latest single, Cooler Than Me, has become an instant success on the dubstep scene, what with it's repetitive beats, designer name-drops and woman-hating lyrics. The gist of the song is this: I want love, but you're just not impressed by my sneering remarks, sexist quips and casual ass-grabs. So I'll spend three and a half minutes 'dissing' you for denying my God-given right to your vagina, and then I'll demand that you sleep with me, dummy.'

Sadly, this is true of most pop songs today. The message is clear - I don't want love, or romance. I want no-strings sex, and I want it now.

Even Rihanna and Beyonce would rather sing about BDSM and how loudly they can climax as opposed to falling truly madly deeply in love. Indeed, even after Rihanna was savagely beaten by her monster ex Chris Brown, she still saw it fit to peddle 'Rude Boy' as an anthem for the masses, and is seen whipping Perez Hilton in bondage-get-up in her new music video. Mmm. Romantic.

Her smash hit single What's My Name? seems to be as lovey-dovey as modern music gets these days. But even this is marred with references to casual sex, 69ers and insanity (she does, after all, appear to forget her name for four minutes).

Let's not forget her rather terrifying collaboration with Eminem in which he threatens to tie her to a bed and set her on fire and she tells him that she 'likes the way it hurts'. What message is this sending out to youngsters today? A couple of decades ago, young children and teenagers had a plethora of positive role models to look up to and emulate. They listened to the romantic power ballads of the 60's, 70's and 80's or read classic romantic literature. They communicated with their classroom crushes by launching a sly paper note when the teacher turned to the blackboard, and composed poetry instead of texting 'I'd bang u' to each other's iPhones.

Now they're brought up in a cultural environment which holds romance in utter contempt. Today, young girls are feeling increasingly pressured in to sending topless photos of themselves to a love interest for any kind of sexual approval, and intimacy has been cheapened to a salable commodity, available to all and sundry with the simple and careless click of a button. Instead of buying your long-suffering wife a bunch of flowers and telling her how much you love and appreciate her, you can send her a quick and hollow text message that is just as easily deleted as read.

The information age has also made it preposterously easy to be unfaithful. Though we now have tax-payer funded 'sex addiction' clinics all over the country to try and teach men how to keep their zips fastened and their trousers on. It all seems a tad bizarre to me. But that's the thoroughly modern experience for you. It's almost as if everything's operating in reverse.

21st Century love, for the most part, is impersonal, cold, hard, fast and marketable, whereas love in bygone eras was tactile, full of warmth and endearment, and sweet - albeit corny. Sadly, old fashioned romance couldn't keep up with today's frenetic pace. It was kicked to the wayside long ago, and spent the best part of the relevantly-titled 'Naughties' holding on for dear life.

I would have written a letter in commemoration for the good friend who reassured me that there's always someone round the corner, waiting to wine and dine me. But I'd be much better off shopping for him on Match.com and sending romance a few saucy 'sexts' later on to make up for it. If I remember.