Dating Apps And The Commodification Of Dating
How often can a moment of boredom turn into a lasting relationship? Or rather, how often have you opened a dating app in a moment of boredom? It may even be mindless; you open your phone and you scroll. Laughing, pointing, blushing. Maybe even showing your friends across the living room or pub bench.
More times than I can say I’m proud of, I’ve asked to take a cheeky glance. I’ve jumped from one seat to another to watch the scroll, the swipes, the giggles and guesses. Looking at a dating profile is nearly like looking into a vignette of someone's life. An artfully crafted one, at that, but still. Like looking out of your apartment window and seeing a snippet of the people moving behind the glass across the street. While you may not know them, and you know they know you can see them through the window, the way they walk, the posters they have hung in the background or even the colour of their couch may give you some indication of who you think they are - even if you think they’re faking it. Whether we trust or question these glimpses, the sentiment remains the same. It’s the fun of guessing - the chance to meet and learn about an entirely new person. Getting this experience on-demand (while being flattered, getting some laughs and daydreaming about finding love in a big city), could be enough to make anyone addicted.
But as I move across to the other side of the pub bench towards my friend's phone to ‘watch’ Hinge or Tinder, like a gnat gravitating towards a porch lamp on a hot summer's day, I can’t help but wonder, can this be good for us? Can sitting around a phone passing judgements on vignettes or falling in love with empty windows really provide as much opportunity as promised?
Already in 1998, pre-dating apps, Carrie Bradshaw was questioning the impact of options on love… especially in a big city.
“Is it that men have an innate aversion to monogamy, or is it more than that? I wondered, in a city like New York, with its infinite possibilities, has monogamy become too much to expect?” [Ep 7., “The Monogamists”]
Similarly, I wonder if Hinge has left us with an innate aversion to monogamy. With our infinite possibilities suddenly crammed into the palm of our hand, how many of us are just searching for the next best thing?
The world we live in today is full of choices. Will you grab the banana-bread matcha latte or the maple? Oat milk or soy? Could you lock in your faith to a coffee subscription? Or was the heartbreak from Pret too much to handle? Better to keep our options open… right? Because going from 15 variations of matcha and 3 fit people in your uni lecture to 15 matchas and 300 fit guys in the palm of your hand, how can one be asked to pick?
Luckily for dating app users, some clever engineers thought of this in advance. To keep users from becoming too ‘swipe happy’ Hinge has a feature in place limiting the amount of people you can swipe with if you have more than eight chats you have not responded to. They also have a limit on likes per day. Interestingly, this isn’t the case for Hinge+ users, leaving many wondering if these tactics are really an effort to quell the endless stream, or simply a tactic to get more customers to invest in a subscription. If it truly is the former, how much could this really help when there are likely 3 other dating apps on the users phone? 79% of Gen Z reported dating app burnout, and I believe it.
In my opinion, we have all become a little bit too swipe-happy - using fast-paced apps as a form of entertainment while also sliding down a slippery slope of becoming entertainment ourselves. The slogan for Hinge is "designed to be deleted". I ask you to consider how many people you have been on a date with and truly believed they were even considering deleting the app. And does Hinge even believe this statement? In Zoe Rasbash’s interview with Alfie Brown, a lecturer in Digital Media Culture and Technology at Royal Holloway University, he commented that Hinge “obviously don’t want you to delete the app. It’s counterintuitive to its own success. You’re on a conveyor belt of short-term partners”. Same thing with Tinder, and social psychologist Jeanette Purvis points out that actually, “for those who may be expecting the next swipe on Tinder to lead to reward, serial swiping can start to look and feel a lot like addiction”.
And what about the other side of it? The side where even if you do commit to someone, the person next to you has infinite options right on their nightstand? A dear friend of mine once woke up to her ‘situationship’ swiping on Tinder in bed next to her. While decorum is long gone, have dating apps also eradicated shame?
So many questions, and so few answers in the world of commercialised dating. Perhaps we should treat it as we treat any other addiction- acknowledge it and do something constructive instead, like getting a new hobby. But the difference lies in the fact that it’s a multi-person problem. The commodification of dating might have added a certain level of complication and hesitance to a lot of our relationships… and really, maybe, there is no way out but through.
As the weather gets colder, and London quiets down into the dark hum of winter, don’t forget your value. Of course, have a little fun, hop over the bench at the pub and giggle with your girls, and maybe go out on a few dates, but remember, you are not just another latte, subscription or someone’s entertainment. As Carrie said “In a city of infinite options, sometimes there's no better feeling than knowing you only have one” [Ep 7., “The Monogamists”].
Edited by Rosa May Levenson
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