Blog Post #10: Dating Apps Suck

When I think about examples of digital media that have changed us, I immediately think of dating apps. Dating apps suck. Even besides the significant fact that women often face harassment (despite attempted remedies like Bumble), dating apps have mechanized the way that people who’re looking to date meet, making a very personal process impersonal and standardized, and reducing it all to a numbers game. I sound like an old, cynical person – I know – but it seems that people really don’t talk to each other when they have the option to effortlessly swipe. And I don’t want the first thing a potential partner knows about me to be my stance on pineapple pizza, or whether water is wet; but it’s weird that that’s in fact what’s typically included in a Tinder bio.

Dating apps are also usually “freemium”. Like Clash of Clans or Candy Crush, it’s technically free – but if you want to be successful at it, your chances are better if you give up some money for premium access. In dating apps, these premium advantages take the form of unlimited swipes, more “super likes”, and even the ability to see who’s swiped right on you before they show up in your “stack”. But this is absurd – as one pays money not to date, but for the opportunity to meet someone to date. You can meet people in real life, for free.

Additionally, transforming dating into a numbers game is, I think, the result of the capitalist necessity for increased efficiency. To someone in a late-capitalist economy (us, very arguably), time is money. One is thought to be: 1) wasting time by waiting to bump into an actual person who reciprocates interest; and 2) probably too tired from working long hours to put in the time and effort not to resort to dating manifested as swiping left and right. The alienation of work begets an alienated form of dating. And maybe this would be fine if reducing dating to a numbers game weren’t awful, but it’s awful. No one is special or even human: dating as a numbers game reduces dating-app users to their existence within the context of the dating app (and more so than dating in real life reduces people to a dating-specific context) – no one is seen as a person, with the dynamic and interesting qualities that characterize people, but instead only as a “dateable”, with an opinion on pineapple pizza.

Furthermore, in multiple ways, dating apps are making us lazier. According to journalist Cady Drell, dating apps disincentivize those in relationships from really giving it their all. In her words, “If dating is like fishing off the side of a ship, then mobile dating is like fishing from a glass-bottomed boat. Since you’re now keenly aware of how many fish are swimming around at a given time… You’re less likely to invest the energy working through problems when there are all those other, ahem, fish in the sea.” Beyond this, it can be seen that dating apps have made us lazier by the phenomenon of “ghosting”. Making dating impersonal provides a sense of anonymity for both parties that makes simply cutting off contact without explanation – something that was previously unthinkable – not uncommon. In the context of Benjamin’s theory of aura, dating apps have irreparably destroyed the “aura” of our romantic relationships – since it’s not really special if it’s easily reproducible, is it? He or she isn’t as “one of a kind” as their partner would’ve perceived them to be 30 years ago. But what’s worse is that, due to the mechanization of dating apps, people and relationships are losing their unique aura – not just pieces of art.

I think that we may be getting better at dating, but we’re certainly getting worse at relationships. This isn’t to say dating apps are 100% bad all the time – I know plenty of people in happy relationships who met on dating apps. But as a system and as a whole, they’re changing the way that we date, and probably for the worse, making dating more superficial, and making us lazier and less considerate (while simultaneously taking our money).

Source: https://www.glamour.com/story/what-have-dating-apps-really-done-for-us