Swiping, sorting, browsing - but not dating
By Neil Gonsalves | Dating Apps an illusion propped up on emotional manipulation utilizing outliers to demonstrate their capacity to transform people’s actual experience
Written by Neil Gonsalves for Seeking Veritas on Substack
I don’t take long walks on the beach, as there are no long beaches by the lake where I live - Also can’t argue that hiking Machu Picchu wouldn’t make for a great date although I tend to start with coffee, might have something to do with the kid, and the dog, and the job, and the house, also the alimony, and the child support, but maybe skydiving and Rocky Mountain climbing might be a closer option than Peru… if only I could live like I was dying. Pesky retirement planning keeps getting in the way!
I don’t really need to know your dietary restrictions, I affirm your right to order whatever floats your boat off the menu. On a related note, thanks for sharing your gym schedule, it may be less indicative about who you are than say your voting preferences, but definitely a nice to know.
I would never tell you I’m looking for a long term relationship because I lost my crystal ball in 1986 and have long ago accepted that I have no idea where anything is going, also I haven’t yet met you! But really, imagine how creepy it would be if someone actually read you the standard profile information on a first date! Jeez, you’d probably tell them to slow their roll at least until the scone arrived.
What can I say, I am a Middle-aged Gen Xer; skeptical about technology when not filtered through an economic lens, with a low tolerance for virtue signalling; Want to meet for a coffee and unpack that?
Alright, that might make you laugh if I said it in person but probably not the best profile bio on a dating app! Pretty sure that would get a “swipe left” reaction by most dating app users. Perhaps therein lies the problem, dating apps lack context.
A Pew Research study found that 45% of people who used dating apps recently said they “left them feeling more frustrated than hopeful”. The irony of that statement is unavoidable given apps like Tinder have approximately 75 million active users, despite only being in business for around 12 years, and Tinder is only one of many dating apps out there on the market. The proliferation of dating apps tracks consistently with the ubiquity of computer mediated modes of communication that we have wholeheartedly embraced in the 21st century, but at what cost have we prioritized convenience over connection?
Annie Lord a freelance writer based out of London, writing for the Guardian discussed the challenges inherent with dating apps in her 2022 article, Why am I talking to 10 guys?’ The rise and fall of dating apps. She highlights that the rate at which people download and delete dating apps is second only to online gambling. That is a business model that works extremely well for the tech companies designing these apps; it is a strategy that is strikingly similar to the approach taken by the multi-billion dollar diet industry, keep the customer coming back but never actually deliver on the promise to improve their lives. Both industries sell an illusion propped up on emotional manipulation and utilize outliers to demonstrate their capacity to transform people’s actual experience.
In her article Lord points out that it has “become so formalised to look for dates through apps now that we’ve forgotten how to approach people in person. We worry if it’s inappropriate, if we might say something wrong or that the other person isn’t interested. On an app you can see on the profile what a person is looking for, something serious or casual. It’s all about communication and without apps maybe we’d have to relearn these social cues”. She wonders if we could actually go back to life before dating apps, before starting conversations with strangers in public was considered cringy.
Of course the odds are stacked greatly against those in both camps, dating app users and those hoping for an old school approach.
For those on the dating apps, a little known fact to many users is that there is a disproportionately larger number of men on most sites. A recent study suggested that the average man has to send approximately 144 messages in order to get a single reply. Conversely, women rated as attractive are bombarded with constant messages requiring them to become increasingly exclusionary with their interactions. At the crossroads of those two experiences is the making of a highly transactional arrangement. The more messages a man has to send the more MacDonaldized they become, and the more cookie cutter they appear the less likely women are to select them. What a terrible confluence of circumstances.
For those hoping for the old school fairytale, catching an eye across the room, a smile and an awkward approach, a fumbly mess of a conversation until a laugh breaks through and then that glimmer of hope that you may get asked out. The scene however is more reminiscent of a movie these days. Many men I’ve spoken to are nervous about making the first move. The media portrayal of the #MeToo movement is still relatively fresh and even the most upstanding among us worry about being falsely accused of impropriety. For both men and women self consciousness about appearance has always existed, self doubt and self-esteem issues have always made dating difficult but a smile had a way of cutting through those limiting beliefs. Hard to get a smile when we have changed the social scripts so much people feel constantly monitored and chastised for every social faux pas, worse still there are no smiles to be had on an app, at least until someone swipes right. - And just so we are clear, nothing in this paragraph is meant to excuse actual bad behaviour, bad actors, abusive and coercive acts, sexism or misogyny.
Leah Asmelash a culture writer for CNN quotes Benson Zhou, an assistant professor at New York University Shanghai who studies sexuality and digital media in her 2023 article, Dating is hard. Have apps made it worse? | CNN. Zhou posits that while dating has always been superficial, the difference now is a fixation on physical appearance, profile data points and rapid sorting, “the first thing you see while swiping is a picture… Even if you match with a variety of people — sparking optimism — the probability of actually connecting with that person is relatively low, … leading to feelings of exhaustion or alienation.”
Moreover dating apps serve to dehumanize and decontextualize actual people by transforming them into commodities and data points lost in a sea of supposed options who are only a swipe away. When innumerable options are apparently available it makes the individual on the screen less valuable, more expendable, and completely transactional. No wonder ghosting is so common and dismissiveness the default. Can you imagine an in-person environment where someone initiated a conversation and you responded with, “I don’t like your face”!
With everything we know, why are dating apps still so popular? Are people still hopelessly romantic in search of their soulmates, or is the dopamine rush from a match hopelessly addictive?
Layer over the challenges outlined above with identity based intersections like age, ethnicity, culture, religion, and racial categorizations and you complicate the situation further. In an age of connectivity and access we seem to have little of either with the people around us.
About the author: Neil Gonsalves is an Indian-born Canadian immigrant who grew up in Dubai, U.A.E. and moved to Canada in 1995. He is an Ontario college educator, a TEDx speaker, an author and columnist, a recreational dog trainer and an advocate for new immigrant integration and viewpoint diversity.
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