Without a doubt, the creation of Tinder has rocked the way we meet and date people. Launched in 2012, the free app allows people to control their dating life from the palm of their hand. It fits perfectly into our hectic lives via the quick and easy swiping technique. Gone are the days of filling in an endless form about your interests, your likes, your dislikes. No longer do we constantly have to log in to check for updates. Internet dating entered a new realm. Co-founders Sean Rad and Justin Mateen spared no expense to ensure your dating profile is created with the least hassle possible, but guarantees the most convenience for you.
New research shows that the dating app has drawn in 50 million active users who check their accounts 11 times per day. Clearly its popularity has grown immensely over the last three years, potentially due to its easy accessibility. Rather than being convoluted with forms, terms and conditions, emails and payments, the app simply uses your Facebook information to build a profile. Your first name, age, photos (of your choice) and pages you have liked on Facebook are all included in the creation of your dating profile. Furthermore, the use of GPS location means that your potential match could be just around the corner from you.
The innovative swiping technique turned the laborious task of reading one’s profile and searching for a match, into a flick of the wrist. Swiping left or right based on appearance has been highly criticised as shallow as it encourages people to choose based on their immediate reaction to a photo. The dating process has been sped up: it only takes a second to decide whether the face that has appeared on your screen is ‘hot’.
An essay from The New Inquiry, titled ‘Tinderization of feeling’, established a greater problem: not the primitive swiping technique, but the way Tinder fosters ‘emotional dissociation’. In other words, the game-like app means that people distance themselves from their emotions; swiping away multiple people a minute, people are no longer really making emotionally-based choices at all – they are just playing the game.
The messaging feature allows us to get to know each other and maybe meet up. Here, the Tinder cycle really gets going and shows why people use Tinder for casual sex. According to the essay, it all begins with a swipe to the right, match, chat, meet up, hook up and repeat. The constant churn of faces appearing on your screen means people are overwhelmed with choice, giving them the power to ignore and reject without any guilt. In entering the cycle, people disconnect their emotions to avoid real intimacy, thus escaping the vulnerability from being emotionally available. This is what The New Inquiry has labelled ‘tinderizing.’
Removing ourselves from any potential intimacy is a state of being Alana Massey has named ‘chill’. Essentially if you are ‘chill’, you do not reply to texts because there are too many and you do not have the emotional energy to reply, socialise and communicate with everyone, and not because you want to intentionally ignore people. On Tinder, there are so many potential matches and messages that the constant stream of faces on your screen is overwhelming, so we become ‘chill’. The New Inquiry puts this succinctly: “The more we Tind, the seemingly chiller we become.”
Tinder should serve as a way to verify a connection created when you have swiped right. It is meant to be easier than creating it from scratch; it is to facilitate a first date and potentially ease any awkwardness by getting to know them via the messaging feature. However, users ought to remember that when you log in, you cannot log out of your emotions; they are a part of you, so why ignore them? Without a doubt, the creation of Tinder has rocked the way we meet and date people. Launched in 2012, the free app allows people to control their dating life from the palm of their hand. It fits perfectly into our hectic lives via the quick and easy swiping technique. Gone are the days of filling in an endless form about your interests, your likes, your dislikes. No longer do we constantly have to log in to check for updates. Internet dating entered a new realm. Co-founders Sean Rad and Justin Mateen spared no expense to ensure your dating profile is created with the least hassle possible, but guarantees the most convenience for you.
New research shows that the dating app has drawn in 50 million active users who check their accounts 11 times per day. Clearly its popularity has grown immensely over the last three years, potentially due to its easy accessibility. Rather than being convoluted with forms, terms and conditions, emails and payments, the app simply uses your Facebook information to build a profile. Your first name, age, photos (of your choice) and pages you have liked on Facebook are all included in the creation of your dating profile. Furthermore, the use of GPS location means that your potential match could be just around the corner from you.
The innovative swiping technique turned the laborious task of reading one’s profile and searching for a match, into a flick of the wrist. Swiping left or right based on appearance has been highly criticised as shallow as it encourages people to choose based on their immediate reaction to a photo. The dating process has been sped up: it only takes a second to decide whether the face that has appeared on your screen is ‘hot’.
An essay from The New Inquiry, titled ‘Tinderization of feeling’, established a greater problem: not the primitive swiping technique, but the way Tinder fosters ‘emotional dissociation’. In other words, the game-like app means that people distance themselves from their emotions; swiping away multiple people a minute, people are no longer really making emotionally-based choices at all – they are just playing the game.
The messaging feature allows us to get to know each other and maybe meet up. Here, the Tinder cycle really gets going and shows why people use Tinder for casual sex. According to the essay, it all begins with a swipe to the right, match, chat, meet up, hook up and repeat. The constant churn of faces appearing on your screen means people are overwhelmed with choice, giving them the power to ignore and reject without any guilt. In entering the cycle, people disconnect their emotions to avoid real intimacy, thus escaping the vulnerability from being emotionally available. This is what The New Inquiry has labelled ‘tinderizing.’
Removing ourselves from any potential intimacy is a state of being Alana Massey has named ‘chill’. Essentially if you are ‘chill’, you do not reply to texts because there are too many and you do not have the emotional energy to reply, socialise and communicate with everyone, and not because you want to intentionally ignore people. On Tinder, there are so many potential matches and messages that the constant stream of faces on your screen is overwhelming, so we become ‘chill’. The New Inquiry puts this succinctly: “The more we Tind, the seemingly chiller we become.”
Tinder should serve as a way to verify a connection created when you have swiped right. It is meant to be easier than creating it from scratch; it is to facilitate a first date and potentially ease any awkwardness by getting to know them via the messaging feature. However, users ought to remember that when you log in, you cannot log out of your emotions; they are a part of you, so why ignore them?
Image: Flickr: [Denis Bocquet]