Thank you to MTV for sponsoring today’s post and encouraging me to discover their new show “Are You The One?”!
American consumers are no strangers to websites and applications geared toward matchmaking. There are numerous heteronormative scripts within this consumer culture that discourage independence and emphasize relationships as a primary goal. Tinder, developed and launched in 2012, is an application that serves such a purpose. Using minimal information that a user inputs into the application, the Tinder service aims to achieve quick and effective matchmaking in a specified mile radius. While convenient, matchmaking apps such as Tinder are problematic when discussing gender performance. In general, Tinder requests little information from users and both directly and indirectly that restricts the performance of any gender that deviates from rigid masculine and feminine binaries. Furthermore, Tinder has transformed and weakened notions of human sexuality and dating culture in the United States and beyond by discouraging the development of interpersonal relationships and communication in favor of passing quick judgments based on limited personal data. As a whole, Tinder obliquely endorses subversion of individuals who identify as queer, and likewise employs strict social binaries that reduce visibility of individuals who deviate from societal norms.
Tinder, upon its initial release, was marketed to students on college campuses, a volatile audience that fervently seeks connections, relationships, and approval. The application’s marketing endorsed effective matchmaking in close proximity by permitting users to find matches within a 50-mile radius. Tinder advertises via Facebook and demands access to Facebook accounts upon sign-up. In a sense, such an endorsement acts as a safeguard for individuals who are skeptical about finding nearby matches of who they can only see a name, age, selected photos, and distance between. Such authentication associated with Facebook attempts to credit the service as safe and its users as genuine (Zeilinger, 2013). Although a user is able to view mutual Facebook friends with their matches, the anonymity of the service, like similar dating apps, undermines the traditional foundations of relationships which demand face-to-face interaction, body language, and verbal cues. The application’s primary existence suggests that all individuals, since Tinder does not firmly employ any age restrictions, should be actively seeking out companions and should use a virtual platform to do so. In essence, the art of spontaneity and chance connections are lost once again to a virtual domain that permits individuals to manipulate reality. Users who are dissatisfied with their body image or age, impacted by societal standards for acceptance, can alter such details in their minimalistic profile seen by potential matches.
When initially soliciting an account on the Tinder application, the user is prompted to identify themselves as a “male or female” interested in “men and/or women.” While making important strides to acknowledge the presence of LGBT community members, as many popular social media services fail to do, such exclusivity restricts the domain of who is eligible to use the matchmaking services. While Tinder is not the only matchmaking application in existence, its growing popularity sheds light on the restrictive language and means of identification offered within the app and by similar services. By offering only two possibilities for gender performance and three potential sexual preferences (same sex, opposite sex, both sexes), the application is restrictive. While social constructs demand rigid identification and categorization of individuals, an application that has a goal of deriving personal relationships should offer more flexibility and options for profile customization to users who are actually seeking a truly compatible individual. Still, it is a simplistic, user-friendly interface.
Not only does Tinder promote rash connections, textual prompts within the application itself encourage users to interact in a forward manner, made possible by the virtual platform. Tinder actively suggests that users employ pick-up lines or direct language that will ensure originality and will be unquestionably memorable to initiate interaction. Such prompts inhibit the visibility of difference by encouraging users to market themselves as a desired commodity rather than an accurate presentation of themselves. Using such forward tactics to make oneself marketable to another user, or to obtain a match, undercuts traditional politics of respectability for women in particular. Tinder’s, like other dating applications, most active users are overwhelmingly male, actually 66% percent, and the majority of users that indicate heterosexual preferences believe male users should initiate conversation and in-app interaction (Smith and Duggan, 2013). Heterosexual males then frequently approach female users with outlandish pick-up lines, encouraged by the in-app prompts, to solicit a response. Social constructs for women, however, are contradictory in the case of matchmaking apps such as Tinder. If a woman initiates conversation first, using a forward or direct line to obtain attention, she is likely viewed as promiscuous or overly dominant because women are expected to be docile and nonsexual beings outside the confines of a traditional relationship. If a woman ignores a man’s forward attempts to get her attention, she is often seen as a prude. Such contradictory expectations of women are so deeply-rooted and well-established as societal norms that they transcend reality and invade virtual platforms such as matchmaking applications, despite an individual user’s motivation for joining Tinder, unique gender performance, and sexual preference.
In an effort to be memorable, both male and female Tinder users frequently rely on binding stereotypes to approach a match. Many initial messages blatantly disregard a need for formal introductions, most likely due to the virtual space, and include overtly sexual insinuations among other scripts deemed flirtatious by popular culture. The use of emoticons and winking faces imply a sexual nature to the conversation from the start. The below screen captures use language that directly stigmatize Tinder and matchmaking application users as insincere and inauthentic, and further contribute to the paradox of the shame associated with using such applications to make connections. Recent data reports indicate that over six million Tinder users are active daily within the United States alone, and that upwards of fifteen million individuals are using the application monthly (Smith and Duggan, 2013). If so many individuals have active accounts with this service alone, why does society continue to discredit virtual platforms for interpersonal connections?
Certainly, virtual spaces provide solace for many individuals who identify as queer in the sense that they have a platform within which they can speak freely and anonymously if they so choose. The converse is true within matchmaking applications that pull data from Facebook or require a user to input information that can easily be falsified. Danah Boyd notes that “ people have more control online—they are able to carefully choose what information to put forward, thereby eliminating visceral reactions that might have seeped out in everyday communication” (Boyd quoted in Wilson and Dines 2011). Thus, the likelihood that a Tinder user is authentic is up to chance at best, which is incredibly risky when utilizing a service that ensures you a match based on personal preferences. Users of Tinder and its cohorts, namely women, are consequently rejected from new mainstream dating norm that generally operates on heteronormative principles and tends to value traditional relationship formation outside of a virtual setting.
While users are undoubtedly of a privileged class in the sense that they have direct access to portable technology that enables interpersonal connections at anytime, the Tinder application has reached numerous consumers who have bought into a restrictive service that upholds exclusionary principles. Tinder’s virtual platform encourages the reaffirmation of gender stereotypes and is generally questionable in the quality of service it provides to users, particularly those who want to utilize such a space to make viable, personal connections. As demonstrated by screen captures 1-8, users are encouraged to offer outrageous statements for attention, thus initiating insincere, unrealistic conversation. Tinder’s limited profile data and minimalist design does not foster space for the development of relationships for all individuals. Although Tinder acknowledges more than heteronormative sexual preferences, the service has much to improve to be of value to all individuals, regardless of gender performance and identification.
Have you had experiences in online/app dating forums? Did you find your happily ever after there? Right now, 20 people are searching for their perfect match on MTV’s reality television series “Are You The One?” – in face-to-face meetings putting their interpersonal communication skills to work. If the 10 men and 10 women participating can determine all ten “perfect” matches in ten weeks, they will earn $1 million to split. Sounds intense! Want to play alongside the cast to guess who their designated match could be? Catch new episodes on Wednesdays at 10/9c on MTV and participate in an interactive guessing game here. Additionally, players will be prompted to share exclusive “AYTO” GIFs and memes across their social media accounts to score points. The top finisher at the end of each episode — one for the East Coast airing and one for the West Coast — will be entered to walk away with a TRIP FOR TWO TO HAWAII. Watch the series trailer and the first episode now!
References
Caton, S., (2014). Figures 1-8. Tinder screen captures. JPEG.
Smith, A., & Duggan, M., (2013). Online dating & relationships. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved September 25, 2014.
Wilson, Clint C., II, & Dines, G., (2010). Gender, Race, and Class in Media, 3rd Ed + Racism, Sexism, and Media, 3rd Ed. Sage Publishing. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
