Dating apps: towards post-romantic love in digital societies

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to studies of implicit cultural policy in platformised societies by offering an empirical study of dating apps and the ways in which they are operating a digital enclosure of the practice of dating. Reflecting on a qualitative research project conducted in different phases from 2017 to 2021, I analyse subjective experiences of dating apps in the aim of deciphering some traits of digital culture of love’s structure of feeling. I focus on the role played by the algorithm as a libidinal object invested with merit and blame, and capable of (re)producing a libidinal economy within the app itself. This is characterised by the gamified alternation of validation and humiliation, which gives the subject the possibility to deal with these feelings in the de-personalised virtual space of the app. Engaging with the app, the subject aspires to foster a careless conduct, in which moral codes traditionally associated with personhood are lifted. I argue that the policies implicit within the logic and agency of dating apps shape the techno-utopia of post-romantic love: a risk free, painless and efficient interaction, deprived of the complications of embodied romance.

KEYWORDS:

• Love
• dating apps
• technology
• platform society
• subjectivity
• culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This is more frequently the case for people living in big cities, e.g. London, but it is recurrent also in interviews with participants living in smaller cities, or even rural areas. The motivation of dating apps users in London is often that in the city everyone is busy and people don’t meet in pubs anymore; while in more peripheral contexts it may be that the low density of the population makes it difficult to randomly meet those of one’s age, who are also single, or anyways seeking an encounter. Even more so if those living in smaller villages look for interactions with people of their same sex, or f they want to experiment with some sexual kinks.

2. For a study on humiliation in media cultures see Cefai (2020).

3. For a comprehensive anthology on gamification see Fuchs et al. (2014).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Centre for Digital Inquiry - University of Warwick.

Notes on contributors

Carolina Bandinelli

Carolina Bandinelli is Associate Professor in Media and Creative Industries at the University of Warwick. She is the author of Social Entrepreneurship and Neoliberalism: Making Money While Doing Good (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2020), and co-author of Fashion as Creative Economy (Polity, 2022). In recent years, she has published widely on the subjective experience of dating apps from an interdisciplinary perspective combining cultural and media studies, sociology and psychoanalysis.