“The rarest of all human qualities is consistency.” –Jeremy Bentham, “Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation”
Last weekend, I saw “Westend” in the theater. Written by Moritz Rinke in 2018 as a criticism of the fragile, collapsing world of the bourgeoisie filled with personal secrets, this particular play successfully integrated elements from popular culture. Lily announces to Eduardo that he is her first “analog lover,” and Eduardo cannot believe his ears. When asked how they met, the middle-aged couple Eduardo and Charlotte reply: “face to face.” Everyone in the room is shocked. “How come?” they ask, “Not on Tinder?”
It seems that in the not-too-distant future, people will ask couples “Did you meet face to face or on a dating app?” Perhaps this question will too eventually become redundant, as it will be already assumed that the meeting occurred on a dating app. By the end of 2019, the Statista Market estimated that there were more than 200 million active users of dating apps worldwide, and mobile dating apps are increasingly utilized by adults to find romantic relationships. But why did we grow such a fondness for these dating applications? What are their pros and cons in our lives? And, most importantly, what does this new order that we have quickly become accustomed to reveal about ourselves?
The acceleration of relationships and the inevitable reflection of the desire to save more time and energy on our interpersonal bonds perhaps has its consequences. Building connections has never been this effortless: Wear your pajamas, make yourself a cup of coffee, spread on the couch, and begin swiping — right or left. Yet, perhaps we have become alienated from our connections and relationships, expediting their production process: no design, no personalization — just a few finger moves.
Furthermore, there is no risk factor for the users of these apps. Our general risk aversion — especially in romances with the fear of rejection — is yet another gut argument. The design of these apps satisfies this need perfectly. For instance, when someone does not like you back, Tinder artfully hides that from you; when someone likes you and you don’t like them back, Bumble announces “You’ve missed a potential match!” and gives you a little ego boost; Hinge, on the other hand, directly shows your suitors and encourages them to praise you (as they too have to do so in order to squirm out of the crowd). The self-validation check of a guinea pig, who is limited to the domain of the app and lacks control over his preferences, done! On the other hand, if the answer is negative, that is, if your attraction isn’t met by the opposite party, you eventually forget about them if you don’t know the person in real life (ah, there is also the awkwardness of coming across someone you already know on these apps, and the question of what makes this interaction so awkward, but that is beyond the scope of this piece.) You move on quickly, given that there are too many options and potential products — so many that only 7% of male users and 21% of female users send a message when they get a match among the 26 million daily matches that Tinder proclaims to procure. According to a survey, 29.2% of Tinder members said that they have met up with someone through the app, compared to 70.8% who answered that they have not, among 72% of millennial college students who have reported using the app. When asked why they were using the app, the same survey revealed that 22.22% were “looking for a hookup,” 4.16% were “looking for a relationship,” and 44.44% were using it for “confidence-boosting procrastination.” I guess the Internet points have never become this dramatic. Ah, as a typical human impulse, you of course eventually want more at one point, when you see the disheartening “That’s all!” on the screen — where have your matches, likes, and validation gone? “Money!” the app cheerfully announces, and then offers you the option to pay for more.
Plus, one of the reasons why these apps appear so riskless at the first blush is that users generally engage in “open” conversations. For instance, after a brief episode of information exchange — where are you from, what year are you, what are you studying, etc. — many guys directly ask me: “What are you looking for on X?” Bum! The question that has been unnerving both sides since the beginning of the conversation is suddenly on the table — all naked! And at a speed which would make many couples who have been dating for a long time, but carefully avoid discussing the status of their relationship, jealous! While I personally respect the question as it ensures that both parties are on the same page and neither one is left misunderstood and/or feeling cheated on, the way that the question is phrased itself is still pretty dramatic. It recalls quickly selecting the ingredients to include or exclude in a fast-food place. I guess, just like picking a dish, we now have to choose the type and flavor of the connections we make with people from the relationship menu.
Please don’t get me wrong! You’ve probably understood by this point anyway, given that I seem to know a lot about the algorithm of these apps: I was an active user of the popular trio in the United States — Bumble, Hinge, and Tinder — until recently. And, no — I hope I don’t seem like some kind of a pretentious neo-Woodstock hipster, a fake Jesus who doesn’t even understand the “p” of pragmatism, a preacher of how we all have come to be products of a Foucaldian biopower, or an advocate of going WiFi-free to live by the Walden lake. As far as that goes, I am writing this for you to get a sneak peek at a college student’s dating app experience and her thoughts, feelings, and observations on their broader implications. Because after a certain point, it has just become so interesting to me to merely observe users of these apps. And if dating apps have become a reality, we need to handle the diverse experiences of its users across all age groups to ensure our decision paths with these apps in the near future will increase mental well-being in society.
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Before getting into the crust of my argument, I feel compelled, even obligated to discuss the crucial problems due to the misusage of these apps. They are nothing new but surged during the pandemic due to their increased use, and are some facts that we often choose not to see due to the addiction these apps create. Namely, they are the abuse, cyberflashing, harassment, catfishing frequently experienced by their users, and, as unfortunately in nearly everything, disproportionately by women and sexual minorities. In an excerpt in Vanity Fair, Nancy Jo Sales, a New York Times best-seller author and journalist whose latest work is “Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating Inferno,” discusses these misogynistic trends through “dick pics” and includes a quote by Whitney Bell — an L.A. based artist who in 2016 did a gallery show of unsolicited dick pics she’d received: “It’s not about sex. It’s about power. It’s about these guys wanting to exert control.”
Perhaps one of the most ironic things is that these episodes of power demonstration regularly end up in embarrassing accidents. For instance, I will never forget hearing the unfortunate story of my friend’s acquaintanceNick the first time: How his attempt of setting a “thirst trap” for his Tinder match accidentally went into a class group chat, and the nickname “dick-pic-Nick” was cursed to stick onto him until the end of his college life. It still amuses me that Nick’s attempt of unveiling the mysterious fruit for an honest and open conversation and reducing the risk of disappointment about its flavors (!), on the contrary, ended up a cocktail of deepest fears that all human beings carry in their hearts: societal exclusion, humiliation, and shame.
This desire to reduce the risk, chance, and accidentality of life is indeed “nothing personal.” The dating apps play to this — perhaps not in practice — but in theory, everything goes according to the plan: If you want to go on a date, you open the app and begin swiping. If you do not like the applicant after the meeting, you have the option of ghosting them. It’s all online, and you are free to go your own way afterward. No explanation, no responsibility, no confrontation, no heaviness, no strings attached. The lightness of being has become bearable in our millennia — at last!
In his 1980 work “Existential Psychotherapy,” Irvin D. Yalom — an American existential psychiatrist, author of both fiction and nonfiction and an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University — dives into the topic of responsibility:
‘Responsibility awareness has come of age in America. What once was the discourse — often obscure — of the professional philosopher and later the bon mot of the Left Bank avant-garde has become a major consumer item in the New World today. Many nationwide best sellers have as their central theme, responsibility assumption. Your Erroneous Zones, to take one example, has these chapter headings: “Taking Charge of Yourself,” “Choice–Your Ultimate Freedom,” “You Don’t Need Their Approval,” “Breaking Free from the Past,” “Breaking the Barrier of Convention,” “Declare Your Independence.”’
It is an interesting phenomenon that North American society — and, as usual, the other world societies that are following its trends — seems to be in love with these slogans, but is embracing this new way of Internet points that are dating apps. Broad consumerism requires the product to be attractive and well packaged, and to be consumed easily and quickly, says Yalom. The contradiction lies precisely at this point: 1) The simultaneous popularity of dating apps that encourage people to constantly swipe for an online company and 2) external validation and self-help books that celebrate loneliness and self-sufficiency, to rid oneself of dependency and the concept of responsibility only on the individual. What then are we really advocating and seeking? As contemporary therapists focus closely on the goal of helping patients reintegrate previously split-off parts of themselves, working on growing self-awareness of the contradiction between the age of individualism and independence and desire for external validation through the usage of online dating apps can serve as a reconciliation for our deeper level of self-alienation.
In another chapter, Yalom defines interpersonal isolation in the following way:
“Interpersonal isolation, generally experienced as loneliness, refers to isolation from other individuals… Cultural factors play an important role in interpersonal isolation. The decline of intimacy-sponsoring institutions — the extended family, the stable residential neighborhood, the church, local merchants, the family doctor — has, in the United States at least, inexorably led to increased interpersonal estrangement.”
Yalom then goes on to discuss intrapersonal isolation:
‘Intrapersonal isolation is a widely used and current paradigm of psychopathology…Carl Rogers in a discussion of Ludwig Binswanger’s famous case of Ellen West clearly describes intrapersonal isolation: ‘Though as a child she was wholly independent of opinion of others, she now is completely dependent on what others think. She no longer has any way of knowing what she feels or what her opinion is. This is the loneliest state of all, an almost complete separation from one’s autonomous organism.’ ”
On a date, a guy who I met through these apps told me how much he is fond of his loneliness. Apparently, this dude goes to the same bar every night. The waiters now already know him and are waiting for his arrival around 9, and they bring his drink in a glass that has his initials on it and so on. I found the discrepancies within the story quite amusing. Despite not having a conventional togetherness as it lacked a romantic date, the painting he sketched didn’t sound lonely to me at all. To begin with, he goes to the same place every day (and I know for a fact that he has many other options in the district he lives in). The workers at the bar are familiar with him (an indicator that, even if small, he has some kind of a community there). They kindly offer him the drink (his favorite one without him asking for it, a demonstration of two sides getting used to each other’s habits, a typical signal of getting used to spending time with a person) in a special glass. I do not know about you, but this story doesn’t quite strike me as lonely. Or the anecdote of a person who truly enjoys loneliness. Rather, it was more of an embodiment of Dr. Kathryn Coduto’s finding — the high correlation between the preference for online social interaction with compulsive dating app use and degrees of loneliness and social anxiety.
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Although cultures follow their own modernization trajectory and each one requires a case-specific analysis, it is regardless possible to argue that there is a crescendoed Weberian tension between rising individualism and traditional collectivism due to globalization. At this point, the increased preference towards dating apps perhaps can provide us a framework to answer a very fundamental question: How can we, or in which way we will choose to, reconcile the loneliness of liberty and individualistic independentism with the comfort of the collective, yet with the burden of its responsibilities towards the group? While the increase in divorce rates all across the world and the reduced frequency of long-term dating (especially in America) allows us to argue that this is a general trend across various age groups and countries, we should keep in mind that the majority of theories and data of contemporary psychology and relationship science comes from Western populations (e.g. Europeans, North Americans, Australians, etc.) and are dominated by Western professionals in order to avoid falling into the Eurocentrism trap.
In his 1996 article, “The Psychological Measurement of Cultural Syndromes,” Harry C. Triandis, who was a Greek-American psychologist and Professor Emeritus at the Department of Psychology of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, offers a way for the psychological method to develop a clearer understanding of cultural differences and augment the sensitivity of discriminations. For Triandis, one way of doing this analysis is to use well-established psychological constructs, which leads to the use of cultural syndromes. Triandis defines cultural syndrome as “a pattern of shared attitudes, beliefs, categorizations, self-definitions, norms, role definitions, and values that is organized around a theme that can be identified among those who speak a particular language, during a specific historic period, and in a definable geographic region.” Collectivism and individualism are among the two syndromes Triandis lists, and he distinguishes them in the following way:
“In collectivist cultures, the self is defined as an aspect of a collective (e.g., family or tribe); personal goals are subordinated to the goals of this collective; norms, duties, and obligations regulate most social behavior; taking into account the needs of others in the regulation of social behavior is widely practiced. Traditional cultures and many of the cultures of Asia and Africa include many collectivist elements. On the other hand, in individualist cultures, the self is defined as independent and autonomous from collectives. Personal goals are given priority over the goals of collectives. Social behavior is shaped by attitudes and perceived enjoyable consequences. The perceived profit and loss from a social behavior is computed, and when a relationship is too costly it is dropped. Western Europe and North America are high on this syndrome and are linked to the ideology of modernity.”
According to this, there are four attributes that define collectivism and individualism: 1) the meaning of the self (interdependent vs. autonomous and independent), 2) the structure of goals (giving priority to personal vs. ingroups goals), 3) behavior (giving more weight to norms vs. attitudes as determinants of social behavior), 4) focus on the needs of the ingroup or social exchanges (paying attention to the needs of members of the ingroup vs. the advantages and costs of relationships in determining one’s social behavior). While individualists are more likely to engage in exchange relationships and drop the relationship if the costs exceed the advantages, collectivists tend to stay in the relationship and engage in communal relationships.
At this point, we observe that the dialectical tension between individualism and collectivism is finally coming to an end through the realm of the dating apps, in a world in which people increasingly report being active members of dating apps across cultures. In a 2021 study investigating the variance of online dating promotion across cultures, Paul et. al. found that the study extended their understanding of the influence of culture on advertising within the novel context of online dating, since “People around the world have come to depend on online dating services (ODSs) to participate in the dating process.” Based on the results after examining the relationship between advertising appeals used by 1003 ODSs from 51 countries and the cultural dimensions of these countries, Paul et. al. have come to argue that “ODSs overwhelming use of culturally incongruent advertising messages can lead to a global transformation and homogenisation of the dating culture.” While the ODS advertisements were found to appeal to people’s need for relationship, friendship, entertainment, sex, status, design, and identity, the use of these appeals was also congruent with the individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance cultural dimensions.
This finding, among many other similar ones, begs the question: Is it finally the time for a Hegelian synthesis after this dialectic between individualism and collectivism? Yes, of course I am aware of the complication behind finding a synthesis in such a diverse and populated world. Regardless, I argue that, through the very question of why we download the dating apps in the first place, the only synthesis possible is growing self-consciousness for the driving forces of our connections, inter and intra personal relationships in order to find the best support that fits our authentic needs.
“The Judith Butler Reader,” edited by Sara Salih with Judith Butler — an American philosopher and a gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory —argues that “Third-wave” Hegelians characterize the Spirit as split (Lacan), displaced (Derrida), and eventually dead (Foucault, Deleuze), and this very act of taking the subject of desire as the focal point of their analyses allows these thinkers to remain within a Hegelian theoretical framework. Butler, on the other hand, does not attempt to “overcome” Hegel or to synthesize their own theories of the subject of/and desire unlike their predecessors, who construct a Hegelian subject (and indeed a Hegel) in order to refute it. Butler instead advocates an open-ended, contingent, and temporal mode of reading, since, for them, “Self-consciousness is desire in general, while desire itself is characterized by loss — both loss of the self in desiring another, and the Subject’s loss of the world in desiring itself. Negation and loss are preconditions of identity, and as in “Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter,” the Hegelian subject is characterized as a melancholic agent who must recognize and overcome the other (Aufgebung) in order to become itself. Self-consciousness is a mode of knowing that is also a mode of becoming.”
According to this, there is no experience without intersubjectivity: Self-consciousness emphasizes the self-negating, self-estranging principle that is central to the experience of desire. Just as the lord and his bondsman seek to know themselves through the suppression of the other and otherness — the lord “overcomes” the bondsman, while the bondsman labors on an object that is constitutive of his identity — individualism requires the collective, and this tension in between can be relieved by a Butlerian self-consciousness. Yes, maybe we fear losing, being wounded, so we justifiably draw our strict boundaries and usually don’t even open them to negation. Yet, if we go into the apps, embark on a date, or approach our potential matches in a self-conscious way with this opposition in mind next time, perhaps this may be our recipe to remain somewhere optimal in between the shores of individualism and collectivism — or to find the long-lost bridge connecting the two. Embracing our own self-contradictions in this self-conscious manner may also grow our awareness of the underlying personal problems that are projected towards and, consequently, embodied in, various inter and intra personal problems: the very urge to send a dick pic, the resulting abuse and catfishing, and the desire for external validation, Internet points, and ego boost. Perhaps abandoning the caressing consolation is itself yet another difficulty, but as the famous Latin adage “dulce periculum” advises, sometimes the real periculum can too be dulce, or the real danger can too be sweet.