Abstract
Mobile dating apps are familiar in everyday life. Their data-driven operations offer algorithmically organized archives of people. This paper aims to offer a reflection on the datafication of intimacy, focusing on the social knowledge mobile dating apps produce on the building of close human connections. Drawing on interviews with young adults, I rely on an existential media analysis, exploring struggles with and around mobile dating apps. I argue that the datafication of intimacy is a particular way of experiencing intimacy, going beyond the socio-technological functions of mobile dating apps. I show how the datafication of intimacy is a mathematical mind-set characterized by commercialization and rationalization (predictability, controllability, convenience), building a relationship of interdependency between a data economy and intimacy. I conclude how this interdependency is an emotionally experienced, existential burden for people, it demands reflection on how data-driven technology has become environmental to building close human connections.
Keywords
Introduction
In an urban metropolis like London, you are rapidly confronted with the presence of mobile dating apps. Whether you are a passing visitor or a longtime Londoner, billboards across the city will show you which app is new to the land of mobile dating. On the subway, people swipe Tinder, and if Facebook knows you are single, carefully targeted ads introducing mobile dating apps will ensure that you cannot miss out on the possibility for intimate connection—whether ephemeral or forever. Mobile dating apps are popular data-driven media. They are part of the fabric of everyday life in an urban metropolis, mediating potential intimate connections, showing users an archive of people, algorithmically organized, and affording communication between connected ties.
Bella, 1 a 23 year-old woman living in London, reflects on the difficulties and pressures to find love in a busy city. Bella states that, nowadays, it is difficult to meet people without mobile dating apps. Therefore, she would “advise everyone to use mobile dating apps because it is the only way.” She adds that, despite many of her friends not liking mobile dating apps, they all agree that using them is the only way to find love. What does it mean to experience such a dependency on data-driven media for finding love? What does it mean that data-driven tools are crucial for experiencing intimacy, for seeking and building close human connections? Intimacy, as defined by sociologist Jamieson (2011), refers to “the quality of close connection between people and the process of building that quality.” In this paper, I refer to love, dating and desire as central to intimacy; love, dating and desire are key to define the quality as well as the processes involved in building close human connections.
The datafication of intimacy is the outcome of a widely adopted, technologically and commercially driven mathematical mind-set to dating. Yet, there is more at stake than functionality and technology. Such heavy investments in technologies of human connectivity and communication come with a complex set of cultural expectations (e.g., promises to find “true” love) and new temporalities (e.g., the need for efficiency and speed when looking for a new date) (Wajcman and Dodd 2017; Williams 2003 [1975]). This paper argues that experiencing a dependency on mobile dating apps is related to how they are now central to many people’s phenomenological lifeworld; people’s relationships with digital media have a “profoundly existential significance” (Frosh 2019, 3). This is because digital media are means for living, bringing new spaces for reflection and for experiencing the human condition (Lagerkvist 2017). Mobile dating apps are deeply existential as they throw us into questioning what it means to be dependent on digital technology for building close human connections. Central to such an “existential media analysis” is recognizing “we are seeing something in our technologically enforced lifeworld that seems stronger than affordances,” but yet “still weaker than determinism” (Lagerkvist 2017, 97).
Drawing on conversational in-depth interviews with young adults on how mobile dating apps are present in the urban landscape of London, this paper focuses on people’s interpretations and experiences with and around mobile dating apps. I aim to offer a reflection on the datafication of intimacy, by which I mean how data-driven media such as mobile dating apps are producing social knowledge on the process of building close human connections. For example, OkCupid produces social knowledge by showing users the strength of the match, based on questions users answer about themselves. Other mobile dating apps produce social knowledge by providing information on location, common interests, or lifestyle (e.g., Tinder).
While in modern life the interventions of data-driven media are often framed as being “inevitable” (Couldry and Yu 2018), this paper explores how people negotiate the social knowledge that mobile dating apps produce. This para-narrative shows how in daily life the datafication of intimacy is experienced at multiple speeds, at varied rhythms and is often met with moments of “stubborn resistance” (Highmore 2006, 109). Earlier scholarship has already confirmed that users navigate mobile dating apps in many different ways, often regardless of mobile dating apps’ affordances (Byron and Albury 2018; Ferris and Duguay 2020). Furthermore, rather than inevitable tools, mobile dating apps are found to be “additional” tools to people’s intimate life worlds (Newett et al. 2018). Yet, it is not only people’s individual uses of mobile dating apps that are significant to the datafication of intimacy, there are also collective stakes for human intimacy, and these collective stakes have remained underexplored.
Mobile dating apps’ mathematical mind-set to dating is deeply engrained in a commercially driven data economy, yet I will argue that the datafication of intimacy is not about experiencing a loss of “authentic” intimacy (the loss of the innate “core” of human intimacy) (Markham 2020). Yet, there is much that is at stake when building close human connections in a deeply digital, calculated and high paced modern environment. This paper explores these collective stakes for intimacy in the context of datafication, without pitting people’s agency against the power of data-driven media (Livingstone 2019).
Online Intimacy: Love, Dating, and Desire
Sociologists Bauman (2003) and Illouz (2007, 2012) have argued online dating is representative of modern intimacy. Bauman sketches a gloomy picture of the individualization of intimacy, which means that modern romantic relationships are focused on serving individual needs facilitated by the easy functionalities and endless choice in partners offered by online dating. Illouz (2012) focuses on processes of rationalization and commodification, referring to online dating as “a hyper-cognized, rational method of selecting a mate” (p. 180). Ultimately, Bauman and Illouz are questioning the “authenticity” and “quality” of building close human connections through digital media. What is significant about these discussions of online dating is how they are recognizing online dating as more than the outcome of particular affordances and functional specificities; online dating is equally an existential issue that generates fundamental discussion on “authenticity” in the processes of building close human connections (Jamieson 2011).
Mobile dating apps are primary examples of what Illouz (2012, 5) refers to as “emotional capitalism” in which “affect is made an essential aspect of economic behavior and in which emotional life follows the themes of rationalization and commodification.” What I want to question, however, is the idea that rationalization and commodification are such powerful forces that they have succeeded in deeply intervening in the processes of building close intimate connections. Do mobile dating apps make the process of building close human connections less “authentic”? What is at stake for our intimate co-existence with others when mobile dating apps are naturalized in everyday life, and people feel as if they are dependent on them?
Mobile dating apps and their data-driven operations are not invading the authentic state of a “pure” subject. Love, “whether viewed psychoanalytically, institutionally or ideologically, is always deemed an outcome of fantasy” (Berlant 2012, 8). While Berlant (2012) argues that love is attached to unconscious processes and investments, subjects “learn to inhabit fantasy” (p. 8), meaning that love and more broadly intimacy are always already bound up in conventional institutions (e.g., heteronormativity) and popular commodities (e.g., romantic movies). Feelings such as desire are equally something outside of us; “Desire describes a state of attachment to something or someone, and the cloud of possibility that is generated by the gap between an object’s specificity and the needs and promises projected onto it” (Berlant 2012, 6)—desire, while it feels as if coming from within is then equally a cultural experience and practice governed by conventional institutions and commodities. Datafication then, rather than being a force and threat to authentic intimacy, could be seen as a new conventional institution with which intimacy is now bound up with.
Datafication refers to an automated means for producing social knowledge, therefore using “objective” metrics and algorithmic processing (although this might be on the background) (Couldry and Hepp 2017, 124). Mobile dating apps are a data-driven infrastructure generating “objective” knowledge on the social process of building close connections between people. For example, generating knowledge on whether people are a “strong” match, or whether they have a nearby geolocation. The processing of these intimate data by algorithms is by no means a utilitarian issue, as algorithms have social and cultural significance in people’s everyday lives, having “meaningfully performative effects” (Roberge and Seyfert 2016). Algorithms generate personal recommendations aimed at “consumer satisfaction,” crystallizing in imaginaries, hopes and expectations, while also generating discussions about their legitimacy and disappointments about their failures—which is precisely what makes algorithms cultural (Williams 2003 [1975]).
Mobile dating apps and their data-driven operations, rather than seeing them as a powerful threat to “authentic” intimacy, need to be situated and contextualized. As has been shown by previous research on how people use mobile dating apps, people tend to actively navigate the affordances of mobile dating apps in relation to their own expectations and identities (Byron and Albury 2018; Ferris and Duguay 2020). The construction of mobile dating apps as a natural phenomenon that has become inseparable from seeking a date or love is nothing innocent, however. An article in Wired, an American news magazine focusing on technology, formulated this as a provocative question; Is It Possible to Find Love Without Mobile Dating Apps? (Baker-Whitcomb 2018). The question then becomes; what is the cost of making mobile dating apps natural in people’s everyday lives?
A Mathematical Mind-Set to Dating
A mathematical mind-set to dating, which promises to make the process of building close human connections more predictable, controllable, convenient, fast, etc. is at the core of the datafication of intimacy. This mathematical mind-set to dating builds on historical ideas on the “science of matchmaking,” an idea which progressed “alongside the evolution of information technologies from newspaper classifieds to dating agencies’ databases to contemporary algorithmic logics” (Albury et al. 2017, 6).
Christian Rudder, one of the three founders of the popular dating platform OkCupid explains, while introducing his book Dataclysm, how a focus on mathematics was what motivated them to start an online dating business: We were all mathematically minded, and the site succeeded in a large part because we applied that mind-set to dating: we brought some analysis and rigor to what had historically been the domain of love ‘experts’ and grinning warlocks like Dr. Phill. (Rudder 2014, 9)
What Rudder refers to as a new and applied “mind-set” to dating is the basis of how mobile dating apps are produced. OkCupid is a platform cultivating the idea of “math to find you dates.” While the algorithmic operations of mobile dating apps vary greatly, they each promise data analysis to find love. Tinder, for example, uses the “swipe logic” in which people’s profiles are presented “similar to a deck of playing cards, and love, sex and intimacy are the stakes of the game” (Hobbs et al. 2017, 2). This easy connectivity is based on data input such as a user’s profile, activity and real-time data analysis of nearby people, using smartphone GPS systems.
Two elements are crucial in how this mathematical mind-set produces conventional knowledge on intimacy: commercialization and rationalization. First, commercialization refers to how a mathematical mind-set is driven by economic forces of data collection and sharing. Those economic forces are different than the goals of embodied human beings, unless actors change their mind-set to a need for predictability, controllability and convenience (Couldry and Hepp 2017, 124). The datafication of intimacy changes the point of departure; from building close human connections to a need for doing so rigorously and efficiently by using mathematics. How those economic forces are different from the goals of embodied human beings is particularly visible in the many ethical issues surrounding the commercial use of people’s intimate data. An example that shows how an economic logic does not always fit well with people’s intimacies is how out of commercial gain the gay mobile dating app Grindr shared, accidently, data on users’ HIV status with commercial third parties. When this practice was exposed, it led to outrage in the gay community (Ghorayshi and Ray 2018). While a HIV status offers Grindr users predictability, controllability, and convenience, the exposed commercial mind-set was nevertheless deeply uncomfortable for Grindr users and beyond.
Second, rationalization refers to how data-driven media are typifying people’s selves and identities through “measurable types” (Cheney-Lippold 2017, 154). A mathematical mind-set uses algorithms that are produced with visions of the social world in mind, also creating social outcomes (Beer 2017, 4). Mobile dating apps’ algorithms refer to key institutions of intimacy—love, romance, desire, sex, and sexuality—that organize intimacy in conventional ways for the sake of algorithmic organization and the rationalization of the dating process. An example is how mobile dating apps aimed at the gay male market are often branded as “hook-up apps” (Wu and Ward 2018), their algorithms allow rapid and easy connectivity, as well as greater anonymity. These algorithmic operations are based on stereotypical ideas of the (sexual) dating motives of gay men, stereotypes which these algorithmic operations then again recirculate and sustain. A mathematical mind-set is a conventional way for organizing intimacy because its algorithmic logic regulates “who we are and who we can be online” (Cheney-Lippold 2017, 154).
Mobile Dating Apps and Dependency
I will continue by arguing that the datafication of intimacy, rather than being a mathematical mind-set that is forced upon people, is a situated struggle to make data-driven media familiar in everyday life. Mobile dating apps throw people into questioning what it means to be dependent on digital technology for building close human connections; “thrownness is an experience of profound disorientation, and in response it is natural to grasp at making things familiar by whatever means are at hand” (Markham 2020, 30).
Datafication, as an experience, is about grasping to whatever what is at hand to make data-driven interventions feel more familiar, to naturalize data-driven interventions as part of everyday life. For many people mobile dating apps are part of their being-in-the-world. Mobile dating apps’ affordances are “at-hand resources” (Markham 2020). The presence of mobile dating apps in the fabric of everyday life throws people into an existential mode of data-driven possibility, dependency and vulnerability. For example, this is the case when people wonder if they will be able to find a date without mobile dating apps, or when they are excited about the potential of mobile dating apps. In that sense, mobile dating apps are “environmental forces” (Floridi 2015), tools for everyday existence: Today, one may suggest that the machines have evolved into environmental and wearable tools of existence. Our being is now explored through, experienced in relation to, as well as defined by these tools in a dynamic relationship of mutuality, tension, ambivalence, and change. (Lagerkvist 2017, 97–98)
Dependency does not destroy one’s autonomy, but the datafication of intimacy is a continuous negotiation of technological promises: “the idea that machines will know us better than we know ourselves, a kind of ‘knowing’ that embraces modernity’s epistemic virtues of accuracy and objectivity” (Hong 2016, 2). These tensions and ambivalences around how data-technologies are so deeply involved in people’s intimacies are clearly symbolized by societal fears, claiming that mobile dating apps’ interventions are “unnatural” and “risky,” or when moral concerns are voiced on the “authenticity” of online dating and ultimately when data-driven interventions are seen as harming the “truth” of love; each of these sense-makings illustrates the existential burden of building close human connections through data-driven technology, which may be met with excitement, yet also doubt, fear, and stubborn resistance.
Method
To further empirically explore how the datafication of intimacy relates to people’s being-in-the world, this paper relies on conversational in-depth interviews with young adults living in the urban landscape of London. Drawing on insights from existential media analysis (Lagerkvist 2017), I explore how mobile dating apps are interwoven in people’s everyday lives, considering the spatial and temporal settings, as well as the particular social categories and formations of the interviewees (Ang 1995).
The interviewees were recruited by enlisting a major London university to circulate a message in the student newsletter, to which I received ten responses. The message asked people to contact me if they wanted to share their experiences with and around mobile dating apps in London. The message stated: Participants can be those who love using dating applications, hate them, need them, have been using them, or maybe never will. You can be a “heavy” daily consumer, or not; maybe these apps are very present in your life-world without you using them (but you still have something to say about them).
The interviews, conducted between March and April 2017, lasted from one up to two hours, two interviewees were met twice for a follow-up conversation. The interviews took place around the university campus. The conversational interviews focused on some key topics such as participant’s motivations for (not) using mobile dating apps, what they liked/disliked about mobile dating apps, experiences and feelings of dependency. In the analysis I made use of observational field notes serving as valuable context, but I mainly rely on the transcribed interviews. An existential media analysis recognizes the ambivalent terrain of everyday life and existence (Lagerkvist 2017, 103). This means that the analysis focuses on people’s struggles and movements with and around mobile dating apps, rather than seeking proof of how datafication is a deterministic given in everyday life, or on the other hand, that mobile dating apps are liberatory tools.
Everyday Life with and Around Mobile Dating Apps
As shown in Table 1, five people were using mobile dating apps at the time of the interview; two people had been using mobile dating apps but stopped using them; and three people had never used mobile dating apps but wanted to say something about them. Table 1 shows interviewees’ self-identified gender and sexual identities, nationalities, and relationship status. Given the dominant number of women responding to the call for participants, the results rely mostly on female experiences.
Overview of the Interviewees.
These refer to interviewees’ self-chosen pseudonyms.
I remained true to the interviewees’ own descriptions of their gender and sexual identities, which is why the terminology is not consistent.
Bob declined to answer this question.
The interviewees’ various national and ethnic backgrounds mirror London’s diversity: people from many different backgrounds live together in global cities. Most interviewees were bounded by the particular experience of coming to London to obtain a university degree. Many of them presented a cosmopolitan flair, having lived in various global cities; coming from higher socio-economic backgrounds; being part of a prestigious educational community; being displaced; showing knowledge about the world; embracing difference; and displaying a critical, reflexive, and political attitude toward life.
For those having experience with using mobile dating apps—seven interviewees—they were understood as empowering because of their technological capacities facilitating connectivity and communication. Using mobile dating apps means access to new pleasures and allows for getting to know people outside of the usual social circles, as Virginia phrased it: “You open yourself up to so many possibilities.”
Suzy used mobile dating apps in a way she described as “recruiting to marry,” others wanted to be “entertained” by flirty conversations (Alexis), some enjoyed experimenting with sexual identity (Tara), others found it a useful tool to “boost the ego” and to find as many dates as possible (Bella, Fritz). While many of the interviewees’ mobile dating app uses can be brought back to typical characteristics of love and intimacy in modern times, which means a rational focus on individual needs, the motivations for mobile dating apps use were varied. Those interviewees that had experience with mobile dating apps were looking for close human connections with very different “qualities”; these qualities were defined in many more diverse ways than the stereotypical ideas of romance promised by much of the marketing of mobile dating apps. As Tara argued: “These ideas about intimacy and love they are selling. . . Maybe you are not looking for love, maybe you are just looking for someone to hug.” Moreover, there was a general tendency to approach the commercial operations of mobile dating apps critically, seeking to distance themselves from monetizing activities.
Mobile dating apps mattered not only for their functionality in building close connections, interviewees made clear they matter because of their intense presence in everyday life. Those interviewees familiar with using mobile dating apps routinely checked them during the day, such as when commuting, to “kill time.” As Tara argued, “You just go with it unintentionality, just like changing television channels.” Checking mobile dating apps is a “fun,” “playful,” and “entertaining” action that distracts from other activities, such as work or paying attention during lectures. There is a feeling of achievement when using them: Suzy enjoyed executing her carefully constructed strategic “protocol” of whom to select and respond to first; others found that having many people wanting to connect with them was “a boost for the ego” making them feel attractive and wanted (Fritz, Tara). Many interviewees argued that it feels good to see so many people “out there” potentially looking to build close connections, yet no immediate pressure exists to engage in a conversation or go on a date. Oftentimes, fantasizing about potentially connecting with someone was already gratifying. Mobile dating apps’ presence in the routine of everyday life feels exciting, enjoyable, and even relaxed at best. As we will discuss later, their presence can also become intense in less positive ways.
Bob, Sheila, and Louisa had never used mobile dating apps, yet they felt how they were very present in their social surroundings, up to the point of being “dominant”—which is why mobile dating apps also mattered to them. Bob noticed the growing popularity but disliked how they “capitalize on how people relate to each other emotionally.” Bob took a strong moral stance of what he thought was a problematic commercialization of intimacy threatening “authentic love.” Louisa worried about safety and wondered why mobile dating apps have been “widely, passively accepted so suddenly.” Sheila wondered whether she should start using mobile dating apps, doubting whether it would still be possible for her to not use them when looking for a date nowadays.
Possibilities and Vulnerabilities
Which mobile dating apps to use was a strategic deliberation for some interviewees, depending on which data-driven operations they thought work best for a particular need. Suzy, who is seeking someone to marry, uses four different mobile dating apps because “[each] targets different people.” Suzy particularly likes OkCupid: “They ask you a lot of questions; I answered over a hundred, so if they tell you ‘you have a 90% match with someone,’ it is actually a match; it is true.” Suzy likes “complex algorithms”; Fritz argues that such algorithms are smart, as they put “mathematics into looking for love.” Both Suzy and Fritz saw the mathematical mind-set as efficient to support their rational, goal-driven attitude to dating (Illouz 2012).
Data analysis, as interpreted by the interviewees, is first and foremost functional; it helps to manage the “huge pool” of possible connections (Tara). Moreover, a complex algorithm gives a sense of credibility and safety; it creates selective barriers, making you feel in control, as the experience would otherwise be too overwhelming—how would you choose between so many partners without mathematical selection? While the simplicity of Tinder’s swipe logic might be very different than OkCupid’s mathematical mind-set—it is entertaining and not much effort is needed to subscribe—a gamification mind-set to dating might equally be goal-driven. As Virginia argued, Tinder might be a better choice when you are looking to just “troll, have fun, and look around.”
The appreciated functionalities of data and algorithmic processing by several interviewees show how data-driven media are a useful technology when people are looking for intimacy, they are in that sense opening up new possibilities. Yet interviewees also showed deeper existential attachments to datafication, beyond mere functionality, when interpreting mobile dating apps’ presence in their everyday lives as being “intense.” They then referred to the emotional intensity of the seemingly never-ending number of people with whom you can connect. Tara and Alexis disconnected from mobile dating apps as they felt they could not cope anymore; Tara found them “draining”; Alexis found that they were adding stress to her life: “It was just a few things that were adding up; I was stressed at work, and I couldn’t use that at that time; it wasn’t worth it.”
Adding “stress” is one of the ways mobile dating apps make people vulnerable. Another way was how interviewees also mentioned they experienced being objectified through mobile dating apps, which they felt as being made into a thing for others’ sexual use rather being seen as a person with agency (Attwood 2018, 64). Finally, mobile dating apps create vulnerabilities because they generate continuous—and always greater—expectations: You expect to meet someone; you expect to receive matches in the morning when you get up; you expect to have a good time. But these expectations are very difficult to meet in reality, which frustrates you. Instead, you are continuously disappointed and like say, ‘God, not another boring man, a misogynistic, sexist man’ (Virginia).
These expectations throw users into an existential mode in which they are continuously reminded they long for intimacy, shaped by often idealized images of love and romance: “In the idealized image of their relation, desire will lead to love, which will make a world for desire’s endurance” (Berlant 2012, 6–7). The continuous stream of potential connections and the quantified metrics that mobile dating apps use to describe the “strength” of the match create the desire for more and the desire for better-matching metrics (Kennedy and Hill 2018). The continuous connections people are introduced to bring excitement, hope, disappointment, and fear at the same time. Moreover, desires are intensified when mobile dating app are naturalized as objective, accurate and immutable interventions in the process of building close connections.
Interviewees such as Bella, Fritz, Tara, and Virginia made clear, each in their own way, how much is expected from them: they feel pressured not to be single anymore, they feel pressured to be desirable. To meet these expectations, so they argue, mobile dating apps feel inevitable. Bob, Sheila and Louisa who never used mobile dating apps experience the same pressures; mobile dating apps are perceived to be needed when you want to go on a date. As Tara explained, without mobile dating apps, it is intimidating to put yourself “out there.” Louisa claimed mobile dating apps might be responding “to a need that we might not have had before.” Louisa is stubbornly resistant to using mobile dating apps, yet she reflected on their popularity regularly, finding it remarkable that mobile dating apps have managed to make themselves needed for so many of her friends when they want to go on a date.
Many of the vulnerabilities the interviewees echoed are related to how love is being institutionalized in modern societies, but equally how love and desire are psychological experiences in which imagination plays a key role. Psychologist Ben-Ze’ev (2004) has argued that online dating is particularly seductive because of the mediated nature of the interaction, which brings excitement and pleasure, yet also illusion and disappointment. Remarkably, the promise of mobile dating app’s great potential was meaningful to those interviewees that used mobile dating apps, while equally to those who stopped using them, or never used mobile dating apps. Mobile dating apps are making big promises to their users; they are promised they will finally meet someone with the help of algorithmic magic.
Despite the interviewees showing a dependency to mobile dating apps and their data-driven capabilities, this dependency did not re-define their intimate selves. A dependency to mobile dating apps is not about losing one’s autonomy but it is about managing fantasy, about merging fantasy with reality. Data-driven infrastructures and their algorithmic operations are not just technological objects that produce social knowledge, they also operate at the level of fantasy and desire (Larkin 2013), the desire for mastering love, and the existential search for “authentic” intimacy.
Disorientation and Naturalization
Mobile dating apps are profoundly disorienting at times and making them feel “natural” and “habitual” in everyday life is, as the interviewees explained, a continuous struggle that comes at a cost. The managing of fantasies and desires is not only about an individual, practical and ethical orientation around mobile dating apps, it is about navigating an intimate co-existence with others.
A dependency to mobile dating apps, as Louisa explained, comes at the cost of navigating all kinds of risks and harms that where related to how people regularly objectified others on mobile dating apps. Data-driven media are, in a theoretical sense, constituting people into typified data subjects (Cheney-Lippold 2017), which was experienced by many interviewees as a general feeling of becoming the object of another user’s fantasy and desire. For example, algorithms and data are technologies focusing on servicing individualized user needs which, as Lika argued; “makes you not consider the feelings of the other person; it is a service provided to you, and you are the center and it satisfies your needs.”
Most interviewees talked about how sexism and misogyny are destructive social outcomes of objectification on mobile dating apps. Yet they also explained how they developed tactics to oppose them. For example, as an Asian woman Tara felt fetishized, Suzy regularly received unsolicited dick pics and rude sexual proposals that mocked the Christian values mentioned on her profile. Yet, mobile dating apps were also found empowering to resist sexism and misogyny; several interviewees coped with these experiences by mocking such behavior with friends, often through dedicated WhatsApp group chats, or even by shaming such behavior on public Instagram accounts (Sundén and Paasonen 2018).
The experience of data-driven media organizing people as individualized data subjects may feel profoundly disorienting. Although interviewees moved in and outside of data subjectification, such coping mechanisms do not rework dependency and the continuous labor the needs to be done to merge fantasy with a disappointing reality.
Mobile dating apps, however, are not about loss, the loss of a subject that is pre data-driven, but about making life in a city like London more familiar. For the interviewees, life in London was seen as lonely, isolating, and alienating despite so many people living together (Hutter 2015). Fritz argued that in such contexts, mobile dating apps are playing an important role: I think it is more a psychological help [using mobile dating apps]; it gives you some comfort to not be sad and feel lonely. Especially in a big city, you can feel really alone. Dating apps give the illusion that there is always an opportunity. Even if you do not need a relationship, you feel good about the idea that there are 100 possible matches available. It gives you that feeling of being safe. You feel comfort about the idea that ‘ooh my personal life is not a total failure because look at all my matches’.
Fritz’s comments should be seen in the context of his position as a single international student recently arrived in London (this context is more or less the same for all of the interviewees), yet it is interesting to witness how mobile dating apps were naturalized as technologies to deal with loneliness, isolation and alienation. Mobile dating apps helped Fritz to overcome everyday anxieties, which is how mobile dating apps, for most interviewees, where not reducible to their mere functionalities. Mobile dating apps satisfy people when they reduce anxiety (e.g., by offering data-driven predictability, convenience, objectivity), yet they also sustain and intensify feelings of loneliness, isolation and alienation at the same time. For example, Tara was dissatisfied with mobile dating apps; she found the cost of coping with being objectified through data to be too high, she found their intense presence in her daily life, the sexism she encountered, to be draining. She decided to stop using mobile dating apps, but she held on to the sense of security that mobile dating apps provide, as she found comfort in the idea that she could always reinstall them: “I was disappointed by the apps, but they will always be there for me. I can always reinstall them and the profile will still be there.” (Tara)
Alexis, like Tara, stopped using mobile dating apps, which reduced the stress she had while using them, yet it also meant giving up on the feeling of familiarity they provided in everyday life. Alexis pointed out that the need to naturalize mobile dating apps is strong. She argued this is why many of her female friends, despite “getting things they do not want” (she referred to misogyny and regularly receiving unsolicited dick picks), continued with using mobile dating apps. Alexis’ comment illustrates how many people in her surroundings seem to be thrown by whether mobile dating apps can build meaningful intimacy at all, and a strong desire to use them anyway, to make the deeply digital, calculated and high paced modern environment in which they live feel more familiar.
Discussion and Conclusion
I have been exploring the ways in which data-driven media are producing social knowledge on intimacy by understanding it as a mathematical mind-set to the process of building close human connections. This mind-set is mainly characterized by a commercialized and rationalized approach to building intimacy: predictable, controllable and convenient. The datafication of intimacy refers to how people are increasingly seeing a need for building intimate relationships in a “mathematical” way. This need is driven by the popularity and large-scale adoption of mobile dating apps, by cultural expectations, and by the speed of modern life.
This mathematical mind-set is most obviously illustrated when people put a lot of trust in metrics for deciding with whom to go on a date, such as Suzy with her strategic protocol and Fritz’ reliance on “smart” algorithms. Yet, equally when not having too many expectations, when turning the process into a playful game, or participated in when feeling bored, it drives on the same mathematical mind-set of collecting and analyzing data, equally offering predictability, controllability and convenience. A mathematical mind-set to dating is in fact a relationship of interdependency (Couldry and Hepp 2017, 125) between a data-driven economy and people relying on data-driven promises of accuracy and objectivity for going on a date.
One of the social outcomes of how datafication governs intimacy, is the way female interviewees felt objectified. Being categorized as a measurable type felt as becoming the object of another user’s fantasy, making some men feel as if they could live their misogynistic and sexist fantasies without the need for considering the boundaries of other users. The social outcomes of datafication are thus clearly not so new, building on, for example, same-old gendered power struggles. The way datafication governs intimacy does not exist in isolation, solely as an “effect” of data-driven technology, but it merges with the already established struggles present in people’s everyday life-worlds. This was also made clear by how mobile dating apps intensified existing cultural expectations for living “wild” romances, followed by a desire for finding the “perfect” relationship.
Interviewees negotiated the social knowledge the datafication of intimacy produces by questioning the commercialized and rationalized logic of mobile dating apps. The logic in which mobile dating apps operate was most stubbornly rejected by Bob and Louisa, they acknowledged the popularity of mobile dating apps, but refused to use them. Those interviewees that had experience with using mobile dating apps negotiated data-driven algorithms by continuously moving in and out. They tried different mobile dating apps to see which worked best for their needs, or stopped using them altogether, to maybe return later. It is clear that data-driven technology intervenes in the process of building close human connections, but it did not colonize interviewees’ intimacies. In everyday life these mathematical interventions must be understood as temporal, their interventions are limited to an engagement with specific algorithmic spaces. People skillfully cope by moving in and out of these algorithmically defined temporalities and spaces.
Yet it is important to emphasize that there is more to the datafication of intimacy than their algorithmic interventions. I have observed how mobile dating apps are emotional forces in everyday life building desires, expectations, ideals, anxieties, and eventually existential meditations on how digital technologies have become environmental to building close human connections. The burden of these existential questions was not bounded by mobile dating app use, but rather by the shared experience of living in a deeply digital, calculated and high paced modern environment: all interviewees where looking to make their world more familiar. The idea of being dependent on mobile dating apps is thus not so much a utilitarian issue, but an existential burden of people’s digital lifeworld (Lagerkvist 2017), which was mainly about managing the fantasies and desires of the technological promises made by mobile dating apps.
The collective stakes of mobile dating apps are not about a threat to “authentic” intimacy. Intimacy was already bound up in conventions and institutions before the moment of datafication. Also, people seem to skillfully navigate mobile dating apps’ affordances in many different ways, related to their individual needs, expectations and identities (Byron and Albury 2018; Ferris and Duguay 2020). Collectively, we do not seem to lose control over the process of building close human connections because of datafication. In fact, mobile dating apps provide people with unseen possibilities for meaningful reflection; desires, expectations, ideals and anxieties are powerful experiences, and they may build valuable knowledge about our intimate co-existence with others, as well as with technology. These collective stakes, however, do not produce generalizable experiences, these experiences are dependent on people’s subject positions and contexts. Therefore, I believe there is a need to further explore what it means when data-driven technologies are infrastructures for being (Frosh 2018); this would mean better understanding how people engage with mobile dating apps as symbolic forces, as objects of attention and discourse, central to people’s experiences of everyday life.
Footnotes
Author Note
Sander De Ridder is now affiliated to University of Antwerp, Antwerp.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author received funding for the research of this article by the Research Foundation Flanders.
