Judging books by their covers – Tinder interface, usage and sociocultural implications

Abstract

Public discourse on Tinder depicts the dating app as marking the end of traditional – as well as healthy – notions of love and romance, permeating them with a logic of consumption and commodification. Our article offers a close reading of the Tinder user interface in order to inquire into how – and in how far – the contours of such commodity culture can be traced into the design and usage of the app. Guided by critical and Foucauldian theory, we indeed find strong objectifying tendencies built into the interface. However, these tendencies are riddled with contradictions and ambiguities. Thus, while the emphasis on the visual exacerbates pressures for users to meet bodily norms of beauty, it also reinvigorates embodied intuition and ‘gut feeling’, the loss of which has been critiqued in studies on more traditional forms of online dating. Furthermore, whereas the swipe gesture appears paradigmatic of a binary consume-and/or-discard attitude, Tinder’s monetising strategies indicate the users’ wish to amend and repair this attitude. Lastly, the aesthetics of the database feed a desire of ‘swiping on’ that is insatiable. However, building on existing research, we see the consequent flattening out of personal relations on Tinder to merely displace the longing for love and romance to a sphere beyond the app’s reach.