Dating Apps and Social Distancing
Online dating applications have been positioned as the most effective response to the current social distancing measures, considerably increasing both the supply of the sector and the demand of the users.
Intimate spaces
Since social interactions are limited exclusively to virtual space, In today’s intimate spaces, technology plays a fundamental role in our current intimate spaces. This type of experiences, consequently brings the rationalization of the desire, that is no longer determined by the unconscious, but by a conscious choice based on previously calculated parameters that precede in time and relevance one’s own feelings.
Our goal
Off Love aims to offer a reflection on the standardized and repetitive model proposed by the digital market where emotions are exposed to public manipulation, limiting and fragmenting our capacity for emotional closeness.
Do you want to know what dating apps hide?
Romantic Consumerism
The search for romantic love through online dating applications is currently an important consumer vector in the digital market.
The communication and interaction parameters used in virtual emotional relationships respond to hierarchical structures typical of marketing where each click made by the user creates a financial incentive that perpetuates a system of sentimental superficiality.
Standardized Behaviour
Algorithms determine the interest of the users depending on their choices and their online behaviour. These predictions are made through the use of cookies as part of a browser tracking scheme that recreates detailed information about ourselves. The information is based on an enormous amount of data that we provide through the use of our phones. This decision-making process does not require any human participation.
Persuasive technologies
All our information is monitored, tracked, measured and recorded, building a fairly accurate base model of who we are and predicting what kind of emotions can affect us. These types of technologies gradually and practically imperceptibly modify our emotional behavior.
Love corpse factory
The overexposure of the users through a personal photograph accompanied by 200 characters, reduces their existence to the simple fact of being exposed. They are products ready for immediate use. One can come to believe that the capacity for love grows with accumulated experiences, that the next love will be more stimulating, although not as exciting and fascinating as the one that will come later. Sentimental expectations fluctuate rapidly and the temptation to fall in love is as present as the temptation to dissolve the meeting.
Rationalization of emotions
The virtual proximity posed by dating apps is based on a technology of assumptions about how to understand the self and how to build a sociability through affective compatibility, forcing an emotional behaviour guided by an algorithmic computation that, presupposes our preferences, but that has actually nothing to do with the way we feel. The satisfaction is instantaneous and the results do not require any prolonged effort.
Consequences
The apparent endless freedom promoted by this type of application is linked to an excessive narcissism that generates a tiered system where affective bonds are considered as a hedonistic object of easy consumption. Most users experience feelings of addiction, insecurity, fear, anxiety, depression, uncertainty, shame, or disappointment at some point.
What happens on the cognitive level?
18% of accounts are hacked for illegitimate purposes such as identity and data theft
25% of users are personally harassed or intimidated
40% of users receive messages or images with explicit sexual content that they did not ask for
50% of the profiles are configured as fake accounts to scam other users
72% of users lie about themselves to appear more attractive
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