This week I read the article “‘Tindersluts” and “Tinderellas”: Examining the Digital Affordances Shaping the (Hetero)Sexual Scripts of Young Womxn on Tinder” by MacKenzie A. Christensen. The article discusses how the gamification of Tinder has changed how people interact with each other. People talk to each other completely differently on Tinder than in real life. I used dating apps when I was a freshman in college, and I absolutely noticed those differences. When I got Tinder, one of my female friends sat down with me and told me about how social conventions are different on Tinder than in real life. She told me that male presenting people should text first, and a few other things that matched up with Tinder conventions from the article. I found the conventions extremely dated compared to how we interact with people in real life. One example of this is the Barstool WSU Instagram page. Every Tuesday, they post Tinder screenshots from WSU students. All of the texts are much more upfront than people would normally talk to each other outside of the internet. I believe that most of this is because the mentality of Tinder is different than in real life. People are treated as disposable on Tinder. From the first interaction, you can easily choose to discard a person based on their physical appearance. Even if you do match with someone, the interactions are still fairly anonymous and can easily be ignored at any time. This makes it easier for some people to say things that aren’t socially acceptable in other formats.
One thing that I thought was interesting in the article was that it said that men are praised for hooking up with women and women are slut-shamed. This is something that I have witnessed in my time at college. I used to live in an all male dorm, and the people that I lived with would engage in discussions about the hookups that they had. This behavior is extremely antiquated and Tinder has served to encourage this behavior. Going back to what I was saying earlier, the Barstool WSU page shows the same behavior. It is treated like a joke, and people in the comments think that it is funny. The men's names are all blurred out.
One other thing that I thought was interesting is that older college students tended to go on more formal dates over hookups. This is something that I have noticed with my peers. As we grow closer and closer to graduation, most of my friends are either in a long term relationship or are not using Tinder. When I was a freshman, there were a lot of my friends on Tinder. It was more common to be on Tinder than to not be. Now, I would say that most of my friends are in a long term relationship. Most of the long term relationships that my friends are in were not started on Tinder to my knowledge. Tinder is primarily used for hookups, and it makes it hard for those of us who are looking for a long term and meaningful relationship.
Comments