Swiping me off my feet: Explicating relationship initiation on Tinder
Leah LeFebvre
LeFebvre looks into the formation of hook-ups and relationships via the heavily mediated space of Tinder. The great thing about this research is that he directly exposes the methods that go into creating and selecting a mate of Tinder. As we have clearly talked about before, “Attraction relied on pictures and bios,” which is a unique feature of the Tinder app specifically (LeFebvre,15). Using what this author calls the “playing cards method” Tinder’s features have you swipe through a stack of photos, selecting potential mates based on the mediated criteria you entered. This means that the pictures that surface are filtered by the age, gender and location you selected when creating your profile. This affordance is something that is completely unique to online dating- you are able to choose criteria of potential mates before even speaking to them. In offline spaces you have no control over who is around you, where they are from and what ages they are.
This mediated space however does not allow for the spontaneity of face-to-face interactions. LeFebvre writes about this stating that this processes can “…constrict the organic communication occurring face-to-face. These strategic processes deliberately force individuals to select their preferences,”(LeFebvre,12). By doing this you definitely lose a sense of reality and or organic interactions. As I learned through my own interviews, many of the users liked this aspect because it made it easier to select a potential mate, particularly one that is close by. However as we have learned through other research as well, this space can create ingenuine interactions among the users.
Another interested concept introduced in this paper was the idea of anonymity as well as being able to never meet these people in real life. He notes that “Mobile dating apps, such as Tinder, afford users the opportunity to fantasize about anonymous individuals, interpersonal relationships, communicative behaviors, and sexual exploits…”(LeFebvre,6). By not ever having to meet these people in real life it allows for the users to have more freedom in interaction and not feel the anxiety that may come with face-to-face interactions. Two of my respondents even claimed that they liked to use the app less for meeting up in real life and more for “feeling important or attractive”. By not meeting in real life but interacting online people feel validation when they see that they have matched with someone. This type of validation would never be able to occur in an offline setting. You certainly can guess and judge if someone has a crush on you but ultimately you can never know unless they say something. It is even harder to know if someone is attracted to you just from your looks in an offline setting because it goes against social norms to tell strangers you find them attractive. However, on Tinder when you match with someone you can safely assume it has something to do with your looks or your bio and you can know instantly that someone is attracted to you. This validation- I learned through speaking with my respondents- can actually be incredibly helpful.