Geolocating the stranger: the mapping of uncertainty as a configuration of matching and warranting techniques in dating apps

Abstract

Geolocation as an increasingly common technique in dating apps is often portrayed as a way of configuring uncertainty that facilitates playful interaction with unknown strangers while avoiding subjecting the user to unwanted risks. Geolocation features are used in these apps on the one hand as matching techniques that created links between the user and potential partners through geographical location, and on the other as warranting techniques that can help a user to determine whether to trust a given profile. Tracing a trajectory from Georg Simmel's figure of the stranger as intrinsic to modern urban culture, through Stanley Milgram's familiar stranger as an inspiration for the infrastructure of social networking sites, to a consideration of the double perspective of overview and embedment inherent in geolocation's ability to map, we identify the stalker as an emblematic figure that appears not as a threatening Other, but rather as our own doubling.

Analysis of the Motivation and Effect of Using Dating Apps: a Literature Review

“…The eighth, the effect of using dating applications allows users to explore unfamiliar territory with a feeling of being controlled by applications that seek to protect users from stalkers (Kristin Veel & Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, 2017). However, the possibility of a stalker is undeniable, and the user (himself) is a stalker who is considered dangerous to others (Kristin Veel & Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, 2017).…”

The Routledge Handbook of Mobile Socialities

“…Users' information-seeking actions become a mode of surveillance. Veel and Thylstrup (2018) draw on Simmel's approach to the stranger as a figure of urban modernity who is both symbolised and determined by 'a state of detachment from every given point in space' (Simmel [1908(Simmel [ ] 1971. Redolent of the flâneur, Simmel's stranger is simultaneously 'attached' and 'detached', by inhabiting our space while not part of our social group.…”

“…This geo-tracking affordance offers opportunities to experiment with the alignment of anonymity and physical proximity. Veel and Thylstrup (2018) distinguish between the use of physical proximity as a technique for matching users (to generate some connection between the user and potential partners) and as a warranting technique (to find ways to manage the discrepancies, provoked by coded virtual profiles, between performance and authenticity). These 'matching' and 'warranting' techniques enable users to decide whether to trust the virtual profile.…”

“…Matching and warranting are, then, intertwined. Sometimes they work in alignment and often they contradict one another (Veel and Thylstrup 2018). This raises questions about how far users are prepared to follow or resist the app's algorithmically coded social norms.…”

What’s really ‘Happning’? A forensic analysis of Android and iOS Happn dating apps

“…From there, the user can view brief descriptions, pictures or other information uploaded by the user. While this is a convenient way of connecting strangers ( Sumter and Vandenbosch, 2019;Veel and Thylstrup, 2018 ), it could make Happn users more vulnerable to predatory behavior, such as stalking ( Lee, 2018;Murphy, 2018;Scannell, 2019;Tomaszewska and Schuster, 2019 ). In addition, it was recently reported that activities on popular dating apps appeared to have increased in the recent COVID-19 lockdowns, as more users are staying and working from home 2 .…”