Mediatized Love: A Materialist Phenomenology of Tinder

Abstract

The article scrutinizes the mediatization of dating and love as part of a broader mediatization process of the life-world, with a focus on the experience of using the popular dating app Tinder. Central to the analysis is how interfacial features, algorithmic structuration, and user perceptions create the affordances of the application and, in the process, shape the experience of using it. The experience of using Tinder is characterized by a “swipe logic,” marked by speediness, visuality, and (self-)objectification, but also by the prevalence of cynicism and boredom on the platform. Under these circumstances, users of Tinder are confronted with new challenges, and to tackle these, they make use of their life-world knowledge as well as creating novel forms of knowledge. While using Tinder, they apply and modify their life-world stock of knowledge. Tinder as a tool of online dating is marked by the duality of reflectivity versus impulsive affectivity, superficiality versus depth, and instrumentality versus striving for relations thought of as authentic. All in all, the mediatization of partner selection is interpreted as a special form of the colonization of the life-world.