More than the selfie: online dating, non-monogamy, normativity, and linked profiles on OkCupid (original) (raw)
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A Rhetorician's Guide to Love: Online Dating Profiles as Remediated Commonplace Books
Computers and Composition, 2014
This project considers ways online daters "write themselves" into the role of dater and offers grounding of this rhetorical work with direct comparisons to historic commonplace books. Despite the promise of interactive, dynamic online spaces to provide full and malleable online dating ads, Match.com profiles offer relatively little agency for identity creation and performance and are actually remarkably close to "old media" practices for writing identity. Paying particular attention to template design and linguistic and visual commonplaces that inform genre expectations for gendered identity performances in this space, this rhetorical analysis focuses on the author's online dating profile. The piece first situates commonplace books as textual identity production and then posits Match.com as a remediation of the gendered commonplace book practice wherein modern daters negotiate tensions between master narratives concerning gender performances and the desire to transcend limiting normative heterosexual gender roles. Specifically, when comparing these remediated dating commonplace books to their Victorian era predecessors, I consider dependence on limited, normative views of gender, the use of scripts and visual and linguistic commonplaces, the public nature of a privately crafted identity performance, and the focus on future, desired roles and identities rather than present identities. The piece offers an insider look at the Match.com community and focuses specifically on the power of Match.com design templates and site conventions to shape and limit daters' identity representations via the use of pull-down menus and linguistic and visual cues reinforcing normative heterosexual gender roles for dating.
Beyond the Female Love-Male Sex Binary: A Non-representational Approach to Online Dating
Kültür ve İletişim, 2021
Based on a critical literature review, this paper reveals that online dating studies on heterosexual users' motivations and mate preferences reproduce two gendered as well as heteronormative arguments. First, women use dating technologies for seeking love whereas men prefer them for arranging casual sex activities. Second, men are inclined to prioritize physical appearance while women tend to value status during mate selection or swiping in e-dating language. The article calls these beauty-status and love-sex dichotomies as the female love-male sex binary which has become a persistent myth through a continuous reproduction. This critical literature review problematizes the binary logic embedded in the literature on heterosexual online dating. To move beyond such duality, it suggests an affective turn which attracts the attention to the mostly neglected things in e-dating studies which focus on heterosexual individuals, namely the body, its capacity, and the affectivity of non-human things like atmospheres as well as images. Among various inspiring techniques in non-representational methodologies, it proposes video reenactment, cyberflaneur or technical walkthrough, and sensory writing techniques to study the online dating phenomenon and to understand motivations as well as swiping strategies of heterosexual online daters.
Love and Sex in the Digital Age: A Semiotic Perspective
Love and Sex in the Digital Age: A Semiotic Perspective, 2019
This second issue of our journal addresses an uneasy topic. It is uneasy exactly because it is too easy to speak about love and sex and yet say nothing. It is uneasy because there has not been tremendous academic interest in this topic within the field of humanities and social sciences, and contributions to the field have thus been sporadic and unsystematic. Moreover, it is uneasy because, compared to other aspects of our everyday life, love and sex concern our being in a way that it is difficult to observe in a neutral or scientific way. However, we are here: organizing a small conference on the consequences for love and sex upon the advent of the internet and digital technologies. We could not resist engaging this topic because our program as a research center concerns the cultural changes of the digital age, and we can hardly think of another sphere of life more affected by the development of digital communications technologies. In our preliminary research we have identified no less than six huge areas of semiotic interest (being helped by Sanders & Co, 2018): - Cyber dating and hookup culture - Erotica, pornography websites, and videogames - Webcamming, hidden cams, and online voyeurism - Sex workers’ platforms, websites, and forums - Digitally engineered sex - The dark side of the net: cyberbullying, online pedophilia, revenge porn, etc. In his paper “The Semiotics of the Face in Digital Dating: A Research Direction,” Massimo Leone is concerned with the problem of whether or not the human face will lose its aura as a result of the digital manipulations popular on dating sites. The first part of this paper offers a profound analysis of the face's semiotic essence and its role in the sociosemiotic reality of the everyday life. Then the analysis focuses on seductive behavior and the crucial role that the face performs in seduction. This analysis' depth comes from the comparative approach between humans and primates, where the face is seen as a communicative project. The second part develops the context in which images of the face are used on digital dating sites. Leone explores the possibility of digital dating faces' typology, wherein the degree of idealization varies. The semiotic tools of such idealization include make-up techniques (including modifications like false moles), a number of seductive facial expressions, and an infinity of digitally-assisted improvements or augmented reality effects used on the face. One representative of the new generation of semioticians – Gianmarco Giuliana – has developed an original and innovative approach to account for the use of love and sex in video games. His perspective is part of a new general approach that tries to overcome the limits of structural semiotics by analyzing the video-ludic experience, going beyond the textual occurrence of the potential or accomplished game. Love and sex are entwined with all the major semiotic aspects of video games. In his paper “I kissed an NPC and I liked it: Love and Sexuality in Digital Games,” Giuliana divides his study in semiotic typology into the representation, enactment, and economy of love and sex. The impressive variety of digital sexuality in gaming is explained and theoretically classified on the basis of a huge list of video games, tracing the field from its origins to the latest products of VR immersive experience. Following this young Italian scholar's line of analysis, we may expect that the role of love in the video games—and the role of sex in particular—is destined to increase and bring a qualitative leap to the market of experience. In his paper “Technology selling sex versus sex selling technology,” Konstantinos Michos (who is a PhD candidate from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) investigates advertising in the digital commerce of sexual and technological devices. His case study compares two extreme cases with a mirrored structure: that of the sexual device Lovense promoted through a website with a multimodal technological rhetoric, and a retailer brand that sells conventional technological products using heavy sexual (and even pornographic) rhetoric to advertise its offer. The author proposes a model that poses sex and technology as two extremities on a semiotic axis. We can position the huge variety of commercial appeals for the examined products and services along the semiotic axis. The paper of young Algerian researcher Mega Afaf is unique in our collection. It is situated between academic research and an anti-pornography feminist manifesto, and represents a strong ethical stance. For this reason the paper has been approved with certain reservations on the part of reviewers. However, we insisted on keeping it because this woman's brave act, coming from El Oued to Sozopol with all the obstacles of her socio-cultural reality. Her presence made our conference more valuable and significant. Shortly after announcing the call for papers, our journal was heavily criticized on Facebook by two or three feminists for having only male keynote speakers. Given the topic of our conference, they were quite right to raise the ethical issue of gender participation. The argument that these feminists did not want to accept was the fact that, as organizers, we made consistent efforts to invite two teams of female researchers from Leicester and Glasgow and a professor form UAS/Prague, all authors of important books on the transformation of love and sex in the digital age. These scholars were not available at the beginning of September, as is the case with many academics. More concretely, Mega Afaf's paper begins with a historical reading of the feminist movement's socio-cultural implications as read through Juri Lotman's semiotic model (as presented in the 2009 book from Culture and Explosion). She situates the phenomenon of pornography within this theoretical frame and, contrary to some currents in feminism, sees it as entirely negative and counterproductive for the feminist cause, as a modern form of civilized slavery. Can we talk about the “touristification of love” and of “lovification of tourism”? Questions about love and tourism motivate the research entitled “Sex of Place. Mediated Intimacy and Tourism Imaginaries,” by the young Italian PhD candidate Elsa Soro, presently working in Barcelona. Her fieldwork takes place on Tinder, and she analyzes the ways people increase their sex appeal and construct seductive strategies using images of touristic places and activities in their Tinder profiles. The study starts from a strong empirical observation: in the last few decades, global tourist activities have increased exponentially, at a rate that mimics the uptake of internet platforms for dating. The number of traveling people and the number of dating people has not only increased, but there is also an important lifestyle overlap between the two trends, suggesting there is solid ground for the cultural implications of this socio-economic reality. Soro makes a sociosemiotic typology of ways of being a tourist and performing tourism in Tinder profile pictures, which not only helps to decode the phenomenon but may also be used as a guide for performing a successful seduction strategy. Francesco Piluso from the University of Bologna gives an excellent example of semiotic critique in the tradition of Barthes, Eco, and Baudrillard. In his paper “From sexual community to exclusive sex: Semiotic translation on gay chat and dating applications,” Piluso applies the semiotic method to one of the greatest expressions of present-day social media capitalism: dating platforms. According to the young Italian scholar, LGBTQ dating apps like Grindr and PalnetRomeo make use of LGBTQ community capital to transform it into a heteronormative, individualized product of consumption to maximize profits. Apparently platforms like these are inclusive and community oriented, but an examination of their internal structure and hidden ideology reveals that they promote individualistic sexual experiences in a very neoliberal way, driven by profit-oriented filters. These platforms thus commodify (i.e. re-appropriate and assimilate) the core values of the LGBTQ community, namely the acceptance of the individual difference. This commodification takes place through the list of participants' qualities, qualities like weight, height, colour of skin, eyes, hair, and even the dimension of a user's genitals. Rather than a research paper, Mihail Vuzharov’s “UX & FOMO. Looking for Love or Looking for Options?” is an informative and analytical review of the latest trends in internet experience, with an explicit ethical stance and sound forecasts for the near future. It also contains a list of the most memorable phrases pronounced by the participants of the XXIII EFSS conference. One of the important things in this paper is the further elaboration of the notion (inspired by Eco’s reader model) of the “model user”, already introduced by Vuzharov in previous publications. Concerning love and sex, Vuzharov discusses the general behavioral trend among millennials (as well as other groups) of FOMO – the "Fear Of Missing Out" – as relates to new forms of sexuality and intimacy that emerged after the widespread adoption of dating apps. “Fomosexuality” is a term used to speak about the commodification of our relationships, love, sex, and affection, topics widely discussed during the conference. Kristian Bankov's paper, “The Pleasure of the Hypertext,” is an updated version of the already-published chapter in book, The Garden of Roses III: Lectures and Speeches (2007-2014), edited by prof. Bogdan Bogdanov. This is a reflection on the shift from the age of the “cult of the text” (of which Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text, 1973 is emblematic), and the age of the Hypertext (which is more or less the last two decades), wherein the cultural impact of the internet and digital technologies is devastating.
Gender Performance Discourse on Tinder Profile Pictures in London, Uk – a Social Semiotics Study
Bricolage : Jurnal Magister Ilmu Komunikasi
Cyclical and bidirectional relationship(s) between technology and today’s romantic gratifications have reformed how people seek romance. On another end, gender performances largely underpin humans’ romantic gratification. This is where Tinder, as a dating application, affords unique opportunities for those seeking romances through portraying gender performances. A number of studies concluded that, in romance-seeking ventures, male’s masculinity and female’s femininity generally remained conformist to their respective biological attributes. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate nuances of gender performances portrayed in dating apps such as Tinder. Since Tinder profile picture, as a form of visual text, is a source rife with gender performance cues, this study focused on the visual component – profile pictures. Profile Picture Protocol (PPP), derived from notable social semiotics frameworks, was established. This study revealed that, albeit a major affinity towards more saturated b...
Algorithmic heteronormativity: Powers and pleasures of dating and hook-up apps
Sexualities
We propose the concept of algorithmic heteronormativity to describe the ways in which dating apps' digital architectures are informed by and perpetuate normative sexual ideologies. Situating our intervention within digital affordance theories and grounding our analysis in walkthroughs of several popular dating apps' (e.g., Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge) interfaces, promotional materials, and ancillary media, we identify four normative sexual ideologies-gendered desire, hetero and homonormativity, mononormativity, and shame-that manifest in specific features, including gender choice, compatibility surveys, and private chat. This work builds on earlier digital culture theorizing by explicitly articulating the reciprocal and gradational linkages between existing moral codes, digital infrastructures, and individual behaviors, which in the contemporary context work jointly to narrow the horizon of intimate possibility.
An interdisciplinary book, Internet-Infused Romantic Interactions and Dating Practices, under contract with the publishing house of the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, aims to analyze intricacies of internet-infused romantic interactions and dating practices. The proposed collection aims to include contributions from communication scholars, social scientists, computer scientists, humanities scholars and design experts whose research and practice will shed light on the romantic interplay of affect, cognition, and behavior on the internet with special attention given to social media platforms such as Tinder, Facebook, Grinder, and OkCupid. The collection would aim to offer an array of international perspectives and methodological novelties and feature a volume of scientific research and practice from a multitude of disciplines and interdisciplinary outlooks. Quantitative as well as qualitative empirical research, theoretical essays and research reviews are all welcome. We aim to provide the readers with a theoretical and methodological assortment that is sensitive towards various approaches to the study of intimate relationships and romance as reflected in new media-from discourse analysis to visual network analysis; from in-depth interviews to experimental designs; from ethnographic observations to cross-sectional and longitudinal survey studies.
Polyamory: Gender and non-monogamy on the Internet
Identities have an advantage and a disadvantage, all rolled into one: it is through identity that one can engage in identity politics and the reclaiming of rights and recognition; but it is also through them that one becomes a subject, and thus becomes subjected to normalization. The ability to engage in identity politics is the ability to exert power, but also the unavoidability of having power being exerted upon those who do so.
Negotiating gender scripts in mobile dating apps: between affordances, usage norms and practices
Information, Communication & Society, 2020
The paper explores the perception and negotiation of gender representations and scripts among Italian dating app users. Adopting a gender perspective and a socio-technical framework, it describes how dating app affordances support the performance of gender scripts and explores how users negotiate gender scripts. We conducted 8 focus groups involving 39 dating app users from a variety of gender and sexual orientations. The results show how shared usage norms and practices disclose dominant gender scripts at play, and illustrate how some users try to subvert them. Participants are aware of a number of traditional and stereotypical gender scripts and broadly adhere to them; nevertheless, such scripts are partially reframed in the context of dating apps. Dating apps are mainly understood in terms of affordances, when participants highlight the ways in which they or their mates reduce the incidence of traditional scripts. On the other hand, dating apps' constraints emerge when some users try to detach themselves from common scripts, or when they struggle to perform traditional scripts in a context they perceive as inadequate. Results highlight how dating app users negotiate gender scripts: affordances and constraints of dating apps shape user practices and influence the performance and 'de-inscription' of gender scripts, without directly fostering the adoption of alternative scripts.
The Commoditized Self: Interpersonal Communication in Tinder Online Dating Apps
I-Pop: International Journal of Indonesian Popular Culture and Communication, 2020
Online dating apps have changed the way people build interpersonal communication, particularly in the way they present and disclose themselves online in order to search for a relationship. The characteristic of online dating apps has urged users to build a rather liquid relationship; hence the transformation of intimacy and user's view of romance, sex, and relationship. In the frame of computer-mediated communication and social informatics, socio-cultural context plays a significant role in shaping the self-presentation and self-disclosure performed by people, in the relation to the dating culture in Indonesia. In the case of Indonesia, this phenomenon is considered unique since the socio-cultural context is rather seeing the 'liquidity' in modern romance as banality and condemning the practice as immoral. This research aims to analyze the Indonesian socio-cultural context in shaping people's self-presentation and self-disclosure in interpersonal communication through online dating apps, particularly Tinder. This research is conducted by a new ethnography method, involving 20 informants who are Indonesian youth active users of online dating apps. The key findings in this research include the contestation between self-agency and self-commodification in the practice of using online dating apps, as well as the shaping of contemporary dating culture among Indonesian youth. Apparently, the contemporary dating culture in Indonesia, also constructed heavily by online dating apps, allows ones to gain sexual revolution in the process of commodifying themselves.
2019 - The Semiotics of the Face in Digital Dating
Arguably, the meaning of the human face is currently changing on a global scale: through the invention and diffusion of new visual technologies (e.g., digital photography, visual filters, as well as software for automatic face recognition); through the creation and establishment of novel genres of face representation (e.g., the selfie); and through new approaches to face perception, reading, and memorization (e.g., the ‘scrolling’ of faces on Tinder). Cognitions, emotions, and actions that people attach to the interaction with one’s and others’ faces might soon be undergoing dramatic shifts. Digital dating social networks are a fundamental arena in orden to understand these new cultural dynamics.