Screened Intimacy

mobile dating apps, particularly Tinder, are reshaping our understanding and practice of intimacy through their design, specifically the "swipe logic." It contrasts traditional notions of intimacy with the technologically mediated, accelerated, and often superficial connections fostered by these platforms.

1. Introduction

• Tinder as Case Study: we willl study the swipe logic here and destroy it bois!
• Sean Rad's Quote: The quote from Tinder's CEO highlights two key aspects:
  The quote: "It’s a casting session and you’re in the director’s chair . . . At the end of the day, it’s just one big party, and you’re just sitting there saying, ‘Yes, no, yes, no’.” Paradoxically, Rad adds, “The irony of Tinder is that in some ways the lack of information, or text, is actually less superficial than having the information"
  • There's Two observation to make:
  • It projects that "you" are in control, you decide who to date, with the immense amount of speed, and you feel the control and power that it offers, making you stick to the app.
  • It is paradoxical that the fact that the lack of information is more useful than more -> forced to make judgements quickly -> based on other features that a monkey man would like.

2. Intimacy and Affordance

• Traditional Intimacy: Defined by closeness, familiarity, privacy, and duration (rooted in Latin intimatus, intimare, intimus - innermost, make known). It implies depth and time.
• Disruption by Tinder: Does ubiquity (everywhere), immediacy (instant), and acceleration (speed) -> have disturbed and modulated this traditional notion.
• Levitas: Has intimacy ironically embraced qualities like volatility, ethereality (airiness), speed, and featheriness? Is this lightweight, fleeting quality (levitas) now paradoxically conveying a form of intimacy?
• Affordance: What does the technology allow or enable users to do? Tinder's affordances (swiping, image focus, location) shape the interactions.

3. Screened Intimacy & Swipe Logic

• Swipe Logic Defined: This is central. It's the pace or increased viewing speed encouraged by Tinder's User Interface (UI/UX). This pace becomes a defining feature of how people talk about and use the app.
• Consequences of Speed:
  • Mediatization: Intimacy is experienced through the medium, shaped by its logic.
  • Depersonalization: The speed and focus on images can make potential partners seem less like individuals and more like objects to be quickly assessed!!!.
  • Hindrance to Traditional Intimacy: The speed and potential superficiality act as a "top-down discursive hindrance" , the very design discourages deeper, slower forms of connection.
• Tinder as a Game: Users often perceive Tinder less as traditional dating and more as a game, reinforcing the idea of lower stakes and faster play.

4. Mediated Intimacy & User Practices

• Judging/Shopping Metaphor: Tinder functions like a "judging app" or a way of "shopping for partners," emphasizing quick evaluation based on appearance.
• Image-Centric Gestures: Physical gestures on the screen (pinching, dragging, scrolling, clicking, swiping) primarily foster connections based on images.
• Context of Use: "Tindering" occurs in various contexts -> publicly with friends for fun, privately during idle moments (commuting ( in private-public places )), or solitarily, highlighting its integration into everyday life. Usually people tinder solitarily.

5. Curatorial Selves

• Profile Creation: Users act as curators of their own identity, setting parameters (age, distance) and carefully selecting images to create a desired profile.
• Image Primacy: Image-based interactions are crucial for the swipe logic to function; decisions are made rapidly based on visual cues.
• Decoding Images: Users implicitly (or explicitly, like the user wishing for photo analysis skills) try to quickly decode personality, style, humor, etc., from limited visual information.
• Platform Features & User Strategies: Paid features (Passport, unlimited likes) offer ways around limitations. Users also employ strategies like "triangulation" (using external information, mutual friends, reverse image search) to gain more context. ( STALKING HI BOLDO BHAI)

6. Moralization (Theoretical Lens )

• Goffman (Self-Presentation): Profile photos are part of constructing a "pseudo self-authenticity," learning to edit and curate an online persona.
• Massumi/Deleuze & Guattari (Molarization): This is key. Molarization turns complex reality into simple, pragmatic binaries (e.g., "Good or Bad," "Like or Dislike," Swipe Left or Right). Desire's complexities are reduced to the "simplicity of mind or body."
• Tinder's Binary Logic: The swipe left/right mechanism embodies this molarization. Users accept this binary logic.
• Plane of Transcendence: Molarization creates an abstract level where individuals are simplified into categories.
• Consequences: This leads to a "stripping of corporeality" (the physical person becomes less important) and the "arrival of spectral body" (the person exists primarily as an image or data point).

7. Speed & Dromology (Theoretical Lens )

• Intentional Speed: The app is designed to be fast, getting users "into the product as quickly as possible."
• The Verb "Swipe": The action itself is quick, often dismissive ("flick the photo aside").
• Virilio (Dromology):
  • Dromology: The study of speed and its impact (Greek dromos - race, way).
  • Time Compression: Technology compresses time and alters perception.
  • "New Ocular Reality": Visualizing technologies change how we see and experience reality.
  • Acceleration: Tinder's swipe logic accelerates interaction, creating a split between the user's "real time" and the "real time of media interactivity," which privileges the instantaneous "now." This is framed and enforced by the UI.
  • Field of Perception: Speed diminishes the field of perception, reducing time for reflection (Virilio, 2012 reference likely relates to this).

8. Conclusion

• User Agency: Despite limitations, users navigate Tinder, asserting agency by playing with its features and constructing their "curatorial self."
• Platform Power: Tinder's swipe logic and algorithms do more than just facilitate; they guide, distort, delete, and promote certain interactions and profiles over others. They actively shape social activity. They replicate this weird intimacy that we call screened intimacy to the users.

rest is generated, also the above should be enough

"Screened Intimacies: Tinder and the Swipe Logic" (David & Cambre, 2016)

1. Introduction: Disrupting Intimacy

• The paper sets up the central tension: Tinder, designed for connection, potentially disrupts traditional intimacy (closeness, duration) through its emphasis on speed, images, and gamification.
• It introduces the concept of levitas (lightness, speed, ethereality) as a potential new, paradoxical mode of intimacy fostered by the app.
• Swipe Logic: Formally defines it as the pace/increased viewing speed encouraged by the UI, which has become a prominent feature in discourses about the app.
• Goal: To examine Tinder's affordances/limits and analyze the swipe logic using Massumi's concept of molarization and Virilio's dromology.

2. Methodology: Triangulation and Discourse

• The study uses a mix of methods: interviews with Tinder users, participant observation, analysis of the UI, and surveys of popular discourse (blogs, news articles, social media like "Tinder Nightmares").
• It employs Foucault's ideas on discourse to understand how narratives and story-lines (like the swipe logic) emerge and function.

3. Tinder's Perception and Functionality

• Discusses how Tinder is often perceived as a game, a "judging app," or even "Tinder is McDonald's for sex," highlighting its departure from traditional dating norms.
• Details the basic mechanics: limited images/text, location-based matching, the swipe mechanism, the need for mutual likes ("matching").
• Situates Tinder within the evolution from online dating to mobile "hook-up" apps, noting precursors like Facemash ( social network baby ) and Grindr.

4. Affordances, Limitations, and User Evasions

• Explores the platform's constraints (image limits, reliance on Facebook, geographical limits) and how users creatively navigate or subvert them.
• User Strategies: Manually adding Instagram links (before official integration), using non-standard profile pictures (pets, landscapes), "triangulation" via mutual friends or reverse image search, using paid features (Rewind, Passport).
• Self-Presentation (Goffman): Users engage in careful self-presentation, curating images to create a desired, often "pseudo-authentic," online self.

5. Discussion: Theorizing the Swipe Logic

• Molarization (Massumi): This is the core theoretical lens applied to the swipe. The binary left/right swipe reduces the complexity of individuals and desire into a simple A/B choice ("Good/Bad," "Hot/Not"). Rad's paradoxical quote is seen as symptomatic of this process, creating a "plane of transcendence" where simplified judgments occur.
• Visuality and Speed: The rapid succession of images is compared to flicking through a magazine (Kundera), leading to an "excessive visuality" that can feel dehumanizing (Bataille's "liquification of the eye," Virilio's "greyness of the same").
• Spectral Economy (Featherstone): The process creates "spectral bodies" – users become disembodied images consumed like commodities ("cocaine for the mind" quote). This is reinforced when Tinder is used purely for entertainment, detached from the reality of the people involved.
• Dromology (Virilio):
  • Intentional Acceleration: Speed is built into the design.
  • The Swipe Gesture: Analyzes the physical act of swiping – quick, decisive, potentially dismissive. Connects to Kundera's idea that gestures use us.
  • Impact of Speed: Acceleration diminishes reflection, alters the "field of perception," and creates a "new ocular reality" focused on the immediate "now," potentially distorting users' sense of time and self-worth (Wygant example).

6. Conclusion: Agency vs. Platform Power

• Users exhibit agency by creatively using and subverting the platform ("curatorial self").
• However, the "swipe logic" and underlying algorithms are powerful forces that shape interactions, filter possibilities, and potentially commodify users. They "guide, distort, facilitate," but also "delete" and "promote," influencing attitudes and behaviours through speed and repetition (Gillespie).
• The paper concludes by questioning whether the user's ability to oscillate between seeking genuine connection and engaging in the app's simplifying logic allows for meaningful intimacy or ultimately reinforces the disruption caused by molarization and speed.