My friend was lying nude in the bath as we swiped through Hinge, a glass of white wine cool in my palm. Her doll eyes glazed over the carousel of poorly lit photographs, furrowing her brow at the men’ s prompts.

There was little poesy in their responses (to much comedic effect), and we were bemused with the way they chose to present themselves. They posed with grilling paraphernalia, in sports jerseys, and beside motorbikes. They had their arms around women and family members, often accompanied by vaguely inappropriate comments further down the profile. They detailed ‘My ideal Sunday’ (meal prep and a walk) and what they ‘won’t shut up about’ (football). It was a panopticon of performance, and we watched them, tipsy on a five dollar bottle of sav blanc, flexing their muscles like Jordan Belfort. 

Every now and then, my friends and I will ‘play’ the dating apps on our phones. It is no coincidence that platforms like Tinder employ similar visual features to conventional video games, condensed to mobile form. They centre around visual elements — bright colours, large images, minimal text. They even borrow the lexicon of words like ‘boost’, ‘super’ and ‘upgrade’ to propose financial investment in nifty features as a way to ameliorate your dating experience, a way to let you ‘win’ internet dating. Every facet of design is über intentional, designed to pull you in and keep you there, from the colour theory of the green ‘It’s a Match!’ screen (think rewards, safety and positivity) to the ease with which you can swipe away.

This comparison of dating apps and video games is further explored in Christina Brown’s paper It’s a Match! The Procedural Rhetoric of Gaming and Online Dating in Tinder, where she posits that procedures and blurbs gamify platforms like Tinder. She muses on how ‘players’ are given a deck of cards to swipe through, with five buttons on the screen prompting them to choose; undo, dislike, boost, like, and super like. You’re forced to act, to decide, to be immediate. Interaction is gamified to keep you invested, to make you addicted.

It goes without saying that the developers don’t really care about helping people to find love. In her article How Dating Apps Sold Us an Unromantic, Dehumanising Idea of Romance, Rayne Fisher-Quann muses on how they pretend as though romantic retention ‘is both the most common result and the end goal of their algorithms’. Despite what Hinge’s ‘Designed to be Deleted’ slogan will try to convince you, the purpose is brief interaction and validation, not compatibility and connection — and the apps capitalise on blurring our perception of this difference. You finding love doesn’t benefit them. Keeping everybody on the apps does. It generates more profit, they can sell more data, and with every failed date you inch closer to buying Hinge X or, god forbid, Tinder Platinum. 

The use of subscription tiers promises that the algorithm will present you as the premium contender, attracting better candidates for a per month fee. Upgrade to increase your matches by fifty percent! Go on dates ten times faster with this feature! Love, which is oftentimes slow, difficult and awkward, has become fast, easy, convenient — and financially consumable. 

A few months ago, playing the app beside my friend in the bathtub, I scored a date. Charlie, 21, ostensibly ticked a lot of aesthetic boxes — he was tall, attractive, strong. Within a few hours, we had arranged a time and place, and a few nights later, we were having a drink.

The date was bad. He wasn’t particularly interesting, nor humorous or warm. He was convinced that carpe diem was a country, and threw a rock in the water by the lakeside, asking me if I thought it made a ‘sploosh’ or a ‘splash’ sound.

I conjured up an idea of who I thought he would be based on three prompts and six pictures, unable to really gauge the incompatibility through a screen. In the name of efficiency, I had prioritised fast responses and attractiveness, ironically wasting time with someone I never would have gone out with anyways. When I redownloaded the app a few months later, I found his profile again.

Once the game is ‘won’ and set aside, we realise how poor of a litmus test digital dating truly is. And the more we partake, the more desensitised we become to subpar interactions, staying logged on in hopes that the next one will be better, trapped in an incessant appeasement of the libidinal economy. 

Tinder and Hinge stylise matchmaking into brief swipes, untangling the spool of romantic compatibility into a simple yes or no. We are quick to dispose of anybody existing outside of our ‘type’, persuaded to value surface level preferences, conventionally desirable aesthetics and the illusion of somebody better coming along. The apps streamline dating and slot it seamlessly into our consumerist, fast-paced quotidian.

Despite their apparent lack of success, we stay on these apps, driven in part by a need for short term gratification. The platforms dispense validation under the guise of promising connection, blurring the lines between desirability and datability, lust and love. My preoccupation with Tinder did not stem from a desire to find and be found as their marketing would suggest, but to see and be seen. I wanted to be chosen.

I received a few messages and likes during my initial days on the app. Miscellaneous men from the suburbs responded to my photos with pick-up lines littered in unabashed conviction. I was a minnow in a sea of electricians and athletes and financiers — or rather, a minnow in an empty sea with several fishermen trying to hook my mouth.

‘You look like trouble’

‘Will you marry me’

‘I’m in love’

‘Sorry, I swiped for your blonde friend’

‘This is my kinda girl right here’

These messages gave me a way to quantify my desirability. Which is, in large part, symptomatic of late stage capitalism, with profiles encoding facts that at first glance might be more useful to consumers than love interests. Our capacity for desire has been commercialised. The obsession with integers — likes, heights, matches, comments — underscores a perverse level of productivity and efficiency embedded within modern dating culture.

In his piece The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present, Byung-Chul Han argues that nowadays, culture is so information saturated that we miss the magic of its lack. This is not unlike digital dating. Our distillation into measurements, careers and characteristics ensures that we stick to what we can understand, know and grasp. Tangibility has usurped the magic in just knowing. As my friend Sofia notes, dating apps force us to ascribe content to what should be intuitive.

Fisher-Quann postulates that proximity is humanising. But as we become removed from physical closeness to potential matches, we form a reliance on snap aesthetic judgments. In virtualising a formerly intimate space, we are left alone. Romance has become numericised and depersonalised, and as a product, we have become disillusioned.

Why do we buy into the commodification of connection? Why do we rely on digitised platforms to determine the way we perceive love, and worse, ourselves?

We need to separate the short term gratification of dating apps from the possibility of forming a genuine connection. Much validation has come from creating good art, spending time with friends and achieving something you’re proud of. Many lasting relationships (and summer flings) have come from bar flirts, phone calls and sweaty dance floor kisses. 

To use the internet parlance… maybe it’s time to touch some grass!