Did the potential love of your life swipe the wrong way?

Amy Kan, Senior Designer, BA International Relations and Japanese 09/12/2024

Entering university provides one with unprecedented freedoms. With that comes the adventures of dating - or attempting to do so. To me, the thought of using dating apps had never crossed my mind, but by the time I was halfway through my first year, everyone around me was on either Hinge, Bumble, or Tinder. One was simply missing out if they were single and not dating. At first, online dating seems entirely innocent. You get the initial surge of excitement as you recieve attention from random mediocre-looking men. Additionally, you get to see what the world has to offer. Over time, it then becomes a drag; the algorithm starts to recommend the same people that you’ve honed through swipes and hearts, and will no longer consider people outside of your conventional preferences. When you’re bored of your own app, you look to your friends’ apps, where swiping through strangers turns into a game. 

There is a reason why downloading just one app encourages you to download another. When you gradually expand your radius of possible matches from 10 km to 20 km to 30 km on Hinge, still without any successful outcomes, you naturally move on to other apps that convince you the love of your life is using them too. The endless options and preferences of digital dating are draining. Humans were never meant to romantically consider thousands of people, to have the ability to swipe at first judgement, nor to have our dating life dictated by an algorithm. Online dating has created the ability for people to focus on the most minute details, curating their perfect partner like a sim. Hinge allows you to choose deal-breaker preferences, like religion, ethnicity, and smoking. The fact that one patiently waits for an ideal person to appear, reveals how picky we have convinced ourselves to be. If a random person shares all of your interests, but can’t text back quickly, they are swiftly discarded and you simply move on to the next match. 

Finding the ultimate person that complies with your most detailed wishes limits the explorative sides of dating. These apps allow you to curate strict preferences and convince you that your match exists within these tight realms, and if you pay for a premium price - your chances might increase. These companies promote an emotional leeching procedure by keeping one’s most likely potential matches hidden away from oneself, or stuck in the so-called ‘rose jail’ on Hinge, only to be accessed by paying for a premium membership. 

Once you’ve gone through the list of 50+ people who have liked you, resulting in a match with just a few pursuers, your future with them is limited. The ease of dating apps lets us judge within a few messages whether the person is worth chatting to and, therefore, meeting up with. No one wants to waste a nice date with someone who can’t even text. 

This is a habit many have been sucked into, and often, it is a matter of security. Ensuring that the person actually exists is naturally important when looking for a potential partner. However, this also causes a habit of creating an emotional connection through texting, without really knowing the other person. After weeks of texting, the question to meet up arises. If this is followed through, the stranger then becomes a striking reality - they are no longer simply a digital character. This can be challenging, as you know the person incredibly well, while also not knowing them at all.

Dating apps are addicting - they are in essence digital products sold to us by big companies who seek profit. As we foster emotional connections through their products, our life-long search for ‘the one’ gets compressed into apps of quick judgement. To many, the fun of looking at the endless options, eventually becomes dreadful. Digital dating can be exciting, but also a jungle of problems and difficulties. As we encounter these, it is important to remember that the delete button is just as accessible as the install one.