Dating platforms and social technologies are built around the chase rather than the consummation of intimacy, emotional resonance, or the recognition of social worth. Research on dating app use has shown that the systems rarely deliver enduring outcomes, but rather incentivise continual pursuit, endless swiping, and repetition of cycles of hope and disappointment (Bonilla-Zorita, Griffiths […]
Dating apps don’t sell love. They sell the chase. Their business model only works if most people fail to find lasting relationships. A happy couple deletes the app and disappears from the revenue stream. That means personal, social, even biological success—stable intimacy, family, belonging—represents commercial failure. So the platforms are designed to keep you searching. […]
I’m a disavowed “swipe left” in this world of manifest superficiality and instantaneous digital gratification; not much interested in the narcissistic hedonism of commercially-mediated myopia and all these profoundly narrow behavioural games and shallow conceptual vocabularies, I really am completely out of place here. Nevermind that all we ever do by embracing and chasing all […]
Daedelus Kite 