{"id":21237,"date":"2021-04-19T09:21:20","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T03:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/?p=21237"},"modified":"2021-04-20T16:50:24","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T11:20:24","slug":"tinderization-of-feeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/tinderization-of-feeling\/","title":{"rendered":"Tinderization of Feeling"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<div class=\"entry-meta\"><time class=\"entry-date published updated\" datetime=\"2016-01-14T06:16:50+00:00\"><\/time>This article was originally published <a href=\"https:\/\/thenewinquiry.com\/tinderization-of-feeling\/\">here<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content clearfix\">\n<p><em><strong>Tinder\u2019s binary mechanisms can be\u00a0a template for a whole\u00a0way of life in which everything is an\u00a0option and processing beats choosing<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>LIVING<\/strong>\u00a0with a sense of overwhelming choice means exerting an insane amount of emotional energy in making the most banal decisions. What should you watch on Hulu tonight? Make a Facebook status asking for recommendations. Tweet the question to your followers. After perusing for an hour, settle comfortably into\u00a0<i>Seinfeld<\/i>, which you\u2019ve seen a million times before. Wonder whether you made the wrong choice. Do it again anyway. There is some comfort in sameness.<\/p>\n<p>When the mundane act of choosing a\u00a0television show to watch is emotionally taxing, relationships are next-level shit. But millennials have a solution: Tinderize it. Tinderize it all.<\/p>\n<p>In an increasingly networked society where people are always ready to connect, the pacing of emotional intimacy has to be constantly tweaked. Dating apps facilitate rapid connection and constant communication, but trusting someone still takes as long as it ever did. So Tinder demands a certain amount of emotional dissociation \u2014 to distance oneself from emotions by treating connecting to others as a game. The only criteria is to choose and choose fast, choose as many as you want, choose so many you\u2019re not even making a choice. This simplicity can provide sweet relief.<\/p>\n<p>But Tinder is more than a dating app \u2014 it is a metaphor for speeding up and mechanizing decision-making, turning us into binary creatures who can bypass\u00a0underlying questions and emotions and instead go with whatever feels really good in the moment.\u00a0Its\u00a0mechanisms perfect the similar either-or\u00a0options other social media platforms have offered, the yes\/no, like\/ignore, retweet\/pass dichotomy\u00a0that leaves no\u00a0room for maybe.\u00a0Within Tinder, we sort each other into ones and zeroes, flattening away any human complexity, becoming efficient robots. Where a best friend might engage with you about the true motivations behind your choices, Tinder serves as Robot Bestie, there to make complex decisions seem easy, shorn of emotional entanglements.<\/p>\n<p>Tinder offers a model for streamlining virtually any\u00a0kind of decision making, but\u00a0the streamlining exacts its price. Swipe\u00a0right and match, then match again, and then see you\u2019ve received 15 matches in five minutes and could continue on this way indefinitely. It is too much.<\/p>\n<p>At the point of maximum social and techno-sexual stimulation, a total withdrawal \u2014 total disconnection amid default connectivity \u2014 begins to feel like the only way to actually say no. This coy form of avoidance is not about \u201cplaying hard to get\u201d; it\u2019s about preserving one\u2019s sanity in the face of so much connectivity and emotional energy. But this refusal feels not only like a shutdown of\u00a0others but also of\u00a0yourself.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>TINDERIZING<\/strong>\u00a0is the\u00a0millennial\u2019s version of zoning out. Vulnerability is scary and potentially dangerous. Immediacy is comfortable and safe. Avoiding confrontation, often in the form of \u201cghosting,\u201d becomes a substitute for relaxation.\u00a0If you don\u2019t follow up about a second date, a late night booty call might still be in the cards, another Tinderized form of intimacy. Swipe right, match, date, fuck, unmatch, rematch, repeat.<\/p>\n<p>As any exposure to Tinder\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/thenewinquiry.com\/essays\/how-to-win-tinder\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">teaches<\/a>,\u00a0<i>nothing matters unless you want it to matter.<\/i>\u00a0This a line to remember when things get weird, to repeat to your bestie while you swipe together, checking in about matches, screengrabbing conversations and sharing them with each other before responding, and texting, always texting.<\/p>\n<p>Absenting oneself from\u00a0potential intimacy is to come off as \u201cchill,\u201d a cultivated state of being in the era of general Tinderization. \u201cPassion is polarizing; being enthusiastic or worked up is downright obsessive,\u201d writes Alana Massey in \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/matter\/against-chill-930dfb60a577\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Against Chill<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0The concept of Chill rationalizes self-centeredness as an acceptable by-product of too many choices. To remain chill is to drop off, not reply to texts for days because you are receiving too many. There are too many relationships to manage and not enough energy for your own relationship to yourself. As Massey writes, \u201c\u2018Excessive Chill\u2019 is \u2018You do you\u2019 taken to its most extreme conclusion, giving everyone\u2019s opinions and interests equal value so long as they\u2019re authentically ours.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tinderization facilitates chill. But it achieves this through depletion as much as through saturation. So many choices become too little energy.<\/p>\n<p>The quintessential exponents of Tinder chill are perhaps the Softboy and the Fuckboy. In \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/life-tips\/have-you-encountered-the-softboy-7e95e2c7f3e7#.1oymuldfa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Have You Encountered the Softboy?<\/a>\u201d Alan Hanson explains these types: \u201cThe Fuckboy is perplexed that you were upset when he forgot to text you for three days and then sent \u2018what are you up to\u2019 at last call. The Softboy knows this behavior is selfish and cruel, though his desire to get laid can trump this. He feels shame. He does it again.\u201d\u00a0Call a Softboy out on not responding to your texts and he\u2019ll offer an explanation of what he\u2019s going through, that he cares a lot about you but you\u2019re \u201cstressing him out.\u201d Call a Fuckboy out and he\u2019ll tell you to \u201cchill\u201d or \u201ccalm down.\u201d But they\u2019re both telling you the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>That is not to say chill is limited to such men; people of any gender can participate in chill. The only requirement is that you don\u2019t acknowledge it. To remain chill is to ignore without intention, not because you chose to\u00a0but because you don\u2019t have the emotional energy to reply to everyone. The more we Tind, the seemingly chiller we become. But really we are just overwhelmed with faces behind screens, with serial\u00a0objectification and passive evasion.\u00a0Away from the screen, chill seems less chill and more like a sad wish that people were more robotic, without\u00a0needs or feelings, hermetically self-fulfilling and self-fulfilled.<\/p>\n<p>But chill is by no means limited to Tinder. The Tinderization of Everything occurs when we adopt Tinder\u2019s\u00a0coping strategies to deal with anyone or anything that might surface in our networks. By maximizing our connectivity and network exposure,\u00a0we\u00a0assure ourselves that we have\u00a0entirely too many options to do anything more complex than yes\/no, left\/right, like\/skip, retweet\/ignore, 001010011010111 and keep on scrolling. Only\u00a0a like or a retweet or a match gives us\u00a0pause to enjoy the pangs of pleasure, which go away as soon as you stop refreshing notifications.<\/p>\n<p>The Tinderization of Everything lures you into Epic Chill, the point of constant ignore. The immediacy of every dopamine hit replaces the pursuit\u00a0of more complicated connection and entanglement. A match on Tinder begins to feel the same as a Facebook like, a Twitter retweet, the ding of a text message from someone cool who you do want to talk to \u2014 or even someone you don\u2019t want to talk to, but who is providing you attention. At this point full Tinderization has taken place, and\u00a0nothing at all feels meaningful \u2014 not even the dopamine. One feels fried.<\/p>\n<p>The epitome of Chill is to ignore everyone but yourself. Tinderizing Everything totalizes that process. Tinderization takes the form of crowdsourcing decisions, as the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailydot.com\/lifestyle\/crowdsource-dating-advice-app\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jyst<\/a>\u00a0app attempts to help you do, or real-life decisions, as the artist Marc Horowitz did in the project\u00a0<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kcet.org\/arts\/artbound\/counties\/los-angeles\/marc-horowitz-social-practice-art.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Advice of Strangers,<\/a><\/i>\u00a0in which he obeyed an anonymous online community. Similarly, the app\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.digitaltrends.com\/mobile\/free-app-connects-friends\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Free<\/a>\u00a0makes the process of meeting up with friends even\u00a0more passive than posting a\u00a0Facebook Event;\u00a0it\u00a0permits users to swipe events away\u00a0before they even occur.<\/p>\n<p>The new app\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/app\/tindog\/id994625591?mt=8&amp;ign-mpt=uo%3D8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twindog<\/a>, launched in December 2015, offers dog owners a way to meet other dog owners using Tinder\u2019s\u00a0mechanisms. No more\u00a0dog park mingling; just swipe to find a\u00a0pooch soulmate! Never mind whatever canine instincts that determine whether one\u00a0dog will like another when\u00a0the owner is swiping. Instincts can\u00a0be overridden.<\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p><strong>TINDERIZING<\/strong>\u00a0can surpass romantic relationships, and if you get sucked in, you can find yourself living in a yes\/no, chill\/ignore, 0110101011 existence. You\u2019ll find yourself stuck on Amazon or Yelp for hours, looking for the perfect dustbuster or the best Japanese restaurant in your area, unwilling\u00a0to choose because there could be a better option ahead in the information stream.<\/p>\n<p>You can only get out of the Tinderization by including your bestie, your community, a group of trusted friends, in the process. By prompting\u00a0you to discuss the emotional intricacies of the conversations you\u2019re having and the vibes you\u2019re feeling through the smartphone screen, these rescuers\u00a0force you\u00a0to acknowledge that intricacies are welcome \u2014 necessary to the process of getting to know someone well. To be without intricacies is to be without emotional boundaries, to disregard whoever whenever. Besties save you from your shit. They are your heart, and they transcend any efficiency that the Tinderization Bestie Robot attempts to offer you in its binary fantasy.<\/p>\n<p>Tinder doesn\u2019t have to lead to Tinderization. Tinder can serve as a way to verify a connection rather than to create it from scratch. Matching with someone you already know of, for whom you already have some context, can confirm and enrich the overlap of social circles and inject complications. In that case, Tinder is simply facilitating your first date. You have a different sort of emotional accountability. This sort of coincidence has more to do with Tenderizing Something than Tinderizing Everything. A flame transformed into a beautiful slow burn.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To be without intricacies is to be without emotional boundaries, to disregard whoever whenever. Besties save you from your shit. They are your heart, and they transcend any efficiency that the Tinderization Bestie Robot attempts to offer you in its binary fantasy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":21276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,1,2715],"tags":[2110,2207,2333,616,2783,99,349,663,2784,2716],"class_list":{"0":"post-21237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-blog-roll","8":"category-categories","9":"category-vulnerability-and-sexuality","10":"tag-connection","11":"tag-dating-apps","12":"tag-ghosting","13":"tag-intimacy","14":"tag-millennials","15":"tag-relationships","16":"tag-romance","17":"tag-tinder","18":"tag-tinderizing","19":"tag-vulnerability-and-sexuality"},"menu_order":166,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21237"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21315,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21237\/revisions\/21315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}