Dating apps monetize access to an imagined unlimited partner market

Evidence

It should come as no surprise that public discourse frames Tinder as a pillar of an expanding hookup culture (see, for instance, Wade 2017). Dating apps are typically depicted as the final nail in the coffin of traditional notions of love, binding human relationships even more tightly to the logic of consumption and commodification. They deploy proprietary algorithms to visualize a previously hidden market of sexual and romantic partners. Importantly, they organize such representations (of virtually unlimited choices of available partners) in ways that are familiar from popular social media platforms outside the dating world: Instagram’s infinite scroll is replicated in the virtually never-­ending stream of partner images on Tinder’s infinite swipe. The way such images flow before users’ eyes differs little from the constant streams of memetic content seen on TikTok. These features have almost entirely upstaged the apps’ more traditional text-­heavy or text-­driven (desktop) online predecessors OkCupid and Match.com. And, like other spectacles enabled by speculative technologies, spectators’ access to visibility is subject to monetization and pricing strategies. Tinder relies on its paid versions for income (called Tinder Plus and Passport), which offer the ability “to like as many people as you could possibly want” (in contrast to the free version, which caps the number of likes and swipes per day). Competitors such as Bumble (launched in 2014 by a Tinder cofounder as a more “women-­friendly” dating app) also offer premium features (Bumble Boost), while most other apps offer variants of Bumble’s SuperSwipe coins that can be purchased by the most avid users for $2.99 per swipe. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 343

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the book’s core thesis that speculative technologies stage visibility as a scarce, payable resource - the reader’s infrastructure/market imagination thread. — connects to: Algorithmic attention extraction monetizes love and the need for love. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 205; Digital platforms extract money by tapping core human desires for connection — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 213
• SEED: The infinite-swipe as a speculation device could anchor an essay on how dating apps train users in speculative, never-settled partner valuation parallel to prediction markets.

Broader Connections

• Algorithmic attention extraction monetizes love and the need for love. #expands (0.90) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 205
• Digital platforms extract money by tapping core human desires for connection #expands (0.85) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 213