Prolonged uncertainty in relationships makes people practice unloving and negative choice

Evidence

Unlike the proponents of a self-­reflexive intimacy, then, Illouz is greatly skeptical of the ideas and possibilities of freedom circulating in the vestiges of risk society. Adopting a rather more pessimistic tone, she suggests that the dissolution of bonds itself becomes the dominant social form (Illouz 2019, 22); the more we linger in the space of uncertainty, the more prone we become to “unloving.” Increasingly, we practice what Illouz calls negative choice, that is, the choice to unchoose. To translate it for our world of speculative technologies, we may choose to “unfollow,” to “unfriend,” to “leave someone on read,” or to “ghost”—­or to dispose of a Tinder match altogether like any other commodity. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 357

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes burns’s broader thesis on financialized risk reshaping social imagination — uncertainty in love mirrors speculative market logic.
• DEFINE: Introduces Illouz’s concept of ‘negative choice’ / ‘unchoose’ as the defining act in unloving.
• SEED: Angle: dating app swiping as speculative liquidity — treating romantic matches like disposable assets, tying fintech’s disposability to courtship.