Tinder and TikTok normalize betting on volatility instead of seeking security

Evidence

Drawing on a range of examples of speculative technologies (from social media and video-sharing platforms to popular astrology apps), I show how our ritual use of image, video, self-presentation, and techniques of rapid valuation becomes a way of collective coping with uncertainty. I am particularly concerned with speculative technologies’ capacity to both hypervisualize and obfuscate; to continually represent a vertiginous reality in our smartphone screens, and at the same time conceal the complexity of such a reality. Proprietary algorithms and computational code fulfill this role by ceaselessly arbitrating what is shown and what is hidden, as we scroll through lip-synching videos on TikTok, or as we swipe on images of possible partners on Tinder. I claim that such technologies nurse a speculative mode of being “in the present,” a disbelief in capitalism’s future promises, and an invitation of the unknown into all aspects of life. I thus offer a corrective to dominant theories of surveillance capitalism and “digital governmentality,” arguing that their neglect of the complex, speculative sociality undergirding such technologies is a significant blind spot. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 36

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concrete account of how speculation migrates into dating and self-presentation: a speculative mode of being in the present.
• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s aim of showing speculation’s migration from trading floors into dating and self-presentation.
• QUESTION: The ‘disbelief in capitalism’s future promises’ invites comparing with how financialized populism reads as speculative rather than security-seeking voting.