10 years ago Tinder was bornthe dating app that has transformed the sexual intercourse and affective. Over the past decade, as many as 75 million monthly users in 190 countries have frantically and mechanically swiped their fingers across screens in search of their ideal partner or one-night stand, turning the ideal of romantic attraction into a digital marketplace. based on the selection and consumption of bodies. Tindergo ahead, does not want you to find the amor.
The application He didn’t invent flirting on the internet, but he did popularize turning that experience into addictive entertainment. Exposed in a digital catalog at the discretion of others, users only have to move their finger to the right or to the left (‘swipe’) depending on whether they want to connect with the carousel of suitors on the other side of the screen. When two profiles like each other (‘match’) they can start chatting. The most popular dating platform on the planet ensures that in the last decade has made more than 70,000 million pairings.
The key to Tinder’s success lies in its design, which uses ‘gamification’ techniques typical of video games to attract users and retain them as long as possible within the platform. the app exploits the human will to like to others: every time we make a ‘match’ our brain secretes dopamine (the hormone of pleasure) in a similar way to how it does when playing slots. The network thus becomes a space where we can look for a reward, be it the shots of happiness caused by the physical validation of our appearance or the promise of finding love.
Desirability status
Beyond its psychological impact, Tinder’s success is based on mathematical gears that explain why certain user profiles appear to you and not others. Until 2019, the app used a system algorithm known as ‘Elo’ -used by FIFA or in chess competitions- that gave more points to the most liked users and then was in charge of matching them with other users with the same status of “desirability”. As the journalist Judith Duportail uncovered, for this Tinder compiled the conversations between flirts word by word, the ‘likes’ of Facebook and connection times.
“The search for a partner is like an economic transaction: it transforms the self into a product that competes with others in a market of supply and demand”
Thus, the choice of attractive photos and an ingenious description for the profile becomes a studied process to try to climb positions in that internal classification between handsome and ugly, in a pure competition to capture the attention of others who transfers the turbo-capitalist logic to sexual-affective relationships. “The search for a partner is formalized as an economic transaction: it transforms the self into a packaged product that competes with others in an open market regulated by supply and demand,” said sociologist Eva Illouz.
sex-affective capitalism
However, this system presented multiple ethical doubts about the discrimination that could occur in the internal classification of individuals. “It’s like arriving at a party and not having the opportunity to see all the people considered too ugly, beautiful, rich or poor “Duportail noted in his research book ‘The Algorithm of Love’ (Contra), pointing to a “patriarchal logic.”
Tinder ensures that it changed that system and replaced it with an algorithm of artificial intelligence (AI) that analyzes the user’s activity and photos to better understand their tastes and allows them to recommend partners that match their behavior. inclusiveor you can calculate your IQ, your emotional state or your training to make the ‘matches’ more precise. If you like black people, playing the guitar and gastronomy, the app will show you people with the same interest.
Using ‘gamification’ techniques and its social hierarchy algorithm, Tinder searches for hook users and drag them to pay a subscriptionthe key to your business model and something that more than 9.6 million people around the world already do. The free version of the app limits the number of daily ‘matches’ to 20. To improve your chances of flirting with exclusive features such as the ‘Super Like‘ you will have to checkout. The point of Tinder is not for you to find love, but for you to pay to keep trying. the owner of it, Match Groupobtained last year 2,983 million dollars in profits.