Online dating: The quest for intimacy in the online world
Dating apps have enveloped our generation.
They suck users in with ego-boosting likes on hinge profiles, where you remain eternally sun kissed and stunning in the pictures from your girls holiday. You check your messages and matches, rotting away in bed, disheartened that the stunner of your dreams hasn’t popped onto your feed. You sigh, wondering if one-worded sexual compliments from unidentifiable strangers in group photos are really as good as it’s going to get. Your dream of bumping into and falling in love with Paul Mescal puts any potential matches to shame; but what is a girl to do when real life interaction and intimacy has started to feel unattainable.
The easiest place to find solace after a breakup or rejection is in the warm arms of the dating apps. The matches, messages and likes are quick validation, assuring us that we are attractive and appealing, when we can’t seem to muster up the love to tell ourselves. It doesn’t take long for the attention to become addictive, and when no one has liked your profile in a few days, we are left feeling as though we aren’t enough. When a match finally pings itself across your phone screen you allow the grip of validation to hook you.
A huge issue with dating apps is that your profile is not representative of you. Instead, it is a contorted highlight reel of your life, designed to fit into a few prompts. What others see of you is a polished top trump card, and whilst this may make us feel confident, it acts as a barricade to intimacy. The bellow of your laugh and the passion you have for the things that you love are not what people see when they like your profile, and I worry that our interpretations of electronic gestures take us further and further away from genuine human connection. On top of this, the amount of choice that is available at your fingertips is so far from reality. We flick through profiles without so much as a second glance, discarding people at the first sight of something we don’t like about their physicality. Whilst it’s important to know what you’re looking for in a partner, I sometimes wonder if the array of choice leaves us always waiting for ‘the best’, running on a hamster wheel, determined to find a carbon copy of our ideal match.
Dating apps make access to casual sex simple, and in my opinion, have been revolutionary for women’s ability to wield their sexual liberty. The freedom to choose to have sex with as many people as you please is not something that women should ever be shamed for, although I think it’s incredibly important that casual sex is engaged in for self-empowerment rather than in pursuit of validation or plastic intimacy. The danger of this never-ending access to casual sex is our desensitisation to the fact that these profiles belong to real people. The way that dating apps make us feel as though we’re playing a game encourages the idea that the people behind these profiles are disposable. My concern is that this further entrenches a harmful belief held by some, that users, specifically women, are sexual objects. Obviously, this is not an issue born out of dating apps but rather another factor that women have to navigate in the extensive web of misogyny that shrouds dating culture. The combination of not having to see someone in real life and having the freedom to message them whatever you want, leaves women open to experiencing gross sexual harassment and misconduct online, and constitutes one of the darkest parts of the world of dating.
My biggest hope, especially for women who have been made to feel worthless and deflated after using dating apps, is that they never forget how truly lovable they are. Your dating profile doesn’t dictate your worth. Nobody can take that away from you.
