Everything is very simple, and because of that it's also very easy to spend a lot of time doing that process. Rejection always occur below the line, so no body feels bad. And even if you're a shy person, you can interact with hundreds of people (potentially thousands if you're really fast), because you can reduce your judgement time to a matter of seconds.
Can we learn something about human romantic relationship with this experience? I think so. Otherwise, at least it will be fun. Let me give it a try by making some basic assumptions and proposing some hypotheses.
This way of selecting people you feel attracted too is very natural and very artificial at the same time. As with normal real life interaction, the first thing you evaluate is appearance. But in the case of Tinder, you're summarized by a single picture. Upside for your rate by others is that you can be very editorial about it (people usually are in very peculiar ways). It means you can pick your best picture ever, the best angle, clothes, light and this will be you in the platform. Downside is that everybody does it, so the photos of others you're evaluating are also potentially very much edited. While it's great to look your best when putting yourself on display for others to say whether they find you attractive, this highly edited character can generate cognitive dissonance when the real date happens. People can feel mislead, as it's usually the case with food advertising.
Let's now suppose you're a guy, and you start playing around with the app. These are all the possible scenarios you can come across:
1- Person is actually attractive to you
2- Person is not actually attractive to you
Within both cases, you'll find the following situations that regard perceptions:
a. The photo takes you to the same conclusion as real life meeting.
b. The photo makes you reach the opposite conclusion.
Since sample is too small, let's keep within the app. In a short period, you'll start identifying some interesting patterns in the photos:
1- Contrary to the old apps that theoretically did the same thing as Badoo, Tinder has a much higher percentage of users you actually find attractive (in the app). This is basically due to the fact it has become fashionable among those people you feel you would like to meet.
2- You can just make two choices, either rejecting the person or liking her/him. However, as one might logically expect, your call is not that easy to do. Because a low percentage of the users' pictures show either very good looking or really ugly (these are perhaps 25% of total users you are exposed to, very attractive folks corresponding to 5% and very ugly ones to 20%). Probably this split varies according to the country. I've actually checked it in several locales, and in fact this is not really equal across geographic regions (reason to be explored later on).
3- Then while these roughly 25% of the pictures are very easy to evaluate, most of them are not. There are many reasons for that, such as how photogenic a person is (which is related to attractiveness but not necessarily). Technical quality of the photos can also influence very much this judgement. Low quality, distorted and inadequately sized photos will be usually perceived as less attractive, even being totally unrelated to a person's actual look.
But apart from that, photos are a very narrow example of one's look. Exactly because all these factors can influence perception, reality of your evaluation from a photo can be very different from the one you'll have when meeting the person face to face. Thinking about this distribution, Tinder user interface is quite helpful. In the evaluation flow, besides like and reject, you can also get more info, as I've mentioned above. When you click on this option, you'll get access to a bunch of other photos from the person, as well as his/her auto-description.
This extra context can be really helpful in making a more accurate evaluation of how much that particular person seems attractive to you. But there's still the editorial aspect of them. Anyhow, if a person appears attractive in several different contexts and angles, chances are her appearance is not that influenced by these factors.
4- Photos have themes that can be observed very often. In the case of girls, maybe the most common pic is a kissing pose. You can see that so often that it seems they've arranged some sort of coordination scheme. Pictures with wild animals like lions and tigers are super common as well. But you can equally find travel pics, skydiving, cars and motorcycles. It's interesting that in San Francisco Bay Area, women use to pose with friends. So quite often, you don't know who you are judging. After thinking the matter through, I didn't reach any conclusion about why someone would do that.
While themes can be curious, in my opinion other patterns related to the photos chosen for one's profile are much more intriguing. The level of sexual insinuation on them changes a lot. My hypothesis is that it relates to ones intention when joining the platform. But these are not as straight forward as they may seem.
This is only one aspect of how people pick pictures to represent them to their target audience. Because the idea is not just delivering the best possible self portrait. Photos also show one's personality, intentions, preferences and so on.
Social and economic status also play an important role in the game. In countries where the gap between the rich and the poor is not as huge as in Brazil, I'd suppose showing off status signs like cars or expensive trips is not that important. This is the case at least in California, but I'm not sure about the rest of the country, which is also highly unequal in many dimensions. But here in Brazil there's a great deal of elements in the picture that aims to place the person at a particular socioeconomic level.
An additional peculiarity is that here, people from different socioeconomic groups usually go to separate bars, restaurants, clubs, etc. Which means that by going to these specific places, you're already making sure you won't meet people from other economic background. One could argue this is not a very open minded mindset and be right about it. But this is not necessarily discriminatory. It can be just the natural desire to meet people that share a larger common ground, since this really helps further integration.
But in Tinder that doesn't happen that much. The filters for age and distance from your location can provide a bit of this selection, but still much less than the common modus operande would. So even if users demographics are distorted to a higher income due to the need to possess a smartphone, popularization of these devices guarantees you're going to come across many people that have much less money, education, and opportunities to travel than yourself. Maybe that explains why travel photos are so popular.
While all these observations are very peculiar, the fundamental question about the app popularity still remains: what are people really looking for when they use Tinder? I'd say the first reason is basically instant gratification. Each match shows you a picture of someone you've rated as attractive and that has done the same to you based on your picture. Apart for any future perspective, this is pleasant in itself and even addictive to a certain degree.
Second, it's very convenient. Real socialization takes time and effort. You need to go somewhere, spend money, put yourself on the spot if you are a guy. Tinder removes all these obstacles for you. Socialization comes at a very low cost and on a very large scale.
What's the problem them? Why people feel kind of uncomfortable by using the app? I see two main reasons for that:
first one has to do with the utter lack of social economic preselection, which can make Tinder seem like a place you wouldn't normally go. Even in the unrealistic case you'd find everybody attractive, issue is you need to have some degree of communication and depending on the differences in background, that can be virtually impossible. Second one is another speculation of mine since I don't have much data apart from what I've heard from female users: guys can be too aggressive, direct, and sexual, which might feel uncomfortable to some girls. When something like that happens, people tend to overgeneralize, creating a biased perception of the whole game.
However, there's some truth in this perception and it's rooted on the very core of the app functioning. As in real life, if you're not a particularly good looking fellow, the chance to find someone interesting is highly correlated with how many girls you approach. But the great disadvantage is there's no visible rejection. Together with the low engagement the channel provides to its users, average male behavior can end up being less polite, further reinforcing the impression of a somewhat weird and wild place.
Regardless of these down sides, I believe the main drivers for people to meet online are stronger than ever and this habit is not going away. I don't think this is particularly problematic. The invention of the phone and the fact people could call each other didn't make them stop meeting altogether (otherwise birthrates would have dropped much more dramatically than they actually did). But I feel the underlying conditions in which Tinder thrives are indeed a bit concerning. The app may not be the reason why people socialize less. However, its success is probably a consequence of that, among other things.
So while I think apart from the weirdness of it, one can find super interesting people by tindering, I think we should make sure to spend enough time with those we already love and a reasonable amount of time caressing our phones in search for someone new.
No comments:
Post a Comment