DATING APPS AND THE CHANGING DISCOURSE OF LOVE

Tinder has changed the way people date and look at dating. Around Tinder had 10.7 million subscribers in Q1 2022, far more than any other online dating app. It has over 75 million active users. Tinder’s Year In Swipe 2021 recorded an exponential boom in the number of users in the COVID period, especially during the lockdown. According to Tinder’s reports, the number of searches for “virtual date night” and “long walk” increased three times.

Tinder, Bumble and Hinge has led to the preferential rise in the “casual relationships” or “hookup culture” within young adults, especially those living in the metropolitan cities. Rohan, a student of Indian School of Business, says that he comes from a tiny, conservative town in Budayun and coming to a liberal campus such as his, he is interested in exploring the freedoms that life has to offer - especially sexual freedoms in relationships.

Satyam says, “The girl I was sleeping with, was initially okay with keeping it casual. After we hooked up a couple of times, she developed feelings for me and got attached. It got difficult after a point because I did not feel anything for her and I did not know how to be polite and continue to see her. I had to cut her off later, because it was getting too toxic and I was not in a space to settle down and give up on my freedoms.”

“He asked me to read out poetry to him while he slept on my lap. That is as romantic as any date could ever have been”, Ashwita says while she pours coffee from her espresso machine.

“As a plus-sized woman who does not have the conventional body type, I have been used to being rejected. So, I went into it expecting to be disappointed.

However, to my surprise, I got around 7 matches within the next 15 minutes and ended up having quite a long conversation with two of them.”

Along with dating apps come dangers to privacy, and instances of fraud and stalking.

Tinder Swindler was a documentary on Netflix that focuses on this one case where a man dupes potential matches on Tinder of millions of dollars.

However, several other cybercrimes include men inviting women to their flats and raping them on the first date, mostly occurring after spiking drinks. Other instances include men stalking women on social media, then following them home. However, most users, especially women had claimed that they did not find the experience fulfilling owing to the fact that they were approached by too many people, and men would bombard their social media with inappropriate messages.

The inception of Bumble was an attempt to tackle the root of this problem: a women-first platform, where women not only choose who they engage with but it prioritizes the safety and privacy of women.

However, there are also examples of people finding long-term, stable partners through dating apps. Suraiya and Priyam are one of the couples who met in 2019, in Delhi when Suraiya was travelling from Hyderabad. “I was stuck in a hotel room and my conference was postponed to the next day afternoon. It was just a way to kill time with Radisson Blu’s free WiFi.

As I lazed in the bedroom, I swiped right on this extremely cute guy from Himachal. Both of us had similar interests; he loved trekking and bird-watching”. Priyam smiles coyly, in their 3-BHK house in Kavuri Hills, petting their labrador Cookie, and nods in agreement. “I was taken in by her curly hair and pictures of her standing against hilly horizons. It was rare of any Delhi girl to be interested in river rafting or bird-watching.”

The changes that the dating apps have brought about in the few years is apparent. However, the impact made across generations still remains to be seen.

Other than emerging as a cultural phenomenon, dating apps may have managed to challenge the whole idea of "romance and love" in itself. But to what extent, only time will tell.

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