Who would’ve believed that ; searching without finding pays off a lot. Behind these gropings mimicking inlove, there is a war machine (5.61 billion US dollars in 2021), a new vocabulary (situation, ghost, scroll, swipe, stalkersexting, zipless fuck, friend zoner), a state of mind (messaging, notifications, I’m waiting, I’m spying on my last crush or my new ex, I filter, I close the app, I block, I avoid, I obsess, etc.).
It is also an indefinite romantic posture (uncertainty, ambivalence, confusion, anxious avoidant, fluid, Teflon, high-performance neurosomething, consumer on credit, FWB (friend with benefits), Q plan, predatory narcissist, ethical non-monogamous, fuck off, an image for sale that relies on our potential for sexual attraction (“scopic” capitalism), a market of repairers of planned obsolescence (coaches, therapists, and other Esther Perels of this world) relayed by new tools to unite: dating apps. Techno capitalism meets Eros and does not put on a condom or withdraws preemptively. And the morning after pill goes wrong.
In short, if you haven’t dislocated your thumb on a dating app in the last decade, you can’t give love advice and you don’t know what you’re talking about. The big game has changed completely and it affects young people who want to “ hook up » than the older ones who are getting back into it despite the “settled past”.
I deleted Tinder and Hinge. I turn my nose up at their industrial capacity to produce matches, taken by the desire to wait for the train of artisanal meetings, cobbled together by Destiny, to pass by. But craftsmanship takes longer.
2.6 million Canadians in 2021, 81% of whom were men (64% aged 25 to 44), were on dating apps. This gives an idea of the volume. At a time when society as a whole is questioning children’s use of screens, we may need to look more closely at the deep furrows left by apps in the plowing of our loves.
Love in the digital age
The Franco-Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz looked into the edge of the well and published a fascinating essay entitled The end of love. Investigation into contemporary disarray in 2020. This book is as important to me as was Anatomy of Love by anthropologist Helen E. Fisher, 30 years ago. It shines the light on a revolution, a collective phenomenon of social humiliation where “non-reciprocity is expected and non-negotiable”, without having to manage the affects of the other.
Powered by algorithms, “casual sex is one of these new forms of social capital, in which sex, sexual activity and sexual competence are new marks of status and value”. And they do not have the same anecdotal and emotional meaning for men as for women (socialized according to relationships), according to the sociologist’s research. Illouz even emphasizes that we have exchanged the unpaid work of mother for that of unpaid object of desire. There’s a name for that.
She studies the impact of capitalism on the minefield of emotions that cannot be left to the sole field of psychology. She deals with our “negative” freedoms (in the sense of non-choice) generating trauma, rejections, mass abandonment managed in the secrecy of alcoves or in the chair of a psychologist at $150/hour.
Just another “anxious avoidant” like the Internet in full
The trade in shredded hearts fuels another industry, that of self-help and personal growth. In short, succumbing to the dopamine of Tinder and co. and their infernal reward dynamics does not come without bruises, sometimes permanent. We now dare to talk about post-traumatic shocks and withdrawal.
Illouz also raises ethical problems which are lightly dismissed. make yourself ghost (ghosted) by non-speciesist vegans who drink lattes equitable shows that the moral question does not even cross the mind. Good morning-Hi ! Next, next ! How many people are crippled by this little game of idiots (unisex), protected by a screen, whose only mental hygiene is limited to consent?
The uncertainty generated by individual freedom erected into dogma calls this freedom into question for the sociologist: “Freedom cannot prevail over equality, because inequality invalidates the very possibility of being free. […] Freedom rarely trumps inequality in heterosexual relationships. » What feminism and the LGBTQ+ movements have managed to gain in terms of progress is not in question. But this freedom could serve another dream: that of love with a capital A, now delivered to the chaos of fleeting impulses under influence.
Let go of your cell!
Eva Illouz believes that the actors of this new art of loving have a multitude of cultural scenarios and modern images at their disposal. The author Candide Proulx also used her own experience in the rough terrain of celibacy to write her novel Majesty. Its protagonist, Rosemarie, suffers defeats after an attritional breakup with the father of her two children.
New Bridget Jones techno version, Majesty was born from a blog with the eponymous title. In an interview at the Byblos café, Candide, in her mid-40s, explains to me her autofictional approach on the “ordinary little predation” to which she has devoted herself body and soul for three years. She was also interested in the work of Swedish sociologist Marie Bergström on the new laws of love.
In other words, has sexual freedom become the neoliberal philosophy of the private sphere […]
“Applications are chance and a volume of people, boosted on steroids, who take you in a direction far from your natural habitat, far from your bearings. It forces you to overinterpret all the signs and all this vocabulary. You become hypervigilant while trying to find love and understand others. In the end, you learn more about yourself…” says the one who no longer goes to bars, because single people look… at their phones.
Candide also notices a large-scale conformity among both sexes in this sentimental marketing, and an all-category penchant for petroleum… “If you don’t travel, you’re a loser ! »
By closing your contemporary novel, both in terms of the subject and the writing, you fully appreciate the chance of not searching for love with your fingers. The cost is high and the failures are numerous. Organ donation will follow.
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