Aussie blokes and high maintenance girls: how the old became new again on dating apps in COVID-19 in Australia

Abstract

Dating apps saw increased usage during the COVID-19 lockdown in Australia – both of new users, and of activity. Using Bumble and Tinder, two of the largest dating apps in the Australian market, we examine the ways in which gender scripts were reinforced and/or subverted on dating apps during the COVID-19 lockdown. Dating apps offer a potential space for negotiation of gender scripts and challenges to heteronormativity, particularly during a period like COVID-19, where media discourse reported a shift in normative constraints because of liberation from physical social spaces. So how did it play out in practice? How did the inability to meet in person affect the ways in which users conformed to or subverted normative binaristic gender scripts? We explore this question drawing on interviews and focus groups conducted with dating app users during the COVID-19 lockdown. We discuss how and whether participants mobilised heteronormative gender specific cultural codifiers to present themselves on app, and whether this was encouraged by Bumble and Tinder architecture. We also discuss how and if ‘traditional’ gender scripts were adhered to in the navigation of new matches and relationships, and the particularities of this in Australian culture. This includes the (re)emergence of stereotypical presentation ideals such as the ‘high-maintenance girl’ and the locally specific ‘Aussie bloke’, and an apparent increased desire for the ontological security provided by monogamous romantic relationships.