Abstract
This article focusses on the courtship rituals and practices of intimacy among young dating app users, aged between 20 and 33, in Berlin. Dating app users participate in ‘rituals of transition’ as they signal mutual interest and heightened intimacy by moving conversations from dating apps to social media messaging platforms such as WhatsApp. These rituals of transition play a far more prominent role in signalling romantic interest than the matching-mechanisms inherent in the design of dating apps. Drawing on ethnographic data incorporating 36 semistructured interviews and 45 chat interviews across three popular dating apps, Tinder, Bumble and OkCupid, the study finds that users code the apps installed on their smartphones as hosting spheres of varying intimacy. These spheres are substantiated through the infrastructure of notifications on users’ devices. Rather than drastically altering how users communicate across different apps, rituals of transition are a key moment of communication in themselves.
Highlights
IntroductionDating apps, such as Tinder (see https://tinder.com) and Bumble (see https://bumble. com), have been the subject of recent scholarship investigating the mediation of courtship rituals and communication practices (among others, see Degim et al, 2015; Duguay, 2017; Duguay et al, 2017), highlighting that apps are utilised successfully for a variety of social objectives, whether seeking relationships, casual sex, companionship or entertainment (Timmermans and Caluwe, 2017)
Dating apps, such as Tinder and Bumble, have been the subject of recent scholarship investigating the mediation of courtship rituals and communication practices, highlighting that apps are utilised successfully for a variety of social objectives, whether seeking relationships, casual sex, companionship or entertainment (Timmermans and Caluwe, 2017)
In their geolocational functionality, dating apps provide an authenticity to connections lacking previously on dating websites, since users are aware of the proximity of potential partners, and their bodies are experienced as being present in shared city space (Bonner-Thompson, 2019; Veel and Thylstrup, 2018)
Summary
Dating apps, such as Tinder (see https://tinder.com) and Bumble (see https://bumble. com), have been the subject of recent scholarship investigating the mediation of courtship rituals and communication practices (among others, see Degim et al, 2015; Duguay, 2017; Duguay et al, 2017), highlighting that apps are utilised successfully for a variety of social objectives, whether seeking relationships, casual sex, companionship or entertainment (Timmermans and Caluwe, 2017). ‘Rituals of transition’, which refer to the switching of communication from a dating app to a social media messaging platform, were examined through ethnographic research methods for 13 months in 2019 and 2020. These rituals of transition occur primarily prior to, and occasionally during, or immediately after, a date
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