Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Philosophy on the Fringes, a podcast that explores the philosophical dimensions of the strange and the mundane.
Speaker: We're your hosts, Megan Fritz and Frank Cabrera.
Speaker: On today's episode, we're talking about dating apps.
Speaker: In a sea of selfies, swipes and super likes, are conditions right for a genuine connection or is it all just a game?
Speaker: Hey, everyone.
Speaker: It's good to be back with you finally for the fifth episode of Philosophy on the Fringes.
Speaker: First off, sorry about the delay.
Speaker: This episode was supposed to come out a couple weeks ago.
Speaker: There were some unexpected events.
Speaker: Probably a lot of you know, maybe some of you don't, probably a lot of you heard about
Speaker: The pretty devastating tornado that hit Little Rock where we're based out of two weekends ago.
Speaker: We really didn't suffer at all because of it.
Speaker: We are really lucky, but we did lose power for a few days.
Speaker: We weren't able to record the episode that weekend like we planned.
Speaker: And then the next weekend, we had a bunch of family in from out of town for Easter weekend.
Speaker: So we couldn't record that weekend either.
Speaker: So here we are two weeks later.
Speaker: Sorry about that, but hopefully you stuck it out and you are joining us today.
Speaker: for a very exciting episode on online dating.
Speaker: Online dating.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm pretty psyched about this episode, weirdly, even though I have never online dated in my life.
Speaker: Frank, you did online dating.
Speaker: Yes, I'll lay my cards out on the table.
Speaker: I have online dated before, very, very briefly in the times before, Megan, in the years of 2015 to 2016.
Speaker: I used Tinder, and my experience was...
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I went out with a few people.
Speaker: It was mostly fine.
Speaker: I didn't go on a lot of dates.
Speaker: I didn't spend a lot of time swiping.
Speaker: And I know that Tinder has changed a lot recently, I guess.
Speaker: Actually, I'm not sure.
Speaker: I'm actually not really sure how it's changed.
Speaker: How do you know, Frank?
Speaker: Well, we have a friend, a mutual friend who sends us lots of updates about his online dating life.
Speaker: So I think things are different than it was in 2015, 2016.
Speaker: I have no idea what the online dating landscape is like.
Speaker: I'm glad to not be online dating.
Speaker: I don't know about you, Megan, but I'm glad to be off the market.
Speaker: Yeah, I will say sometimes... You're glad to be off the market, right?
Speaker: Of course I'm elated to be off the market.
Speaker: Sometimes I do wish that I had just known what it was like to kind of play around on the apps.
Speaker: But of course it sort of seems like it's a hellscape now, so I have no desire to...
Speaker: But it seems like you actually had kind of like a like a halcyon experience.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, I met a few people.
Speaker: It was fine.
Speaker: You never got ghosted.
Speaker: I never got ghosted.
Speaker: I didn't waste that much time on it.
Speaker: I didn't I never had any like characteristically bad dates.
Speaker: You know, I know some people like some people who use these apps a lot.
Speaker: They go on dates like every week, sometimes multiple times a week.
Speaker: And they have a lot of bad date stories.
Speaker: I don't really have any of those.
Speaker: It was fine.
Speaker: You know, it was.
Speaker: So from a standpoint perspective, we're maybe two of the worst people to talk about.
Speaker: About online dating or philosophizing about online dating.
Speaker: But we're going to try to anyway.
Speaker: And we're going to try to say some new, maybe unexpected things about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, Frank, do you want to start out by just sort of giving us a few interesting factual tidbits about online dating?
Speaker: Yeah, let's talk about some facts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So as you might have guessed, online dating apps are pretty popular.
Speaker: According to a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, 3 in 10 U.S. adults say they have ever used a dating app.
Speaker: So that's quite a lot.
Speaker: It predominates among the younger crowd, so 50% of those ages 18 to 29 have used an online dating app.
Speaker: The most popular one is Tinder.
Speaker: So 46% of those who use online dating apps say they use Tinder.
Speaker: Next closest one is Match, then Bumble, then OkCupid, then Hinge.
Speaker: That's a more recent one.
Speaker: This one's pretty significant.
Speaker: One in 10 partnered U.S. adults say they met their significant other on an online dating app.
Speaker: So that's those that are committed relationship, those who are married.
Speaker: I've seen other studies that have suggested the numbers even higher.
Speaker: I remember seeing a...
Speaker: A headline from not that long ago that said that meeting someone online is the most popular way to meet someone these days if you're in a committed relationship.
Speaker: People's experiences on these apps are somewhat mixed.
Speaker: It's pretty much split 50-50 whether your experience is positive or negative.
Speaker: People report being experienced.
Speaker: excited about those they've been on dates with.
Speaker: They report being disappointed about those they've been on dates with.
Speaker: So it's kind of a mixed bag.
Speaker: It is not the case that the majority of respondents think that online dating has made it easier to meet someone.
Speaker: So only 42% said that it has made it easier.
Speaker: So it's not as though they think it makes it easier.
Speaker: And it looks like people are romantics out there because only one in five think that dating algorithms can predict love.
Speaker: Love is mysterious.
Speaker: Love can't be captured in an algorithm.
Speaker: So those are some of the facts.
Speaker: We'll come back to some more facts as they are relevant.
Speaker: But that's a good place to start off.
Speaker: I feel like that's a standard episode in a lot of sitcoms.
Speaker: Or maybe, I don't know, you know the episode I'm talking about?
Speaker: Like every sitcom has this episode where someone goes in to see a matchmaker and they give them all these details about themselves.
Speaker: And, you know, often what happens and is played for laughs is the matchmaker is like, oh, gosh, there's no one out there for you.
Speaker: Yeah, love is just the mystery.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, so something that I found surprising about the set of facts is that only 42% of people say that dating apps make dating easier.
Speaker: I guess I found that surprising, one, because it seems like because people use them so much, there must be a reason.
Speaker: And one would think that the reason is that it's easier to meet someone on an app than it is in real life because whatever, the modern condition is solitary and isolated and
Speaker: you know, everyone's on their own and no one ever meets anyone or has friends or wants to leave the house, according to like Instagram memes.
Speaker: So you would think that that would make it easier to meet someone.
Speaker: But people think that they don't necessarily think that.
Speaker: And fewer than half the people who use dating apps think it's made dating easier.
Speaker: So I think that's something that we should talk about.
Speaker: Why hasn't it made things easier?
Speaker: Frank, do you have any ideas?
Speaker: Well, I guess it seems like there is an embarrassment of riches, you might say.
Speaker: There's just too many options.
Speaker: Yeah, actually, I saw, I think this was on Instagram or somewhere, but this video, I'm sure it was a joke, but it was a video of some guy using Tinder, but he wasn't really using it.
Speaker: He had this like robotic thumb that he that would just swipe right on every single picture that came up, you know, it was
Speaker: freeing up his time to do other things with his thumbs.
Speaker: And I guess the joke is that you just want to collect them all in a way.
Speaker: You want to maximize your exposure to people by swiping right on all of them.
Speaker: And there's a lot of people on these apps.
Speaker: So initially, that seems like a good thing because if you're on a dating app, it's to meet people.
Speaker: So the more people you meet, seemingly the better.
Speaker: But there's also kind of this paradox that you run into.
Speaker: And I've talked about this in my class before, this basic sort of paradox.
Speaker: I always call it the Netflix paradox because I think that Netflix really exemplifies this sort of bind that we find ourselves in
Speaker: where we log on to Netflix because we wanna just chill and watch a show and we log on and there's like 8,500 shows.
Speaker: And we spend our entire time we have allotted for relaxing and watching a show, just kind of scrolling through the shows, trying to pick the best show to watch.
Speaker: And then suddenly it's one in the morning, you have to go to bed.
Speaker: And the paradox is that there's so many options that it's prevented you in a way from being able to make a choice.
Speaker: So I'm wondering if that's what people on dating apps, if that's one of the reasons they're not finding it easier to date is, like you said, there's this embarrassment of riches.
Speaker: There's so many options that making a choice becomes extremely difficult.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that could be it.
Speaker: I think when it comes to Netflix, sometimes because there's so many options, we just sort of let the algorithm decide.
Speaker: Like they have the little box that says new picks for you.
Speaker: So I'm surprised that there isn't like yet, as far as I know, there is not.
Speaker: There's not an algorithm that where like it just sort of picks matches for you, right?
Speaker: Like it sort of knows your preferences.
Speaker: And because it's onerous to spend the time swiping, the algorithm would just sort of like select matches for you.
Speaker: I'm surprised it's not out there.
Speaker: I know, we can be famous now.
Speaker: Tinder, you have to pay us if you use this.
Speaker: So one of the questions that was asked in this survey was whether people thought there were too many options.
Speaker: So interestingly, 43% thought that they had the right amount of options, right?
Speaker: Surprising, the right amount, right?
Speaker: The exact right amount of options.
Speaker: 37% thought they had too many, and 13% thought they had too few.
Speaker: 7% didn't answer.
Speaker: So, yeah, again, mixed bag, 43% plurality thinks they don't have too many options, but, you know, quite a few, 37%, quite a few think they have too many, so that could be part of it, but I'm not sure that's the whole thing, right, given that 43% think they have too many.
Speaker: the right amount.
Speaker: I think another part of it could be that you don't want to settle before something better comes along, right?
Speaker: Isn't that the idea?
Speaker: Isn't that why we don't settle sometimes on a show on Netflix, right?
Speaker: If you keep scrolling, you might find a better show or a better movie, and you don't want to have missed out on that.
Speaker: Like, surely that kind of psychological disposition plays a role in this.
Speaker: What do you think?
Speaker: Well, yeah, right.
Speaker: So this kind of the grass is always greener sort of feeling if you're if you're always able to, you know, peek over the fence into your neighbor's yard, then you might.
Speaker: Doesn't Kierkegaard have something to say about this?
Speaker: He wrote a lot about anxiety and choice and options and on love, right?
Speaker: I think Kierkegaard actually has a couple of things to say about this, but I should probably start by telling the audience who Kierkegaard is.
Speaker: For those who don't know, Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, 19th century Danish philosopher.
Speaker: Megan's fave.
Speaker: One of my faves, for sure.
Speaker: And actually, he's probably been the philosopher that's been a fave for the longest for me.
Speaker: I was actually just thinking about this the other day.
Speaker: So Kierkegaard is often considered a kind of proto-existentialist, technically before the era that we might call the existentialist era in philosophy, but someone who kind of sets them up for the kinds of questions the existentialists will later discuss.
Speaker: And throughout a lot of his work,
Speaker: Kierkegaard describes a kind of person that he calls an asthete.
Speaker: An asthete, simply put, is someone who thinks that the highest value in life is life being interesting.
Speaker: So there may be what we would describe in today's terms as someone who has like main character syndrome.
Speaker: They think that the best thing that life can be is interesting, whether that be like happy or tragic or whatever.
Speaker: The worst thing that life can be is dull.
Speaker: And he has a character, a fictional character that he describes as kind of encompassing the mind of the Esthete, who he calls the Seducer.
Speaker: So he has, as a kind of side note in one of his longer works, he has a shorter piece called The Seducer's Diary.
Speaker: The Seducer's Diary is a fictional diary that's supposed to be written by this man who just goes by the name of the Seducer, detailing his relationship with a woman named Cordelia.
Speaker: And the seducer details this relationship.
Speaker: He's kind of stringing Cordelia along.
Speaker: He feels like he is in love with her.
Speaker: He's just crazy about her.
Speaker: But he's never willing to fully commit to her because for him, that would ruin the relationship.
Speaker: That would take the excitement out of it.
Speaker: That would make it dull.
Speaker: And keeping things open, even if it's open only to the tragic, is what makes things interesting and kind of...
Speaker: is what drives the seducer in this relationship.
Speaker: So I think Kierkegaard would describe this propensity in people to always sort of be wondering about or thinking about, like, hey, what if the next person who comes along is better or more exciting or I'm more in love with them as kind of a characteristic of this character, the Asthete.
Speaker: Someone whose main value in life is being interesting or having an interesting life rather than maybe having a life of committed love or, you know, sacrifice for other people or being a good person or whatever.
Speaker: Maybe this is obvious, but this is not the kind of life that Kierkegaard thinks ultimately someone should aim to live.
Speaker: But he does think it is a common way that people live.
Speaker: Yeah, one of my favorite quotes from Either Or is the larger work in which Seducer's Diary is contained.
Speaker: At the beginning of Either Or, there's a quote that I really like, and it goes like this.
Speaker: I think it really encapsulates the esthetes attitude, the aesthetic attitude.
Speaker: Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.
Speaker: And what wine is so sparkling, what's so fragrant, what's so intoxicating as possibility?
Speaker: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So this idea that we are, you know, at the bottom of things, not really intoxicated or drawn in by beauty or pleasure itself, but maybe just like the possibility of increasing amounts of both.
Speaker: But I think Kierkegaard has something to say about this paradox of choice as well.
Speaker: So in later work of his, particularly I'm thinking of a work called The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard talks about a kind of what he calls anxiety or dizziness that someone experiences when they're in a situation of what he calls like pure freedom.
Speaker: So in his book, he's talking about he's speaking more from a religious context, specifically the freedom to sin.
Speaker: But I think that we can apply this concept elsewhere, that this kind of like unrestrained total freedom, it has maybe not the kind of like
Speaker: It doesn't make things easier for us like we might expect, but it actually can arrest our agency to some extent.
Speaker: And this is an idea that Sartre many decades later would pick up on and talk about in his own work.
Speaker: In Sartre's views, mankind is utterly free, in fact, not even constrained by any kind of moral norms or objective values at all.
Speaker: But this doesn't make things easier for us.
Speaker: In fact, it makes things much more difficult.
Speaker: Yeah, I think this is a really significant point.
Speaker: If you find yourself paralyzed by too many options on Netflix or too many options on Tinder, this shows something pretty significant, that more choices, more options, isn't necessarily better.
Speaker: So we think of freedom of choice as a great good.
Speaker: We really like freedom here.
Speaker: And so there's a tendency to think more options is better.
Speaker: But I mean, this shows that not necessarily, right?
Speaker: It leads to this kind of dizzying paralysis.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm also just not sure that people have great insight into whether they have, like, too many or too few options on Tinder.
Speaker: I mean, surely the people that said the right amount are mistaken, right?
Speaker: Like, the exact—it's really hard to get the right amount, right?
Speaker: No, neither more nor less.
Speaker: Like, that has to be wrong.
Speaker: I mean, I guess I always feel like I don't have enough options on Netflix either, even though I have literally thousands.
Speaker: And I guess it's just because I have so many options that I get, like, absurdly picky.
Speaker: Yeah, my dad always says there's nothing to watch here.
Speaker: I find it hilarious.
Speaker: So far, a lot of stuff we've said has been pretty standard.
Speaker: You can find articles in the popular press talking about this sort of stuff that there's too many options or that people have this fear of missing out.
Speaker: So let's talk about some things that are a little less traditional when it comes to online dating.
Speaker: So I recently read a paper in the journal of the American Philosophical Association called, Is It Bad to Refer Attractive Partners?
Speaker: I really like this paper.
Speaker: It's a nice instance of the kind of thing that philosophers like to do, which is question common sense assumptions.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, I mean, I think it is a common sense assumption that it's okay to at least factor into your decision for who you get romantically involved in that, whether the attractiveness of the person, right?
Speaker: So this paper, though, argues that that is objectionable, that it is a kind of objectionable form of discrimination.
Speaker: What do you think about that thesis, Megan?
Speaker: Like just off of that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What are your, what are your vibes?
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: I mean, I mean, right.
Speaker: It's certainly contrary to common sense.
Speaker: A big part of the maybe colloquial concept of romantic relationships is this kind of thing that we call chemistry.
Speaker: And usually our physical attraction to people is part of our chemistry with them.
Speaker: Yeah, well, the paper, I guess that's true.
Speaker: One thing that the paper tries to argue is that the sort of stuff that goes into a romantic partnership, you know, a lot of times, at least a lot of it, physical attraction really doesn't have much to do with whether you're successful at the functions of a romantic partnership.
Speaker: So what's involved in a romantic partnership?
Speaker: Well, you know, romantic partners oftentimes are
Speaker: friend.
Speaker: They're oftentimes a confidant, a supporter.
Speaker: They share resources.
Speaker: They help you when you're down.
Speaker: Maybe they have a good sense of humor.
Speaker: They make you laugh.
Speaker: I mean, physical attractiveness doesn't really affect any of those things.
Speaker: And for a lot of the functions of a romantic relationship, it's kind of irrelevant.
Speaker: And even the sexual component, right?
Speaker: I mean, you can be really good at sex even if you're not physically attractive, right?
Speaker: So, yeah, I mean, I think on one hand, this is something that it sounds like I didn't read this paper, but it sounds like the paper does get this right, that a lot of the most important parts of like a long term committed partnership are things that don't depend on the other person's like.
Speaker: objective attractiveness, right?
Speaker: I mean, otherwise, all relationships would fall apart as people aged.
Speaker: But obviously, this does not happen, right?
Speaker: There's lots and lots and lots of older couples who have really strong, beautiful, loving marriages or lifelong partnerships.
Speaker: And so even though they look different than they did when they got together, it doesn't seem like that's affected their relationship at all.
Speaker: So that sounds right.
Speaker: But on the other hand, it seems like you don't want to just reduce romantic relationships down to other kinds of relationships like friendships or whatever.
Speaker: I mean, it sounds almost like, you know, what would be the difference between a romantic partnership and just like a really strong friendship on this view?
Speaker: I mean, I guess maybe the author thinks that like how attractive you are doesn't have anything to do with like
Speaker: I don't know, your sex life, that seems a little implausible to me.
Speaker: Like, surely someone would enjoy having sex with someone they found attractive.
Speaker: Yes, I think a lot really depends on what type of relationship you're seeking out, right?
Speaker: Yeah, we'll leave it at that.
Speaker: But anyway, so I think it's worthwhile to question this common sense assumption.
Speaker: I guess my reaction to the thesis is that, yeah, this sort of just seems like the kind of thing you can't control, right?
Speaker: You can't really control who you are attracted to, even if you are attracted to them for bad reasons, I guess.
Speaker: It's just something that's not within your control, and so you don't really have any kind of moral obligation.
Speaker: It just seems sort of like an amoral realm, a realm where
Speaker: like moral talk just seems inapt, right?
Speaker: Yeah, so this kind of critique, when we're talking about other areas besides romantic relationships, it's often referred to as lookism.
Speaker: Is that right?
Speaker: Yeah, so that's what it was called in discussions of like employment discrimination.
Speaker: So lookism is analogous to like sexism, analogous to racism, right?
Speaker: It's the sort of thing, if you're making a choice based on a morally arbitrary feature of a person.
Speaker: So I didn't, again, I didn't read this paper, but I can see the following critique being kind of compelling that maybe there are these beauty standards that are like features of the culture and that meeting those beauty standards doesn't have anything to do with like how good of a romantic partner you will be.
Speaker: It seems implausible to be like your partner being attracted to you or not makes no difference in your romantic relationship.
Speaker: But I can see like, you know, there being something along the lines of you should interrogate like, you know, whether like you're just attracted to things because they line up with like some arbitrary cultural beauty standards and maybe that would be bad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: I think another issue, though, I have with the thesis is that it seems like whatever you substitute in for, like, the morally permissible things upon which it's okay to, you know, sort out the partners for you and the partners that are not for you, it just seems like that's the sort of thing that's going to be subject to a similar kind of critique.
Speaker: I mean, for instance, right?
Speaker: A lot of your ability to be a good friend, a good confident, a good partner in other ways, depends on things that are outside your control.
Speaker: A lot of that depends on your personality.
Speaker: I mean, what if you're super duper boring?
Speaker: So suppose we say it's okay to find people interesting as a basis for partnering up with them, but not okay to partner up with them just because you find them physically attractive.
Speaker: Well, I mean, it's hard to change whether you're boring or not.
Speaker: I mean, boringness is just kind of a personality trait.
Speaker: It's hard to change personality traits, right?
Speaker: I mean, so it just seems like whatever you substitute in for the thing that's okay to act upon as a means of sorting through who you're going to be with and you're not, that's going to be subject to a similar sort of critique, I think.
Speaker: I mean, just it's outside the person's control, you know, that sort of stuff.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, not everyone is as naturally funny as I am, and that's not their fault.
Speaker: Yeah, and if you're really unfunny, it's probably almost impossible to change that.
Speaker: I guess you could read a book of jokes all day.
Speaker: I'm not sure that's... That's going to make it worse, honestly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I think that's totally right.
Speaker: So why I think that looks are in this special category of like things out of your control that people shouldn't take into consideration when they're thinking about dating you and like your funniness levels or whatever.
Speaker: You're like, you're, you know, let's just say your ability to do all those things that are needed for a good relationship would depend on conscientiousness.
Speaker: That's one of those big five personality traits the psychologists like to talk about.
Speaker: how conscientious you are.
Speaker: You know, that's a lot, a lot of that's determined by, you know, your personality and that's hard to change.
Speaker: So, uh, so then if you, if you decide to partner up with people based on their conscientiousness, well, again, now you're, now you're, you're, um, you're, you're discriminating against people based on something they have no control over.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, okay.
Speaker: Let me just try to, I'll try to play, I don't want to say devil's advocate, but I'm not super convinced by the paper, but I'll try to, you know, maybe make a case for it.
Speaker: Let's say looks more than these other traits affect your outcome in life.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: I do not know if that's true.
Speaker: Oh, no, that's true.
Speaker: There's research on this.
Speaker: The people who are conventionally attractive, they're regarded as more kind, trustworthy, whatever.
Speaker: So maybe if someone's like really hot, even if they're not conscientious or funny or open or whatever, they're still going to probably do all right.
Speaker: This seems plausible.
Speaker: So maybe since your looks more than these other things are a source of like such vulnerability for your outcomes in life, that makes it like worse.
Speaker: That makes it, you know, a thing that you should disregard over these other things when you're picking partners because maybe it's just like an issue of justice.
Speaker: Well, that's true.
Speaker: That's going to make Tinder really bad because I bet when people are swiping left and right, they are not making some kind of all things considered judgment about personality and interest.
Speaker: We don't have time for that, right?
Speaker: A lot of people make judgments based on looks, right?
Speaker: Let's be honest here.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think the guy with the robotic thumb is taking time to carefully read all the bios, right?
Speaker: I mean, it doesn't even seem like he's looking at the pictures.
Speaker: But right, yeah, a lot of these dating apps are really picture-based.
Speaker: Not all of them.
Speaker: Some dating apps do not, or you can't see someone's picture, I think, without reading your bio and then swiping on it.
Speaker: And then I think you see pictures.
Speaker: I can't remember which ones those are, but I know they're out there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But dating without seeing the person first is actually the like plot kind of of this really popular reality show that people are watching these days called Love is Blind.
Speaker: Have you heard of this?
Speaker: Didn't we try to watch it and it was too bad and we turned it off in 10 minutes, I think?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: We tried to watch an episode of this because I saw so many people tweeting about it.
Speaker: So I was like, let's just try.
Speaker: Let's watch an episode.
Speaker: But anyway, for those of you who haven't been initiated yet, as far as I can tell from the half an episode I watched, there's a bunch of people on this dating show and they are paired up in each episode with someone who's
Speaker: to get to know someone, you know, of whatever gender they're attracted to.
Speaker: And they spend some time talking to one another, getting to know each other.
Speaker: But they are, a wall divides them.
Speaker: They can't see the person they're talking to.
Speaker: So throughout the show, they get to know a bunch of people, but only their personality.
Speaker: They don't actually see what they look like until, like, the end of the show, when they've already kind of made a connection with these people.
Speaker: So maybe, you know, for people convinced by this kind of like lookism and dating is bad, maybe like that's the kind of utopian dating scene that they, you know, they think might maybe they think that'd be better.
Speaker: I think somewhat unfairly, we've been talking as though people on Tinder only swipe left or right based on physical attractiveness.
Speaker: But it's implausible that people make these decisions solely based on physical attractiveness, at least in most cases.
Speaker: I think most people care a lot about values, interests, personality to some degree, right?
Speaker: Again, depending on the type of relationship they're seeking.
Speaker: But they care about both things to some degree.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: So, but even with that, though, Tinder, online dating poses a problem, right?
Speaker: Because there's so many options.
Speaker: You have to make these decisions really, really fast.
Speaker: If you're putting yourself out there, you know this.
Speaker: And so you have to do your best to kind of signal to would-be swipers that what your personality is, what type of values you have, what type of interests you have.
Speaker: Because they're not going to read your bio.
Speaker: Yeah, they're likely not going to read it very closely or at all.
Speaker: So, you know, you might want to have pictures of you from that one time you went to Europe five years ago or a picture of you holding a fish, right?
Speaker: Or a picture of you doing sports or hanging out with people because you want to signal these sorts of values or interests and personality.
Speaker: So everyone knows this.
Speaker: Everyone engages in this to some degree on these online dating sites and apps.
Speaker: And, you know, to some degree in real life, too, let's be honest.
Speaker: But I think it becomes sort of magnified on the apps because you know you only have so little amount of time with any given person when they look at your profile.
Speaker: And in fact, there are guides on the Internet to help you, you know, craft the most interesting and swipe-write-worthy profile.
Speaker: Okay, yeah, so I kind of see what's going on.
Speaker: So we have these criteria for all the things that make a really good online dating profile, things that people are going to swipe on and like and want to go out with.
Speaker: And people kind of know all of these tips for making their profile really good.
Speaker: So they do all these things.
Speaker: They put every picture of themselves playing every soccer game they've ever played in their lives or...
Speaker: They put pictures of themselves in front of cool monuments that they've been to.
Speaker: And it's kind of like when you're in school and they teach the lessons so that you can pass the test.
Speaker: The standardized test.
Speaker: The standardized test.
Speaker: It's called teaching to the test.
Speaker: Teaching to the test.
Speaker: They teach to the test.
Speaker: This is in the best interest of the teachers in the school districts.
Speaker: And so when you score really well on the test, what that should mean is that you know a lot about geography or biology or whatever you're being tested on.
Speaker: But what it might actually mean is just that you have learned to master this particular test.
Speaker: So too in online dating, if you know that everyone else knows exactly how to craft the perfect profile, then when you're looking through and you find yourself drawn in by someone's profile, you might think, well, are they actually interesting or have they just mastered the technique of building an interesting profile?
Speaker: This is a problem that social scientists have to deal with all the time, that when you have this way of measuring some target, when the measure itself becomes the target, then it's no longer a good measure.
Speaker: The measure is only good if it's not like the thing you're aiming directly at.
Speaker: Once you start aiming directly at the measure, the thing that's supposed to be doing the measuring, then it's no longer a good test anymore.
Speaker: Yeah, so instead of actually looking for love with authenticity, it's kind of turned into a game and you just want to get the most swipes or something like that.
Speaker: Like practically, that's what's driving your actions.
Speaker: And speaking of games, I'm really excited about this part because I think that one of the biggest things that worries me about dating apps is that they function like a game, which I think is kind of inarguable.
Speaker: They do function as a kind of game, even to the point where you can kind of buy like features in the app, right?
Speaker: Like in Tinder, you can pay for super swipes, right?
Speaker: Yeah, to boost your profile.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So dating apps function like a game.
Speaker: This is this is inarguable.
Speaker: One of my favorite semi-recent papers in philosophy and everyone who knows me knows that I love this paper because I talk about it all the time, write about it all the time by the philosopher C.T.
Speaker: Nguyen.
Speaker: He wrote a paper called How Twitter Gamifies Communication.
Speaker: I couldn't recommend this paper enough.
Speaker: We're going to link to it in the info on the podcast.
Speaker: But what Nguyen argues in this paper is that Twitter, the app Twitter...
Speaker: turns human-to-human communication about important topics into a kind of game by inserting what he calls artificial values into the communication experience.
Speaker: And these artificial values are things like likes, retweets, follows, things that kind of function as like a visual sticker of success.
Speaker: on your tweet.
Speaker: If you get a lot of likes, if you get a lot of follows, you did a good job.
Speaker: If you get a lot of comments but not a lot of likes, you got a ratio.
Speaker: That's bad.
Speaker: That means you've done a bad tweet.
Speaker: You did a not good tweet if you get a ratio.
Speaker: So Twitter...
Speaker: functions as a kind of game because there are things that we value, like getting a lot of followers or a lot of likes on our tweets, that we wouldn't value if we were outside of the game.
Speaker: He calls these artificial values, and they're a standard feature of games.
Speaker: Anytime you play a game, you have to value things that you have no values for outside the game.
Speaker: Normally, in most games, this isn't an issue because we play games because they're fun.
Speaker: They're a good pastime.
Speaker: They help us build important skills.
Speaker: But some things, he argues, should not be gamified.
Speaker: And he thinks that, like...
Speaker: Human-to-human communication about important topics is one of those things that shouldn't be turned into a game.
Speaker: It's one of those things that we need to value for its own sake and not for the sake of artificially valued features.
Speaker: Otherwise, it's going to break down.
Speaker: Communication is going to break.
Speaker: So what are the artificial values in like Tinder?
Speaker: Is it just getting matches?
Speaker: I know it makes more sense.
Speaker: I think this fits a lot better when it comes to Twitter because people can see your likes, right?
Speaker: But people can't really see your matches.
Speaker: So is that how this would apply?
Speaker: Like the game is getting as many matches as possible?
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: I'm not really sure it matters if a lot of other people can see them.
Speaker: I think getting a lot of matches or a lot of people swiping on you functions as a kind of badge of honor.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess our friends that we've talked to that are on these things, they seem to get pretty excited when they match with someone they think is really, really hot or something.
Speaker: You don't really have any interest in pursuing them any further.
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: It's just the fact that you have managed to attract the attention of someone that you also think seems interesting or attractive, even if ultimately, you know, you have no interest in pursuing a relationship with them.
Speaker: It's kind of an ego boost.
Speaker: Like, oh, they thought I was pretty too.
Speaker: That's nice.
Speaker: And I think that we sort of, that at least this might be one of the causes behind a very common complaint about dating apps, which is the phenomenon of ghosting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ghosting.
Speaker: This is a, from what I hear of people who are on dating apps, this is a pervasive complaint that there's a lot of kind of small talk that never goes anywhere.
Speaker: And we might think that a good explanation for that is that people are using Tinder like a game and they get these artificial values fulfilled.
Speaker: They get the match, they get someone to strike up a conversation with them and they're kind of satisfied enough to not really need to put in any more effort to actually go through with the person, the in-person outing.
Speaker: So ghosting is pretty common on Tinder, but it's also pretty common in the offline world, right?
Speaker: I mean... Yeah, everyone ghosts everyone.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I mean, to some degree, right?
Speaker: Like, I've heard that employees regularly will just sort of quit not informing people
Speaker: their employer.
Speaker: This sort of two weeks notice thing is kind of a thing of the past.
Speaker: And likewise, prospective employees will sometimes be ghosted by would-be employers, right?
Speaker: So this is just becoming increasingly common, I think, in society at large.
Speaker: People ghost each other, just sort of a thing we do now.
Speaker: I mean, what do you make of this, Megan?
Speaker: Is there some sort of cause, like single cause of this?
Speaker: Like, why are we ghosting each other all the time?
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: So someone might be like, well, the gamification of dating apps isn't, you know, why people ghost each other.
Speaker: It's because everyone goes to each other because we as a society or as a generation or whatever are like totally like terrified of awkward situations.
Speaker: We simply can't do it.
Speaker: We can't tell someone we're not going to come into work the next day.
Speaker: We can't tell someone we're not going to hire them for a job.
Speaker: We can't tell someone, you know, whatever.
Speaker: We just, we don't, we can't muster up the courage to do it.
Speaker: And so we just don't.
Speaker: So that seems like a big, you know, reason behind these ghosting situations in like employment contexts.
Speaker: I know when I...
Speaker: Had like, you know, a normal person's job back in, you know, the pre-grad school days.
Speaker: I worked at a sandwich shop.
Speaker: People just quit and just, you know, yeah, two weeks notice, that's not a thing.
Speaker: So I've definitely seen that kind of ghosting.
Speaker: But the weird thing when it comes to online dating is that like in employment situations, you are kind of forced into that, right?
Speaker: Like people have to work.
Speaker: If you're working, you're probably working because you have to work.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And so it makes sense that you would just like ghost your employer because you don't really care about them once you have a new job.
Speaker: But when it comes to ghosting and like dating situations, you don't have to be dating or like trying to date.
Speaker: You don't have to be on Tinder.
Speaker: Nothing's making you be on Tinder.
Speaker: So it's weird that people ghost in a situation that's like utterly voluntary for them to be in.
Speaker: So that's why I feel like there might be something extra behind the ghosting in romantic situations.
Speaker: I want to circle back, though, to my personal experience with online dating in the years of 2015 to 2016.
Speaker: So one thing I remember feeling when I used the app was that it was kind of awkward to meet someone with the mutual recognition that this could turn into a relationship or something like that.
Speaker: And ordinarily, when you meet someone with whom you eventually have a relationship, that's not really the unstated assumption.
Speaker: So when I met Megan, she was just another grad student.
Speaker: We were at like a party or whatever.
Speaker: We're just talking philosophy.
Speaker: And that's how we met.
Speaker: There was no unstated assumption that we'd someday date and get married and have a beautiful child.
Speaker: So, yeah, I think that's one of the weird things for me about online dating, even though my experience was, you know, fine.
Speaker: Like I said, it was fine.
Speaker: And this reminds me of one thing that philosophers talk about when it comes to the philosophical position called hedonism.
Speaker: So hedonism is the view that happiness is the only thing that matters, right?
Speaker: That when we're trying to seek out a good life for ourselves, all we should care about is happiness.
Speaker: When we're trying to benefit other people, all we should care about is their happiness.
Speaker: But as many philosophers have pointed out, often trying to be happy directly is really a recipe for failure.
Speaker: When you directly aim toward happiness.
Speaker: you're likely to be unsuccessful.
Speaker: The best way to be happy, the best way to achieve this goal that the hedonist says we ought to achieve is to not really focus directly on happiness, but to focus on things and people and the world itself, right?
Speaker: Seek out projects, activities, you know, that sort of thing.
Speaker: And then hopefully you will become happy as a result of that.
Speaker: An analogy here, when you go to a party, you want to make friends, right?
Speaker: Directly focusing on trying to make friends is very likely going to be unsuccessful.
Speaker: If you try to do that, you think to yourself, I've got to make friends, got to make friends, got to make friends.
Speaker: That's going to come off as really awkward and no one's going to want to be your friend.
Speaker: Likewise, the best way to make friends is to not focus directly on the goal.
Speaker: Focus on meeting people, learning about them, telling people what you're interested in.
Speaker: And then that hopefully will lead to you achieving your goal of getting friends.
Speaker: So yeah, I think this is one sort of limitation, I guess, I found with online dating.
Speaker: Why I didn't really use it that much and use it in a very lukewarm way.
Speaker: It's just sort of awkward to focus directly on this goal when meeting and talking to someone for the first time.
Speaker: Frank actually left out a really good part of our, like, origin story, which is that the very first time we hung out, it was on a double date with different people.
Speaker: Like, I was on a date with someone, and he was on a date with someone else.
Speaker: So there was really definitely no expectation at all of anything romantic.
Speaker: Then we talked about Kierkegaard then.
Speaker: We did.
Speaker: We did talk about Kierkegaard then, much to the annoyance of the people we were on the actual dates with.
Speaker: Yeah, I've expressed this to Frank before, actually.
Speaker: This is the reason I feel like I would never want to use a dating app.
Speaker: I was always sort of put off by the idea even when I was single because of this very thing, this kind of, I don't know, I mean, it's not exactly, well, I guess in the context of hedonism, it's a paradox.
Speaker: I don't know if it's exactly a paradox when it comes to
Speaker: relationships but this kind of difficulty with um you're always going to act different or you're going to go into the situation meeting someone new totally differently when there's this thought in the back of both your heads that for the relationship to succeed it needs to succeed romantically
Speaker: It kind of sets the success conditions for the relationship to romantic partnership.
Speaker: And that means that you're going to go into it totally differently than you go into a position of meeting literally anyone else.
Speaker: Well, hold on now.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Let's go back to the facts.
Speaker: So the stats.
Speaker: So according to the Pew Research poll, 20% of men polled who are online daters and 24% of women who are online daters said that one of the things they're open to when it comes to being on these apps is making new friends.
Speaker: I mean, isn't that significant of a significant percentage?
Speaker: I would love to know the percentage of people who actually did use the app to make friends.
Speaker: I just, I mean, maybe this is cynical of me.
Speaker: I feel like that's just something people say.
Speaker: But maybe they say it to act as a kind, to kind of counteract the weirdness.
Speaker: Right, yes.
Speaker: Of going into these meetings with people with purely romantic expectations.
Speaker: If you say I'm open to friendship, maybe it takes that edge of weirdness off of it, even though it's obviously ridiculous.
Speaker: I think we've made a discovery.
Speaker: This is a discovery.
Speaker: Yeah, because people don't make friends on Tinder.
Speaker: I've never met a person who's made a friend on Tinder.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If we made a profile that said, we're seeking friends, people would think something really different.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we would get made fun of online.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we did a poll on the podcast Twitter a while ago asking people if they were...
Speaker: single and if so were they online dating and I think it was like 13% who said that they were using dating apps currently so you know if you're one of those people and you're out there looking for love and you're listening to this podcast right now I just want to send you like a podcast high five you know I'm rooting for you it's rough out there it's rough out there but I think there's hope I think you're going to do it yeah that's a good way to end yeah
Speaker: That's all the time we have for today's episode, but join us next time as we journey to the final frontier to talk about our next topic, extraterrestrial life.
