To swipe or not to swipe? That is the question I’ve been faced with on the few different dating apps I’ve logged on to. To be frank, I have no particular interest in dating, so if I find myself flipping through a stranger’s selfies, it’s probably because my friends are too. I guess that means, I would jump off that bridge if my friends were.
Even though apps like these profess to be able to find your ‘match,’ I still don’t ever really think about them as dating apps. This could be because interactions are generally limited to ‘swiping’ style interactions, but it could also just be because I’m just not that into it. With that though, I don’t think the prospect of meeting someone you really care for on a dating app is impossible or even unthinkable. I think the internet opens up a host of possibilities, especially for people that live in intolerant places or encounter a lot of resistance to preference.
While I don’t designate any racial difference on my profile (specifically thinking about Tinder), I’m preettty sure I would be read as black. I don’t have any preference listed on my profile either, but filters for ‘miles away,’ ‘gender,’ and ‘age’ change who shows up on my feed. I think being a Black woman changes my dating prospects quite a bit, though this is probably also dependent on other factors. For instance, I have seen that I am more likely to match with users my age in more ethnically diverse areas. However, the possibility of being fetishized ostensibly adds to my pool of possible suitors irregardless of location. I think this is most obvious when someone panders to me via references to Black culture or invites me to participate in race play. While these are surely the flattering comments everybody hope to hear, I am still compelled to swipe left. Overall, I feel that my readable identity makes dating a cautionary tale: I can never be sure of anyone’s intentions until I get to know them irl.
Even as I write this, the most striking thing for me is the comparability my virtual reality has with my lived reality. Simply, it seems as if the virtual can exist as both a reprieve from lived experience and a replication of it. As Sharpe indicates, “‘virtual citizens’ on the Web often reproduce the very inclusions and exclusions of our in-person social encounters and alienations” (Sharpe 1093, 1999). However, this does not mean that these “particular positions in cyperspace” cannot be used to “address how we are constituted through these relations with racial and sexual others in RL” (Sharpe 1095, 1999). It seems then that I occupy this tenuous space where I’m aware of how I might be perceived and must spar with the double-edged sword of visibility and marginalization. I think that, as we continue to learn, the space of dating in the Black digital sphere is one that rests on instability.