Is Tinder changing the way we think?

Is TINDER changing the way we think? Experts warn 'binary thinking' teaches people to over simplify and become disconnected

• 'Tinderization' is a way of over-simplifying, leading to yes or no decisions
• Phenomoenon allows people to passively avoid emotional entanglement
• Concept applies to more than just Tinder, and leads to robotic behaviour

By CHEYENNE MACDONALD FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 14:31 EST, 15 January 2016 | UPDATED: 18:45 EST, 15 January 2016

As technology merges with social decision making, users are growing increasingly disconnected, tending more towards 'either/or,' options than embracing complexity.

The phenomenon is becoming known as 'Tinderization.' In this concept, which is not limited solely to Tinder use, people are urged toward being more 'chill.'

By creating too many options to make decisions more intricate than a 'yes' or 'no,' human behaviour ultimately becomes robotic.

WHAT IS 'TINDERIZATION'?
The authors compare the mindset to a large-scale version of 'zoning out.'

With Tinder, swiping through potential suitors allows people to make choices quickly—so quickly that it becomes like a game.

By swiping right time after time, users can pick so many options that they don't actually have to make a choice, the authors explain.

This applies to all networks, as people continue to push aside human connection, and opt toward binary sorting techniques.

When a situation doesn't go well, a person can easily avoid confrontation and never just follow up.

The phenomenon is leading toward a more detached society, which feels less emotionally accountable in virtual connections.

In an essay for The New Inquiry called Tinderization of Feeling, Alicia Eler and Eve Peyser write that Tinderization is a way for people, largely millennials, to make fast decisions by simplifying situations into a simpler 'yes/no' format.

Regular decisions, like choosing a show to watch, or a restaurant to eat at, have become even more difficult with the inundation of immediately available networks at your fingertips.

With Tinder, swiping through potential suitors allows people to make choices quickly—so quickly that it becomes like a game.

By swiping right time after time, users can pick so many options that they don't actually have to make a choice, the authors explain.

This applies to all networks, as people continue to push aside human connection, and opt toward binary sorting techniques.

'Tinder is more than a dating app,' Eler and Peyser write, 'it is a metaphor for speeding up and mechanizing decision-making, turning us into binary creatures who can bypass underlying questions and emotions and instead of with whatever feels really good in the moment.'

The authors compare this mindset to a large-scale version of 'zoning out.'

When a situation doesn't go well, a person can easily avoid confrontation and just never follow up.

'To remain chill is to ignore without intention, not because you chose to but because you don't have the emotional energy to reply to everyone,' the authors write.

'The more we Tind, the seemingly chiller we become. But really we are just overwhelmed with faces behind screens, with serial objectification and passive evasion.'

The authors argue that these networks don't have to lead to a disconnected society, but users must be willing to engage in 'emotional intricacies,' to fight it.

By including other people in the processes and having intricate conversations, emotional boundaries can be set, allowing a person to reconnect with complex feelings.

Even Tinder, they write, doesn't have to lead to Tinderization.

Instead, the dating app and other services like it can be used to verify a connection by facilitating the first dates of people who share overlapping social circles, and already know of each other.

Then, a person is held emotionally accountable in a different way.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Report: World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China

Visualizing The Power Of The World's Supercomputers

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car