Tag: paradox

Dating apps are the new reality, but do they really make dating easier? My study suggests they complicate it further. Questions about trust and online dating regularly crop up along with headlines about unpleasant online approaches, scams and even physical assaults when dates move offline. Still, dating apps like Tinder remain hugely popular, downloaded and used mostly on cellphones to meet new people. In fact, they have received increasing traffic globally in recent years despite these bleak stories and spurred by COVID-induced lockdowns. My ethnographic research in Cape Town, South Africa, shows that Tinder dating is riddled with contradictory feelings. As an anthropology scholar who is curious about intimacy and apps, I followed the dating journeys of 25 Tinder users for two years. I so...