This thus became one of the reasons–alongside the failure of the development of intimacy–that participants became bored and exhausted with the dating app process and the behaviours that app architecture engenders, such as multiple matches and low level investment
I probably feel more hopeful about the end of isolation. I think that the nature of online dating might slightly change, because people will be wanting to have more human contact, they’ll want to be going out more and connecting … for me I’m thinking to that phase, and I’m happy to go through this stage now.
This idea that solely digital encounters were not sufficient to determine whether or not someone was a potential partner and that physical interaction was fundamental manifested in several ways. First, participants became disenchanted with the lack of investment evident in DM conversation over multiple matches. But secondly, they were also reticent to ‘over-invest’ in one person, given they might not be able to meet this person face-to-face for an extended (and unknown) time period. Participants were concerned that they might ‘over-invest’ in a match and then discover that they had ‘no chemistry’ in a real-world environment. Participants often described an ‘animated’ quality which was lost on dating apps, a three-dimensional component which could not quite be transmitted in the digital landscape, constituting part of the potential ‘chemistry’.
There’s so much lost in the digital domain...
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