An introduction

This is the Introduction Chapter to the written project, which includes a chapter outline of the Thesis. If you would like to read the entire thesis, please download via the button at the bottom.

It is hard in the modern age to go a day without hearing about technologies and their profound impacts on human society; most recently, it has been impossible to ignore a digital intervention in the dating and marriage structures. Whether or not an individual utilizes dating apps in their personal life, they have saturated popular culture. In a nod to the panic surrounding digitized dating and hookup spaces such as Tinder, Netflix recently released a show called Too Hot to Handle, which addresses central themes of the digitization of sex and intimacy, and implies that dating apps have ruined traditional forms of “dating;” therefore, the men and women on the reality TV show are banned from physical contact, an experiment in modern dating processes.

What doesn’t tend appear in popular discourses, however, are how this rise of influence of dating apps has shifted and changed “rules” and sexual scripts; furthermore, these shifting sexual scripts perpetuate traditional relations between gender, race and class. Prognosticators have questioned and judged the ethics and implications of “hooking up,” specifically identifying it as a phenomenon on college campuses, as well as the risks and benefits of online dating, etc., leaving a small foundation of research analyzing these themes. But is the digital world improving the likelihood of positive relationships, even longstanding relationships? How could it, if it is stuck in old, traditional ways of perpetuation and maintaining class structures? Could new and improved digital tools fundamentally improve the process of meeting a “partner” (for the night, or for a lifetime, or somewhere in between)? What happens when the digital intersects traditional relations within a specific institutionalized community such as an elite institution of higher education?  

Inspired by these beginning questions, I started my evaluation from the modern and evaluated Tinder. I quickly noticed the ways in which Tinder was functioning around campus and dug a little deeper. By the end, I had dug up its unique purpose and usage on the Wesleyan University campus; students used it to meet up with other Wesleyan students, a “Who’s Who?” of single potential partners on campus. Upon further research, I quickly realized that the digital hybrid culture that students met, hooked up, and dated within had a long history of institutionalized class reproduction. Although college campuses have become more diverse sites in terms of the student body, the ways in which the culture is still entrenched in traditional systems and perpetuates homogeneity stood out to me. I read so many panicked articles and heard too many upsetting students’ stories, and I felt inspired to search for an alternative, or a solution, instead of parsing out what was wrong and negative. This inspired the design and partial development of WesFlame.

Throughout my research, as I talked and wrote about dating apps on college campuses; I kept thinking back to a comment that my friend’s mother had made over lunch our first year on campus, “The pool has already been selected for you!” Every time this mother visited, she would reminisce about the college dating pool, specifically how there’s nothing quite like that elite, intelligent “pool” of eligible young singles post-graduation. My friend and I laughed it off, brushing away the fact that neither of us had formally dated a fellow Wesleyan peer, and neither had many of our friends. While I don’t think she meant her discourse on college campus dating pools to be negative, her point highlights many of the patterns I uncover and break down in my arguments. 

In March, in light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, Wesleyan University cancelled in-person classes and sent a majority of students packing to their homes across the world, which unfortunately led me to make the decision to cancel the in-process development of the WesFlame application. I made this decision in part because students are dealing with much graver concerns and issues than the release of a dating app, and also because one of the most central components to hookup culture is proximity. A thriving campus culture, and therefore a positive and fruitful meeting, hookup and dating culture, relies on a proximity and intimacy that cannot be accomplished with COVID-19 and the mandated stay at home orders and social distancing guidelines. This sudden change of plans, as well as restrictions in funding, time, and resources, clearly limited the scope and depth of the research and analysis. In addition, many questions have arisen that demand further analysis of the specifics that lie in these complex reproduction systems and structures, especially pertaining to race and gender, and I urge future research to continue to assess these evolving systems.

Another key development that has resulted from the global pandemic is that connection via technology and online platforms has seen a surge like never before. Multiple digital dating platforms reported seeing increased usage,[1] as the majority of the global population for the months of March and April have had to approach life in unprecedented ways; many are working from home, taking classes on their computers, and are more isolated than ever. One dating app called “Quarantine Together” was released to ease feelings of loneliness in this time where people can’t physically meet up. In a request to their users, Tinder sent a message on March 30th disclosing that they had “seen longer chats from [Tinder] members in areas most impacted by COVID-19.” They urged users to keep connecting digitally, but to not meet up “IRL;”[2] “we know there’s a lot to say to each other as we all do our best to stay healthy and prevent the spread of the coronavirus.” These dating websites and apps are altering their platforms as people undergo these major lifestyle changes and dating moves to being completely virtual. For the first time, Tinder made their “Discovery” feature free to every user, which allows someone to put their location as anywhere in the world; this feature allows curious users to place their profiles in cities like Paris or New Delhi, or nostalgic college students can set their locations as on campus. “It is technology overcoming the physical distance between people and creating connection;”[3] and it is technology making proximity progressively less essential in meeting and dating. This new feature has the power to disrupt traditional approaches to creating connections that wouldn’t have naturally happened. It is technology that continues to shape and alter the meeting, hooking up, and dating scripts and processes, especially, as I’ll argue, on college campuses.

While it was not the time for the development and release of the new dating app, this explosion of usage on existing apps is just indicative of how much the digital has permeated every aspect of life, now sex and intimacy; it is essential to extend previous research of meeting, hookups, and dating on college campuses to include the digital. If WesFlame had been released before the cancellation of in-person classes, perhaps it would have also seen increased usage as students faced loneliness and isolation, and perhaps it would have been a resource for students to form connections outside of their social groups. And, it may have addressed the limitations that students indicated of existing apps.

Outlines

I begin with a brief overview of Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction and cultural capital and utilize his frameworks to connect institutionalized settings, especially elite, liberal arts campuses and similar institutions of higher education, to an elite social group; therefore perpetuating marriages of similarly educated individuals, or of upper-class to the upper-class (and of middle-class to middle-class and so forth), reproducing structures of class inequality, not to mention race and gender inequalities as well. In Chapter Two, I give a brief history of how young students in America have met and dated each other, with a particular focus on ways in which this reproduced class structure. Using script theory framework and various other sources, I also trace the shifting scripts that frame, influence, and facilitate sexual encounters between young adults. After giving an overview of the foundational research that has been established on the topic of the hookup era, I turn to the specific culture that exists within the borders of Wesleyan’s campus community, what one might call the “Wes Bubble.” Due to many factors, Wesleyan University boasts a uniquely radical, sex-positive campus culture, where reportedly and historically, a significant portion of students don’t formally date.

In Chapter Three, I break down how dating websites and soon after that, dating apps, infiltrated and shifted dating scripts and hookup culture. I briefly overview the past dating platforms that have been popular on Wesleyan’s campus, and then turn to the conversations I had with students that inspired this project and informed the development of an app that uniquely fits the need of the modern-day college student. WesFlame is designed most specifically for the Wesleyan student but I do think that the foundation beneath the app could be generalizable to colleges that are similar in size and culture.[7] Although many things stood out as interesting developments in what I classify as an emerging digital hybrid script, what stood out to me was two things: that Wesleyan students were utilizing apps where they could specifically connect with and meet other students, and that the digital medium had successfully removed potentially the worst step of the hookup script – discerning mutual interest from a potential partner. Because my sample was so small, I set out to design an app that would not only change how the digital works inside hookup culture, but that would reveal further answers about the broader student body and support my questions and hypotheses regarding these themes.

In Chapter Four, I give a short introduction detailing the framework and inspiration I kept throughout the design and development of the app WesFlame. I designed the app to answer multiple questions; most of all, is the theme of small, elite, liberal arts students searching for other small, elite, liberal arts students a prominent one? Could an app again transform and influence the dominant script on campus and potentially disrupt patterns of social, cultural, and class reproduction? I then give a detailed analysis of the features and functions of WesFlame. Because development was cut short due to unforeseeable reasons, it is unclear how (and if) the app would have been utilized on campus, and if it would have made a difference in the digital hybrid script, the hookup and dating culture on campus, and most of all, if it could have disrupted themes of traditional relations.

[1] Dockterman, Eliana. “The Coronavirus Is Changing How We Date, Perhaps Permanently.” Time. Accessed April 27, 2020. https://time.com/5819187/dating-coronavirus/

[2] Popular slang for “in real life”

[3] Cundy, Linda. Love in the Age of the Internet: Attachment in the Digital Era. Routledge, 2018. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429476938.

[4] Urban Dictionary. “Top Definition: Situationship,” April 5, 2014. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Situationship.

[5] Bogle, Kathleen A. Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus. NYU Press, 2008. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qg39g, 182.

[6] This is further covered in the “Sexual Scripts” section of Chapter Two. It is not uncommon that as college students age and progress within hookup culture during their years on campus, they begin to learn cultural behaviors, social scripts, and therefore, sexual scripts

[7] I have not found a sweeping, comprehensive study of hookup culture on a diverse group of colleges and universities; but there is reason to believe that it is a common part of the social landscape for many campuses today. I claim it could be generalizable, just as Bogle’s findings were consistent across two very different campuses (Bogle, 59).