What is Tinder?
Liquid Love Meaning
Undoubtedly, liquid love in new technologies and smartphones ( smartphones ) have meant a change in the way we perceive the world, and also in the ways of interacting and relating.
This is something that has had an impact on many facets of interpersonal relationships, and considerably on the strategies that men and women put in place to find a partner.
Tinder is an application (app) linked to GPS and designed to find people who are also looking for a partner (or fortuitous encounters) and are close to our location. This app was created in August 2012 by Sean Rad, Justin Mateen, Jonathan Badeen and Ramón Denia. The designers’ objective was based on the following hypothesis:
“Everyone has the need to meet people, which in the past meant doing it physically. We have turned that process into something more efficient ”
In this way, Rad, Mateen, Badeen and Denia gave business format to the intervention in a range of human difficulties prevailing today :
- Loneliness.
- Dissatisfaction in the current relationship.
- Shyness when it comes to interacting with other people.
- Difficulties to extend the social circle after a certain age (around 35 years).
- Lack of time for personal leisure.
This application was first tested at the University of Southern California ( University of Southern California ), located in the center of the city of Los Angeles.
Currently, Tinder exceeds 50 million users, and is considered one of the most successful and probably the best known dating applications in the digital market.
Tinder is not another social network, but an application for the user to communicate with another person within the geographical area in which both are. Its sole purpose is to make appointments or meetings .
What Is The Main Purpose Of Tinder?
The success of this type of dating ( online dating ) lies in the immediacy of finding someone nice to have a good time with, whether it’s a week, a month, or even a couple of years.
Undoubtedly, Tinder liquid love involves several risks inherent in the beginning of a relationship with a stranger, and also the anxiety generated by the need to obtain immediate gratification , the constant approval of others , as well as the danger of succumbing to an addiction.
The mere fact of using Tinder can provide superior to other less specific and more social networks pleasure light ( Facebook, Instagram …), even without the relationship comes to occur or is completed.
In this sense, the dynamics of the Tinder liquid love would be comparable to the pleasure of the league or the foolishness of all life , due to the predisposition of the human being to get excited sometimes, more by the process than by the achievement of the objective.
Usually the way to interrelate and find a partner, was a union behavior linked to belonging to a group (friends of the neighborhood, friends of studies, family …) that today is being displaced by these applications.
A new way of relating thus emerges , in which the affective bond tends to be easily excluded in a time of haste and immediacy, in which the time taken to contact other people is very short, and even more since the proliferation of apps to find a partner.
Using these applications reduces the chances of finding a stable and lasting relationship. The desire to establish a non-sporadic relationship moves away , partly because in the apps, the user will always find new and more attractive options that will encourage him to date someone else and different from the previous person.
The consequences will be the predisposition to app addiction and, paradoxically, the decrease in the probability of establishing a solid and intense relationship at the same time.
Is Tinder Good For Dating?
I have assumed that almost all readers have heard of Tinder, and I imagine that there will be quite a few who have the app installed on their smartphone.
In the same way that it would be naive to think that of the 2,000 friends that someone can have on Facebook, all are in the real sense of meaning , the more innocent would be the belief that through Tinder you can find friends with whom to share hobbies, and even more to the ideal couple.
In the beginning, Tinder was created with the aim of making it easier to meet people, interact, chat with like-minded people in tastes and concerns …, but from the saying to the fact there is a great stretch.
Currently, several years after the launch of this app, its initial objective has been distorted by being reduced to a flirting tool. Thus the problem arises of those who deposit their expectations in Tinder liquid love and fail to find someone who becomes a true friend, and even less to establish a relationship.
It all starts when, after a few matches – or many, according to the selection criteria of each one -, the first meeting takes place, after which – if there is mutual acceptance – there will be trips to have a drink, the occasional dinner, and in the end green light to maintain a sexual relationship that, after all, is what in most cases is sought.
Is It Worth Using Tinder?
Most often, after a brief lapse in which a mock relationship is pretended , those who do not intend to commit resort to common phrases such as: “I am not being prepared”, “I have not yet recovered from my separation”, ” you want to have me exclusively, but I am polyamorous »… etc. Much more corroborating and resounding – also painful and traumatic – is when the person who already obtained what he wanted, disappears without giving any explanation.
From my experience through the cases that I have met in consultation, the victim of these relationships suffers a great deal of unease that makes the fragile concept of himself wobble , his way of being is questioned when he considers himself a rare person who «with so many men as I have known »—in almost all of them, the victims are women— with none have had a relationship that will last more than a few months.
That is when fatalism enters the scene and induces victims to believe that “I can never share my life with anyone”, a feeling leads to self – reproaches of the type “I will have done to deserve this.”
Great causal responsibility for the problem that affects Tinder liquid love victims lies in the expectations placed on a person with whom there are no projects or a matching purpose . This leads to new search attempts and new disappointments, which turn the desire to find a partner into a trial and error process.
I found it didactic and clarifying to use the description that makes Tinder the Portuguese singer Salvador Sobral (winner of Eurovision 2017), in the television interview that Pablo Motos did on June 21, 2018, and in which, in the context of a relaxed talk, Sobral said he did not like social networks, and when asked about Tinder in particular, left the presenter off the hook by answering with a six-word phrase that summarizes the opinion of the vast majority of those who know this app: « Tinder is for fucking, isn’t it ?
Can You Search For People On Tinder?
The security company Symantec warned in 2013 about one of the first occurrences of spam related to adult webcams in Tinder. It also warned of a possible flood of spam- generating bots in the version for the Android system that was subsequently launched.
A bot is a computer program that copies the behavior of a human being, and makes the interlocutor believe that he is chatting with a real person, when it is not.
In Tinder, cybercriminals use bots to create fake spam- generating profiles. Thus, when a user gives a “ like” or “ like ” to one of these false profiles, a mechanism is activated that will invite, through the bot, to enter certain adult video chat or webcam websites, places where the user will be asked for their personal data (to verify your age of majority) and the digits of a card where you can charge the cost of sex services online that Tinder has placed at your fingertips.
Liquid Love About The Fragility Of Human Bonds
Zygmunt Bauman, in his book “Liquid Love. About the fragility of human ties ” (2005), raises the fragility of human ties in the age of the Internet and social networks in a postmodern society in which it is paradoxical that the individual, despite being more connected, is Find more and more alone and isolated .
“In a liquid modern life there are no permanent links, and anything we occupy for a while must be freely linked to be able to untie again, as quickly and effortlessly as possible, when circumstances change.”
Bauman coined the term “liquid love” and defined it as a tendency of the current postmodern society, in which the individual is afraid to establish lasting links or relationships with other people. Bauman emphasizes the fragility of ties, an inconsistent weakness that promotes feelings of insecurity along with the desire to strengthen ties that, at the same time, are weak so that they can be unleashed.
That is to say, intense relationships are sought but without commitment so that it is easy to end them at any time . The consequence is that, at present, long-term commitment in relationships is not usual and is a drag to avoid, which is why lax and light relationships prevail .
There is a tendency to flee from permanent relationships for fear of inherent responsibility as they limit individual freedom, and a type of ambivalent and priority relationship is sought in the life project of the liquid modern individual.
Establishment Of Relationships In The Era Of Immediacy
Our consumer society , in addition to being increasingly individualistic , is characterized by immediacy .
There is a low tolerance for waiting times, and everything is required to be quickly and immediately attainable, which affects the time required for any relationship, whether interpersonal or partner.
Overcoming each stage of establishing a relationship is a necessary requirement to meet the other , while the current sociocultural tendency predisposes to dispense with time more and more.
In addition to immediacy, the increase in digital interactions between individuals through social networks stands out, a way of relating that allows establishing a different perception of space and time, and fosters a sense of immediacy of the facts, as well as a way accelerated processes occur.
We must not forget that interpersonal relationships consist of a reciprocal interaction between two or more people , in which social and emotional skills are involved that promote the ability to communicate affectively and effectively as they are: active listening, conflict resolution and genuine self expression.
According to Bauman, social networks are a trap. At present, people’s relationships , rather than transmitting experiences or the hope of achieving something at the expense of relating , do so by connecting or being connected.
This conditions that traditional pairings become networks, and predisposes to flee from mutual commitments in a culture where the network represents precisely the lack of commitment, and a kind of matrix that so easily connects as disconnects, two activities simultaneously enabled for connection and disconnection are two identical options in legitimacy, importance and status.
Can I Browse Tinder Without A Profile?
We can therefore talk about a concept of relationship or liquid love experience, in which priority will be given to investing the minimum effort, a type of relationship in which difficulties will be exempted, running a risk, or what is the same, everything that forms part of an experience in which there is uncertainty.
For Bauman, the culture of consumption has moved to interpersonal relationships , so that as with any other product , the relationship will be designed for immediate and single use consumption . Thus, if the desired expectations are not met, the previous relationship will be quickly replaced and eliminated without prejudice. In this way, human beings are treated as mere objects of consumption that only depend on the amount of pleasure they can offer.
How Tinder Works In Our Brain
Regardless of the sociological and psychological connotations presented throughout the article, we find that something as simple as sliding the computer mouse and instantly having an appointment for the weekend , is a revolutionary way of knowing and relating to others. people.
It is a mechanism that has a neurophysiological basis as described by Rob Henderson from a study by the Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging in the Netherlands, which ensures that the brain region that processes chemical rewards is much more active when a person Look at an attractive face .
If we add to this the unpredictability and uncertainty factor (not knowing when the selected person will give a match in response), the rewards circuit will get even more excited. The consequence is that the individual will remain in expectation thanks to a hitch similar to that of an addiction.
According to these studies, Tinder modifies certain responses in our brain. Initially, dopaminergic activation – the same that provides pleasant sensations of reward – will only take place if a response is received from the selected person (in our case, a match through the app).
However, as the use of Tinder becomes more frequent , the agency will end up generating dopamine not only when receiving a match, but also before signals that predict that the response will arrive.
This simplification to receive a chemical reward in the face of simple modifications that make suspect the proximity of the match , translated into a more understandable language, will be indicative that an addiction has been established. Therefore, the best way to detect and prevent this situation is to be aware of it and the negative consequences inherent in the abuse – and consequent engagement – to any social network.
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Eric Cameron is a passionate relationship coach and counselor with a focus on helping couples reconnect and build strong and lasting relationships. He has years of experience working with couples and helping them to understand the intricacies of healthy relationships. He also provides guidance on how to maintain a healthy relationship and deal with difficult topics. Eric’s approach is tailored specifically to the couple’s needs and he has a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw upon.