Geolocating the Stranger The Mapping of Uncertainty as a Configuration of Matching and Warranting Techniques in Dating Apps Veel, Kristin; Thylstrup, Nanna Bonde Document Version Final published version Published in: Journal of Aesthetics & Culture DOI: 10.1080/20004214.2017.1422924 Publication date: 2018 License CC BY-NC Citation for published version (APA): Veel, K., & Thylstrup, N. B. (2018). Geolocating the Stranger: The Mapping of Uncertainty as a Configuration of Matching and Warranting Techniques in Dating Apps. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 10(3), 43-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2017.1422924 Link to publication in CBS Research Portal General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us ([email protected]) providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 01. Oct. 2021 Journal of Aesthetics & Culture ISSN: (Print) 2000-4214 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/zjac20 Geolocating the stranger: the mapping of uncertainty as a configuration of matching and warranting techniques in dating apps Kristin Veel & Nanna Bonde Thylstrup To cite this article: Kristin Veel & Nanna Bonde Thylstrup (2018) Geolocating the stranger: the mapping of uncertainty as a configuration of matching and warranting techniques in dating apps, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 10:3, 43-52, DOI: 10.1080/20004214.2017.1422924 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2017.1422924 © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 18 May 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 593 View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=zjac20 JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE, 2018 VOL. 10, NO. 3, 43–52 https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2017.1422924 Geolocating the stranger: the mapping of uncertainty as a configuration of matching and warranting techniques in dating apps Kristin Veel and Nanna Bonde Thylstrup Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen S, Denmark ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Geolocation as an increasingly common technique in dating apps is often portrayed as a way Geolocation; dating apps; of configuring uncertainty that facilitates playful interaction with unknown strangers while matching; warranting; avoiding subjecting the user to unwanted risks. Geolocation features are used in these apps uncertainty on the one hand as matching techniques that created links between the user and potential partners through geographical location, and on the other as warranting techniques that can help a user to determine whether to trust a given profile. Tracing a trajectory from Georg Simmel’s figure of the stranger as intrinsic to modern urban culture, through Stanley Milgram’s familiar stranger as an inspiration for the infrastructure of social networking sites, to a consideration of the double perspective of overview and embedment inherent in geolocation’s ability to map, we identify the stalker as an emblematic figure that appears not as a threatening Other, but rather as our own doubling. It is becoming increasingly common in dating apps to making sure that the stranger can be trusted, and filter potential subjects of interest not only through avoiding subjecting yourself to potential stalkers; but profile pictures and texts, but also by using geoloca- all the while you are also seeking to leave space for tion to facilitate social interaction, supposedly on the performativity on your own and your potential part- assumption that physical proximity indicates shared ner’s part, to allow a sense of playful interaction. In interests or characteristics. Dating apps display geo- other words, you want to unleash the right amount of location in a variety of ways, ranging from notifica- uncertainty to make the experience enticing without tion of the proximity in miles or kilometres of a given posing any unwanted risks. The question that profile to your own location, to a general indication remains, however, is the degree to which all of this of region, area or city, or even a map showing where puts you in the position of the stalker. you have crossed paths with a potential love interest. The present article situates itself in the emerging Users are thus notified not only about where a given field of research dedicated to dating and hook-up “datable subject” (Rosamond 2018) is, but also about apps. Significantly it brings a cultural-theoretical this person’s relative temporal positioning. In this perspective to bear on an analytical object that has way geolocation technologies produce new forms of hitherto primarily been explored the fields of health intimacy mapping that operate both spatially and studies and in different branches of internet sociol- temporally. ogy, including those informed by gender, critical This configuration of temporal and geographical race studies and LGBTQ studies (see e.g. Batiste information, we argue in this article, can be seen as 2013; Stempfhuber and Liegl 2016). The pioneering an affective technique of uncertainty and control. On work conducted by these fields take on a wide the one hand, physical proximity is used as a match- variety of concerns and interests, but it is also ing technique that creates an affinity between the user possible to identify recurrent themes across the and potential partners; on the other hand, geographi- board: questions of risk, uncertainty and control cal location functions as a warranting technique that a (Handel and Shklovski 2012; Brubaker, Ananny, user may employ to determine whether to trust an and Crawford 2014; Albury and Byron 2016), new online profile (Stone 1995; Walther and Parks 2002). forms of intimacy (Race 2015; David and Cambre It is in the vulnerable emotional space between the 2016; Møller and Petersen, n.d.), and new patterns users’ desire for the unknown and their anxiety over of mediated mobilities (Licoppe, 2015; Blackwell, the unknown’s implications that geolocation operates Birnholtz and Abbott 2014). Seeking to foreground as a cultural flirtation technique. You seek to identify and emphasize the cultural historical trajectory of a stranger you want to get to know, in the process these concerns, we wish to bring this pioneering CONTACT Kristin Veel [email protected] Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, Karen Blixens Vej 1, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 44 K.VEELANDN.B.THYLSTRUP work into dialogue with aesthetic and cultural his- tomorrow” (Simmel, [1908] 1971, 143), but rather the torical theories on urbanity. Our hope is that stranger that remains in the same place, and who approaching dating apps from this perspective, can moves in our circles. make the research potential available apparent to a In The Metropolis and Mental Life [Die Grossstädte wider audience and gesture towards the ways in und das Geistesleben die Grossstadt]([1903] 1950), which looking at dating apps may inform existing Simmel argues that the urban inhabitant comes into discourses in aesthetic and cultural theory. contact every day with a large number of people, only With a focus on the contemporary spatio-temporal a small proportion of whom become acquaintances. dynamics at work in these apps, we argue in this Moreover, many of these acquaintanceships remain article that the cultural history of modern urbanity, superficial, in order to counteract overload and retain and specifically the figure of the stranger, can help us psychic energy. The number of possible interlocutors to understand the contemporary stakes of geolocation necessitates a selection as to where to focus one’s in dating technologies. Second, we link this historical- attention. Adaptive approaches may include spending theoretical lineage to more recent sociological the- less time on each input, disregarding low-priority ories about the familiar and the stranger, suggesting input, or completely blocking off some sensory that geolocation as a spatio-temporal matching and input. Considerations such as these take shape in warranting technique helps us to navigate an uncer- geolocational functions as design questions ripe for tain territory of strangers who appear as desirable algorithmic automation. How do we decide which of unknowns or as risks to be avoided. Third, we unfold the thousands of people we pass in the street to the questions these insights yield in relation to the interact with? How do we decide to whom to send a cultural technique of mapping, arguing that the maps flirtatious gaze? Whom to ignore? produced by geolocation techniques invite the user to While Simmel’s stranger was an emblematic figure assume a double perspective on the dating process as of modern urban culture at the beginning