Recently I completed a bunch of videos for MISTER, a new gay dating app. MISTER's goal is to be inclusive and to bring more people into the fold of online and app dating. It seems like a good mission. Personally I don't have any apps on my phone and have never had a desire to become a part of the app community. I began asking around and talking to my friends about their experience on phone apps. The general feedback I got was that the phone app was like radar, it was addictive, and the interactions were frustrating, flaky, and some times racists/discriminatory.
I can imagine the allure of having a radar on me all the time and being able to flirt without the risk of face-to-face rejection. Hence, the apps were immensely addictive and compulsive. that's not so attractive because even having email on my phone has turned me into a perpetual email checker. When I'm bored, lonely, have a few seconds to kill on the subway as it heads over a bridge, I now have an instant reaction to grab my phone and see if I have any new messages. I can't imagine having a phone app and treating people like a video game. In fact that become one of the running jokes in the MISTER videos I wrote and produced. Here is one below:
Many of my friends also talked about feeling discriminated against if they were Black, a Latino who was too dark, Asian, or deemed as overweight in gay society (which could mean anything from morbidly obese to having over 2% body fat). It was disheartening to hear this.
We can do better. Technology is supposed to be a tool of unification. But as with anything that is for human use, tools can be used to construct or destruct. In the case of dating apps, many people feel like it has been to their disadvantage. It has only allowed people to stay more isolate and to not explore.
I don't have any personal examples because I'm not a part of any online or phone app sites. But I hope we can be more inclusive of others.
