Читать книгу The New Laws of Love - Marie Bergström - Страница 11

There is something dazzling and almost blinding about online dating. By focusing on the most spectacular features of the phenomenon, such as the mass of registered users, ostentatious self-presentations, and profile swiping, one may fail to detect another, seemingly minor characteristic, which is no less important: the social insularity of dating platforms. Online dating is detached from other social activities; it occurs outside an individual’s ordinary social circles and possibly without their knowledge.

This is surely the most important difference from earlier ways of meeting potential partners. Historically, heterosexual courtship has always been intimately tied to ordinary social settings, for example the neighborhood, the workplace, the church, the school, community activities, and leisure (Bozon and Heran, 1989; Laumann et al., 1994). This means that meeting venues have very much corresponded to the geography of social life. In the nineteenth century, young people in the countryside often met and courted in the fields; a hundred years later, they tended to meet at school or university. Of course, some settings have always been more propitious for seeking and meeting a spouse than others. Today’s bars, for instance, are certainly more conducive in this regard than supermarkets. But, with the notable exception of prostitution and swinging, there has never been a place allotted specifically and exclusively to heterosexual courtship. This is all the more the case as, at least from the nineteenth century on, finding love in the course of one’s everyday life has been an integral part of the romantic script: the initial encounter is expected to be a matter of fate, not something you seek out actively (Corbin, 1994; Bergström, 2013).

Today’s platforms, explicitly and wholly dedicated to dating, mark a radical break from this historical pattern. Meeting partners is now a specific social practice, with its own platforms, clearly delineated in space and time, and with an explicit purpose. The real novelty lies here, in the disembedding of dating from other social spheres and in its resulting privatization.