Hot or not: how the choice architecture of dating apps shapes intimate valuation practices

With the growing popularity of mobile dating apps such as Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, and OKCupid, mobile online dating has moved from a stigmatized practice to a mainstream way of seeking different types of new relationships. These environments are largely shaped by platform companies, which can define the limits and possibilities of intimate encounters, informed by the profit motive and the norms of mainstream audiences. While this profound shift has been keenly observed from the point of view of economization and the expanding and accelerating logic of capitalism (Illouz 2008; Degen & Kleeberg-Niepage 2022), dating apps also open alternative windows to analyze digitalized intimacies. From the point of view
of the sociology of valuation (Lamont 2012; Cefaı et al. 2015; Peetz 2023; Krueger & Peetz 2024), platforms such as dating apps are fertile ground for understanding how digital spaces transform valuation practices, that is, how people assign meaning and value to themselves, others, and the world around through different verbal and nonverbal formats such as images, bios, and prompts.
Drawing on 30 semi-structured interviews conducted with Finnish dating app users in
February-March 2024, this paper focuses on users' experiences of navigating dating apps as sites of intimate valuation (Peetz 2023), asking how users understand and use the platforms' choice architectures in assigning worth to themselves and others. By choosing what is worth showing and saying in an environment characterized by struggles for visibility and intimacy, online daters communicate interesting knowledge about the values, norms, and ideals that people in contemporary societies hold - and how these are mediated, performed, and negotiated in the socio-technical context. Inspired by French pragmatist theorizing (Thévenot 2001; 2014, Meriluoto 2023), the analysis looks into how the platforms enable or disable the valuation of oneself and others and shape how people can make themselves recognizable and, conversely, recognize others as worthy. In particular, the analysis focuses on the role of the choice architecture of dating apps, such as ready-made lists of lifestyle choices and interests. It shows how these features facilitate and enable alternative registers of valuation, but also limit, orient and sometimes even transform valuation practices, triggering feelings of exclusion and invisibility, especially for those dating from the margins. By bringing the conceptual toolkit of valuation studies to the empirical site of dating apps, this paper contributes to the ongoing analyses of digital intimacies, rooting fresh empirical results with robust tradition of sociological theorizing.