Computer mediated interpersonal interactions are defining our daily lives as we know it. Studying this phenomenon with various methodologies, across different cultures and traditions is a crucial component in understanding social ties. This book brings together articles that approach online dating from a range of cultural and critical perspectives. The research decodes the level of engagement and manner of approaching online dating in various countries such as France, India, China, Turkey, Cuba, USA and Portugal. Mapping the history of dating and courtship shows the evolution of these practices even before the introduction of the online medium and traces parallels and differences between old and new traditions.

The data behind a distinct form of racism in online dating The Dating Divide is the first comprehensive look at "digital-sexual racism," a distinct form of racism that is mediated and amplified through the impersonal and anonymous context of online dating. Drawing on large-scale behavioral data from a mainstream dating website, extensive archival research, and more than seventy-five in-depth interviews with daters of diverse racial backgrounds and sexual identities, Curington, Lundquist, and Lin illustrate how the seemingly open space of the internet interacts with the loss of social inhibition in cyberspace contexts, fostering openly expressed forms of sexual racism that are rarely exposed in face-to-face encounters. The Dating Divide is a fascinating look at how a contemporary conflux of individualization, consumerism, and the proliferation of digital technologies has given rise to a unique form of gendered racism in the era of swiping right—or left. The internet is often heralded as an equalizer, a seemingly level playing field, but the digital world also acts as an extension of and platform for the insidious prejudices and divisive impulses that affect social politics in the "real" world. Shedding light on how every click, swipe, or message can be linked to the history of racism and courtship in the United States, this compelling study uses data to show the racial biases at play in digital dating spaces.

Online dating has become a widespread feature of modern social life. In less than two decades, seeking partners through commercial intermediaries went from being a marginal and stigmatized practice to a common activity. How can we explain this rapid change? And what does it tell us about the changing nature of love and intimacy? In contrast to those who praise online dating as the democratization of love and those who condemn it as the commodification of intimacy, this book tells a different story about how and why online dating became big. The key to understanding the growing prevalence of online dating lies in what Marie Bergström calls “the privatization of intimacy.” Online dating takes courtship from the public to the private sphere, and makes it a domestic and individual practice. Unlike courtship in traditional meeting venues, such as school, work and gatherings of family and friends, online dating makes a clear distinction between social and sexual sociability, and makes dating much more discrete. Apparently banal, this privatizing feature is fundamental for understanding both the success and the nature of digital matchmaking. It also sheds light on a broader social transformation: that of an increasingly private social life where interactions move indoors, narrow down to small circles and rely primarily on elective affinities. Drawing on a wide range of empirical material from interviews, national surveys and dating platforms, this book challenges what we think we know about online dating and gives us a new understanding of who, why and how people go online to seek sex and love.

A brilliant and surprising investigation into why we date the way we do

“If online dating can blunt the emotional pain of separation, if adults can afford to be increasingly demanding about what they want from a relationship, the effect of online dating seems positive. But what if it’s also the case that the prospect of finding an ever more compatible mate with the click of a mouse means a future of relationship instability, a paradox of choice that keeps us chasing the illusive bunny around the dating track?” It’s the mother of all search problems: how to find a spouse, a mate, a date. The escalating marriage age and declin­ing marriage rate mean we’re spending a greater portion of our lives unattached, searching for love well into our thirties and forties. It’s no wonder that a third of America’s 90 million singles are turning to dating Web sites. Once considered the realm of the lonely and desperate, sites like eHarmony, Match, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish have been embraced by pretty much every demographic. Thanks to the increasingly efficient algorithms that power these sites, dating has been transformed from a daunting transaction based on scarcity to one in which the possibilities are almost endless. Now anyone—young, old, straight, gay, and even married—can search for exactly what they want, connect with more people, and get more information about those people than ever before. As journalist Dan Slater shows, online dating is changing society in more profound ways than we imagine. He explores how these new technologies, by altering our perception of what’s possible, are reconditioning our feelings about commitment and challenging the traditional paradigm of adult life. Like the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, the digital revolution is forcing us to ask new questions about what constitutes “normal”: Why should we settle for someone who falls short of our expectations if there are thousands of other options just a click away? Can commitment thrive in a world of unlimited choice? Can chemistry really be quantified by math geeks? As one of Slater’s subjects wonders, “What’s the etiquette here?” Blending history, psychology, and interviews with site creators and users, Slater takes readers behind the scenes of a fascinating business. Dating sites capitalize on our quest for love, but how do their creators’ ideas about profits, morality, and the nature of desire shape the virtual worlds they’ve created for us? Should we trust an industry whose revenue model benefits from our avoiding monogamy? Documenting the untold story of the online-dating industry’s rise from ignominy to ubiquity—beginning with its early days as “computer dating” at Harvard in 1965—Slater offers a lively, entertaining, and thought provoking account of how we have, for better and worse, embraced technology in the most intimate aspect of our lives.

Based on a study using online ethnography as the major research method, this book explains why and how men in Hong Kong use QQ—an online instant messenger—to “chase” women in mainland China, especially in the neighboring city of Shenzhen. Chasing women through QQ is a reciprocal exchange process during which the resources to be exchanged in the interaction are not negotiated. Rather, the men provide resources to the women, hoping for rewards in return that are not guaranteed. This characteristic of the exchange makes men who chase women through QQ very strategic in their action. They try to maximize the rewards and minimize the costs by adopting myriad strategies, such as constructing an attractive online identity by strategic self-presentation. The role of emotions in the exchange process is also examined. Men learn the emotional norms through the online forum, but sometimes it is difficult for them to control their emotions; some men fall in love when they are not supposed to. As it happens, they have failed to calculate the costs and rewards rationally in that they may provide too many resources to the women without getting enough rewards in return. This book provides original insights into the thought processes, motivations, desires, anxieties and risks of Hong Kong men seeking short-term sexual relations with women on the mainland. These insights are highly relevant to our understanding of the quickly evolving use of social media, a phenomenon of worldwide importance and deep implications.