Geolocating the Stranger: The Mapping of Uncertainty as a Configuration of Matching and Warranting Techniques in Dating Apps

TY - JOUR

T1 - Geolocating the Stranger

T2 - The Mapping of Uncertainty as a Configuration of Matching and Warranting Techniques in Dating Apps

AU - Veel, Kristin

AU - Thylstrup, Nanna

PY - 2018/9/3

Y1 - 2018/9/3

N2 - Geolocation as an increasingly common technique in dating apps is often portrayed as a way of configuring uncertainty that facilitates playful interaction with unknown strangers while avoiding subjecting the user to unwanted risks. Geolocation features are used in these apps 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.

AB - Geolocation as an increasingly common technique in dating apps is often portrayed as a way of configuring uncertainty that facilitates playful interaction with unknown strangers while avoiding subjecting the user to unwanted risks. Geolocation features are used in these apps 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.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Geolocation

KW - dating apps

KW - matching

KW - warranting

KW - uncertainty

U2 - 10.1080/20004214.2017.1422924

DO - 10.1080/20004214.2017.1422924

M3 - Journal article

SN - 2000-4214

VL - 10

SP - 43

EP - 52

JO - Journal of Aesthetics & Culture

JF - Journal of Aesthetics & Culture

IS - 3

ER -