Red Flags is Novara Media’s advice column for anti-capitalists. Inspired by our columnist Sophie K Rosa’s book, Radical Intimacy, Red Flags explores how capitalism fucks up our intimate lives – not just our romantic relationships, but also our friendships, home lives, family ties, and experiences of death and dying – and what we can do about it. To submit a question to Sophie, email [email protected] or, if you’d like more anonymity, fill out this form.

Dear Sophie,

In a society that is so disconnected, I, like many of my friends, have turned to dating apps – even though I see them as highly unethical and exploitative of human isolation and loneliness. How can young people find love, connection, and intimacy in the real world?

– Swiped Out

Dear Swiped Out,

More than once, I’ve had conversations with friends about how we find ourselves hoping to match with people we already know in the flesh, on the apps. The anonymity of dating apps might be exciting and enabling for a certain kind of desire, a certain kind of sex, for some. But for those seeking something more, swiping can feel like being condemned to looking for love in all the wrong places. Try as they might, tech giants have yet to evoke romance. People do get lucky in love online, of course – but swiping often feels like a soul-crushing capitulation to capitalism, a profit-led love-purgatory. 

For all the effort people put into their dating app profiles, this dominant mode of romantic matching deprives us of an intangible and vital magic. A charged, fluttering glance, an uncannily intimate first encounter, a flirtatious gesture that briefly stops time; the lingering, the wondering, the fantasising. 

It’s not as easy as just divesting our attention from apps, towards new romantic pastures. For one, they have us hooked. Research has found that 90% of singles consider themselves addicted to dating apps, and last year six users filed a lawsuit against Tinder and Hinge claiming their “addictive, game-like design features, [locks] users into a perpetual pay-to-play loop that prioritises corporate profits over its marketing promises and customers’ relationship goals.” Hinge’s advertising claim – that it is ‘designed to be deleted’ – is worse than nonsense, considering its profit motive. It can’t be doing us any good, emotionally, to have so much riding on these corporate platforms. 

Dating-app logic has infected our psyches. No doubt flirting – let alone asking someone out – has been an awkward endeavour since the dawn of time (as it should be), but I’d wager our anxiety about doing so is at an all-time high – to the extent that some of us hope to bump into our real life crushes behind the inhuman safety of a screen. 

The other day my friend sensed “a vibe”, as she described it, with a man at the sauna, but they didn’t exchange numbers. That evening she matched with him on an app, and they went on a date. If not for their sweaty, fleshy vibe, she would never have matched with him online for a number of reasons – not least because her app preferences were set to exclude men until that unexpected encounter changed her mind. Sexual desire and romantic longing are much weirder and more watery than the algorithms can possibly contain. If we are essentially strangers to ourselves – as psychoanalysis would have it, contrary to modern investments in fixed, discrete identity markers – how can information about our desire ever be truly captured by the apps? That’s a good thing, I think.

While dating apps themselves might significantly shape our desire, as Alfie Bown argues in Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships, our desire will always exceed them. You want to meet people in the flesh. As I type this, I am feeling disturbed that this is, here and now, such a commonplace longing. A lot must have gone very wrong, that we are living in a society where this feels so difficult. 

I wonder how useful practical ideas might be; I am sure you have thought of them. You could attend events with like-minded people; you could go speed dating; you could try your luck with people you already know; you could ask to be set up with someone new. Telling those around you about your desire for a romantic connection could plant some seeds. Or else, you could hand your fate to the idea that love comes when or where you least expect it – least of all when you’re looking. Take time to appreciate and nurture the relationships already in your life. 

How about deliberately subverting the logic of the apps; where they ask us to delineate our ideal partner’s characteristics, and simulate an experience of unlimited choice, how about you set all that aside and simply ask yourself how you want to feel? Rather than internally embracing dating apps’ quantified, commodified approach to human connection, reflect upon how the kind of love, connection, and intimacy you seek would make you feel. How many possible forms might this feeling take? Is it a conventional couple form that you want, or could another kind of bond be as good or better (and – as bad or worse)? 

And – spend some time with this one – could you be standing in your own way, at all? I am sure the answer to this will be yes – we all are – but still, could you get out of your own way, somehow? No doubt, there are many ways that the odds are stacked against us – and certainly, an enduring romantic partnership is more elusive for some. Even so, I wonder what stories you are telling yourself, and what those stories might be doing. Or what cycles you might be stuck in. The best we can hope for in psychoanalysis, concludes Bruce Fink in Lacan on Love, “is a halt to repetition, and the potential to find love and jouissance differently than before.”