Thirty-one theses on dating capitalism
06 / 31
PART ONE — THE PORTFOLIO
I
Revenue up, payers down
II
Success ends subscriptions
III
Manufactured scarcity
IV
One owner, many brands
Hidden ranking, patented swipe
VI
Volume produces refusal
VII
The app is the destination
VIII
Demographic pricing
IX
Fabricated interest
X
Safety became an upgrade
XI
Intentionality drives growth
XII
Queer platforms consolidated
XIII
Contraction intensifies extraction
XIV
Free users are inventory
XV
Global risk, concentrated revenue
XVI
Health data as telemetry
XVII
Data as national security
XVIII
Membership reveals identity
XIX
Identification without breach
XX
Profiles sold as commodities
XXI
The platform remembers more
XXII
Community versus its workers
XXIII
Extraction is optional
XXIV
Refusal is not innocence
XXV
The grid is optional
XXVI
Filtering is not sorting
XXVII
The applications work
XXVIII
Lifeline and trap
XXIX
Loneliness is the market
XXX
Companionship without reciprocity
XXXI
Named, not stopped
THESIS VI
PART ONE — THE PORTFOLIO
Volume produces refusal, and the refusal outlasts the session.
The more profiles people see, the less likely they become to accept one.
Across three studies, the probability that a participant would accept a profile declined by an average of twenty-seven percent between the first option presented and the last, with objective quality held constant. The researchers named the effect a rejection mind-set. Women in the sample subsequently received fewer matches. The interface trains a disposition, and the disposition does not remain inside the interface.
EVIDENCE SNAPSHOT
−27%
ACCEPTANCE
Acceptance fell from the first profile to the last
3
STUDIES
Effect reproduced across three experimental studies
Constant
QUALITY
Objective profile quality remained unchanged throughout
Rejection
EFFECT
Repeated choice produced a persistent rejection mind-set
KEY FINDING
Across three studies, the probability that a participant would accept a profile declined by an average of twenty-seven percent between the first option presented and the last, with objective quality held constant.
IMPLICATION
Endless choice can train habitual refusal rather than improve connection.
Source apparatus
SOURCE 01
|
PEER-REVIEWED STUDY
Pronk, T. M., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2020). A rejection mind-set: Choice overload in online dating. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(3), 388–396.