The man who has used a dating app has made himself a whoremonger of the most debased caliber.1 

The dating app’s consumer experience is identical to the brothel’s. Consider how dating apps show you only women. Obviously this is because you’re not gay, you’re only interested in girls. Yet this is not so obvious; traditionally, early stages of courtship occur in mixed company beginning with group socialization and public displays of character before pairing off and paring down to private conversation.2 

This is not present in the realm of dating apps. Keeping the user the sole male in the experience, to whom a profusion of women are advertised and private conversation with them offered, imitates the consumer experience of the brothel. The heterotopic sexual dynamic of the dating app recalls the system of bells and curtains that the Mama-San employs to keep whoremongers from encountering one another. The illusion of privacy is necessary to abate the guilt of the act. 

If one could see the Tinder bios or desperate opening lines of other men (in the way flirtation and courting happens in mixed company both on and offline), the user would be disgusted by the way their peer debases himself for pussy. Like the curtain behind which the John waits for erstwhile clients to leave, the dating app preserves a mock dignity by hiding from the user his interest’s inbox full of identically desperate one-liners. This is no dignity at all; obscuring indignity does not absolve the sin of self-degradation. The only way to win is not to play the game.

  1. Of course he has made of himself a debased gigolo as well; the women who deign to use dating apps are jaded and desensitized by a format that inherently objectifies the other party. ↲

  2. This is true on and offline; the timeline or discord server occupies the role of coed socialization in the bar or dance hall for many young people and offers the same public/group -> private trajectory. ↲