Tinder and the new dating apps are not offering love. They’re not even offering sex. They are providing an alternative to the validation process of meeting someone. In an era when shorter trust cycles challenge “symbiosis seeking”, new paradoxical situations arise – so to say “alone together” – a bigger deal lies beneath: do people consume a temporary trust in which meeting someone is the absolute risk? And following that, is the risk of meeting someone so big, more reassuring to remain alone together? According to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Japan, one-person households will represent 30% of total households by 2030. This is a dramatic impact on our beliefs in families, but this also leads to consequences in terms of social security, transmissions, and (more cynically) who’ll take responsibility for paying for the public good. .
Team RE-UP took to the streets of East London to investigate the way in which Tinder has become a vital – or not – part of our search for the next one night stand, true love and all the awkward dates in between.