First published 2024
Treena Orchard avoided technology her entire life. Fresh from sobriety and a deliberate break from romance, she reluctantly downloads her first dating app. The promised fun and simplicity never materialize. Instead, she encounters constant maintenance, vanishing matches, brief sexual encounters, and persistent sexism. Drawing on her expertise as an anthropologist specializing in sexuality and her perspective as a sex-positive feminist, Orchard examines the reality of seeking love while fighting the designed addiction of swiping platforms. She investigates crucial questions about dating app culture: What social and human costs do these platforms exact? How do we preserve authenticity and genuine desire for connection while navigating swipe-based romance? Can users resist the harmful elements of this digital dating world? Does real love survive on these apps? Orchard reveals how dating applications function as influential social and sexual technologies that fundamentally reshape sexuality, relationships, and self-perception. Written with both humor and honesty, this book decodes contemporary romance while offering guidance for maintaining personal integrity during the digital transformation of twenty-first century love.
Genres: feminism, relationships, non-fiction, 21st-century, academia
Vibes: honest, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: non-fiction, personal-experience
256 pages · Hardcover · Aevo UTP
Content warnings: sexism