Intimate valuation devices: Doing valuation while doing dating in Tinder texts

ABSTRACTDating apps are valuation devices that people use to set up and valuate digital identities. Building a profile is a first move in a valuation game that contributes to intimate valorization of persons and elicits valuations by other members of a dating platform. This article contributes to the analysis of valuation in intimate life by analyzing profile texts as documents of dating practice. Using data from 1004 profiles collected in Berlin, Germany, it shows that profile texts formally resemble personal ads and identifies three rules of doing digital dating: Users identify the dating self by describing who they are, what they do and what they like; they valorize the self by references to valuation criteria that indicate what counts as valuable or worthy; and they do so by using the list as a medium.KEYWORDS: Valuationvaluation gamesonline datingdating appsdocumentary method Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Vatin (Citation2013, 31) suggested to distinguish two dimensions of ‘valuation’ as ‘valorizing’ – the ‘production of value’ – and ‘evaluating’ – the ‘assessment of value’ – , a distinction that was taken up by Michèle Lamont (Citation2012) in her influential article on the sociology of ‘valuation and evaluation’ (see also Krüger Citation2022). While I agree with critics of this distinction like Callon (Citation2013, 267f.) and Heinich (Citation2020, 77) that measurement always implies the attribution of value – Heinich (Citation2017, 26ff) identifies measurement as one form of attributing worth among others –, it is helpful in this particular case for distinguishing two aspects of the dating process: setting up a profile with the focus on attributing value to an identity and assessing the value signals implemented in the profile.2 As an exception to this common practice of abstaining from the presentation of quantified values, OkCupid presents users with a number signifying the percentage of compatibility with the other user – and notably not a global estimate of a profile’s intimate value.3 Contrary to this literature, I hold that the concept of ‘game’ is helpful for analyzing social life in more general terms: discussions about ‘gamification’ refer to one historical version of how dating games are played.4 On compensated dating and the boundary work that distinguishes it from sex work, see Nayar (Citation2017).5 For an example of different cultures of dating in an ‘analogue’ setting, see Krause and Kowalski (Citation2013) on dating in Berlin and New York.Additional informationNotes on contributorsThorsten PeetzThorsten Peetz is Privatdozent of sociology at the University of Bremen and currently Interim Professor of Sociological Theory at the University of Bamberg. He studies processes of valuation in intimate and religious games as well as processes of digitalization.