Around this time last year an app called "Cuddlr" was released, which purpoted to be like Tinder, but for platonic cuddling instead of hookups. I found out about this app when it returned last month after a shutdown in March 2015, now rebranded as "Spoonr".
Now, I don't personally use apps like Tinder but I can at least understand their usefulness. Matchmaking can often be quite complex and such applications greatly streamline the process while simultaneously expanding the potential number of matches, as exemplified by Tinder's crucial "swipe" feature, which sets up a way to grant more matchmaking power to the user with greater efficiency (as opposed to other, older matchmaking services which relied on algorithms to gauge the compatibility of users based on their profiles). Tinder is strong in its simplicity; in a way it's almost like automating the process of connecting with people, but not actually automatic.
However, the idea of an app for cuddling and platonic touching seems more strange to me. A hug is a much simpler thing to do, and I can't imagine there to be a sufficient number of people so deprived of human contact that they would need a form of social media to automate the process of hugging. I also think that doing so raises concerns about the commodification of physical contact or may even cheapen the significance of it.
Is this app created in reaction to the role of online communities in human lives? Is it yet another way to extend a formerly real-life-only activity into the online world, just as matchmaking services and social networks did before, or is it an answer to how the growing usage of purely online interaction fail to provide sufficient connectedness and intimancy? Or is it both?
Hi Gary,
ReplyDeleteI find myself a little weirded out by these apps, personally, but can understand the appeal behind them. When we live in a world in which communication and interpersonal dynamics are becoming increasingly devalued in everyday interactions, I think there is the desire to reach out to someone even in a platonic sense, as you put it, as a sort of way to form a physical bond that doesn't have to mean anything. I can point to a number of occasions where I simply wished I had someone around, not even to talk or with, but to just be there and exist with. I think this is that desire manifested on a more physical scale, crossed with a pseudo-romantic experience of intimacy that a lot of us might long for when we are feeling down or lonely.