Sam Olmsted [00:00:00]:

Welcome to Online Offscript, where we discuss trending topics and all things new on the Internet. I’m Sam Olmsted, the New Orleans Managing Director.

Eliza Fillo [00:00:06]:

And I’m Eliza Fillo, the Senior Digital Ads Coordinator.

Sam Olmsted [00:00:10]:

This week we’re discussing the Rhetoric of Dating Apps. Our guest today is Amber Kanui. Amber is currently a fourth-year English literature PhD student and Assistant Instructor of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She focuses on the digital humanities and the rhetoric of technology. Prior to attending UT Austin, Amber received her Bachelor’s in English at Loyola New Orleans and her Master’s at Tulane, where she won the Presidential Fellowship Award. Thanks for joining us, Amber. How are you?

Amber Kinui [00:00:39]:

I’m doing well, thanks. Thanks so much for having me. How are you all doing?

Sam Olmsted [00:00:43]:

We’re doing great. We’re busy. We’re excited, excited to chat with you today, so let’s just jump into it. Can you tell us a little bit about your dating apps course at UT Austin and what sparked your interest in the topic itself?

Amber Kinui [00:00:58]:

For sure. I’m a current fourth-year PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, and during our program, they require us to teach different sections of English coursework across the university. It’s very interdisciplinary. We have sections of about 25 students or so. So I’ve taught everything from banned books to seminars in American lit and so on. And then in the past couple of years, I’ve switched gears to rhetoric and writing. So at first, I taught an intro course, which is called 306, and then we took a teaching course to curate our own syllabi for our own rhetoric and writing course at the 309 level. And I was really thinking about what undergraduate students might find interesting new ways for them to engage with language, per their technology usage. And that’s kind of how the Rhetoric of Dating Apps was born.

Eliza Fillo [00:02:00]:

Thanks. I feel like it is a very relevant topic, specifically to those younger Gen Z generations that are now in school, but also, I mean, all of us as well. I think that at some time or another, most people that I know have been on a dating app. They’ve met people on it, whether you love them or you hate them. How do you think that they had an effect on not only love but on just general communication and how we communicate with people?

Amber Kinui [00:02:27]:

Overwhelmingly, I think that there is an overflow of options nowadays and instant gratification through dating apps, but also through other popular apps like Uber Eats, just essentially getting what you want when you want it. And I think that’s really triggered our reward centers as human beings. And, you know, the lights from just staying on our phones and scrolling, et cetera. I think that the way that taps into our reward center and translates into how we regard one another on dating apps or disregard one another has been really interesting over the past few years especially.

Eliza Fillo [00:03:11]:

Can you talk a little bit more about the disregard part of that statement?

Amber Kinui [00:03:15]:

Absolutely. So I think just with the endless options nowadays, and also the fact that people have different intentions or levels of just what they’re looking for when they join these apps, and as a result, I think that what one person might be taking as a serious encounter, a way to meet somebody, to seriously date, et cetera, another person might be intermittently, like, checking their phone throughout the week and respond when they’d like, or might just move through their options and be matching people simply for the sake of it. I found that really interesting and listening to my students and also kind of sharing, from what I’ve heard, as a millennial as well.

Sam Olmsted [00:04:01]:

And to follow up on that, do you find that the dating apps tend to be self-selecting in terms of what the intentions are of the users? And, if so, does that make the experience better because people know what they’re expecting, or is it still so muddled within each app?

Amber Kinui [00:04:20]:

I think that the app, as a device that reflects our young popular culture, it tends to actually cause folks who are, who relate to one another, based on various demographics, to match more so than what one might expect, which is to meet someone totally different or totally new. So it’s really interesting that you know, while these apps were created on one hand to hopefully help you meet new populations and whatnot, the trends are showing that essentially it does the same thing. And if anything, it kind of confuses the process a lot more, in that while they were created to bring folks together, the trends and the studies, et cetera, are demonstrating that they’ve just kind of driven folks apart a bit more, and their usages are declining as well in recent years, and there’s the Match lawsuit, et cetera, but yeah.

Sam Olmsted [00:05:26]:

Wait, can you tell us about the Match lawsuit?

Amber Kinui [00:05:29]:

For sure. So, on February 14, Valentine’s Day of this year, I think about six users sued Match Group, which is in charge of Tinder and Hinge and a few other apps. And they were essentially making the case that using the apps has been psychologically damaging to them in some way and that they are seeking out these addiction cycles and patterns, tapping into their reward center, but, of course, never feeling fully fulfilled, I suppose. It raised some really interesting questions about the extent to which app developers should be held liable for their products and their effects on their users, and how much of a question it is for human agency controlling our own app usage, et cetera, in the face of big technology over development.

Eliza Fillo [00:06:27]:

I feel like whatever they decide in that lawsuit will definitely set a precedent for how responsible these apps are for how we behave moving forward, especially, like we said, moving into this age of technology just in our lives so much like, how culpable are we? Are we to it? I kind of want to shift gears a little bit, but I feel like the visual component of the apps is so big, right? Like, you’re just swiping on people, and it’s essentially, it’s more picture than it is text. So how do you think that the photographs contribute to the communication, or maybe lack thereof, that goes on within the apps?

Amber Kinui [00:07:06]:

I definitely think that photographs are rhetorical on the apps in that they are persuasive to some degree, and you’re getting an idea of, or a sense of, who that person is before you’ve met them, which can play into such icky things like stereotyping or just archetypes, et cetera. This is kind of a silly example, but one archetype I think about on the apps might be the fish boy who, like, is showing off something that he caught. And that tends to be one that makes my classroom laugh on one of our warm-up days in the beginning of the semester, and just thinking about how photographs resonate with us and what ideas we get based on each other simply from a photograph, and how many judgments and predispositions we can carry just based on them. And also just playing into the fact that dating applications have shown that one of the, if not the top, factors when looking for a new dating partner is attraction and how someone puts their foot forward through photographs, et cetera. I think that in a way, it’s been a way to, like, weed people out before you even meet them, so.

Sam Olmsted [00:08:27]:

How do you know I’m not a fish boy? I’m just kidding. So when it comes to the rhetorical appeals that you discussed in your course, what does the rhetorical triangle consist of?

Amber Kinui [00:08:39]:

So rhetorical appeals might sound familiar: ethos, pathos, logos. So emotional resonance is going to be like pathos, appealing to somebody else’s sense of empathy or care, shared interests. Ethos is essentially ethics or trustworthiness. And logos is like logic, statistics, other things like that, which has been pretty interesting to integrate amongst various surveys that have come out regarding dating applications and how they have kind of indicated this intergenerational shift in our preferences and our lack of convention that is the appeals. And then we’ve just been working on papers based on multimedia, like digital dystopia, and so on.

Sam Olmsted [00:09:31]:

What are the elements of a dating profile that touch on those rhetorical appeals? Is it the photos? Is it the text that you include? And do you think there’s an ideal way to portray those appeals?

Amber Kinui [00:09:49]:

Essentially, another part of the integration of rhetoric in this course is the rhetorical triangles. So, thinking about message, audience, and communicator amongst those appeals, and also have different modalities play into dating app profiles. So visual modalities, like pictures, auditory modalities, like what’s included in multimedia on people’s profiles nowadays, since you can leave vocal responses and recordings in response to certain prompts. So we’ve been analyzing profiles and also current events and popular creative works that fall within the digital dystopia genre that kind of hit on all of those things at once and allow students to make a comparative paper on the basis of rhetoric and also personal reflection.

Eliza Fillo [00:10:45]:

Do you all ever touch on the rhetoric of the marketing that these apps actually use to get new users? Because I feel like there’s two sides of that coin, like the rhetoric that exists within the app. But do you know anything and can you tell us about how you’ve seen the apps use that in their marketing?

Amber Kinui [00:11:03]:

Absolutely. So one of the themes we’ve been discussing recently is the paid features on the apps. There was a New York Times article that came out recently that discusses that the free usage of the apps is kind of just not the ideal experience anymore. So it really encourages folks to try, you know, a free run of hinge plot, and eventually buy it so that they can get more matches or extend their time to talk to someone, which is interesting because it’s so invasive and monetizes what’s such a precious, fragile indicator of human emotion and connection. We’ve been talking about that a lot, and on Valentine’s Day, we talked about the marketization of Valentine’s Day as well. So, yeah, I think it’s a very interesting, convoluted theme.

Sam Olmsted [00:12:04]:

Okay, I’m gonna jump in. I paid for three months of Hinge Plus, and it worked out great. And I think, I know, scandalous, but I think what made it so much better in terms of the experience is I was able to see who was swiping on me without needing to put myself out there first. And as someone who doesn’t want to be constantly putting himself out there online, it was a great way for me to see who was interested and then allow myself to kind of like make a move. Whereas the regular profile felt very limiting and I totally understand that they monetized my precious, you know, experience and time, but it was so worth it to me to get that elevated experience. That’s just my experience.

Eliza Fillo [00:13:10]:

I wonder, too, how these applications influence, like, our expectations of how we’re supposed to date, like, because they skew so much. Like in that scenario, you pay more money, right? Like you, they essentially monetize off of a better experience. And I just wonder how that affects expectations outside of the dating apps. If you meet someone in person, and do you know if that, if that has had an effect, if it’s been studied, how the apps have affected dating outside of the apps?

Amber Kinui [00:13:44]:

I know that there have been a lot of studies recently that urge folks to consider success on the apps not as necessarily coupling off with someone, but instead as simply meetups because there is a disconnect between folks who are talking consistently and actually meeting up, so I’ve read about that discrepancy, but I’m not quite sure about other outcomes.

Sam Olmsted [00:14:24]:

Eliza, to your point, that goes back to the intentions that people bring to the apps, and everyone’s intentions may be different, and so the user experience is different because you’re not matching the intentions of the users. And so that’s why I think apps like Hinge and Bumble versus apps like Tinder, which have different connotations and different users, ends up mattering so much to people because they go where the intentions are matched as well as where they can find their people. But that’s just my experience personally, not studying it.

Amber Kinui [00:14:54]:

Absolutely. I definitely think that there have been, like, an influx of. There’s been an influx of niche dating apps recently, like The League recently came out, and that’s been pretty controversial because essentially, to make a profile, I believe you have to meet certain career qualifiers or be a part of a certain extended circle. And then, of course, there are also dating applications that are geared to specific sexual preferences or nonconventional ways to date. So I think that that’s been really interesting as well. And some of my students have brought that to light, to bring awareness to the fact that, yes, of course, like Tinder, Bumble, et cetera, are household names at this point, but there are apps that are out there appealing to smaller populations based on certain identifiers or preferences.

Eliza Fillo [00:15:55]:

I feel like I’ve definitely heard more not quote-unquote, “name brand apps,” in, you know, like my friend circles recently and stuff. But I kind of want to switch gears to hopefully a more positive outlook on it. But you’ll tell us about this because I’m not exactly sure, but I know that your course mentions this concept of community healing, so can you tell us a little bit about that and what that means for your classroom and just the wider societal context of dating apps?

Amber Kinui [00:16:23]:

Absolutely. So UT is definitely the largest campus I’ve ever been on in my life, and I was really surprised in teaching this course, how many students expressed that they joined the course to simply have a space to talk about what’s going on around them, and how many young people cited loneliness as a stressor on such a buzzing campus, especially one in which they’re going to huge lecture halls with hundreds of other students, et cetera. So I think it’s a really good, the classroom culture is a microcosm of larger events on campus that get us thinking about new conversations that can take place between folks who, I don’t want to say wouldn’t typically interact on campus, but it is true that in navigating such a large population, particularly from the ages of 18 to 22, you’re going to mostly stick to your athletics team or sorority and fraternity culture is huge at UT, of course, as like a D1 school, and otherwise to academic clubs or your discipline, et cetera. So it’s always interesting to me that folks tend to sit in groups where they feel as though they can relate to the other members more so. But it’s always interesting that by the end of the semester, based on various interests expressed throughout their homework and their classroom conversations, sometimes folks from across the room end up pairing up for their podcasts, and that’s just been really rewarding, and I think it can be cathartic in the sense that there’s a space to talk about what can be, like, overwhelming or unpleasant experiences, but also joyful and fun ones, solidified through surveys, through current articles, through digital dystopian books that have predicted the futures of AI and technology. And I think Austin is just also a really interesting place to be doing this with the tech development that’s taken place here and ideas of local geography and “Old Austin,” quote unquote, et cetera.

Sam Olmsted [00:18:49]:

So you talked about emerging technology and how it may affect the dating app scene. We’re getting really close to near-human chatbots, and I think a lot of folks are using dating apps as a way to talk to people and maybe not even take it further. And I guess my question is, do you think there’s going to be a scenario where people are matching up with chatbots and finding community or finding some sort of romance with an AI text bot, essentially, and not taking it offline and staying there and kind of finding that community there.

Amber Kinui [00:19:33]:

Yes, I know it seems so outlandish, but I definitely do think that that is happening now. One of my favorite films is “Her” with Joaquin Phoenix from the early 2010s, and I remember when I first watched it, it seemed so absurd that he could be falling in love with Samantha, this AI assistant that he had who’s voiced by Scarlett Johansson. And it was just really poignant, sad. We saw him pretty much go to the, go to his wits’ end of his humanity and risking his relationship with Samantha, contending with these ideas throughout the film. And I think it’s interesting watching it ten years later because now we see AI, like, dating or even just advice lines emerging. And I think that just speaks to the fact that some people think that they need it. I don’t think it’d be developed without popular demand. It’s been interesting, I haven’t gotten to fully take a look at that quite yet. I suppose just because it’s so unsettling. I don’t like, want to dive into it too deeply, I guess, on my own end. But yeah, I definitely think that is happening already and will only grow.

Eliza Fillo [00:21:00]:

I have never even thought of the possibility of there being an AI chatbot on the other side of the app, and that is so freaky. And I haven’t thought about the movie “Her” in so long. And I remember when I watched it, I was like, oh my God, this is ridiculous. Like, how could anybody ever fall in love with a robot? And now here we are having conversations with robots on a daily basis, and it is so normal. And that is crazy. And I’m sure there’s going to be a whole field of study that emerges out of that context, but I guess we’ll just have to, have to wait and see. You’d mentioned this earlier that so you’re teaching on a college campus, and that’s such a microcosm of hookup cultures and young people who are dating. But how do you think that that culture kind of reflects any broader societal trends? Like, do you think that where you are teaching these students that you’re with, do you think that that you’re seeing those same trends outside of that context?

Amber Kinui [00:21:59]:

I definitely think that within the classroom, they’re bringing their outside experiences as the lens through which they’re viewing or contending with this work. I definitely think that there’s an overall popular culture conflict or question taking place at the moment in terms of just what, I mean I think for millennials and Gen Z, we are of course, like, generally less traditional than our parents, grandparents, generations in terms of our preferences for marriage. We’re getting married later, our divorce rates are typically higher, et cetera. But I think that’s not the whole story, that it’s certainly more nuanced and complex, and that even with these unconventional ways of coupling off, like cohabitation is very popular amongst our generations, that it’s not always as negative as we tend to make it, or that it seems, perhaps, but that there’s something to investigate with how people are to grapple with these large pressures of large technology and big tech and, I don’t know, just the human resonance that we can find somewhere in the mix.

Sam Olmsted [00:23:30]:

This is going to be an oversimplified question, and I’m just going to ask it. Are dating apps good or bad, and why?

Amber Kinui [00:23:39]:

I think that’s very difficult to answer because on the one hand, the information that has been presented to me, I think, indicates that they are mostly negative simply because they were created to have a certain, ro render a certain outcome, to bring people closer together. But actually, in several ways, they’re driving us further apart, I think, because there’s a contradiction in that folks are making accounts, becoming addicted even to their app usage, and running into various barriers that are unique to dating applications that we haven’t seen before. So, like getting ghosted or getting catfished, or other questions of safety, especially for young people that didn’t exist before. So I think that it’s most definitely. I love a good dating app success story. I think that it’s definitely also very possible to navigate through this and find your person with a little bit of patience and luck and curation of your profile and good intentions, et cetera. Good discernment and judgment, I think. But that ultimately, the larger culture of it is really difficult for most.

Eliza Fillo [00:25:15]:

That’s just the nuanced answer I was expecting, but I think all of that does make sense. Like, there’s two sides to it all. How do you think that companies, these dating app companies, are using users’ behaviors on the apps to then market to more users? Like, do you think that is a common practice that’s happening? And if so, what nuggets of intel are they finding from user behaviors, and how do you think, at least, that that might be translating to marketing?

Amber Kinui [00:25:48]:

I think that they’re definitely tracking time spent on the apps, and that when certain messages pop up, like your match has expired or, you know, now, Hinge has the feature that asks whether or not you met up with that person, or if you have anything to share about the experience. And so I think that they’re collecting that all to develop the features to become more user-friendly on one hand and to also become more addicting, because as people see that their matches are running out or that they haven’t gotten a response, of course, like, the receptors in their brains are, like, now I’m playing a game of cat and mouse and doom scrolling. So I definitely think that there’s a positive relationship between those two things.

Eliza Fillo [00:26:42]:

Well, I think that about wraps it up for us. I think we’re about at time, but typically, we like to close out the show with having our guests tell our listeners where they can find you, whether that’s social media, a website, anything you want to share, the stage is yours.

Amber Kinui [00:27:00]:

Cool. On LinkedIn, I’m Amber Kinui. On Instagram, I’m Kinui with two underscores. K, I, N as in Nancy, U, I. Thanks so much for having me. This was really fun, and I’m hoping to open some larger conversations about dating apps with anyone interested who’s listening or in the future. So thanks so much.

Eliza Fillo [00:27:23]:

Thanks for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and rate the podcast. And if there’s anything you’d like to hear us discuss, reach out on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Sam Olmsted [00:27:32]:

And as always, stay optimistic.