Swiping, Voting, and Risking (nothing): The Safety-First Society
On dating-apps, the U.S elections and our riskless revolutions
“Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.” - James Baldwin
Last February, I was sitting in a cold lecture hall, half-listening as my professor rambled on about German Cinema. His lectures have always been chaotic and somewhat memorable, but I didn’t expect he’d be the reason I’d delete all my dating apps once and for all.
“Most of you know about dating apps,” he started. “...Calculated love matches, swiping right because you both like to read or travel...”
Embarrassed laughter filled the lecture hall. My friends and I smiled; we had to admit that he was right. Like a lot of people, I’d spent evenings idly swiping, and although I hadn’t used them in months, the apps were still on my phone, waiting for me to tap their icons and let the algorithm present me with the ‘catch of the day.’
But I needed an excuse to get rid of them, so when my professor started his monologue, my ears perked up. I was more than ready to hear him preach about ‘real’ connections and blame phones for modern society’s barriers.
Instead, he quoted French philosopher Alain Badiou: “Love is a spark of coincidence, free from calculation—the exact opposite of what dating apps would have us believe.” And then he went on to talk about other German films, but my mind lingered on about Badiou.
I’m the first person to say that love happens when you’re not looking for it; that dating apps are the bane of my existence, and that I’m wishing for a technological revolution where we all get rid of our phones to start living in the here and now. I’ve always said I’d find true love in a jazz bar, bookstore, museum, or even on the street. Call me a hopeless romantic or delusional (it’s probably both).
What my professor—or Badiou—said, inspired me: there’s no calculation involved in love. Anyone who has ever been in love can tell you that—it’s a curse, and a blessing.
The apps were deleted instantly. I started quoting Badiou every time the subject of the apps came up, and none of my friends took the same plunge. We continued exchanging dating stories. I swiped for them, told them “no, two emojis aren’t too much” and “if he doesn’t show initiative he’s not worth it.”
However, my annoyance about the apps only grew. I was trying to understand what made them so appealing. At first I blamed it on passivity taking over my generation, we don’t know any better than having math do the work for us. But it take long for me to change my mind once more: passivity is not the root of the problem, but rather one of the symptoms. I realized this thanks to Badiou making a return in class.
Last week during my Film and Philosophy seminar, the same professor dedicated a whole lecture on Badiou (half of which was on his ideas on love, the other half was about film). He elaborated on Badiou’s take on dating apps: they don’t work, simply because the lack of risk they offer. Love is anything but riskless. Love is meeting someone and having your world turned upside down, something you can’t ever prepare for. Love, in fact, is the antithesis of dating apps: finding someone safely from the comfort of your own home, (safely) rejecting someone from your phone through a swipe, or ‘ghost’— even getting rejected is safe! If they swiped you left, you won’t even know.
It felt as if this French philosopher who, less than a year ago, I’d never heard of, shared the same brain as me. I got myself a copy of In Praise of Love and dove right in. I found out that Badiou doesn’t just criticize dating apps, he connects them to broader issues I’ve never been able to articulate:
The ideology of safety, which is predominant today, is the exact opposite of love. Love cannot be a contract; that is impossible. Yet that is what people today would like: to have contracts that ensure zero risk, absolute protection, insurance for each partner. That is the ideology of ‘safety’—and it is a catastrophic one. It is an ideology of withdrawal, which fears the exposure of love and substitutes it with a safety that suppresses love’s transformative power
According to Badiou, love is powerful because it can make you see the world through the eyes of another—sometimes even someone you never thought you’d agree with. Imagine a right-wing law student falling in love with a radical climate activist (an example I borrow from my professor). The climate activist will start to understand the law-student’s views and vice-versa. Now, these two people would never swipe right on each other on Bumble, but they might fall in love in a dimly lit club, talking until dawn— a story straight from a fairy tale.
Not only do apps keep us divided, they create a false illusion of safety, shaping a society that can’t even fathom seeing the world from another perspective than their own, let alone change it.
Our ‘modern’ society is full of safety nets. We’re like children living in a house with every sharp corner covered. The house is surrounded by a tall fence; we go outside with a leash attached to our hips. Instead of wanting to leave this prison of a home we claim it as something sacred.
Is it possible to live risk-free? When you ‘ghost’ someone on a dating app, there’s still a person on the other side wondering what they did wrong. Let’s take it a step further: bombing someone from afar doesn’t make it a ‘victimless war,’ and who will be paying for this destruction, and blood if not innocent citizens who want nothing to do with it?
“The bombs they drop kill a lot of people who are to blame for living underneath. These casualties are Afghans, Palestinians... They don’t belong to modernity either. Safety-first love, like everything governed by the norm of safety, implies the absence of risk for people who have a good insurance policy, a good army, a good police force, a good psychological take on hedonism, and all risks for those on the opposite side”
The genocide in Gaza is funded by our tax money. In the U.S., the war is supported by the Democrats, the same people marketed as the “lesser evil” (whatever that’s supposed to mean). Yet anyone who voted independent, or didn’t vote at all, has gotten flack from the left. If Kamala had won the election, would she have stopped supporting Israel? Is voting blue a sign of a clear conscience, or just a way to ‘safely’ consider yourself a political activist? Perhaps the solution is to stop paying taxes altogether, but I’m not sure many would be willing to take the plunge.
Dare I say that voting is as risk-free a revolution as finding love through dating apps? Like being a soldier who shoots innocent civilians from the safety of their desk? Society has indoctrinated itself with a false idea of comfort. Complaining is now equated with demanding change—or creating it. We criticize our governments night and day, but in the end, we seem to agree with them by voting. “We have no other choice” is a standard phrase used by both voters and political parties. When have revolutions ever happened through voting? Yes, evil cheats, but that does not mean good has to win by playing the game of a corrupted system
I’ve spent a long time blaming cellphones on the issues of society. Today, I’d like to make a formal apology to these little bricks of technology. It’s easier to blame external forces than it is to look at the root of the problem. It’s like drinking Redbull every day and wondering why your health is declining.
I’d like to use this platform to promote Kino Tarot’s crowdfunding campaign to help Fares and his family safely evacuate from Gaza. I’m grateful every day for the life I’m able to live, and I hope the world wakes up from its slumber so we can make it a better place for every living being on Earth.
Great, Lara! I really like the way you write.
Love is vulnerability - the antithesis of safety. It's a willingness to share the things I keep most heavily-guarded. It's a display of me trusting in someone enough to put my entire inner world on the line in order to give the ultimate gift I have in the world - my soul - to nourish and empower someone else. To share in the painful joy and joyful pain. That's risky as fuck - and it's how we grow and transmute the unfavourable circumstances of our lives and find meaning. And this piece touches on that in such a brilliantly grounded way. Thank you Lara.