Look, I (like everyone I know) love my phony-phone, I love Facebook, I can't even remember how life went without social media, I'm a convert, is what I'm saying, I'm not a luddite preaching against new softwares. But I can't escape the evidence that some hawt-trending-millennial apps and the cultures surrounding them are, if you're an Asian-American guy, really terrible. As a lifelong Asian-American guy, I can't keep quiet on this anymore: Tinder and Snapchat, both extremely popular apps, are both completely useless, utterly irritating, toxic-racist-douchebag shit.
Tinder is horrible mainly because of the NOPE animation, which is nothing but superfluous looks-shaming. And the fact that by swiping left or right you're making indulgent snap judgements (masquerading as "decisions"), in place of the more participatory model of most dating sites, where you can take a little time to know you are being checked out, check out who's checking you out, and let something grow. NOPE, Tinder don't have interest in that, or in ugly people! And in function, Tinder is just as worthless for the less-preferred ethnic groups as Every Online Dating Thing.
"Sexual Racism" has not ascended into popular usage yet to the degree that terms like "White Entitlement" and "Cisgender Privilege" have. Sexual racism is a very tricky topic to discuss, because it's all about about personal preferences, attractions, and concepts of "hot." But the bottom line of sexual racism in America is, Asian dudes and Black women are highly disadvantaged in online dating, for no reason other than their race. By disadvantaged I don't mean we have horrible dates, or can't find someone to love/lust after. I mean we don't have any opportunities for dates because we are hardly chosen. And, before I revive an awful kerfuffle by appearing to label all African-American women — who live through a myriad of experiences I know zero about — I'll stress that this assessment is based on statistical data which gathers people into broad racial groups, and has nothing to do with the actual culture of us as people. And also, the reasons behind the se disadvantages are very different, not even comparable. And also, Asian dudes are far and away dead LAST. It's not like there are two groups both hovering around the bottom; Asian Dudes are far less-preferred in online dating than Everyone Else, taken as racial groups, and it's not even close. And being gay doesn't change the curve, generally. (It's a closer call at the top, where Asian women, white women, and white men could all make a strong argument for being the MOST preferred, but let's not go there right now.)
But still you gotta try, because you need the eggs, right? So as an average-looking Asian dude you might reluctantly struggle with Match and OKCupid, but then you get on Tinder for two days and it's like Holy shit, now I feel extra-terrible about my life. Because Tinder, again, is utter shit. AND BEFORE YOU SWIPE AWAY LET ME TRY TO SAY WHY:
– It validates your dismissal of people with that little "Nope" animation when you swipe left. Your little self-puffing-up from saying "No way, dude! Not in a million years!" is reinforced with every negative swipe. The same thing people feel when they're dismissing Asian dudes at first glance, based on a negligible first impression, because of systemic sexual racism. All Asian dudes (well, maybe not Daniel Henney) know exactly what it means to be shut down long before you even get started — we don't need any more of it validated by Tinder. Would you say "Nope!" to everyone you weren't immediately attracted to in real life, within one half-second of meeting them? Why not?
– As an experiment, I liked as many people as it's possible to like on Tinder over 3 days, within the daily limit, on a weekend with a lot of promising "party" and "social event" potential. So, several hundred people. Without a lot of choosing, a wide spread of types and ages. I don't even know what my intentions were if someone had matched me, but it didn't matter, because zero matches. I don't really know how Tinder functions if you do match with someone, because have had zero matches ever. (Okay, as of this writing, it's been 1, but it was a professional sex service.) It's not like I was expecting something different from my experiences with other dating services, and I realize that the apps perform an important filtering service, especially for women. But the thing that really doesn't "match" is, that zero is not who I am. I'm not Supa-Unicorn-Dude, but I am a guy who can meet people IRL, and talk to new people on the internet, and can make A. Sin gle. Connection. With SOMEBODY, if the sample size is 300-500 people. Again, for experimentation's sake, I've liked 100s of profiles for a reason, and also 100s of profiles without a reason. Zero.
– People are blathering about their Tinder experiences all the time, to which, if you've tried but never matched once, so are unable to have any kind of Tinder experience, one can't help but feel, "Why not me? What's wrong with me?" (Psst! The cure-all for this is to just STOP BLATHERING ABOUT YOUR "TINDER DATES" — It's just called "dating," Tinder doesn't own it.)
– So, without dismissing the ideas that I might be "doing it wrong" or "barking up the wrong trees" or "being whiny" (all, in some way, true) I maintain this opinion that Tinder is SEXUALLY RACIST, TOXIC BULLSHIT. And the NOPE part, and the judgey culture of it, make Tinder much MORE TERRIBLE CRAP than any of the other date-apps. 'Cause it's not me, Tinder, it IS ACTUALLY YOU.
(Btw, The Lobster is a fantastic movie.)
AND THEN THERE'S CRAPCHAT. Let me be clear, my beef with Snapchat is more because of its doucheiness than its racism — I mean, if it were a little less racist, it would still be remarkably douchey. But it IS racist too, so let's chat about that:
The filters – The "Bob Marley" filter? The "anime" filter with the slitty eyes? (YO, ANIME CHARACTERS HAVE HUGE EYES. IF YOU KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT ANIME, YOU'D KNOW THAT, SNAPCHAT BROS.) Wow, how neat! It's almost as awesome as a white person cosplaying as Luke Cage because he doesn't see color!
(I wish I was making up that part about white people cosplaying Luke Cage, but it's actually happening. There are, photographically and sociopolitically, a lot of things wrong with this picture:)
Faceswap – basically a way for white people to celebrate how normative their faces are, while the rest of us pine for an app that could really for real switch our face with someone else's. Because, according to faceswap, the face we have is NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
A few of my good friends are regular snapchatters, and a couple times they've tried to faceswap with me, and lemme say, it takes a while for Snapchat to recognize the Asian guy's face. It doesn't "acquire" easily. There's a history to this; facial recognition software is really cool, but it still privileges people with big eyes, big smiles, symmetrical face — the standard of Western beauty. These female friends (the ones who like faceswap the most) are white or Asian and really pretty, by all the standard metrics of face-prettiness, and all camera apps love them. So I get it, it's validating. It's just the opposite of validating when the piece of crApp won't recognize that you have a face.
Remember the "someone's got their eyes closed" problem, as brought to light by Jozjozjoz? It's still with us.
And aside from the other racial, privileged doucheiness of Snapchat, it's just STOOPID. As a filmmaker (by which I mean, videomaker) the idea of a thing which erases your shots after you've shot them is offensive, disgusting, and a little trauma-triggering. Last week I took the most beautiful long handheld shot of a cosplay karaoke singer, everything about it was gorgeous, the performance, the lighting, my unusually adequate camerawork, it was probably one of the 5 best single takes I've ever been involved in — and then the memory card failed, the camera crashed, and the shot was just gone.
You know what that was, that disappeared piece of video artistry? THAT WAS A SNAPCHAT. That's how fucking awesome the idea of Snapchat is. A lost shot, a once-in-a-decade shot, killed by random gear failure (The second take, desperately cobbled together, was prettttttty good, but now we'll never know the alternative).
And Snapchatters. Do that. On purpose. Because….? "PRIVACY"? Oh for Pete's sake. If it's worth shooting a video of, it's worth keeping the video, okay? If it's not worth keeping the video, why don't you just NOT snapchat it and live in the fuckin' undocumented moment?!?!
And don't even get me started on #HALLOWEENCOSTUMES. 🙂
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