Tinder is Facebook: Unravelling Facial (Dia)Logic Seduction Strategies in Online Dating Sites

The article sets out an exploration of facial aesthetics in online dating sites and applications. By analysing different figures of (digital) face exhibition and concealment drawn from the opposition between “natural” and “artificial”, the piece focuses on how dating sites architecture plastically remediate face-to-face encounters. Brought into dialogue by the dating site project, through their face manipulation strategies, digital faces unravel the interactive (dia)logic of seduction and courtship practices. Without aspiring to provide an exhaustive account of the understanding of facial images in online dating sites, the article explores how digital faces in online dating sites work as unstable texts which display a collective exchange of glances. The study ultimately proposes to study how facial images are connected to each other and organized in the digital intimacy semiosphere.