Screen Intimacies: Gamification in Online Dating Applications in India 0 0

Abstract

This paper examines how the concept of play brings to fore a very intimate relationship between technology and humans. The smartphone screen has shifted from being simply a mode of communication to a crucial device for all tasks and activities,
including for leisure, pleasure and play. Generating new rituals and communication practices, there are sensual and aesthetic pleasures being offered by the playful media engagement on the screen. Much like how it is with other forms of play, the pleasures of
play on screen with reference to dating apps requires a learning of the rules and decoding the codes and conventions. Different apps have their own way in which a user can access it and use it, they have their own variations, interface and levels of interactivity. The paper
argues that consumption and leisure at the site of the smartphone screen have come to determine the texture and experience of everyday life. Technologies do transform the everyday life in terms of its spatio-temporal limits and the possibilities. At some levels it
offers new possibilities, in others it reinforces power structures which continue to constrain agentic capacities.