Strategies of auto-protection

how fear influences the sociability of female users of Tinder in Santa Maria - RS

Abstract

Relationship forms have changed rapidly since the advent of the internet, a phenomenon that has accelerated with the popularization of smartphones and the development of relationship-specific applications. The emotions involved in the contacts established from these platforms greatly influence the sociability of the subjects. In the city of Santa Maria-RS, women users of the Tinder app that are searching men on the platform describe two preponderant emotions in their perceptions about the interactions using the app: desire and fear. Desire is what drives them in search of these partners, and fear is what causes them to devise strategies of self-protection before establishing a physical encounter. Based on the perspectives of desire defended by Miskolci and fear, by Borges and Barbalet, and with the intention of analyzing the tension between these two emotions and what are these strategies of self-protection developed by these women, this work starts from a developed ethnographic investigation from the participant observation of Tinder and interviews intermediated by the platform and developed, also, in a personal way. What is evident here is that these women, although they have never experienced situations of fear or violence in meetings established by the Internet, intend to exercise their desires and meet these men, but they do not leave home without taking precautions.