Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Thursday, Dec. 26
The Indiana Daily Student

opinion

Grades for dating

Just when you think there comes a time when grades stop mattering, you’re wrong.

Behold “ The Grade ,” a phone dating application that algorithmically assigns letter grades to ?users.

These grades are based on the users’ popularity, the quality of their messages (checking for grammar errors) and their ?responsiveness.

The app expels those with an F grade and advises those with C grades on how to become better suitors.

Although I keep having an “Is this for real?” moment in my head as I begin to grapple with the idea of assigning grades for dating, I can see some of its merits.

However, I believe these merits are rather misleading.

Indeed, the makers of the app have made considerations about the problems with modern dating sites and apps.

The app-makers say they have “substantial market research” that show many women using dating apps were unsatisfied with the quality of daters and their ?seriousness in dating, according to Time.

Women were also offended by the high frequency of the hostile and sexually suggestive ?messages.

Knowing this, it seems that having a grade system in place would definitely help reduce the frequency of such problems.

At the very least, it would guarantee that all active users were ones willing to demonstrate readiness of being a good suitor.

However, when it comes to dating, it’s obvious that a willingness to demonstrate readiness for a relationship is hardly enough to spark the beginning of a deep, ?meaningful relationship.

I mean, it’s completely possible for a person to demonstrate readiness for a certain kind of relationship and not actually desire it in the least bit.

What repulses me most about the app is the notion of a grading system helps to enforce such ?dynamics.

In assigning a grade, the desires and goals of getting a good grade become a central part of dating.

Clearly, this is ?misleading.

It encourages people to direct their intentionality for relationships to obtaining some computer-generated grade.

With such ideas in mind, people can be together and engage in communication solely for the benefits of getting a good grade. Instead of having their good intentions directed toward each other, their intentions are directed at achieving approval.

It’s not a healthy way to develop relationships, and it invites a certain amount of narcissism.

While people may, as a consequence of trying to achieve a good grade, also engage in a deeper sense of communication with those they date, their primary intentions become misdirected.

They are not toward the establishment of a loving relationship but rather toward achieving better algorithmically generated grades.

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe