From “advocating” to “petfishing”: this is how the language of love affairs changes

The new communication models have thus changed and conditioned relationships that new words have also been born to define them. Because if, as the philosopher Umberto Galimberti argues, we only think about the words we know, it is necessary to define a form, in which to recognize ourselves, through the right language.

How our way of falling in love has changed

The online dating it has changed our way of weighing love and has killed, for example, the idea that love is the fruit of a chance encounter, completely unexpected. Today we seldom come across love, but we seek it. And we look for it in the privacy of our home, on some platform or application that allows us to keep a safe distance between the known person and our family and social environment. Commitment becomes easier, but so is disengagement. For Doctor Marie Bergström, sociologist, interviewed by Guardian and author of the book The New Laws of Love, in the future we will use online dating platforms more and more and this will lead to an even clearer separation between sex and real life.

What is the implication of all this? It may seem paradoxical but it is there fear of the body, of physical contact, because falling in love online is a form of protection, of liquid eroticism without presence, of serial consumerism that aims to multiply relationships without true reciprocity. In the book The end of love. Sociology of negative relations, Eva Illouz argues that: “The use of partner selection tools such as Tinder means that the initial choice itself takes place according to the characteristics of the choice in a catalog of goods, in a sample book: you choose quickly, at the first look, excluding or selecting in a binary way who is compatible and who is not, with the aim of an occasional relationship, mainly of a sexual nature, and without expectations for the future. The result is not of a selective type, but of a cumulative type: it is not a question of the careful selection of a stable love partner, but of the multiplication of occasional contacts in view of a contingent sexual satisfaction ».

These forms of non-relationships generate uncertainty, an uncertainty that negatively affects people’s personality and emotional integrity. For the author, relationships are entered through sex and not vice versa, with emotional detachment and sentimental control.

The data says that Gen Z has a more pragmatic approach to sex, which doesn’t necessarily mean moving from one relationship to another, but rather having a more conscious approach that doesn’t compromise their identity and needs. Young people are looking for themselves to build a stable identity and this makes them physically distant, a side effect of rampant uncertainty.

Language and online dating

Written love is less empowering but for this reason it is not alien to emotional dependence. Social networks have profoundly transformed the form of relationships, making them ephemeral but potentially tending to infinity: just like a story (the latest feature made available by Instagram) to emphasize one’s presence, generate expectation, expectations then obviously disregarded. . There is no longer poetic distance, because social networks know how to keep their distance but by binding people. And here is the sentimental control: we control ourselves but we want to control the other.