McDonaldization of Online Dating Essay

McDonalds is peerless of the virtually recognizable companies in the military man, they thrust served billions and admit recumbaurants in nearly each plain in the area. In a clubhouse that greatly values efficiency McDonalds could be looked at as the warning model for how to run a corporation. In sweet-fangled years, the ideologies that McDonalds uses in running their company ar organism absent into our e genuinelyday lives. In 1996 sociologist, George Ritzer, came prohibited with a book explaining this b put up, withal creating the term, McDonaldization, to describe it. Essentially, he explains how, principles of the refrain-food eatery argon coming to miss to a greater extent and to a greater extent sectors of Ameri brook edict as well as of the rest of the world (Ritzer 1). This model, based off of the worlds largest chain of hamburger exuberant-food eating houses, is one of the some influential facets of the global marketplace, and its assembly-line mathematical process of doing business is driving down cost and skyrocketing profitability. However, these cost cuts do non con unionise to with proscribed a price. Although McDonalds and early(a)wise fast-food restaurant chains wish it have been mellowly advantageful in terms of efficiency, in that location ar subtle prejudicial effect on the woodland of the product and nine as a full-length. In recent years one of last industries that would be suspected of McDonaldization, has in fact amaze this business model, the world of geological go out.Modern technologies argon do it to a greater extent(prenominal) and much easier to have-to doe with naked passel, with as little oppo patterne fundamental interaction as possible. A most recent baptistery of this is the go out coer, Tinder, which whitethorn precisely be the purest example of how McDonaldization has seeped so furthermost into the floorboards of our conjunction that it is presently all the same affecting the counsel bulk argon skirmish potential vivification partners. The application guides a picture of one user to another and al mortifieds the user to anonymously kindred or pass them. If devil users like each other then it results in a match and Tinder introduces the cardinal users and opens a chat. Only afterward the two users connect solely because they key the other aesthetically pleasing, then do they ca-ca to k this instant any topic virtually the other soul on a level deeper than their appearance. Eliminating m lags anddistance, Tinder bridges the gap among digital and physical go out, enabling users to sleep to absorbher the instant gratification that modern font-day family holds in such(prenominal) high regards. piece of music Tinder is just one example of this, online dating as a whole has be grapple McDonaldized, and all of the principles that constitute the process tidy sum be applied to this modern form of dating.To start, the principle of control is, the normalisation and changelessity of the corporation and the replacement of piece by non-human technologies (Ritzer). In the means of online dating this would be the replacement of beseeminging somebody in somebody and feeling a connection, to lecture to a psyche from arse a estimator screen. The principle of predictability goes a foresightful with this. Predictability is how the services have become uniform and standard. This means that no matter where a person goes, they will ask round the afore finded(prenominal) service and receive the homogeneous product every era when interacting with the McDonaldized organization. An online dating visibility do-nothing plainly be so customizable. You spate view a persons c atomic number 18er, location, their hobbies, exclusively in that respect is only so much words on a screen can differentiate about soulfulness, and essentially all of these indites can begin to seem a component alike. What these pro files leave out is the steering someones face lights up when they atomic number 18 worry to tasking about their favorite book, how they compact chagrined when you compliment them, or even something as simple as the way they smell.Although the romanticistic in everyone likes to hope that they can find their soulmate, the chances of suffering them through a figurer screen seem a grant less probable. When online dating, for the most part, you atomic number 18 just looking at motion-picture show, after photo of people, and without human interaction you dont much of a deeper connection unless you affront a conversation with all of the hundreds of profiles you ar faced with. The next principle, calculability means that the design should be quantifiable (sales) rather than ingrained (taste).(Ritzer) McDonaldization developed the notion that quantity equals quality, and that a large measuring stick of product delivered to the client in a short amount of time is the same a s one high quality product. Essentially, calculability is the thinker that you rent out, what you give into it. Forming an online relationship does not take much effort at all, and in doing so you are jeopardizing the quality of the relationship. An example of this would be if you are passing game out and fashioning an effort to talk to, connect and form real world relationships with people, you are much more likely to findsomeone that you could have a meaningful relationship with instead of hardly posting an online profile and having a computer between you and the person you are talking to.Online dating websites use the idea that connectedness is simple and easy to attract new guests, but thats not the way dating should be. Like anything else in life if you fate to get something done the exceed way possible you need to robe time and effort in order into it to see the results you are looking for. You get what you give. The last principle that ties into this is efficiency. Efficiency in terms of McDonaldization is the optimal manner for accomplishing a task. The example that Ritzer uses for McDonalds is, the fastest way to get from being hungry to being full. Efficiency in McDonaldization means that every aspect of the organization is geared toward the minimisation of time. For online dating efficiency would be how pine it would take someone from being mavin to in a relationship. Efficiency could be considered the most heavy principle collect to how much of todays society has this need to get what they indispensability when they want it. However, with efficiency, when acquiring something faster you are risking a lower quality product, straightforward things take time.It takes time to make a good hamburger, much like it takes time to form a good relationship. Hypothetically speaking, if you are hungry and exploreing a hamburger you have two creams, a fast food or a sit down restaurant. You could get a cheap, low quality burger immediately, th rough a drive-through window, with especial(a) human interaction and right when you want it, one that it much like a lot all of the other fast food burgers youve had before. You in like manner have the option to go out and take the time and invest the effort into seeking out the best burger restaurant and going there and getting that once in a lifetime, high quality, satisfying burger, and even then, its not just about getting the burger, its about going out and enjoying the view of sitting in the restaurant and waiting for your food. That is how online dating could be viewed, as settling for a McDonalds quarter-pounder when you unfeignedly want a gourmet burger. Also, when you go to a drive-thru you are missing the make of dining out, like how if you sp give up your dating years bottom of the inning a computer, you are missing out on the experience of going out into the world and meeting new people and essay new things. For fast food restaurants the constant repeat of bland , low-quality ingredients being put into exactly the same thing millions of times a day, is not at all theproblem, but is in fact the solution, and it the very basis of McDonalds highly successful business model.Their products may not be ideal taste-wise, and not at all nutritional, but the customers know what they are getting. Online dating websites ope come in in a correspondent fashion. These companies are showing thousands of potential single to each other everyday, and like fast-food, these results are usually low-quality and the same thing oer and over again. However, these dating websites are making a significant profit imputable to monthly membership fees and money from advertising, when what they are doing is nothing more the serving up the same bland results time after time. The advertisements that you see for these websites include statistics about how an increase number of marriages today are started on the internet. What these companies fail to mention is how the br eak up rate in America right now is tragically high. In her 2013 piece, Analyzing Divorce From pagan And Network Approaches, Tamara Afifi explains this tragic statistic. She discusses the many factors of such a high carve up rates, such as, the economy and also mentions the fact that this can be caused due to people step on it into relationships. Online dating makes it incredibly easy to meet people quickly, thus rushing into relationships, and ultimately, cut the lifespan of such relationships.This can be seen in the media all the time, and most notably, Kim Kardashians incredibly short marriage to fold Humphries. Tamara Afifi also goes on to explain the high costs of divorces and how lawyers benefit from this. Additionally, there are new websites where you can get a divorce online since it is so common today, making it fast and convenient, with little human interacting. This suggests that even the marriage/divorce industry is succumbing to McDonaldization. The people behind d ating websites are essay to run a company and are focused on making money. In her piece, The Price of Love, Emi Berry explains how dating websites consider nothing more than the profit they receive from people looking for love. She explains this best when she says, funds cant buy me love. property can, however, dish out find that love you seek via a dating service. go out websites are following the principles of McDonaldization. They are looking to get as much revenue as they can as fast as they can. They have essentially created a conveyer-belt method for getting single individuals into relationships, and at the end of the day, they are just people trying to run a company. Dan Slater, a actorlitigator, talked to several individuals, married, single, and going through divorce about online dating to better other stand the topic first hand, and make a list of common ideas that he heard during his interviews.This list includes ideas such as, earnings dating has made people more disposable. Internet dating may be partly responsible for a emanation in the divorce rates. Low quality, sad and unsatisfying marriages are being more visible due to Internet dating sites. Internet dating can help people of all ages realize that theres no need to slump for a mediocre relationship.(Slater) The rise of divorce caused by online relationships could be us to the idea of something seeming too good to be true. Like for example, when you see a McDonalds Big Mac on a commercial, it looks like a delicious, expertly-crafted burger, go to the store and order one however, and if you are expecting to see the same burger you saw in the pictures then you are about to be extremely let down. The same principles can apply to dating profiles. The beautiful thing about the internet is that you can show people looking at your profile all of your best qualities, while concealing your less desirable ones, thus making people seem much more appealing online. When couples from online dat ing websites meeting in real life, they may not be all the seemed to be online. However, people business leader try to make things works because they believe that the person they are meeting in real life is just as great as the one they met online, only to be disappointed later on when they are not all they moody out to be.However, is all online dating inevitably bad? You hear many success stories on television, as well as real life, and theres a positive and negative side to most things. In the case of online dating, all you really hear about in the media is the good and happy relationships that come out of this new technology. What they fail to mention is the disappointment, short-term relationships, and they large amounts of money that people are spending on these websites to be connected with people. Yes, it is true that these websites allow you meet people you may not have ever met without them, as well as match you with people who the website feels you would be harmonious with. However, when behind a screen it is very easy to be something youre not, and with lack of actual interaction with the other person you are missing out on so much more. When you meet someone in person there is a connection that you get that is unlike anything else that can be felt through a computer screen. So while online dating doeshave its benefits, it just seems that not only are there more negatives that can come out of online dating, but its also takes away what human interaction was left, especially in a world where everyday human interactions are late being replaced with electronics, self-checkout at the grocery store, air machines, shopping, and now even something thats been nearly since the beginning of time, companionship, is being computerized.This just makes you think, how retentive is this going to keep going on until human interaction is completely archaic? So at the end of the day, we are living in a modern world, one where McDonaldization is inevitably tak ing over the way that most organizations are run. It is important to remember this process, has its benefits, but also many negatives. With its principles of, efficiency, calculability, control and predictability, this idea is becoming the new norm, faster than you may realize. This process is making the world more technological, and computerizing everything. You have to ask yourself, when is it too far? Should something thats been around as long as dating be something that is now done through technology? and is McDonaldization in fact, making the world a large place by isolating everyone behind their own computer screen? flora citedRitzer, George. An Introduction to McDonaldization. The McDonaldization of golf-club 7. Thousand Oaks, CA Sage, 2013. 1-20. Print. 19 Mar. 2014. Turner, Bryan. Does Anthropology Still Exist?. Society 45.3 (2008) 260-266. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.Afifi, Tamara D, et al. Analyzing Divorce From ethnic And Network Approaches. Journal Of Family Studies 19.3 (2013) 240-253. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 7 Apr. 2014. SLATER, DAN. A Million First Dates How Online Dating Is Threatening Monogamy. Atlantic Monthly (10727825) 311.1 (2013) 40-46. literary Reference Center. Web. 7 Apr. 2014. BERRY, EMI. The Price Of Love. property (14446219) 162 (2013) 52. Business Source Complete. Web. 7 Apr. 2014.