One of the worst vibes on social media is when you can tell someone is already planning to post a screenshot of an interaction while they are still in the midst of it, chuckling to themselves and picturing the likes rolling in as they type out a sassy put-down. Some people seem to go through their lives with an imaginary audience peering over their shoulder at every moment, waiting to be delighted by their outrageous antics and no-fucks-given attitude.

At a time when we are incentivised to mine every aspect of our lives for content, screenshots of dating app conversations are a recurrent feature of the internet. Sometimes, these are harmless and even quite sweet: a surreal exchange, an insult so funny that even the recipient had to laugh, or a moment of unlikely bonding. But sometimes they’re mean: can you believe this boring loser failed to keep up with my whip-smart repartee?

Sharing screenshots of intimate conversations is widely accepted as annoying, but two high-profile scandals have brought the issue back to the forefront. When Jonah Hill’s ex-partner, the surfer Sarah Brady, posted a series of private conversations that appeared to show emotionally abusive behaviour, plenty of people argued that this was an unacceptable breach of privacy. But beyond personal catharsis, there’s a public interest in sharing experiences of abuse (even when they don’t involve a celebrity): it can educate others about what to look out for, it can show that abuse is a political and collective issue, rather than an isolated problem to be suffered in private. The other scandal, involving BBC presenter, Huw Edwards, was a little murkier. Last week, The Sun published an allegedly “creepy” Instagram conversation between Edwards and a 17-year-old. Regardless of whether this exchange was inappropriate in itself, it consisted of the most tame, banal chit-chat you could imagine, and it’s hard to see why any of us were entitled to read it.

As individuals, we can’t be judged by the same standards as tabloid newspapers, who have a far greater power to destroy people’s lives. But we should still ask ourselves: does the person we’re screenshotting deserve to be put on blast? Does anyone else really need to know about this? In some cases, the answer will be yes, but the threshold needs to be pretty high. I generally think that we shouldn’t have to communicate in private as if everything we say might be broadcast to an audience of thousands, and that even the most innocuous post should be made as anonymous as possible. But rather than the ethics involved, I’m more interested in the content of these screenshots, the glimpse they give us of how people interact with each other in the early stages of dating, how they want to be perceived by others, and what this tells us about romance today.

While people do sometimes share stories of their own abjection, the majority of these screenshots are from the perspective of the rejector. Often, they show the exact moment when someone has had enough or got the ick. This usually takes place soon after the beginning of the conversation, before they’ve met in person, and happens due to a similar set of reasons. One of the most common is the breach of dating etiquette, where the other person, having failed to realise they were chatting with a countess from a Jane Austen novel, offends their sense of honour by suggesting an inappropriate activity. Maybe they proposed meeting at a bar near their home, instead of somewhere in the middle, or going to get ice cream, instead of a high-end restaurant; maybe they didn’t realise they were expected to pay for an Uber or pick up the tab; maybe they suggested attending a tea-dance without a suitable chaperone. These transgressions, once committed, are far too serious to be rowed back.

Bungled attempts at flirting are another recurring reason for sharing a screenshot. Sometimes people – particularly men – are creepy, abusive and overly persistent. But the failed flirt we see on social media is often just a bit awkward, trying their best to respond to someone else’s cues and not quite getting it right. Maybe they jump the gun, accelerating things too quickly, or maybe their attempts at seduction are a little ham-fisted. These are the people to feel sorry for the most, because flirting well over text is a specific skill that some people, for whatever reason, simply lack. This doesn’t make them a creep or a loser, and it definitely doesn’t mean they deserve to be mocked on the internet. 

What both of these examples show is that, over ten years into app-based dating, we still don’t have a shared set of norms. There’s an entire cottage industry of podcasts, books and lifestyle articles devoted to questions of dating etiquette, but everyone has their own set of standards: some people are clearly offended when these aren’t met, while others are way more relaxed. When it comes to flirtation, it’s hard to distil this into a list of dos and don’ts – by its very nature, flirting is ambiguous, and sometimes you want it to be unpredictable. Whatever norms do exist shift depending on the context: a gay man jumping straight to explicit sexting on Grindr is par for the course (speaking from experience), but a straight person doing the same on Hinge is likely to be read as too forward or inappropriate. Or maybe not – but either way it’s impossible to say with any certainty.

All of this means that it’s easy to slip up while texting on a dating app, and to offend someone without meaning to, having failed to discern their expectations. The economics of the romantic marketplace has turned us all into prospective employers, conducting interviews, screening candidates, and maybe even running background checks. To use dating apps – particularly in a big city – is to be inundated with choice, which means that we value prospective partners less. “Abundance triggers devaluation because in a situation of abundance, objects and persons become more likely to be interchangeable,” writes sociologist Eva Illuiz in The End of Love, a book about the ways that relationships fail in the modern age.

While some ‘icks’ and ‘red flags’ are legitimately worrying, these concepts have emerged in a sexual marketplace where there’s always another option around the corner. Our time is a precious resource and we can’t afford to waste it, preferring instead to shut things down at the first sign of friction or mild disappointment. “The rapid turnover of partners entails a capacity and desire to do short-term investments, not to waste one’s time, to shift the line of production quickly, to make quick mental calculations about the worthiness of a relationship,” writes Illouz. Rejecting someone sooner rather than later might be a good decision, but it often means you’re not really giving them a proper chance. The awkward flirter could be charismatic and charming in person, the stingy first date could be generous and attentive; you could discover that your material or aesthetic expectations are not quite as rigid as you thought.

​​Maybe the never-ending conveyor belt has made us too quick to get the ick: we could be tossing away the love of our lives – or a satisfying fling – simply because they list “a walk and a roast” as their favourite Sunday activity or describe themselves as “6’2 – because apparently that matters”. As a long-term strategy, our willingness to discard others so rapidly, who will just as easily discard us in turn, gives dating a sense of precarity. Just like our experiences with housing and employment, our romantic lives are now defined by uncertainty.

All of this might explain why we’re so quick to reject others, but what do we gain from sharing it online? Whether consciously or not, performing the act of rejection is a way of bolstering your own sexual capital, asserting your value and positioning yourself at a higher level within a hierarchy. It shows that you’re in demand, that you’re desired, that you have the power and confidence to be highly discerning.

It’s a bleak fact of modern life that sex and dating are heavily influenced by market logic, the cold economics of value, abundance and competition. While romantic rejection has always been part of the human experience, it has become something we’re subjected to more regularly than ever before – as the decline of long-term relationships would seem to suggest. This holds true for just about everyone, but we’re not all equally discardable: straight, white, well-off men have it easier than others, possessing greater power to dictate who is considered worthwhile. This is not something we can easily opt out of at an individual level and it’s not necessarily within our power to change. But even if there’s a baked-in ruthlessness to modern dating, we don’t have to celebrate it, we don’t have to flaunt our indifference towards other people. Of course, sometimes dating is funny, people do say ridiculous things, and having a laugh about that is a necessary strategy for endurance. But nine times out of ten, we should save it for the group chat.

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