Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Swiped: Hooking Up In The Digital Age’, An HBO Documentary About How Mobile Apps Have Changed Dating

If you’re single in 2018 and you’ve just deleted Tinder for the 232nd time, then you will probably nod your head at everything in the new documentary Swiped: Hooking Up In The Digital Age on HBO. Does it portray today’s swipe-to-date-culture accurately?

SWIPED: HOOKING UP IN THE DIGITAL AGE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s pretty much a given that the iPhone and other smartphones have changed the way we interact with the world. Dating is no exception: Even the “olden days” of dating websites seem old-fashioned and quaint compared to the “swipe right/left” simplicity of Tinder and other similar dating apps that have taken over the space in the last decade.

Swiped takes a look at how apps like Tinder (and Grindr, Bumble, Hinge and others) are changing how and why we hook up. In locations ranging from New York to Southern California, Austin TX, and small Midwestern towns, the filmmakers interview mostly college kids and people just out of college to talk about how even a simple thing like meeting over coffee or a drink has been rendered obsolete by the virtual buffet of potential dates these apps offer.

The film also talks to social and dating experts about how the culture has changed —some think for the worse, others aren’t sure— by the fact that that daters today have seemingly unlimited choices, and who they choose is largely dictated by looks more than ever before. Also interviewed is one of the co-founders of Tinder, the co-founder of Bumble, and the co-founder of Hinge.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Probably whatever the last documentary that described our society as going to hell in a handbasket because of how people date.

Performance Worth Watching: For a great look at who women shouldn’t hook up with via dating apps, look no further than Josh, Skyler and Cam, three California dudebros who sound like they need to lay off the doobage a bit.

Memorable Dialogue: Bianca, who with her more relationship-minded sister Breanna is profiled, talks about a “situationship,” where the two people are exclusive but won’t label themselves as boyfriend and girlfriend. It looks like the girls’ mother, who’s in on the conversation, is so confused about this her head is going to explode.

Single Best Shot: We just can’t get enough of April Alliston, a professor of comparative literature, gender and sexuality studies at Princeton, breastfeeding her baby during her interview (at 59 years old, no less!). “Look how permissive we are!” say the filmmakers with that shot.

Sex and Skin: A couple of the young women who are interviewed show recent dick pics — artfully edited by the filmmakers — they’ve gotten from more or less complete strangers they met on various apps.

Our Take: Swiped is the first directorial effort from journalist Nancy Jo Sales, and we can see the journalistic approach she takes in this documentary. She tries to cover as much ground as she possibly can in the 86-minute runtime, and only scratches the surface on any one issue.

The parts of dating in the digital age Sales covers with the most depth is one that we’ve seen before, in web videos on dating to scripted shows like Sideswiped: How online dating’s superficiality has gone to extreme levels in the app world, how much pressure people — especially woman — are under to portray the best images of themselves online, how men use the apps to look for sex while women look for relationships, and how apps like Tinder don’t lead to real connections or marriages for most of their millions of users.

None of these issues are new; even the “slot machine reward” aspect of matches, which Tinder’s Jonathan Sabeen readily admits to, is old news, as anyone who used eHarmony back in the day could attest to.

But when Sales focuses her camera on a person like Cheyenne, a perfectly attractive and dynamic young woman who feels so much pressure to look good on dating apps and social media, it has killed her self-esteem, we want to see more. When we hear about the potential for violence or stalking or revenge porn incidents from app-based dates, we think an entire documentary can be made about that. The impact of services like Hinge and Bumble, who try to be different from Tinder, only get a light treatment, as well.

Then there are the people Sales interviewed who are either gender fluid, LGBTQ, or otherwise not in the hetero, cisgender categories 90% of the people she talked to are in; their stories and struggles — heck, even the stories and struggles of people who are just average Joes and Janes looking for relationships without the need to do duckface sefies on Instagram– are not examined too deeply. It feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

Our Call: STREAM IT, if only to witness Prof. Alliston’s interview. It’s a sight to behold. Oh, and the interviews with the people on the front lines of the digital dating battle are interesting, too.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch Swiped on HBO Go or HBO Now