I want to tell you about my soon to be posted blogs written as an assignment for my MA in Creative Writing at The University of East Anglia.
What will I be writing about?
The blogs will integrate short stories and poetry, a formal merging which I believe more faithfully reflects the fluidity of self and experience.
They will be about the dating app Tinder, engaging with surrounding questions about digital media culture through what I have found entertaining stories to experience and write.
Some of these questions will be:
- What kind of space is Tinder? Real or imagined?
- What is the purpose of Tinder?
- If online dating can be seen as play and performance, how does this affect interaction?
- What are the potential dangers of partial anonymity?
- Are there pitfalls to logging such personal information?
- How does Tinder affect presentations of gender?
- What does it do for creativity?
N.B
I was struck when researching other Tinder blogs by the potential not only for confessional accounts but for a narrative arc.
In view of the dynamics between “real” and “virtual”, I’d ask you to question how the blogging form has been positioned as autobiographical and authentic. As with many things in life, “I” tells a version of a story, which may be mostly truth and a little fiction as well as mostly fiction and a little truth.
I hope that as the narratives unfold, your perceptions of Tinder evolve along with me, and that you find something with which you identify. I will post twice weekly beginning Sunday 30th April. All images are courtesy of free repositories such as Pixabay and Morguefile, or my own photos. Comments are welcome and much appreciated!