Welcome to our new series on Sex & Relationships! VITD has long been about psychology, mental health, social dynamics and self-development, and these are all vital themes in the realms of sexuality and interpersonal connection.

But usually most of us just don't talk about them. They're vital parts of the human experience, yet we tend to just follow the script that our culture's given us, rarely questioning why we think and act the way we do.

In this series, we're going to upend those assumptions and see what we find underneath. From open relationships to dating etiquette, infidelity to sex parties, we're going to dive in – sometimes literally – and challenge what we think we know.

So what better place to start than the word of dating apps? Only a few years ago, if you dared to admit you'd met someone via an app or a dating site, you'd be up for immediate ridicule, but these days it sounds just as strange to have got a date any other way.

So what do dating apps mean for us today? Are they affecting what we do, or are they a reflection of who we are?

They're arguably providing us with the largest social experiment ever designed – the app-makers are studying people's sexual and dating behaviour on a macro scale that was simply impossible until now.

So let's take a look and see what the experiment has to tell us...

How do men's and women's behaviours differ on dating apps and why? What're the signalling mechanisms going on in a dating profile? Why are people so angry and intense online? And how far are the apps' own algorithms skewing and controlling our dating lives?

Dre's done his research and for a while had every possible dating app installed, from threesome apps to Tinder to Grindr to Bumble. We dissect how Jon represents himself on Tinder, how many emotional meltdowns he's witnessed, and he tells the story of how he almost became Grindr's Russian translator...

 

Also Including:

• The secret algorithms controlling your Tinder experience
• Self-esteem and insecurity online
• Do dating apps reveal who you really are?
• The key ingredients of a successful dating profile
• Why is there so much rampant racism on these apps?

Links:

• Esther Perel's Audible series on Infidelity

Be Silly. Be Kind. Be Weird.

Further episodes of Voices in the Dark

Further podcasts by Jon & Dre

Website of Jon & Dre