Love in the Age of Apps
DIRECT MESSAGING PLATFORMS ARE THE NEW CRUCIBLE OF ROMANCES. BUT TRANSFORMING VIRTUAL RELATIONSHIPS INTO REAL LOVE IS OFTEN FRAUGHT WITH DANGER.
Neha Sharma, 25, from Bangalore, gets home and gets comfortable with a glass of wine to browse through a list of ‘dating candidates’ she receives every day from the Krush app. From a prospective lover’s age to his taste in music, movies and food, even a past relationship status, Krush browses through Sharma’s ‘friends of friends’ on Facebook and shortlists the perfect man based on her preferences. If she ‘likes’ a guy who ‘likes’ her back, the app sets the two lovebirds up on a date. If someone rejects her, she will never know. “After two failed relationships and numerous blind dates, I was utterly lonely. With my hectic life, it becomes difficult to meet people. I don’t want to meet absolute strangers online either,” says Sharma, a graduate of HKBK College of Engineering. Such rampant loneliness is increasingly pushing more and more people to seek romance online.
According to a 2013 survey by Vserv.mobi, a mobile advertising agency, India is an “app superpower” ranked highest in the world for use of social media apps—with time spent on them rising. Over 52 per cent were in the age group 18-24. Facebook, when it turned 10 on February 4, admitted it was worried about how teenagers were moving to messaging apps such as Instagram’s private messaging service Snapchat, WhatsApp, and WeChat, and resorting to direct messages for emotional succour. Says Chandra Thomas, a 41-year-old man going through a separation, who seeks comfort on Twitter, “All one seeks is a little attention—albeit virtual—in the hope that it leads to something physical.”
Is social media abetting or obstructing the cause of everlasting roma-
nce? A dark, winding passageway in an Art Deco building at Shivaji Park, Mumbai, leads to the office of detective Rajni Pandit, with over 75,000 cases under her belt. Twenty five years into the business, she has had to learn a new specialisation: Hacking into direct messages and messaging services of those wooing her clients. “We have our ways,” she says with a poker face.
Private messaging platforms are the crucible of all romantic action: Inter-office, cross-country, international, cutting across caste, class and appropriateness. What’s worrying though is how much lovers are letting their guards down online. Everyone
What’s worrying is how much lovers are letting their guards down online. Everyone customises what truths are on display and what stays concealed.
customises what truths are on display and what stays concealed. Whether it’s a wife hacking into a high-profile husband’s BBM messages and posting them online to disastrous effect, or a Maharashtra minister who was being blackmailed for money after pouring his heart out on WhatsApp, or a 78year-old who recently took to social media and ended up giving away lakhs to a 50-year-old who seduced him online and threatened to go public with torrid details of their affair, private investigator circuits are rife with lore of social media-fuelled romances, rendezvous and pitfalls.
Relationship experts are also con-
cerned about the impact of social media on relationships. Dr Jalpa Bhuta, consultant child and women psychiatrist associated with Global and Wadia hospitals in Mumbai, says while it allows the socially anxious to connect and gain social confidence, it also provides a false sense of bravado by placing unrealistic virtual expectations on real-time relationships.
For instance, most apps today allow you to tell if someone has read your message. The simple lack of an immediate response can be disastrous these days. “Push a button and get a response: This is what a relationship is reduced to. The expectation is of immediate gratification,” says Dr Bhuta. On a day-to-day basis, where social media replaces realtime interaction, it erodes the quality of relationships. Online relationships are like media spins: One chooses which facet of personality to project. To love online is to buy into the spin.
Most apps allow you to tell if someone has read your message. The simple lack of an immediate response can be disastrous these days.
Constantly insecure about his wife who travels frequently on work, Arun Bora ( name changed), 29, finally downloaded the ‘ Cheating Spouse? How to Catch’ app from the iPhone store. Now Bora not only has remote access to his wife’s location but can also spy on her text messages, email accounts and Facebook notifications. The app even gives a step-bystep account of how to recover deleted messages from his wife’s phone. “It sounds like I’m a stalker but when you are away from each other for weeks, you do tend to worry. This app just reconfirms her loyalty to me,” says Bora, who runs his own software firm in Delhi.
Bora isn’t alone. “It is much more common today for clients to ask me to recommend a spy app or store instead of a private detective,” says Dr Madhavi Ganesan, a Bangalorebased relationship counsellor. If the ‘Boyfriend Text Message Spy’ app allows individuals to keep tabs on their partner’s SMSS by simply entering his or her phone number, the newly launched ‘SpyBubble’ app gives users access to the background noise of where the mobile phone is located.
“These services require the consent of the person whose phone or computer is being spied upon—but this can easily be given by anyone