The Success of the Subtle Asian Dating Page
The Facebook page “subtle asian traits” meme has been blossoming over the past couple of months among the Asian community. As an East-Asian girl, I often chuckle at the hundreds of posts that explain my cultural experience in a meme and tag my friends that I’ve grown up with on those posts. Because of this tremendous social, cultural revolution, there are numerous blog posts by figures in the Asian community that analyze the network diffusion of the people in this group. While this page is rapidly expanding, another page is slowly brewing its coffee: “subtle asian dating.”
After a meme about “subtle asian dating” was posted in “subtle asian traits,” the page began to increasingly gain attention. Members of the group can either make a post about themselves or their friends and “auction” them/themself off to find a romantic partner. Based on this criteria, people would hype and post photos of their friends and vouch for their romantic interests. Interestingly, this page becomes similar to all the other dating apps out there, especially Tinder. Because Tinder is a location based app and have way more men than women using it, women often aimlessly swipe on men (assuming heterosexual interests), trivializing the purpose of the dating app. This page has revolutionized the dating scene for Asians interested in dating other Asians because their social media presence presents a more “truthful” side to themselves, than their Tinder profile, which could either be catfishing or contain photos that are untruthful. Because friends are vouching for their friends, we know that the person they are vouching for is personable (to an extent).
In class, we learned about positive and negative relationships and how that affects the structural balance property. We know that a balanced triangle relationship must contain either 3 positive edges, or 1 positive edge, and that an unbalanced triangle relationship must contain 0 positive edges, or 2 positives edges. With the posts in this page, we already know that there is an established positive relationship between two people: the friend vouching for their friend. When a third individual is introduced into the equation, there is more of a chance for the triangle relationship to be a balanced one, since at least one positive edge is needed to be in a balanced relationship. Because of this, it is completely possible for an individual who is romantically interested in the friend to “slide into their DMS” and successfully secure a date with the friend.
The “subtle asian dating” is currently one of the hottest pages for potentially finding a romantic partner in the Asian community. In my previous blog post, I analyzed how Tinder is becoming a game due to the trivialization of finding a potential mate. Tinder also causes people to judge others based on their appearance, which should not be the determining factor of a person’s worth. The potential romantic partners in the dating page not only have pictures, but are also validated by a close friend of theirs. Thus, not only could you talk to the date directly, but you could also gain more insight to that person through their close friend, creating more genuine interactions. Before you know it, kids will be saying their parents met through a dating meme page on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/725870897781323/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1343933772408499/
https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/life/culture/article/2018/11/14/we-need-talk-about-subtle-asian-traits