Building Intimacy:A Study Of Affective Labor On The Internet

With the rise of the internet and the atomization of modern society,online dating has become a familiar and popular way to meet people.And a variety of online dating methods have emerged,making online dating a new economic trend.From "virtual lovers" to "escort service" in dating Apps,the business model of online "escort service" is gradually maturing.The "escort service" in dating Apps mainly refers to the scene setting of dating Apps,in which the practitioners interact with customers through text,voice and video to meet their emotional needs,and then get certain remuneration.This is a kind of affective labor that people in the "escort service" do not know they are engaged in.This study is based on the theory of affective labor and uses a web-based ethnography to obtain information through participant observation and semi-structured interviews.Three main research questions were answered:(1)What are the motivations of the practitioners and customers of "escort service" in dating Apps?(2)How does the "escort service" in dating Apps work,how are practitioners’emotions commercialized in the process,and how is the emotional relationship between practitioners and customers constructed?(3)What is the impact of the "escort service" in dating Apps on practitioners and customers,and what are the characteristics of intimate relationships under the internet?The study found that the practitioners of "escort service" in dating Apps are mainly driven by economic factors,while customers choose the service out of the psychology of confession and expression.In the "escort service" of dating Apps,practitioners manage their own image and emotions through the scene setting and emotional decoration in dating Apps so as to better perform on the "stage",while customers as audience do not simply Appreciate it.Therefore,the emotional labor in the "escort service" of dating App is mutual.In this service,the practitioner’s feeling is generally positive at the beginning of the work,and the customer’s experience is almost always positive.However,as the service time increases,the practitioner may suffer from emotional dysfunction due to excessive emotional exertion,which leads to an overly idealized imagination,high-frequency interaction and trust crisis in the intimate relationship built up through the Internet.The online chatting method has not only changed the way of establishing intimacy and emotional expression between people,but also made the use of capital on people’s emotions in the consumer society more clever.In addition,in this context,the "liquidization" of intimacy between people has become more prominent.By focusing on the emotional labor embedded in the "escort service" in dating Apps,this study not only helps to explore the changes in Chinese society,but also complements the current research on emotional labor on the Internet in China.