During this debate, French nineteenth-century commentators coined the term “marriage market” (Gaillard, 2020). Since then, this term has acquired a scientific character, being used primarily by scholars in economics to describe partner choice and matching. But when it was coined in France, it was not a concept at all; it was a moral term used to condemn marriage brokerage:
[The critical essays] readily describe these agencies as an “industry,” or even as “marriage factories,” in order to awaken the anxieties of a society in full industrialization. In short, the marriage market is supposed to be the expression of a generalized competition between marriageable individuals in a modern society characterized by urban anonymity. The metaphorical use of the term “matrimonial market” aims to morally contest these agencies, as it maintains a confusion between the rationale that governs partner choice and the commercial logic that governs these new businesses. Since the agencies constitute a “marriage market,” responding as they do to the demand of their clientele, does this not mean that the couple formations themselves are dictated by the rules of market competition? From observing a matrimonial market to asserting a commodification of people is only a short step. (Gaillard, 2020, p. 50)
This historical perspective brings many insights to the contemporary debate about the commodification of love. Just as their ancestors, dating sites and apps are said to turn intimate relationships into a market, and users stand accused of having a pragmatic, or even consumerist approach to partner choice. In much the same way as industrialization was held responsible a century ago, objections now focus on the liberal market economy. But the arguments are ultimately the same now as they were then, and are found both in Europe and in North America. Pamela Epstein’s analysis of how matrimonial ads were covered by the American press in the late nineteenth century reveals that “critics of personal ads saw them as symptomatic of a new era of commercialization and commodification, and feared that the results would be dangerous – not only to individuals but to society as a whole. As the ads multiplied, they provided additional proof that the market was intruding into private life in an unprecedented manner” (Epstein, 2010, pp. 106–107). This diagnosis is very similar to the ones we find around online dating today. While the twenty-first century is often described as a critical moment in history in which capitalism changes and corrupts intimate relationships, a very similar criticism was already mounted against the market some 150 years ago.
The nineteenth century’s disapproval of a presumed “marriage market” may seem strange. Why would talk of money, real estate, and heritage when arranging marriage alarm the general public so much at a time when marriage was indeed closely intertwined with economic issues? What shocked this public, Claire-Lise Gaillard explains, was that the economic concerns were so bluntly put on display. Making a good match was important at the time, but these matrimonial negotiations were supposed to remain hidden behind the scenes. The reason why marriage seekers dared to make them public was precisely that the ads and agencies allowed them to remain anonymous. In other words, what appalled the public was not the socioeconomic foundation of marriage in itself, but rather the exhibition of this foundation. As Claire-Lise Gaillard puts it, “the market criticism reveals the malaise of the nineteenth-century society to see the real principles of partner choice being exposed in crude terms in the advertising columns, while they usually were kept secret” (Gaillard, 2020, p. 61).
Nineteenth-century observers knew, just as we do today, that love is not blind. People have partner preferences but are reluctant to verbalize them. In an ordinary social setting, these preferences can remain implicit: we approach people in whom we are interested (and ignore others), and so we carry out a non-verbalized selection. But matchmaking services – whether in print or online – make these preferences explicit and put them on the public scene. To a present-day observer, it is relatively easy to see what the nineteenth-century commentators did not want to admit: that the matrimonial ads and agencies did not themselves generate the economic considerations that floated around marriage but made them explicit. In the same way, dating platforms have not created the social, racial, and sexual preferences that play out online – something they are often accused of. They do, however, make these criteria very visible. Thus we can say that dating services make explicit the terms of partner selection and, in doing so, challenge our representations of love.
The moral stigma surrounding matchmaking services would lastingly hold them in disrepute, and matrimonial agencies and ads never gained much traction. Even in their heyday, between the two world wars, when agencies were opening with branch offices and greater use of classifieds in major dailies, they remained marginal, according to surveys conducted during the twentieth century. In France in the mid-1980s, less than one couple in a hundred had met through matrimonial agencies or ads, and an overwhelming majority of the French population said that they would never consider using them (Bozon and Heran, 1989). The tone of disapproval echoed the complaints heard one century earlier: the system continued to carry a stigma of commercialization and fraud and was not considered “serious.” A survey conducted in the United States in 1992 gives a very similar picture: only 1% of the American respondents had met their partner through a personal ad (Laumann et al., 1994). New digital technologies would nevertheless renew the matchmaking business.
BBS and Minitel networks: praise and prejudice
The first experiments with “computer dating” (Figure 1.2) date back to the late 1950s, when students at Harvard and Stanford used punch cards to match candidates for dates (Gillmor, 2007; Sprecher et al., 2008). A similar arrangement was adopted for scientific purposes in the 1960s, when social psychologists were investigating the factors at work in interpersonal attraction, one of the discipline’s pet topics at the time (Coombs and Kenkel, 1966; Byrne et al., 1970). Researchers programmed the computers to match men and women according to a predetermined formula, established on the basis of data from questionnaires, physical attractiveness scales, and personality tests. Dates were arranged and subsequently evaluated after participants submitted their satisfaction questionnaires. The system was also marketed by marriage agencies; one of the earliest to specialize in computer matchmaking was the Scientific Marriage Foundation, which had started business in 1957 (Joyce and Baker, 2008). The agencies introduced men and women who were found compatible in terms of preferences and personality traits, and also homogamous about age, ethnicity, social and occupational status, and religion (Sindberg et al., 1972). Some thirty years later, such experiments were carried over into the automatic matching arrangements available on different forms of computer networks.
Figure 1.2. Newspaper publicity for the “computer dating” agency Compatibility (LIFE, August 1969)
When new technologies were introduced in the 1980s, the matching services made great strides. Computers in the United States were networking since the late 1960s, but it was only with the expansion of microcomputing in the 1980s and the introduction of BBSs that online communications would become commonplace. Anyone with a personal computer and a dial-up modem could access a bulletin board and send messages to other users. Some of these services would rapidly specialize in dating (see Figure 1.3).
Figure 1.3. Interface of the BBS Matchmaker
Two of the BBS dating services that attracted