PREDATE 普得爱 Subtitle: An Informal & Unprofessional Dating Platform

PREDATE is a real-time interactive web-based project exploring how contemporary Chinese dating culture transforms intimacy into a system of scoring, categorization, and social evaluation. Set within a speculative anthropomorphic dating platform where participants continuously judge others while being judged themselves, the project examines how contemporary intimacy is increasingly shaped less by genuine emotional connection and more by learned habits of evaluation and self-performance.

Project Video

Abstract

What cools down intimacy in contemporary Chinese dating culture? Are people still trying to emotionally connect with one another, or have they become accustomed to judging others through swipes, scores, labels, and first impressions? As dating platforms increasingly organize relationships through visibility, filtering, and optimization, people are gradually moving away from choosing others through genuine emotional connection and toward evaluating them through measurable value, desirability, and social performance.

PREDATE is a real-time interactive web-based project that explores the phenomenon of “cold intimacy” and the normalization of social judgment in digital relationships. Inspired by Chinese matchmaking parks, dating apps, and online relationship discourse, the project constructs a speculative anthropomorphic dating world where participants build profiles, evaluate others, and are evaluated in return. The work focuses less on romance itself than on the social habits surrounding modern matchmaking: ranking, categorizing, interpreting, and packaging people through fragments of information.

Participants create profiles through a combination of personal choices and randomly assigned conditions related to assets, lifestyle, desirability, and relationship history. Not every trait can be controlled. Some conditions are determined through a limited dice-roll system, where luck directly shapes social value. Participants immediately see their scores rise or fall according to these assigned conditions, turning identity into something quantified, comparable, and publicly visible.

After creating their profiles, participants swipe through others, leave comments, assign labels, and react in real time. Rankings continuously shift as collective opinions shape visibility and desirability. The installation creates a cycle in which people judge others while simultaneously adjusting themselves to fit the same standards of evaluation. In this environment, judgment becomes automatic, performative, and socially reinforced.

PREDATE engages with broader questions surrounding emotional capitalism, algorithmic culture, and the commodification of intimacy in contemporary Chinese dating culture. The project examines how dating platforms encourage people to present themselves, interpret others, and navigate relationships through learned templates of evaluation. From profile construction to first impressions, intimacy becomes increasingly shaped by categorization, optimization, and social performance rather than emotional connection.

If audiences find the experience entertaining, that response becomes part of the work itself. The humor only functions because participants already recognize the logic behind it from their own lives.

Photos