February 14 2022
My first NFT Collection - Swipe Left to DDS
Swipe Left to DDS - That is the title of my first NFT collection. The main thesis of the NFT is to explore the question: Does political view affects how Filipinos choose their partners? Its inspired by the No DDS (Duterte Diehard Supporters) profiles that I saw in dating apps. You can now buy them at Opensea.
view NFT collection in OpenseaThe Story
When I visited the US last May 2019, I saw a survey in an in-flight magazine titled, The Politics of Dating. I found it very interesting because I was curious if Americans value political views when choosing partners.
A statistic in that infographic asks the question - How important is a person’s political party affiliation when deciding to on a date? A good 71% of women and 60% of men believed that it is at least moderately important. That result was interesting but not surprising considering the US seems to be polarized by its blue and red, left-wing right-wing politics. And that polarization seems to have increased with Trump in office that time.
the survey in the in-flight magazine
And this made me wonder. Has this kind of polarization reached the Philippine psyche? I never really had a chance to explore that until I’ve noticed an interesing occurence as I was using dating apps. I saw that some women have specifically pointed out in their profiles that they will not date a diehard Duterte supporter or popularly known as DDS. Does this mean Philippines has now reached a point of polarization that the US has?
A few months of seeing the Swipe Left to DDS pattern, I decided to document this unraveling phenomena. In June 2020, I started taking screenshots of the No DDS profiles and has now reached 100 screenshots. I thought of taking this an opportunity to capture this event in Philipppine society.
Scope of the Project
1. I took screeshot of the profiles that contain the No DDS criteria. The dating apps I used were OkCupid, Bumble, and Tinder.
2. To protect the identity of the women in those profiles, I cropped anything that will provide personal information and identification of these women.
3. I wasn’t actively using these apps just to find women with this criteria. I was still on my normal usage behavior. That is why probably it took me 1yr and 8mos to gather 100 screenshots. I didn’t use the apps everyday. And everytime I use the apps I didn’t always see the No DDS profiles.
4. Since I was using the apps as I intended, the screenshots that I got are 100% from women’s profile.
5. I’ve seen some posts that are directed to Pres. Duterte, I didn’t took screenshots of those because it was more of an expression of their opinion about the president and not about setting deal breakers for a partner or relationship.
sample screenshot of a No to DDS profile
Questions to Ponder
Why do these No DDS criteria appear?
Most No DDS posts also include the same dislike for the Marcoses (the immediate family of the late dictator and Philippine president), why do these women have the same sentiment to the 2 political figures?
Is there a perceived stereotype of a DDS and Marcos apologists? What makes that stereotype undesirable to other people?
Since this screenshots are limited to women, do men also have the same criteria when choosing a partner?
Why are the DDS and Marcos supporters singled out in this posts? There is a general disdain for politicians (by people around the world according to a survey) but why are these 2 political figures are the mostly, if not, the only mentioned politicians.
On the flipside, perhaps do the people who have this No DDS criteria just belong to a certain group? Whether its by idealogy, religion, education, economic status, etc.
What percentage of Filipinos have this No DDS criteria? How does politics affect the relationship choices of Filipinos?
Conclusion
Hopefully this project got a glimpse of this occurence in the dating lives of Filipinos. A lot more can be explored and I hope there will be more studies or projects that will tackle this subject. I would be very much interested to hear more.