Messing with the Attractiveness Algorithm: a Response to Queering Code/Space

Responding to the collection of articles, “Queering Code/Space,” this article discusses how algorithms affect the production of online lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) spaces, namely online dating sites. The set of papers is well timed: lesbian bars have closed en masse across the US and many gay male bars have followed suit so that online spaces fill—or perhaps make—a gap in the social production of LGBTQ spaces. I draw on Cindi Katz’s idea of “messy” qualities of social reproduction and the necessity of “messing” with dominant narratives in order to think about the labor, experience, and project of queering code/space.