“I hear you like bad girls? I’m bad at everything”: a British-Spanish cross-cultural analysis of humour as a self-presentation strategy in Tinder profiles
“I hear you like bad girls? I’m bad at everything”: a British-Spanish cross-cultural analysis of humour as a self-presentation strategy in Tinder profiles

Summary/Abstract: This article explores humour employed as a self-presentation device in the biography section ofTinder profiles belonging to heterosexual users (male and female) in their 20s based in Spainand the United Kingdom. The main purpose of this investigation is to find out if male or femaleusers are more prone to resorting to humour in their Tinder profiles and if the culture withinwhich this interaction takes place also affects the frequency of use of humorous remarks. Morespecifically, we intend to answer the following research questions: (i) To what extent doesgender influence the use of humour as an online self-presentation strategy?, (ii) To what extentdoes the users’ cultural context play a role in the frequency and way humour is employed? Tothat purpose, a total of 455 Tinder profiles from both Spanish (224) and UK (231) users wasgathered with the help of a bot, Tinderbotz, and it was then analysed quantitatively andqualitatively with the assistance of the software program Atlas.ti. The results show that UKusers favour humour as a self-presentation strategy in a significantly higher percentage thantheir Spanish counterparts, independently of their gender. Thus, while Spanish-speakers mayregard humour as a risky mechanism that can backfire, UK users embrace it as part of theAnglo-Saxon ethos of not taking oneself too seriously.

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