This is an overly optimistic take that I cannot confirm.
The first messages received on Bumble are either "hey/hi" or a GIF that is typically a waving bear with the word "hello". That is despite profile text and images with dozens of things that could spark a conversation or question. In fact, most people never read my thoughtfully crafted profile - there certainly is no investment in getting to know me. Instead my reply is expected to be creative/funny or the conversation will end, essentially making this conversation no different from Tinder. In my experience the typical Bumble user in major metro areas wants to date, but not with long term in mind. If that isn't important to you, fair enough. As an aside, I also find that Bumble has less diversity than other apps - racially, socioeconomically etc
Given Tinder and Bumble I vastly preferred Tinder. Tinder has far more users of every kind of background with every imaginable kind of intention. The key is to be intentional in your profile or your first messages about what you are looking for and move on if it is a mismatch. I know how to identify a Tinder profile that is a good mutual match for me, but I definitely will get tendonitis from swiping left in the process of locating such a profile. If you save your free daily super like for that person and assuming you are introspective enough to accurately assess whether this person will be interested in you you have a high chance of being seen and matching.
If you would like to date seriously without it feeling forced or desperate I highly recommend Coffee Meets Bagel (if you are in an area where this app is being used). It never takes me long to find someone wonderful there that makes me want to quit all apps.
In my experience, no matter what you are looking for, Bumble isn't your best choice for any of those things.
I don’t think it’s fair to characterize it as “women punting the ball back” so much as it’s just not usually worth the effort for a lot of people — no matter their gender — to think of something more original to say.
I don’t know why people complain about it though. It seems like the perfect way to really stand out in the crowd. Everyone wants to be recognized as a unique individual and when your inbox is full of “hey” all the way down then a message from someone who took the time to get to know you a bit is definitely going to be opened and replied to more often.
And every conversation starts with a hello. Sure, if it gets boring after then it's a diff issue
Bots are generally easy to spot. Coming up with something at least semi-relevant the person’s profile is not much harder than a “hey” for the type of person who shows enough personality on their profile to be interesting in the first place.
Your success rate will easily shoot up 5x from the baseline of “hey” by saying something even remotely interesting.
If your goal is dating to establish a healthy romantic relationship then number of matches isn't what you want to optimize:
Accept who you are, how you think and feel. No need to hide the real you. No need to please the masses. You can find people who will appreciate you the way you are. And I can't emphasize this enough: *Respect the other person* - everyone is equally looking for (and entitled to find) what is right for them.
With experience it gets easier to quickly identify people who think and feel like you, who share similar values and lifestyle.
IMO no one likes writing dating app bios and no one likes reading them. People are gonna match based on looks anyway. You’ll learn about someone on the date, not by reading some painstakingly crafted autobiography
Way back when I used Bumble, a lot of girls used to drop 'Hi!'(double standards), and never bothered to reply to my reply which felt very annoying to say the least.
I would wish every dating app to add a simple feature, if the other person is active on the dating app and isn't responding to you, just unmatch the pair say after two/three days of the last message. I don't understand what's the purpose of just being a name/chat on someone's list.
This is a good point. However, some women (due to men spamming them) don't have notifications turned on, so genuinely don't get around to seeing a message until they have time to sit down and scroll through the pile
Also (as I'm sure you know), anything that can be used as a "measure of cool" will be used as just that. And having a huge list of matches can be a huge self-esteem boost to some.
I agree with your point though. It can be tiresome to have to periodically clean out matches every so often
That's why I wrote "if the other person is active on the dating app and isn't responding to you, just unmatch the pair say after"
> anything that can be used as a "measure of cool" will be used as just that.
Agreed. I have been guilty of this as well, though I also do realize that it is still a human being at the other end and giving a closure by unmatching is much better than leaving it hanging.
> It can be tiresome to have to periodically clean out matches every so often
I think more than cleaning out the matches, if you were interested in someone and were having a conversation with them and suddenly they disappear, you don't know if that's just because of being busy. The delay might be just anxiousness for the other person.
Ultimately the types of girls to use bumble in my college, home town, and when traveling aligned with the types of girls I like. I know hinge is super popular in major cities like LA/NYC. But in the suburbs of SoCal 90%ish of hinge girls seemed socially awkward and I did not find their pics/writing prompts attractive.
Yeah girls do tend to drop 'hi! :)' on bumble. You just have to be clever when responding to it. I treat it as she is signaling me to make the 'opening move' which sets the tone of the whole conversation.
You can always unmatch (on any dating app) if the conversation stales. At least bumble unmatches if the guy does not respond to the girl in 24 hours.
I'm Gen X, I came of age the last time there was a virus going around that had potentially lethal repercussions if you got it.
We didn't stop dating. We took reasonable precautions. To be blunt, you didn't raw-dog someone you just met.
Only fools expect you to abstain for years. Only fools look at a person and think "well they _look_ healthy, I'm probably OK."
Not really true, Bumble engages in less shitty behavior than Tinder, so they don't prevent you to match with the people who are compatible with you basically. Which is more likely to create a serious relationships. But the 24hr thing for matching doesnt work anymore, that just eliminates girls who only want more followers on insta.
But yeah overall the app works better than Tinder, because Tinder needs to capture as much money as possible from their user to be the most profitable as possible. Bumble doesn't have to, at least it didnt have to, now that they become public, they will become as bad
Can you elaborate on this? What is Tinder doing in this respect? How does preventing matching compatible people allow them to capture more profit?
So if you want more recurring paying customers, prevent them to meet with compatible people ;)
What they do ? Show you attractive girls but don't show your profile to them. Keep a 90/10 ratio of men to women on the app. Make you feel like there is an endless list of people to meet and all better than others. Tell you you have 99+ waiting likes (when in fact thats only the girls who liked you but you didnt like). Dont limit the number of guys that a girls can match. Dont delete matches that are inactive (push you to collect matches). Almost force you to choose a long term membership instead of a month, ...
Maybe that's changed, but I honestly believe the only dating app currently available that's actually worth using if you want a relationship and not a hookup is Coffee Meets Bagel. I had more and higher quality dates, including meeting my now 3+ year girlfriend, on CMB than any other app.
Browsing Tinder in Westminster with the search distance set to the lowest possible, half the people you see are 1000s of miles away.
Unless you're ready to hop on a plane and go fuck your match halfway across the world why even bother? Is it for all the people hoping to hook up when they arrive at their vacation spot?
Furthermore, I've used it plenty of times before traveling to set it to a country where I will be going. I am very clear about not wanting a hookup and just meet up with locals and that has been working quite well.
Not everything is about having a hookup.
Maybe long distance is not your thing. Some people have bigger intentions than just fucking on a first date.
1) A small number of desperate people in poor countries trying to score a way out. Marriage is one of the rare ways for unskilled people from the 3rd world to get legal residence in the 1st world
2) Tons and tons of crypto scammers. So many crypto scammers. "I'm actually in Hong Kong right now. I made tons of money investing in $ponzi, and now I'm a free agent. You should make an account too, then we can travel together!"
After this I gave up and just accepted the fact I might be sooo ugly to get any matches on online dating websites.
And I don't approach women in real life either now because honestly if there's no common courtesy online and then I get no interest, in real life people just giving me response out of courtesy.
People in middle age that choose to travel solo are open minded, a bit lonely, and are completely dissatisfied with all of the "normal" social bullshit.
don't let that put you off talking to new people IRL though. dating sites tend to give you an unrealistically low impression of your attractiveness. before the pandemic, I used to go out to local bars a few times a month for dinner and a drink. I was mostly focused on eating, but more often than not whoever was sitting nearby would start a conversation with me, some of them very attractive women who I'm sure would have swiped left on me without a moment's hesitation.
keep in mind, all dating failures stem from one or both of the following: unreasonable expectations and simply not talking to enough new people. both are within your power to change.
I don't think these are the same thing. Swiping right is expressing a positive attraction and intent to go out for a date. Having a conversation in a bar is just... having a conversation. People do that with anyone and everyone. It doesn't mean any attraction at all.
Blackstone owns it.
Bumble founder was an executive at Match group. She was sexually assaulted. Why she would sell it to them - only to go back to a horror show?
The mechanism is still there.
Most people I know have put their dating lives on hold. Not all of course, but most. It’s like any of the rules people have been asked to follow during the past year: most people have followed them, it’s only a selfish minority that have not.
Edit: My point is not to excuse shitty behaviour by pretending everyone else is doing it. Consider the world doesn't revolve around you and that occasionally people need to work together for the greater good, each making a variety of sacrifices.
I am in my 20s as well and can see where he is coming from. I have not gone out on dates this past year and it feels bad. 20s are the prime dating years, it feels like a year was taken out where I aged but my life hasn't moved.
To make things worse, the whole staying at your home thing has made the desire of having a relationship even more strong as the alone periods do hit you hard.
Though to put things in perspective, a lot of people had it way worse than just their dating life/travel being disrupted.
The thing is though that those later years of people’s life are often worth very much to those around them.
For instance, what about a four year old whose primary caretaker is their grandmother? Four is a precious year with an outsize effect on the trajectory of someone’s life. The calculations are not so simple then.
(New Zealand, you go ahead and enjoy yourselves. Remember to use protection.)
Should we remove the laws about driving while intoxicated? That's just another form of reckless endangerment that leads to loss of life.
It's the Quality-Adjusted Life Year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year
> The method of ranking interventions on grounds of their cost per QALY gained ratio (or ICER) is controversial because it implies a quasi-utilitarian calculus to determine who will or will not receive treatment.
So yeah there are people who are choosing to go on dates, gather, party, etc. Those people are very visible. I get it, there can be FOMO. Why should you sacrifice when they're having fun?
Does it help to consider that there are lots of people (dare I say a majority) your age who are making the same sacrifice you are? If/when things return to the old normal, you'll have some sense of solidarity and shared maturity with them. Selflessness is a good quality in a potential spouse.
(Of course, unlike the "I voted" sticker, there's no "I stayed home" sticker, so in two years you're not going to be able to tell who did what now.)
> To make things worse, the whole staying at your home thing has made the desire of having a relationship even more strong as the alone periods do hit you hard.
I get this. My wife passed away 9 months before the pandemic hit full swing and I'm lonely af. I don't get to see adult friends really at all anymore.
> Though to put things in perspective, a lot of people had it way worse than just their dating life/travel being disrupted.
Exactly this. Every time you choose not to go to a party or whatever, you could be averting the death of a family member (yours or a friend's, or friend-of-friend's, etc).
And so we've pretty much burned a year of life for everyone. I know many, many people for whom 2020 has been the worst year of their life, in large part due to the lockdown. The people who have suffered least are the people who are basically at home anyway; professionals established enough in their careers to thrive during WFH; the already coupled; and those with kids. Although inconvenienced, they can still progress with their lives. But for many singles in their 20s or 30s, this has been a lost year. And that's very costly: particularly if you want to raise a family, losing a year or more of dating and socialization from your late 20s or 30s is incredibly damaging to those chances.
> The people who have suffered least are the people who are basically at home anyway [...] and those with kids.
hol up. Not to downplay what you're saying (I personally know it can be tough wondering whether you're going to find somebody to spend the rest of your life with), but do you think raising kids is easy?
After this is all done, the world is going to be split between people who spent lockdown with one or more 2- to 4-year-olds, and those who have their sanity.
A year wasted versus a year spent raising a kid. For the latter, you'd be raising them anyhow regardless of quarantine. That's not to say juggling WFH and being around your kids 24/7 isn't difficult--I'm sure it is--but at the end of it, your year was spent on something meaningful. It's analogous to spending a year at a shitty intensive 80 hr/week job vs being a NEET living in your parents basement. Neither enviable, but at the end of the day most people would prefer to be the former.
> the world is going to be split between people who spent lockdown with one or more 2- to 4-year-olds, and those who have their sanity.
As opposed to people who spend months on end, devoid of any meaningful social contact at all? Neither situation is ideal, obviously, but at least with one you're accomplishing something.
It's on the same order of risk as driving. Many young people die driving every year, yet we still do it plenty, with reasonable precautions. If you take reasonable precautions, are young and healthy, it is a risk worth taking to many.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0/figures/2
Note that the OP said it was selfish to be out and about, not against self interest. So your statistic is irrelevant to the point made. Selfish means you're benefiting yourself while harming others. That's exactly what happens if you catch COVID, pass it on, and then recover. You're fine. Others may not be.
We could go further and outlaw cars that don't have speed governors. That would save lives. Lower speed limits would save more lives as well. Now we have a balance between freedom and safety.
> Tens of thousands of people are dying a day right now because not everyone is taking the precautions they have been asked to take.
That was true during the flu season of 2018 as well. The excess deaths from COVID are higher, but not orders of magnitude higher (more like 3x) [1]. The response is off the charts, economically and culturally devastating. Not the right balance.
(Plus, letting it burn through the whole population comes with downside risks of more mutations.)
It's a hard case to make. Sweden for example has had less excess death than harsher lockdown countries like Spain & UK.
Lockdowns have done little if anything in US states. New York and Florida have similar stats (worse in NY if anything).
Edit: To be fair, the same argument can be made in reverse as well, that it is selfish for older people to insist on universal lockdowns, which primarily benefit themselves. To that, I would argue (1) that death is not the only negative result from covid-19, and (2) that the relative magnitudes of benefits and harms need to be compared.
It's rather entitled and judgey to imply that people who still have some human contact are bad. Assuming the worst of people basically.
Most people who have followed the rules are people who believed fake propaganda. Now even the staunchest supporters of lockdowns, e.g. NYC and Chicago mayors, are coming out against them.
Trying to suppress life's prime imperative is always a losing battle.
If there's one ugly thing about the Covid situation that I hope our society reflects on with great remorse in the future, it is this justification for moralizing the private behavior of others. Covid seems to have unleashed the self-righteous scolds of the world in a way that I haven't seen in my lifetime.
If two consenting adults weigh their own personal risks and choose to go on a date, it isn't your business to judge their behavior. Catching a virus is not a moral act.
Obviously, people who interact with high-risk individuals should take special precautions. But if I am a healthy young person, live by myself and want to date someone else who is in the same situation, you can take your judgments and go pound sand.
It's more like drunk driving. I may evaluate that after 4 beers I'd still be comfortable with the risk of driving. It's my life to lose after all. Except I'm not the only one affected by it.
That's fine if it was just a risk to them. But it's not, unless they decide to live together and never leave the house after their first date, or quarantine for 14 days after every date.
The "miniscule risk to others" argument can be extended to literally any intrusion on personal liberty, and is exactly why I hope society looks back on this trend with horror and regret.
How far do you take this logic? Do I have to quarantine myself for 14 days after going to the park? Home Depot? A restaurant? If not, why not? I can catch Covid every time I leave my home. Must I lock myself indoors forever, or is it just for things that other people don't approve of?
If your date is a walk in the park six feet apart, then great, you're probably fine.
If your date involves touching, hugging, kissing, or vigorous sex in a small bedroom for more than 15 minutes, then you have a much higher chance of spreading the virus.
Here's a suggestion: Have some empathy and consider that it's highly likely that you have knowingly or unknowingly made plenty of mistakes over the year that have contributed to the spread of COVID.
Yeah I get it, it sucks, you can't have random hookups. I feel for you, I really do. There's lots of things I can't do either. But if we all sacrifice a bit, this will be over sooner. We've all had to change our lives during this pandemic. You're not unique in your suffering.
If you choose to raise your risk of catching COVID, a few things can happen:
(1) You don't catch COVID
(2) You catch COVID, and recover safely in the privacy of your own home
(3) You catch COVID, and accidentally spread it someone else while pre-symptomatic
(4) You catch COVID, get very unlucky and have to be hospitalized. The hospital's ICU beds are full, and they prioritize your young life over someone else's old life, and that old person dies.
If the only possible outcomes were (1) or (2), I would agree with you that it's a private decision that no one should scold you for.
But as the likelihood of (3) and (4) rise, your actions increasingly impact others. At a low likelihood, it's not a big deal and we can probably round down to zero in our moral calculus, just for convenience. But when R is above 1, and the average person is likely to pass on the disease, it's very possible that your infection on average leads to dozens or hundreds of infections over the next year. The expected value of quality adjusted life years lost at this point is not negligible. Tens of thousands of people are dying every day, and it's only going up[1]. ICUs are full in a non-negligible fraction of US hospitals [2].
I get that all of our actions impact other people, and it would be hassle to constrain your freedoms by that fact alone. But when it comes to COVID, your actions affect others by a much larger degree than other everyday choices.
Incidentally, this is why we as a society have made speeding a crime and not a 'personal choice.' Driving very fast is usually safe but occasionally hurts others, and we've decided that that risk is large enough to be worth restricting your freedoms over. Not all externalities meet that threshold, but some do.
So if one unnecessarily risks catching COVID and passing it along, then scolding seems ok to me. People who recklessly pass on COVID are why millions are dead and dying. Countries with much better adherence have much lower death tolls.
I personally have curtailed my dating life this year to try and save lives. I encourage others to do so as well.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths?country=~USA
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-...
Likewise, how far do you extend this logic? I can catch and spread Covid literally any time I go outside. Do I have to avoid all other human contact, or is it just the things that a tribunal of strangers on the internet thinks is unnecessary?
> So if you take dumb risks and raise your odds of catching COVID and passing it along, then I am happy to scold you. People who recklessly pass on COVID are why millions are dead and dying.
I made a comment about two consenting adults, who live alone, taking a calculated personal risk. I am not sure who is being reckless here, but at the least this is an exaggeration.
I don’t know how things are where you live but here (Germany) it’s been severely restricted why (and how) you can do things. There’s actually a defined list of reasons under which you’re allowed to go outside. Now that list is pretty generous and include exercise, shopping, etc. but it exists. Any store that doesn’t serve a basic need is closed and at best can do “Click & Collect”
Likely this weekend things will go further here in Berlin. The airport will be shut down and you won’t be able to go further than 15km outside the city limits. Again there’s a defined list of reasons why you can go, just as en example visiting your spouse is ok. Visiting your parents or adult children is not unless you’re a care giver.
I say this in so many words not to say look at us, we got it so bad. But because what you said is true, _anytime_ you go outside you can catch and spread COVID. That’s why we have restrictions on when you can go outside.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55292614#:~:text=A%20m....
Most prefer Tinder/Hinge because it allows them more control over their dates/matches (i.e they can put in more time/work to get more dates) whereas Bumble is more of a passive experience. It's used as more of a "bonus" or "extra".
This is my experience of the three...
Hinge: I talk to people, and sometimes that leads to a date
Tinder: I talk to people, but no dates happen
Bumble: Nothing happens.
what is The company worth?
In my experience...Facebook Dating is just a like factory in which people aren't seriously looking rather boosting their ego or have a huge list to filter through even if they liked you the conversations doesn't go far(I only continue a conversation if she asks about me too). It's definitely not a dating app to find women who are serious about dating.
Overall during Covid I've had more dates then usual. Women are out there looking and dating at least here in the suburbs/rurual areas of MD and PA; restaurants are open for outside and inside dining.
I know a lot of you are married so let me put this out here: I (and most young people) will not put their romantic life on pause cause of a virus. Every dating app got an influx of people due to bordem from lockdowns.
I'm biased towards (investing in) bumble because it has anecdotally acted as the best dating 'middleman' compared to tinder/hinge. I've had only great experiences taking bumble girls on dates.
Compared to tinder, bumble has more serious people looking to date. The system is set up so girls message first and matches will expire after 24 hr. When a girl messages you first, she is already more invested in getting to you know than when a guy using a cheesy pickup line on tinder.
I've always loved the philosophy bumble took to the dating scene compared to the apps part of $MTCH.