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Why some twentysomethings aren’t clicking with Bumble
By Bethany Osborn
Nov. 26, 2018
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Emily assumes she’ll meet her future husband in real life, like a normal person.
She said the words with a confident certainty, like meeting the person she was meant to spend forever with was an absolute but meant for later in life. In the meantime, she chooses to occupy the space absent of men she feels compelled to date seriously in the same manner as many of her peers: dating apps.
Emily, 20, a senior at the University of Arkansas, whose last name has been omitted for her privacy, is one of the dating app Tinder’s millions of users. Emily compares her usage of dating apps to a business transaction. Oftentimes few words are exchanged between two people – practically associates – who have the same goal in mind: a hookup.
Emily was on Tinder until she eventually tired of the innate hookup culture she’d fallen victim to. One of Emily’s friends mentioned she should try Bumble, a dating app geared toward women, because the guys were way hotter, which Emily said she discovered to be true after creating an account. Emily’s motivation to seek out a higher caliber of men was not exactly the intention behind Bumble’s creation, but made her one of more than 40 million Bumble users.
Bumble was created as a way to amend the hookup culture perpetuated through its main competitor, Tinder. CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, who was 27 when she founded Bumble in 2014, left Tinder, where she was named a co-founder for her key role in marketing the app, to create a dating app with women in mind. Her vision was to change the rules of dating.
Bumble requires women to make the first move, giving the app an early reputation as the “feminist Tinder.” The app adheres to the same principles of Tinder – swipe right to connect, swipe left to pass – but once a match is made, only the woman has the ability to send a message.
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Photo by Kevin Snyder / Illustration by Raleigh Anderson
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The company’s website is littered with their slogan, “make the first move.” In an interview with The New York Times reporter Jessica Bennett in March 2017, Herd said the reversal in “old-fashioned power dynamics encourages equality from the start.”
Bumble aims “to spread our mission of empowerment, kindness and equality for everyone,” and a lot of that starts in college, said Grace Weisiger, a marketing manager for Bumble who oversees marketing on college campuses. It’s branded as a lifestyle, rather than the means to securing casual sex by the end of the night.
But users like Emily fail to use the app for its intended purpose. Among the college students I spoke with, there seems to be a disconnect. Students, including Emily, claim to use dating apps for entertainment, which can be defined ambiguously as “a joke” or for a confidence boost that stems from mutual physical attraction, rather than for serious dating. The lack of seriousness when it comes to dating apps suggests college students haven’t yet given up on traditional means of meeting their significant other.
It seems Herd’s vision to change the rules of dating has yet to resonate among users who still hope for an organic connection.
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The modern dating game continues to be ever-changing as more advanced technology enters the scene. From the days of online dating through websites like Match.com, which launched in 1995, and Eharmony, which launched in 2000, an even more convenient way to meet people was born through the development of dating apps.
Tinder was the first app to the scene. It’s popularity was the result of an innovative and time-savvy feature on which users could swipe either right or left on another user’s picture to indicate his or her interest. Since the app launched in 2012, more than 20 billion matches have been made, according to statistics released by the company.
As of February 2018, women have “made the first move” on Bumble more than 500 million times, according to statistics on Bumble’s website.
Bumble doesn’t publish any user information as far as who is using the app and where, Weisinger said. After multiple inquiries regarding the average age of Bumble users and the geographic location where the app is used most, I was told the app is globally available to anyone above age 18.
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Bumble has become known as the feminist Tinder, or a dating app meant to empower women. Photo illustration by Andrea Johnson
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It’s difficult to measure exactly how students are using dating apps and their intentions because the technology is relatively new and still below the radar of extensive behavioral research, said Jessica Strübel, an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island. Strübel holds a doctorate degree in consumer studies and social psychology, and last year she co-authored the article “Love me Tinder: Body image and psychosocial functioning among men and women” for the National Institutes of Health. Strübel’s research focused on what motivates people to use dating apps and how they affect a user’s self-esteem.
“Think of the limited information about character and personality that apps like Tinder provide.
It’s almost nonexistent. It’s about appearance, and there is no denying that,” Strübel said. Although the research was primarily from Tinder users, Strübel said it’s about the way the app operates based on appearance alone that affects one’s psyche. “Your self-perception may also be heavily dependent on validation from others who don’t know you as a person,” Strübel said. Her study concluded that entertainment was a common goal behind downloading a dating app.
A similar study from 2016 on the goals of micro-dating, or dating apps, concluded that the primary motivation for usage among a group of undergraduate students wasn’t sex or dating: It was entertainment, again. In each study, entertainment was simply an option on a survey and was not explicitly defined.
This conclusion aligned with some of my own small-scale research. I interviewed six students at the University of Arkansas who would talk with me, and only half had ever gone on a date with someone they had met through the app. None of the students said they downloaded the app with the intention of finding someone to seriously date.
Through the rise of dating apps, finding a significant other online has differentiated itself from the traditional rituals of dating that occur in the real world. Students I interviewed mentioned the stigma attached to meeting someone online. To students like Emily, seeking a real relationship through an app is akin to giving up on finding someone in real life, especially in college, where students are already surrounded by their peers and sufficient dating opportunities exist. Claiming to use the app for entertainment keps the door to organic connections open.
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“I’d rather have a more organic connection with someone instead of starting online,” said Cozy Brown, a University of Arkansas alumna who downloaded Bumble out of curiosity. “You don’t click with someone when your instant connection is appearance based, which is still what Bumble is.”
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Photo illustration by Kevin Snyder
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.17.2″]With her friends’ encouragement, Brown began swiping through the faces of her male peers, connected with those she found attractive, initiated conversation and even decided to go on a date. Her experience was awkward, to say the least.
Brown, 22, met the 31-year-old man from Northwest Arkansas at the Black Apple Crossing Cidery in Springdale. Immediately, she noticed he didn’t exactly resemble his profile picture, particularly his teeth. The date failed to improve as the conversation shifted to the feeding and hibernation patterns of black bears, when all she said was she occasionally liked to go hiking when the weather was nice.
Barely able to get a word in, Brown sought refuge in the bathroom halfway through.
When the date was finally over, the man asked if he could see her again, noting that “she was so easy to talk to.” Brown was shocked by this response and surmised that the other women he dated rarely let him ramble. It was the first and last Bumble date for Brown. The lack of a natural, candid connection deterred her from using the app again.
When I had the initial idea for the story, I thought the best way to find sources would be to get on Bumble myself. I made a profile and swiped right on anyone who listed in their bio that they were a student at the University of Arkansas. Whenever I had a match, I messaged them introducing myself as a journalist, explained my article and asked if they’d be willing to let me interview them. I was shocked by many of the responses I got.
One person informed me that my introduction “sounds like if I meet you you’re gunna kill me.”
Another respondent was willing to be interviewed but continuously talked about his ex-girlfriend, the last person he’d met on the app, and how he was hoping for better luck now. I informed him that any meeting between us would be strictly for the article and he suddenly became defensive and confused.
I realized that some of these men thought my inquiry to interview them was some form of an elongated pick-up line, alluding to another factor in which online dating has differentiated itself from dating in the real world. Simply having a conversation with someone within the setting of a dating app had certain expectations tied to it. No matter what the conversation was about, the idea of a potential hookup was present, regardless of the fact that I was the one initiating the conversation.
As the idea for the story buzzed around my head, I considered going on dates myself, comparing my experiences dating men I met on Bumble to men I met on Tinder. I decided to forgo the idea because my intentions would skew my perception. I decided it best to tell this story through the perspective of those who used the app, and I discovered it was difficult to find students using it as Herd envisioned when she created it.
“I feel like college students don’t really take it seriously at all,” said Brendan Smith, a University of Arkansas alumnus.
Smith has been using Tinder and Bumble for three years but said he’s never gone on a date with a girl he’s matched with. Being on a college campus provides ample opportunity to meet people, Smith said, therefore he feels no need to use the apps other than for entertainment.
To Smith, entertainment had a broad definition. He’d met with a few women from the app when convenient, but that wasn’t his motivation for having the apps. If they both happened to be out that night and talking through the app, they would meet up. He said he simply wanted to meet people with no expectations attached – meet who was out there and see if there was a connection. Smith never went on formal dates with the women he met through Bumble because that would suggest a more serious intention.
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Weisiger said the company recently conducted a survey among its users, and 94 percent claimed they were looking for a relationship on the app. Weisinger suggested the lack of seriousness on the app was unique to the University of Arkansas, but different environments may result in different usage habits.
Luzi Watson, 22, moved from Tucson, Arizona, to Chicago at 18 to attend Depaul University. She remembers when many of her peers were using dating apps like Tinder during her freshman year, but no one took them seriously until two years later. During the summer, between her junior year and senior year, she began to see her friends use the apps more seriously.
“Throughout my whole college career I feel like I’ve seen the evolution of dating apps go from not really serious to people hoping to find their future spouse,” Watson said.
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Infographic by Sarah Young
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She thinks that the dating pool at her school is small, and she doesn’t have any other choice but to go on dating apps. Watson’s college environment also differs from that of the University of Arkansas. Not only is Depaul University located in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the country, but their enrollment is different as well. In 2017, Depaul reported nearly 15,000 undergraduate students enrolled, compared to the 23,000 undergraduate students at the University of Arkansas.
Watson found herself uninterested in dating other college students. “The type of people my friends and I tend to go for are young professionals in the city who don’t have time to go out and meet people,” Watson said.
Like many other students I spoke with, Watson said her environment certainly had an impact on how seriously she considered using dating apps. Watson said she never even considered going on Tinder because she couldn’t take it seriously.
Upon graduation, many students find themselves alone in big cities, having moved for a job and displaced from the comforts a college town has to offer and the seemingly endless dating opportunities. Perhaps this is the gap in the online-dating market where 94 percent of Bumble users claim to use the app for seeking serious relationships.
This was the case for Rachel Atterstrom, 27, who graduated from the University of Arkansas in 2012 and now lives in Houston where she works as a brand manager for a marketing agency. Being the skeptic she is, Atterstrom only entered into online dating because she was bored. One evening after work, she realized the group of friends in Houston she’d spent many laid-back nights with had slowly dwindled until it was just her, alone in the apartment. With the realization that her friends were busy going on dates with people they’d met through dating apps, Atterstrom decided to give it a shot and downloaded Tinder and Bumble.
After several months, she eventually got bored with the entire thing and the dates she went on were unsubstantial, as none of her relationships lasted more than a month, until she met Tony, her current boyfriend. Tony had never used dating apps before but lost a bet with a friend. His punishment was to download Bumble and use it to go on dates throughout the month of May 2017. They had their first date that month, and they’ve been dating ever since and now live together in Houston.
Despite finding a successful relationship through Bumble, Atterstrom doesn’t think much about how the app impacted her life. To her, the cultural phenomenon of dating people through an app isn’t surprising to her, Atterstrom said. Her decision to use Bumble over Tinder was a result of mere convenience, and in her experience, men on Bumble acted the same as they did on Tinder. Atterstrom, who proudly describes herself as a “ragey feminist,” doesn’t see Bumble as any sort of solution to the problems plaguing women in today’s society.
“Just because women message first, it doesn’t mean anything. People will behave online how they behave. That’s not going to change,” she said.
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Four months after I graduated from the University of Arkansas and thought I had finished this story, I found myself as Rachel Atterstrom did: alone in a new city where I knew no one. Admittedly, I downloaded Bumble, swiped through hundreds of my fellow twentysomethings living in Colorado and even went on two dates with a guy. He was gracious and handsome, but we were ultimately looking for different things. He was clearly ready for a girlfriend while I was simply bored of staying in on Friday nights. There was never a third date.
There’s no right or wrong way to use dating apps. Some people download them because they’re bored or looking for new friends while others have their intentions set. Some go in with little to no expectations and end up finding someone who changes their life, while others just download, start swiping and genuinely don’t know why.
Bumble’s website highlights members who have experienced positive life changes from downloading the app. The success stories tab is full of pictures profiling engagements, marriages and even babies, all proving that dating apps work. But the formula to finding a significant other will never be black and white. Dating apps have simply provided the technologically savvy generation with yet another option.
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